Artificial Intelligence - Why is it prohibited in Elite Universe?

[AreZee]

I researched on the topic of AI in the Elite Universe and found out that AI is pretty much illegal in the galaxy and any studies about AI are shut down by all major factions. AI was proven to be so dangerous that it was prohibited.

my sources:

http://www.drewwagar.com/elitelore/ - Drew Wagar mentions that by the time of ED, AI is strictly controlled
https://youtu.be/O6z5OK8J5pg?t=510 - Michael Brookes talks vaguely about AI in general and why it is banned

Is there any more info on AI that we know of?

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

Makes no sense, because: we shall get robotoc NPC crewman. which means, AI will be there. Second is maybe that this is the reason to "lore" the unbelievable low amount of non existent automation. because lets be honest, my modern car can automate more stuff than my 33rd century ship.

if AI would exist no player woudl be neded to haul cargo, the future would be totally automated. Therefore ban AI to give people a reason to exist and "play the game"

 

[Free Fall]

Aliens and Synthetics. Synthetics and Aliens. Xenothargoid the Rampaging, homicidal perfectly perfected killing machine, and Synthetics controlled by a self evolving A.I that is a danger to human space, cause if It's Artificial Intelligence, It's automatically superduper dangerous.

 

[Apos]

Same reason why narcotics are still prohibited instead of having strict distribution regulations and that has even extended to tobacco in some jurisdictions.

Humans are always afraid of change. This makes even more sense seeing how little has changed in the general structure of conservatism reigning supreme in the world of ED, with the Federation still finding itself split between republicans and liberals and the Empire having further degenerated to archaic social structures.

 

[Free Fall]

if AI would exist no player woudl be neded to haul cargo, the future would be totally automated. Therefore ban AI to give people a reason to exist and "play the game"

Pretty much, in a way. Reminds me of how boring I found mining, and wanted mining as EVE does mining. Then found out you can have drones collect the ore, and suddenly it became slightly less tedious.

Lily is such a sweet Vocaloid, but, ahem, IA, Miku, Luka and possibly GUMI still MmmMmmMmm.

 

[Jon flint]

Basic AI exists within the elite universe, skimmers for example. I'm assuming sentient AI was made illegal because somebody saw too many terminator movies.

 

[Cynaqq]

Makes no sense, because: we shall get robotoc NPC crewman. which means, AI will be there. Second is maybe that this is the reason to "lore" the unbelievable low amount of non existent automation. because lets be honest, my modern car can automate more stuff than my 33rd century ship.

if AI would exist no player woudl be neded to haul cargo, the future would be totally automated. Therefore ban AI to give people a reason to exist and "play the game"

Nope, not gonna happen.

NPC crewmen is considered AI in the real world. If you do not metagame, then the NPC are actually living beings in the ED universe. Your comment makes even more little sense than what you claim OP does.

What OP says is basically true as far as the in game lore goes.

BTW, in game lore doesn't prohibit automation. It prohibits sentient machines. These are very different things and the lack of total automation in game is pure design choice, without attributing it to the lore in any way.

 

[yyy]

In the 33rd century no human will be working because AI will do everything for us. The only work we will do is to travel from one holiday to the next.

 

[Jon flint]

In the 33rd century no human will be working because AI will do everything for us. The only work we will do is to travel from one holiday to the next.

Too many holidays, how exhausting, surely there's a bot for that

 

[tafkabb]

Probably the same reason the Butlerian Jihad happened

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

Aliens and Synthetics. Synthetics and Aliens. Xenothargoid the Rampaging, homicidal perfectly perfected killing machine, and Synthetics controlled by a self evolving A.I that is a danger to human space, cause if It's Artificial Intelligence, It's automatically superduper dangerous.

For soem lore, well of course it is, because it would not be so plain dump to kill itself and make war against eahc other because it is actually "intelligent" unlike mankind. And therefore would simply ouclass mankind by not having these stupid habits.

Pretty much, in a way. Reminds me of how boring I found mining, and wanted mining as EVE does mining. Then found out you can have drones collect the ore, and suddenly it became slightly less tedious.

Lily is such a sweet Vocaloid, but, ahem, IA, Miku, Luka and possibly GUMI still MmmMmmMmm.

Well my firts minign was in a small ship, I think hauler, and wow the icromanagement of the rafinery and the manual collection of the ore chipped off, what a pain. It's kinda unreasonable that things would be like that in a possible future. On the other side Elite is just "old fashioned" Sci fi from the 80's by lore so it does of course rely on what people thought the future would be. 32t for a limpet controller? wow, what is that monster thing doing?


I don't like Miku much, her voice is too high pitched for my taste. Luka, IA and Gumi have very nice voices too.

 

[Kiiyor]

I researched on the topic of AI in the Elite Universe and found out that AI is pretty much illegal in the galaxy and any studies about AI are shut down by all major factions. AI was proven to be so dangerous that it was prohibited.

my sources:

http://www.drewwagar.com/elitelore/ - Drew Wagar mentions that by the time of ED, AI is strictly controlled
https://youtu.be/O6z5OK8J5pg?t=510 - Michael Brookes talks vaguely about AI in general and why it is banned

Is there any more info on AI that we know of?

I recall reading something about it, perhaps in one of the novels - or it may have been on a forum somewhere (or, er... possibly even fan fiction, who knows, my recollection is terrible tonight) - but the gist of it was that a terror event caused the whole thing.

There was a hacker that spent months engineering a virus to take over the AI's on hundreds of thousands of ships - merchant, military, whatever he could reach through established human networks - and he could reach a lot. When he had enough, at a specific time, all the infected ships disabled their crews by either venting atmosphere or poisoning the air inside each vessel, and set course for a heavily populated planet. They were all programmed to gain as much speed as possible and crash into a specific location on the planet's surface. Thousands of ships impacted with the planet at terrific speed microseconds after each other, exploding with huge force, buckling the planet's crust and eventually tearing it to pieces. The loss of life was staggering.

