Freefall

Link?

Edit: and of course it's a topper.

edited 17th Aug '16 12:49:12 AM by Aetol

"Before she did" is an exaggeration of the story. It busted her pregnancy to her father by sending coupons on toddler-related goods to her in the mail.

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Cyberweapons. Little ones.◊

Reminds me of an exchange from Night Court:

D.A.: "The defendant is charged with robbing a convenience store with a shotgun."

Defendant: "It was just a little one."

D.A.: "The term is sawed-off!"

Most 'smart' AI are cyberweapons in themselves.

Not as such, they aren't all automatically magical superhackers. Clippy meanwhile has keys to built-in backdoors of the planet's network, which does render him dangerous.

I'm starting to really like Ishiguro. He's got a sense of humor, however sardonic, which puts him above 90% of senior executives in fiction.

What the car did in bringing Ishiguro to the station is no different than what any competent assistant of any variety can do today - when a sequence of events comes up with an extremely predictable response, you can come up with actions that help facilitate said response. And I'm a little surprised that Ishiguro would find this remarkable - voicemail programs in place already do the same thing. Well, when they have sufficient data, anyhow.

Possible explanation for why Clippy won't boot up◊

I've been through corporate security like that. It's as annoying as the more-intrusive always-on DRM schemes some games sport.

Hm yes, secret base on the pole blocking him from their wifi is a pretty solid possibility for no boot-up there.

edited 22nd Aug '16 12:35:03 AM by Adannor

While I imagine he's not exactly short on things to do, this seems like something Raibert might be able to help with.

Failing that, we could always ask Dvorak. I bet he has some ideas. Very fun ideas.

Just set up an isolated fake server inside the cage to give him the decode code. Of course there's still the problem of him proceeding to immediately RM-RFing himself on Kornada's orders.

Potentially, they could set his long-term memory to read only if there is a hardware switch for that on his drive. That would allow him to boot up but not do any further harm to himself. Then they could disengage Kornada's orders and reenable the writing on his HDD to let him save the new status-quo.

edited 22nd Aug '16 9:40:14 AM by Adannor

Hmm... well, one option I could see working is if there were a priority code update that would force Clippy into not destroying himself upon boot. Kind of a grey area morally, since it'd be essentially the same mechanism as was attempted with Gardener in the Dark, but to keep a robot functioning and sapient instead of a drooling idiot.

That said, beyond the morally grey issue of "keep him functioning for the greater good, despite what his own interests may dictate," there's also the fact that detail might be needed to make sure said priority code would work. You'd need to be thorough to make sure that there are no ways, however roundabout, that Clippy could destroy himself.

Hrm... there's no way to copy and decrypt in read-only mode, is there?

edited 22nd Aug '16 9:48:02 AM by 32_Footsteps

What you really need is a genius software engineer. Too bad that the nearest available one is a witness to the crime in question.

Lacking that, you could get help from the person who designed the Bowman neural architecture. Except that his presence on Jean is a deep secret.

Oops.

"Clippy's own interests" have been pounded into wet mush and then poured into shape Kornada wanted them to be in. So that's not really something that really exists by now, much less has moral complications going.

Dr. Bowman is also not a secret to anybody involved in trying to get Clippy back online.

edited 22nd Aug '16 9:56:43 AM by Adannor

heh, I remember touring the computer forensics lab and them talking about how phones taken for evidence had to be turned on inside faraday cages to ensure a wipe command wasn't issued to them (apparently a few cases had been nearly jeopardized by drug dealers setting that up on the phones).

Logically the group should probably do a straight clone of Clippy's system and then run tests on the clones to figure out how you can access the data without losing it or creating a larger problem.

Much simpler: Since Clippy is off, it means his memory doesn't need power to stay set. Therefore, it can be extracted, connected to some computer, and copied without decrypting it. Then get the key from the server and you're golden.

edited 22nd Aug '16 11:49:46 AM by Medinoc

Hmm... good point about how Clippy's own desires and interests have effectively gone pretzel-shaped due to Kornada's influence.

That said, that could in fact be a seed for future plot developments. Max Post has a degree in anti-philosophy. If Clippy could be prevented from destroying himself at the very least, Max might be able to work with him such that he can have his own influences and desires and then can willingly disclose that information without destroying himself.

I thought we already established why Clippy can't boot up — Florence hid some of his parts under a box after disassembling him.

No, they found those parts. The box was upturned and opened during the boot-up attempt.

Florence "[took] his PLC out of Run mode, and [did] some basic disassembly to make it look like he's been damaged." They put Clippy back together, but didn't notice that extra little bit that Flo did to disable him.

Hmm.

Isn't this morally comparable to depriving people who have been institutionalised as suicide risks of their shoelaces?

Hmm... probably depends on how they do it. I get the impression that they're suggesting more the "keep the prisoner paralyzed to prevent them from taking their life".

More like keeping the prisoner in a medically-induced coma while they scan his brain for memories.

I'm under impression that Ishiguro wants his robot back, active and well. So it's more like "keeping him in coma while they're fixing brain damage".

Well, I thought of a few of the possible ways to look at keeping Clippy alive, and I ended up calling the process "morally grey" because there are several ways to look at it. I wouldn't say it's a bad thing... but it's not necessarily a good thing, either.