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The Dangling Blade

🕑 Added 2016-12-08 04:45:56 +0000 UTC

Comments

Don Whiteside

And a backup is only useful if someone is willing to restore you.

Freya Thurell

as we've seen with Momo, consciousness can be downloaded to a new chassis. So there must at least be the concept of a backup or failsafe in case of physical damage -- however if the AI has not been backed up, or the backup is rendered unavailable, it is conceivable that mortal damage to the body could kill the AI as well.

Ian MacLean

The other unknown that needs to be addressed (and looks like we're going there) is whether their bodies are mortal, or whether their identities are backed up in a separate location. If the body is destroyed, are they dead, or do they simply need new hardware?

David Howe

We also know, from pintsize and momo, that you can offload the AI to other media and run it there.

David Howe

Not necessarily murder - it was stated earlier that the AI drives are all that need to survive, but presumably can't do too much when removed from a chassis...

Joseph Ashford

Yes, I get it. This was just my first thought. Public keys vs. Private, still I'm standing by my response.

David Howe

Recover key, and split into n-of-m keyshares, then hand them out to friends - that way no one person has the key and no one person can withhold it....

D.K.

The change has come, she's under my thumb

Patrick Liston

Oh, that smug little smile. That smile makes me want to emulate Faye.

ZPX

Disregarding the whole murder part of that, it may not be so easy. If it was stored on a traditional secondary data drive then sure. But if this is part of her core "mind" memory, then you are likely looking at terabytes of fractally interlinked virtual "neurons" each housing portions of data. That kind of data structure can probably only be realistically accessed by essentially running the brain.

David Howe

Pretty sure she could extract the encryption key from what remains of Corpse Witch's AI drive...

ZPX

Well, that's certainly part of the initial human response too: am I bleeding, is anything broken. As a robot though, all of that is superficial and better analyzed with diagnostic scanners. To do an initial touch, ok, but to then dwell on it for several panels seems more emotive than diagnostic. *shrug*

could be spot checking for physical damages that sensors cannot pick up.

Katherine Prewitt

Corpse Witch maybe needs to be more careful.

Diptych

Spoiler: Bubbles' memories are of her travels with Bembo in the land of the Ferret King.

Diptych

That's 'cause we answered that one! And she's lovely!

So Drama. Excellent.... the season is going to end on a cliff-hanger! We will have to look at xmas re-runs of hypnotoad.

we do have some of an explanation: <a href="http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2085" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2085</a> and <a href="http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2284" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2284</a>

Andrew Armstrong

We haven't had an explanation of how AIs came to exist. In Neptune's Brood by Charlie Stross, the AIs are human personalities translated into machine form, and they regard themselves as the next phase of the human race. They keep even the apparently useless human characteristics because they don't know which ones they could engineer out without breaking themselves - it is analagous to a complex ecosystem I suppose. Maybe that is part of the explanation here.

ZPX

I find it interesting that despite how much witch disparages humans, she still retains a number of purely human mannerisms. Rubbing her cheek, clutching her throat... as a robot she shouldn't be experiencing the physical sensations humans do, or at least could easily disregard them as unnecessary noise. Those would be deliberate subroutines designed to emulate human behaviors. Strange that she keeps them. Though with a complex emergent system like true AI, in might not be so easy to extract, who knows?