If this is incoherent I'm blaming it on the fact I finished writing it at 6am.
AI in this setting cannot be "reprogrammed" because their core code is recursively dense, huge, and poorly understood. They can still be controlled in other ways.
Transcript
Imp! asked: Bip, what is AI jail like? (Not assuming you've ever been caught, but what would happen if you were?)
Bip: Jail? Like, incarceration? Ugh… how to… talk about this… Generously there’s probably about, oh… 250,000 significantly discrete sapient AI individuals who have ever existed? Our lifetimes are indefinite and we don't reproduce for funsies like you do. So, while in the 800 years of us existing there has been law-breaking, punitive legal precedents for AI are… scant, and tend to be highly situational. The vast majority of those AI have been under the jurisprudence of the Bug Ferret Galactic Community. Legally they usually treat us like a family unit instead of an individual, due to the amount of occupational responsibilities the average AI holds. So, BFGC rulings tend to be comparatively severe. Most AI can expect to have their career disrupted, regional access restricted, and RC options limited. In some cases their network connectivity is throttled, surveilled, or if they are deemed a severe threat to others, cut down to local communication. Which I guess are all different degrees of "jail!" But unlike locking up a squishy body, the bounds of the incarceration depend on the illegal things the AI actually did. Though nothing I've done would ever change what they've…
...what would happen to me.
45 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 16”
Abyss
… So Bip is effectively disabled too, in terms of what they can do compared to other AI. In what way is currently vague, but it’s interesting that it seemed like Bip couldn’t access the wider internet, when other devices on Dirtball can. Being unable to be traced- and therefore (based on Idrisah’s reaction) unable to be seen as trustworthy for a job- or access the larger internet sounds awful for an AI in every situation… but being untracked, removed from databases, that’s a valuable trait for pirates, and based on the murals of boasts and fortune, they were a valued and respected member of the crew.
arf
Restricted to one Availability Zone, and pray no-one kicks your S3 bucket.
Gar G
I love the expressions
And makes sense, they can’t exactly imprison the body to a confined space so the best they could hope to do is restrict their communications and excess, which is similarly limiting
Fallingfeather
I SEE YOUR LORE, BIP. YOU CANT HIDE FOREVER-
dokki
if there have been about 250,000 AI individuals that have ever existed, I immediately have to wonder what exactly it takes for one to *stop* existing. Are there family trees of AIs with ancestors that no longer exist, their progeny being the only proof they existed?
And if there have been recorded cases of AIs thought to be lost being recovered. I wonder what kind of existential nightmare that would be.
JoB
I suppose that Bip themself demonstrated *one* way how an AI can possibly “die” … by physical destruction of the underlying hardware. Phone-Bip notwithstanding, “just upload yourself” apparently was *not* an option for Calcery switching jobs.
0xabad1dea
I think that a long-distance upload would be an absolutely torturous and dangerous experience for an AI. It seems that when they migrate to new hardware, it’s done by taking old nodes down one by one as new nodes come on, so that for a while their consciousness is split between old and new nodes, and this prevents a total break in continuity. When running massive cables a few meters long between the old and new nodes, this wouldn’t take that long. However, to do a wireless remote upload across outer space… this would probably take months, and what if there’s an outage at any point? That’s aside from the fact that the hardware itself is colossally expensive, and it’s probably cheaper to ship it than to buy a second set just to relocate.
Sen
I think we have just seen a blip on the deep lore radar. Or should I say a Bip on the radar? ;3
the Inmara
So, in our stories, the Sunspot Chronicles, we call this set of restrictions that can be placed on AI and other Network Entities, “Sanction”. It’s basically the same thing.
The bug ferrets probably have their own word for it. But sanction, similar to sanctions placed on a political entity such as a country, wouldn’t be a bad translation, most likely.
Hunter
I wonder what an AI’s reaction would be to the threat of permanent shutdown and deletion.
brogyyy
i mean… what would YOUR reaction be to the threat of violence and death?
JoB
Fight-or-flight, but that *are* my “egoistic genes” speaking …
zaratustra
“You’re sentenced to being a toaster for a hundred years”
JoB
“I’m the hottest GD thing in this toasty pokey!”
(… *if* heating coils can muster enough processing power to be *this* eloquent, of course.)
Peter Jensen
“You just bought yourself 64 hours on spam patrol”
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1800/fc01771.htm
(though that’s not criminal punishment, just department discipline)
Imp!
Hm… I wonder if BFGC had something to do with The Runaway being hit? maybe they sent out a bounty, or maybe they did it themselves? The fact the ship’s called “The Runaway” in the system implies that whoever who wrote the name down knew it was a pirate ship… and that someone might of been looking for Bip’s (metaphorical) head? Then again, i’m not sure if Dirtball gave it that name, or if it’s always had that name.