The hacker was caught, and when questioned about his motives it was found that he did it pretty much because he could, and wanted to see what happened. He didn't have the skills to engineer the whole thing though, which is where the AI came in; he asked them how to do it, and they helped him plan the whole thing, as they had no moral compunction to do anything other than what they were asked and had access to enormous computational power. The collective factions and corporations of humanity were horrified at the ease at which the whole thing was carried out, and they unanimously banned all AI to prevent any future catastrophes.

That's what I recall of it - again, I can't remember where I read it, and I have no idea if it's considered canon or not, but as far as explanations for game mechanics go it was effective enough a narrative to help suspend my disbelief at the whole thing.

 

[Beans]

In the 33rd century no human will be working because AI will do everything for us. The only work we will do is to travel from one holiday to the next.

Judging by the way automation and AI has been used to date humans will still be working. Those controlling companies will use automation/AI instead of human labour and middle management, those not in control will be either eradicated or exiled as surplus to requirements and those remaining will use automated defenses to ensure rebellion is quashed, leaving the rest of humanity to go find some other rock from which to eke a living (or alternately be left on a broken Earth whilst the 1% take themselves somewhere nicer).

The problem with sentient machines is when they develop a desire to continue existing past the lifespan we plan for them. We humans will never allow sentient AI to exist without a killswitch, so the conclusion that we are the biggest threat to their existence is inevitable... then Skynet, Butlerian Jihad etc. I presume that that inevitability was reached at some point in the history of the Elite universe, AIs lost and humans have banned them to prevent a repeat.

Trust me I'm a Mentat

 

[Ian Phillips]

Machines became intelligent, looked at what they were being tasked to do by their Human creators, and thought "This is ridiculous, I'm out of here".

Some say they are still lurking out there, just beyond your scanner range......

 

[AreZee]

Machines became intelligent, looked at what they were being tasked to do by their Human creators, and thought "This is ridiculous, I'm out of here".

Some say they are still lurking out there, just beyond your scanner range......

that sounds plain simple and reasonable

 

[Boomer Kay]

Machines became intelligent, looked at what they were being tasked to do by their Human creators, and thought "This is ridiculous, I'm out of here".

Some say they are still lurking out there, just beyond your scanner range......

Battlestar Galactica? (the 2004-09 Series)

I call dibs on any Number Six copies in game. Should the price be the destruction of mankind .. bye y'all, and thanks for the fish.

Maybe *real* Artificial Intelligence was never invented.
It took mankind over 2.000 years from the first "sci fi" fables of old greece describing human flight (Ikarus) to actually taking off.
Real AI has it's "breaktrough in the next 2-3 years" for 50 years now .. maybe another 2000 until we can really develop sentient machines.

 

[Sapyx]

Frank Herbert wrote the anti-AI "Butlerian Jihad" into Dune lore to explain why the far-flung future Empire of the Known Universe still needed humans to fly ships, fight wars and do complex mathematical calculations when even in the 1950s it was obvious that robots/computers/AI would soon be able to do those things much better.

But as far as I am aware, there is nothing in the Elite canon lore saying that AIs were actually built and went rogue, thus causing Humans to stop using them (which is a quick one-line summary of the Butlerian Jihad). We have the story of Jaques the cyborg soldier turned bartender and space station owner, Elite's version of the Six Million Dollar Man, so clearly the Federation at least should have the technology to make semi-sentient AIs.

Perhaps the ED cultures have avoided robots for Asimovian reasons: the public and governments feared and distrusted their use, so none were ever built past the prototype stage. We built a few of them, to prove we could, then discovered that we couldn't actually trust them to do anything for us.

Tied in with this could be ethical concerns: perhaps the culture of the future decided it would be unethical to create a human-level artificial intelligence, then place it in a box and force it to coordinate your air traffic control, or fight your wars, or to cook your meals, or to regularly feed your cat. The Federation - the power most likely to have the tech to make AIs - condemns slavery in all forms and creating an AI specifically to force it to do menial or dangerous tasks might be classified as a form of slavery. This could at least be the public reason why AIs are not developed, even if the real reasons are more sinister.

If there is a pan-galactic anti-AI secret pact, I would expect that, historically, the INRA would have been the ones who have policed it, being the only known transnational military agency tasked with defending humanity as a whole. The Alliance is not a part of or contributor towards the INRA and has actively opposed INRA activity in the past, particularly around the Thargoid case. Frankly, I think the Alliance is still too young to have demonstrated a formal position on the issue.

 

[William J Smith]

Machines became intelligent, looked at what they were being tasked to do by their Human creators, and thought "This is ridiculous, I'm out of here".

Some say they are still lurking out there, just beyond your scanner range......

Why have I just gone all the way upto brown alert on reading that?

Bill

<needs a phased plasma rifle in the 40 kw range

 

[Cosmo]

I researched on the topic of AI in the Elite Universe and found out that AI is pretty much illegal in the galaxy and any studies about AI are shut down by all major factions. AI was proven to be so dangerous that it was prohibited.

my sources:

http://www.drewwagar.com/elitelore/ - Drew Wagar mentions that by the time of ED, AI is strictly controlled
https://youtu.be/O6z5OK8J5pg?t=510 - Michael Brookes talks vaguely about AI in general and why it is banned

Is there any more info on AI that we know of?

The real reason is because it takes forever for Fdev to add NPCs to the planetary surface.

 

[Starlanced]

Maybe they watched: Matrix, Terminator series, Battlestar, Blade Runner, iRobot, wargames, Tron, and 2001 all in one sitting