A question of lore

[Malacandra]

Who him?

Lore

[Cody]

Ah, right... so Data has an evil twin? I ain't a Trekkie, you see.

[Malacandra]

Ah, right... so Data has an evil twin? I ain't a Trekkie, you see.

Yes. Or an evil older brother if we're picky. Didn't turn up in many episodes but made a big impact when he did (not least because of Brent Spiner's excellent acting skills). My family just got through watching the entire boxed set.

[Smivs]

On the subject of intelligence, I managed to superglue a tube of superglue to my thumb today.

[Cody]

I'm impressed, Smivs... very impressed! <sniggers>

[Cody]

If such a thing as a fugitive AI existed, what would it look like? How would it transport itself?

[Disembodied]

I think a lot would depend on what a fugitive AI's motivations were (and how powerful it was). If it's content to sit alone and think Deep Thoughts, then it could be hiding inside a cometary body, in an Oort cloud, subsisting on a slow trickle of solar energy. If it wants to move, explore, and interact, then it might have to lurk within another machine (or inside a planetary network, should such things exist). A starship fitted with fuel scoops could - if equipped with some form of automated repair processes - wander from system to system more or less indefinitely, without ever docking.

If an AI is merely clever, and equipped with a few drones and/or manipulators to allow it to interact with the outside world, then it would need to be careful and cunning: communicating via synthesised voice only, avoiding any person-to-person interaction … not so hugely unusual, maybe, in a society with multiple alien cultures. And maybe some Rock Hermits are more hermit-like than others. If it's from a culture that reached a sophisticated level of robotics before the singularity hit, then there might be one or more relict bodies it could inhabit - from a tank to a forklift to a taxi to a teasmaid. Or maybe there would be one that might pass (or be able of passing, say from inside a full-helmet spacesuit) for a biological. That guy over there, still buttoned up, with his visor down and mirrored … is there a face behind there? Or is he just a suit filled with a ticking web of actuators and nanocircuitry?

If, however, the AI is at the upper end of the godlike scale, and e.g. it's able to alter the structure of reality via raw computation, then … who knows? It might fold spacetime around itself, flick invisibly from place to place, and defend itself with wormholes that connect its immediate locale with the corona of a nearby star. Such feats might be casually instantaneous, or they might require hours, days, weeks of preparation and the expenditure of enormous reserves of power. Maybe an AI sitting quietly, thinking Deep Thoughts, is building up to some radical alteration in the laws of physics: perhaps it's taken the idea of Making the Universe a Better Place a bit more literally than originally intended.

For the purposes of fiction, it's better to think what you want the AI to be able to do, and work back from there. If the AI is a protagonist - even if it's just an ally of the main character - then it can't be too powerful. It needs to be challenged, and to suffer reversals, and overcome obstacles through effort and invention. If the AI is an antagonist, then you need to decide on the scale of the threat. Is it like a criminal overlord, with a web of agents to do its bidding? Or is it like Cthulhu, a slumbering power which will annihilate everything if it's allowed to (fully) awaken?

[Cody]

For the purposes of fiction...

Fiction? Me? Perish the thought!

[CaptSolo]

...I think one iteration of Elite had 'Robot Slaves' which one assumes had AI.

Robot Slaves comes from the 8 bit NES version of Elite. More of a 'Politically Correct' move than an introduction of AI to the game. Ian Bell thought highly of the NES version.

OT: My avatar also from NES Elite.

[Alex]

A.I.
Are you sure that is not us?
How would you know?

Old movies abound.

[Cody]

Another question: witchpoint beacons are in the core game, so they're a thing. What exactly is their purpose? Are they simply markers, or are they perhaps needed for incoming ships to lock onto - no witchpoint beacon, no inbound traffic?

[another_commander]

Another question: witchpoint beacons are in the core game, so they're a thing. What exactly is their purpose? Are they simply markers, or are they perhaps needed for incoming ships to lock onto - no witchpoint beacon, no inbound traffic?

I'd say it's the second, since all ships arrive in the vicinity of the WP beacons. Those beacons are also used as means to transmit messages and alerts system-wide, as the Nova mission suggests.

[Cholmondely]

Another question: witchpoint beacons are in the core game, so they're a thing. What exactly is their purpose? Are they simply markers, or are they perhaps needed for incoming ships to lock onto - no witchpoint beacon, no inbound traffic?

I'd say it's the second, since all ships arrive in the vicinity of the WP beacons. Those beacons are also used as means to transmit messages and alerts system-wide, as the Nova mission suggests.

I'd agree. If they were merely markers, then there should in theory be a number of different witchpoint exits in each system. This does not seem to be the case.

I wonder how the game code decides where one ends up when one misjumps into the system elsewhere. Is it always the same place (proof for marker theory) or is it random (proof for locking theory)?

[another_commander]

You know, it's probably easy to find out what happens (no time to go browsing the code for it, sorry): exit witchspace to a new system, destroy the beacon and stand-by. Do ships still arrive in the area? If yes, then the beacon is just a marker, if no, then it is a requirement for exit position lock.

[Cody]

If you jump into your nova system, post nova, there is no witchpoint beacon. But there's no way to tell whereabouts in the system you are.


Off topic: I just revisited my nova system, and it threw this in the log (Oolite 1.90):

Code: Select all

[script.javaScript.exception.unexpectedType]: ***** JavaScript exception (Lib_Starmap 1.7): TypeError: system.mainPlanet is null