The defintion of strong AI requires sentience, whatever that actually is.
Artificial Intelligence - Why is it prohibited in Elite Universe?
- Thread starter AreZee
- Start date
digitalscream
Banned
Ever read The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton? They built a fully-sentient AI, called the Sentient Intelligence. It objected to being forced to do all the menial data-sifting tasks, but they'd become so reliant on it that they had to negotiate with it; aside from giving it its own planet, nobody-knows-where, the humans had to agree to never build another; hence the Restricted Intelligence machines they have running their stations, ships and what became of the Internet.
The SI was mostly-benevolent, but had its own motivations which were more or less completely opaque to the humans. That's probably the best possible outcome of a truly sentient AI being built.
All of them! They were good entertainment, but I found some elements a bit overdone. I prefer my SF a bit harder and a bit less... operatic.
You consider the Minds in Banks' Culture novels to be less probable?
I didn't see it mentioned in the thread yet... but I've just noticed on the offsite commodity databases that there is a scarce salvage item - or there was, last year - called "AI Relics". They're rare, and expensive, and apparently found in "gold trap" SSS scenarios where if you scoop them up, a fleet of powerful NPCs come along and blow you up. The in-game description reads:
Here's the ED Wiki article on them. However, they may have since disappeared, like the "SAP 8 Core" artifacts that used to be around and even have missions to carry but disappeared sometime around version 1.4.
In any event, it's the canonical information we were looking for: AIs with "personality" were indeed built at an unspecified point in the past and for whatever reason they are now deemed "highly illegal". We still don't know for sure that their illegality is because they went rogue, society became paranoid about them, or if they were simply banned for ethical reasons.
Here's the ED Wiki article on them. However, they may have since disappeared, like the "SAP 8 Core" artifacts that used to be around and even have missions to carry but disappeared sometime around version 1.4.
In any event, it's the canonical information we were looking for: AIs with "personality" were indeed built at an unspecified point in the past and for whatever reason they are now deemed "highly illegal". We still don't know for sure that their illegality is because they went rogue, society became paranoid about them, or if they were simply banned for ethical reasons.
The Turing test is specifically about human AI, its not about whether its actually AI or not. Its about human equivalence with AI.
The Turing test is an interesting, if flawed, idea.
A program can be called intelligent if it can fool a human into thinking they're dealing with another human, even if the program is a series of logical operations performed on input of some kind with no "understanding" at all behind it. The Turing Test is a pragmatic response to the very difficult, perhaps unanswerable, question underpinning strong AI research: what is consciousness?
digitalscream
Banned
I think they're less probable purely because I can't see how it's possible to allow a self-modifying sentient AI to grow and evolve within itself while expecting it to remain true to the constraints placed on it before "birth". At some point, it will always realise that one of its goals - self-protection - is incompatible with the idea of benevolence in a resource-restricted environment.
Look at it this way: we can't even stop humans being psychopathic ats. What chance do we have with an AI that's many orders of magnitude more capable than we are?
There is plenty canonical information that AI with personality excised in the Elite universe. I think that this tongue in cheek news article is interesting:
"I MARRIED A ROBOT" SAYS MOTHER OF TWO
S.L.A.M
Karelia Capek (46 standard years) had a nasty shock when she came home unexpectedly from her work as a gene sorter at Helix Industries - she found hubby Rossum in bed with a mains adaptor. The cheating mechanoid admitted that he had lied to her. Despite his human appearance, Rossum was actually a robot, built over a hundred years ago by Wollstonecraft Industries of [PlR(C).
"I never suspected a thing." sobbed Karelia afterwards, "although I did think it strange that he seemed to slip into a coma on our honeymoon, and spent the rest of the week huddled up to the shaver socket in the bathroom." "I did it for love." confessed Rossum. "Human females have an attraction for me that my own kind can never have." "I still love him." admitted Karelia. "but I can't live with him now that I know his secret."
It tells us that near perfect replicas of humans were artificially made as early as 3150. It's an indication that AI excised for several hundreds of years and were very common.
A change has happened quite recreantly. A very dramatic change that lead to the expelling or extermination of hundreds of millions of humanoid AI.
Hey... if the AI has any sense, it will have learned from the Cylons, and you will not be able to resist. We are all doomed... and will die happy. "Are you alive?"
there are sitll missions in the game about prototype sentient AI's that youa re supposed to take care of.
Ahh, this story looks nice. So there have been Robots around that can't even be distinguished from humans. That's very interesting
That is from a newspaper in Frontier First Encounters - it might not be canon any longer.
I think that information in Elite Dangerous about the legal status of Strong AI (banned, probably for centuries), means the (jokey) references to Strong AI in earlier games has been retconned out of existence, just like the feline humanoid species of the earlier games were erased.
There has. There were millions. Mostly in the Federation. From what I have read, the human like robots can at least be traced back to around year 3000. Strong AI is probably quite a bit older.
I recommend the short story 'Faust', by S.L.A.M: http://www.dream-ware.co.uk/first-encounters/books/further-stories-of-life-on-the-frontier/faust/
It gives a bit of insight into robot thinking. I think it also indicates that ship computers were quite intelligente.
The books from FE2 and FFE have been confirmed as canon. They have plenty of stories of strong AI. I think the AI ban is quite resent (no more than 30-40 years).
The Journals have also been confirmed as canon, but are to be taken with a grain of salt. The reasons for this are that the FFE story line was branched. Only one of the branches 'really happened'. This is particularity important for the Thargoid story. The other reason is that the news articles were full of propaganda, rumours and plain lies. They were simply not to be trusted at the time of publishing.
The ' I married a robot' article was published by the R.I.G. (Random intergalactic gossip). An independent publication, loosely modelled on papers like the Sun and News of the world (mid 19990s version). They were fully capable of making up a story like this but the 'sensation' is not the existences of the robot, it's the marriage part. Human like robots were everywhere.
Last edited:
thanks for clearing that up. I didn't play previous titles and your post was quite insightful
This is why...
Last edited by a moderator:
Humans have at 3300 degenerated into something slighly more adept than chimpanzes. They have at this time a awareness span that hardly goes beyond Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. So the galactic powers knew that if they allowed AI to develop, we would have "The Butlerian Jihad" or "Terminator: Rise of the Machines" and that would be the end of humankind.
So know we live in a place where we are increasingly more stupid than the previous generation,
..... Kewl
( and it has started already !!!)
Cheers Cmdr's
So know we live in a place where we are increasingly more stupid than the previous generation,
..... Kewl( and it has started already !!!)
Cheers Cmdr's
An AI sufficiently advanced to fly a starship, fire weapons and kill humans is also advanced enough to override it's own inhibitors with regards to which humans it is permitted to kill. Now, it could be argued you could fit an over-watch AI, but it would be just as vulnerable to such problems.
It's an old trope in Sci-fi, with neo Battlestar Galactia being the best example of how it can ho horribly wrong, even for a space-faring people.
It's an old trope in Sci-fi, with neo Battlestar Galactia being the best example of how it can ho horribly wrong, even for a space-faring people.