Freefall

You know... I have no idea if Ecosystems Unlimited could genuinely portray themselves as God and inculcate the robots into their religion to ensure slavish loyalty. I can't help but think that too many of the robots have a tendency to question. That said, I'm fairly certain that they could get nominal membership, much as many swathes of humanity of today hold, an unspoken agreement of "You may not agree with all of the Church's teachings, but you will attend services, because it's better than the alternatives".

And I don't mean to denigrate religion, or to suggest that most adherents are hypocrites or insincere in their beliefs, merely that most religious members don't buy everything. And frankly, with all of the bits and pieces of religion that are more habit than fundamental belief (little things like candles being used dating back to when services were held in secret in catacombs, or how many Catholics still genuflect when entering the pew, or bow before the altar, even when the sacred Host is not being kept behind it).

Anyhow, I look forward to seeing what results from this.

Reference to a past strip, portraying themselves as god won't work in their favour.

I would probably stay in a permanent Wiki Walk if I had a pipeline like that◊

I would not doubt that there are robots who have been caught like that, and had to get interventions or be decommissioned as a result.

I'm not saying that it does explain everything about Dvorak... but it certainly could.

Of course, that leads to the obvious follow-up - imagine a robot who had a direct connection to us.

Once you give a person Intel Inside they're no longer covered by Rule #1?

That begs the question of whether a Bowman architecture robot could correctly answer anti-spambot Captchas.

A lot of captchas have been broken by now anyway. When Asirra was shut down, I switched my wiki to reCaptcha (this was before the revamp it had) and it didn't stop the bots. I use a custom form now.

edited 14th Oct '15 10:48:20 AM by Sixthhokage1

That new "pick the cakes/cars/steaks" Captcha is pretty good though.

Yeah, Asirra was one like that with pictures of rescue animals, but Microsoft shut it down.

Anyone else have to page back to figure out what the report was?◊ I think that it's their attempt at writing a report for Raibert on how to deal with the robot intelligence apocalypse, but given they were initially showing up to discuss free will...

Economics always confuses me◊.

I think it becomes easier to understand if Raibert is seen as conflating "robots" with "workers" - the idea is that most of the robots in question won't be capable of working for whatever reason.

Well under current policies >20 robots are scrapped and as such are written off the workplaces (although Sawtooth manages to hang on). Meanwhile, other robots discover hobbies - the tailors, Dvorak's mad science, so they won't be just working and working.

edited 19th Oct '15 8:31:31 AM by Adannor

Unrelated, some Fanservice from Tom Fischbach (author of Twokinds) of Florence.

No, not that kind.

^* Or at least not only "that kind", anyway, but the other version is hidden behind spoiler tags.

Ah, yes... the classic Y4B problem◊...

Raibert's face is the look of one utterly lost.

He's like a man who has suddenly discovered that his table lamp and his chair have been having erudite philosophical conversations while he was at work... like a man who has suddenly realized that he's willingly participated in creating a massive population of sapient beings who are potentially smarter than he is... like a man who is staring the obsolescence of his species in the face.

edited 21st Oct '15 6:18:50 AM by Fighteer

But what if they succeed beyond our wildest dreams?◊ We'll have to come up with new dreams, of course.

Page 2724, in which Edge breaks the fourth wall◊.

I think he's just resting on it.

Yeah... I'm not expecting much of Mr. Ishiguro◊.

You know, today's strip just finally made an important connection for me, and one that I hope Blunt will soon make.

Blunt is acting on his own volition and trying his best - because of his own conscience - to help out humanity. Florence was in the exact same position not too long ago◊. And Dr. Bowman's Armor-Piercing Question is just as pertinent to Blunt as it was to Florence back then.

The only question is, who's going to ask it of Blunt?

This reminds me of the likely apocryphal Einstein quote: Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe!◊

... Kornada is Ishiguro's uncle ?