Latest blog post: End of the chapter 5, and a short hiatus (2024-02-19)

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Well, that raharr is broken now, send for a replacement.

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just one guy51 (transfer from Disqus)

Just wait till Ahshu hears about the TimeCube.

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Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

...hang on here, "some incident nearby"??? Quantum knows exactly where the crash site is, and Google Maps will tell him that N is right nearby!

I suppose he might be talking about the military's search for the Three Musketeers, but even then, it seems like he would have mentioned that connection.

Also I have concerns about that tail fin right next to those chair wheels. Seems likely to end in tears, or whatever the raharr equivalent is. Cool detail with the chair's back-stem being offset to make room for the tail, though.

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Darth_Biomech

You have enough spatial awareness to not drive over your toes with chair, would be weird if raharrs wouldn't be aware of their tails. Though yeah, sometimes it happens.

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Carefulrogue (transfer from Disqus)

I wonder what limits exist on the AI we're seeing as such, based on what we're being told. Is it merely a limit of bandwidth, or do they not have any way to create a child process of itself to function semi-independently in the human network, surviving off some stolen processing power?

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Jonson26 (transfer from Disqus)

While the bandwith between the thing they used to connect to the internet and their spaceship may be near-infinite, you have to remember that they are still limited by the internet itself. I also doubt that a self-conscious AI wold even be able to function inside our networks. You have to remember that while their technology is vastly more andvanced, right now they are essentially just using our primitive computers.

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Darth_Biomech

You're right; and AIs of LTC aren't software-based. Quantum won't be able to upload himself even in the Alliance's network.

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Jonson26 (transfer from Disqus)

So Quantum is less artificial intelligence and more artificial brain then?

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Darth_Biomech

Is there a difference though?

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Jonson26 (transfer from Disqus)

Quabtum being an artificial brain would imply he himself is somehow tied to a physical object, whereas if he were an AI inhabiting a dedicated machine, it would imply that he can somehow transfer or copy his being into a totally different compatible machine.

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Darth_Biomech

He is tied to a physical object, right, to his quantum computer core. But is he inorganic? Yes. Is he artificial? Yes. Is he intelligent? Yes. Therefore, he's an AI. =P

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Carefulrogue (transfer from Disqus)

OK, but not a true AI of the sort that writes up a new horseman or two. This isn't a Skynet or rogue self developing piece of software that flies off somewhere and ends civilizations because the numbers add up in a particular way.

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Darth_Biomech

Oh, thanks for validating Quantum's opinion on humanity, I guess?

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Carefulrogue (transfer from Disqus)

Sure, let's go with that.

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Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

So in your mind, a "true AI" is defined by a particular type of pathological instability resulting from incompetent design?

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Carefulrogue (transfer from Disqus)

@Lord Eric
I'm looking at it from a hard scifi sense, of an AI capable of producing singularity. We've lack the IQ to figure what that will result in, besides generally bad for us fleshies. Something that will become smarter than us progressively, to the point we lose any ability to fight it after some point. A monkey can't trick a human into a cage afterall.

I enjoy the stories of soft scifi AI as much as any other, but, there is a distinction between the two that is meanignful. Most fictional AIs like Cortana and Quantum here, don't fly off and start doing their own thing, because that has cataclysmic consequences. Most of which detract from the story the author is trying to tell, so it gets brushed under the rug. Or some other explanation arrives by which the AI retains some attachment to the civilization and people it arose out of.

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Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

Setting aside for the moment the question of why you think a human-level AI would automatically be capable of feats of self-improvement that an equally knowledgeable human isn't...

Being bad for normal people doesn't necessarily follow from achieving a singularity. There's no particular reason an AI god would be evil, unless the programmers who created the original AI were stupid enough to give self-upgrading capabilities to something that doesn't have a sense of morals.

Skynet, Friend Computer, assorted paperclip maximizers, and all the other "hard scifi AIs" have a flaw under the skin. They all assume that the AI develops the extremely sophisticated capability of making themselves more intelligent (which goes way, way, way beyond just more processing power, they would have to be making their own advances in computational and cognitive science as they go) while also keeping an extremely simpleminded goal system that doesn't include any moral or ethical codes. This doesn't follow. It's quite likely that we'll figure out how to make an AI moral and sane long before we figure out how to make them smarter than we are, let alone capable of autonomously becoming smarter still.

Forbidding an AI from self-upgrading, on the other hand, is something you can do just by leaving stuff out of the build. Seems like a pretty basic precaution if the AI you're building isn't already a trusted friend.

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Darth_Biomech
singularity


Which is based on a bunch of unproven assumptions, some of them forgetting that things like laws of physics exist? Singularity is unreachable.

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Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

Even without trying to migrate his own psyche, it does seem like Quantum should be able to write bots to do some of the work without waiting for speed-of-light lag though, even if the bots aren't very bright.

Then again, we're only seeing the results. Maybe that's exactly what he is doing, and his complaint is that he can't write more sophisticated ones or manage them more closely.

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JoB (transfer from Disqus)

Their fleet is flittering around Jupiter AFAWK, which is at 5-5.5 AU from the Sun, so, less than an hour of signal lag from Earth. That's vital if you want to RC a spacecraft over the distance, but for bulk data transfer, signal strength+dispersion is more of a concern.

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Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

Signal lag definitely does show its ugly face if you try to follow hyperlinks, though.

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JoB (transfer from Disqus)

Only if the prefetching is done from all the way behind the RTT, like our browsers do it.
[invites the fleet to do a "case study" presentation at the next IPNSIG meeting]

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Keith Schiffner (transfer from Disqus)

Time lag for one. The poorly integrated and disjointed nature of the infonet on this planet makes it difficult even for we dirtlings to do things. with one little game I get regular DC's, often buffering even with text pages. It's something a fractured people like ours does. Easy to beat, hard to reconnoiter before you leap. And one always examines the prey before you scream and leap.

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Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

Ah, looks like I was right about Nea's real goal with that breakout attempt.

I'm real interested in what could be more important than a solid reason to believe there's a survivor, though. My top three guesses are intel specifically about Gharr, Gharr's falsified report to Zane, or something to do with the fleet's classified mission.






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TRIVIA
Before becoming a webcomic, Leaving The Cradle was initially developed as a modification for Source engine, back in 2007. It was vastly different back then, much closer to the usual space opera look and feel, and the plot had nothing in common with the webcomic version, sharing only one character.