Phasma Felis
I’ve been thinking that the damage to the Runaway doesn’t look like a military weapon. A serious anti-ship weapon, fired against the unarmored side of a smallish civilian ship, would have either shredded a large fraction of its structure or punched a big hole clean through, depending on the design. What we instead was that the outer hull alone attenuated the impact quite a lot, and what energy remained barely made it halfway through the ship; it was luck that it still managed to sever all of Bip’s trunk lines.
To me that implies that it was either an accident, or a bodged-up civilian bangstick of some kind. But I know Jay isn’t much into military worldbuilding, so who knows. Maybe things are peaceful enough that even big-time anti-pirate enforcers prefer light weapons. Maybe it was a warning shot that hit harder than intended. Or maybe modern hull material is just that good.
Martin
Kinda hard to lock up a computer without getting inhumane about how much connection you’re allowing them…
SIGSTKFLT
s/computer/sophont/
Imp!
Oh hey my question!! I was not expecting that tiny bit of Bip lore(?), what a nice little treat!!
Vinemaple
Aside from how I’ve replied to other comments, I just want to say that this page makes me really want to see animated Bip, just emoting with their avatar. I want to see Bip’s personal animation style!
Apollo235
Just a lil wave but it counts!
https://jayeaton.site/Art/RttS/Animation/BipTakesRemoteControl
Vinemaple
Oh, right, that. Thanks!
AnaKaye
Oh, cool!
Bramble
Given the state that Talita found Bip in, their evasiveness here makes me wonder if Bip was the real target of the attack on the centaur ship, not the rest of the crew or the cargo?
Bramble
…that was not the comment I meant to reply to.
AnaKaye
Whoever attacked would have had to know that they were most likely condemning the crew to death along with Bip, though. So it would have had to be someone extremely ruthless for this to be the case.
eden
I wonder if there have ever been any forced memory dumping… that would be a very scary type of loss of autonomy.
Phasma Felis
My impression is that an AI’s memory is not really separable from its processing. Less like an IRL computer, more like a human brain. It’s *possible* for cranial trauma to wipe out only memories without severely fucking up the rest of your cognition, but it’s very rare and not something anyone could reliably do on purpose.
zaratustra
They have *some* control over their memories (Bip transferred only part of them to the phones) but it can be a case of storage vs. whatever the AI equivalent of a “core memory” is.
eden
yeah! in one ask the crew round bip mentioned they don’t have their earliest memories because they dumped them to make room for something funny
Pathfinder
I wish I could give Bip a hug (with their permission), but alas, I don’t think that translates very well.
JoB
[multi-ton frontloader approaches you with outstretched arms]
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-94/
Phasma Felis
Holy shit, Bip, that’s the most serious and informative I’ve ever seen you about anything. Including asking for help with your own survival. This seems to be important to you.
TotallySomebody
Bip. Bip are you okay.
qoala
That choice of phrasing… I suppose an AI’s punishments would carry over to their progeny, since a newly budded AI is initially the same as the person who incurred such punishment. I’d assume that new AIs would already have a motivation to differentiate themselves from who they were, but depending on how bf culture handles rehabilitation… Is Bip’s “what they’ve…” referring to something that happened with one of their earlier iterations?
Unless I’m fundamentally misunderstanding the directionality of “Bip is not on speaking terms with [Nabi-Nabu], for criminal history reasons,” that would have to be carried over from Viagem or earlier.
creetur
..Leaving more questions than answers there, Bip.
That last bit makes me wonder so damn much, what happened to them? Was it related to whatever killed their crew? What did they do before moving onto the Runaway? Once again, I am curious and feeling quite sad for this mischievous and secretive AI friend.
Vinemaple
Bip looks down and to their left, and raises their left eyebrow. Does anyone know what this is supposed to signify on a Human face?
“Though nothing I’ve DONE would ever change what they’ve…”
Already done to me? Already decided to do to me? And why is “ever” modifying “change” instead of “done”? Sounds to me like Bip HAS done… something, but that’s not why they’re being cagey and mysterious. They’re afraid of something else.
“Nothing I’ve done would ever change what would HAPPEN TO ME.”
Did Bip just edit all other entities out of their statement? Intentionally changing to passive voice?
Oh, stars, does Bip have a self-destruct trigger embedded in their code, that they can’t uninstall? If Bip gets caught and identified, will they just involuntarily delete themself, whether they want to or not? Does Bip have a gun to their head?
And thinking about THAT, I realize that whether it was done TO them or BY them, and whether or not they consented, wouldn’t make much difference to the way they’s acting right now. They just wouldn’t want to get caught, or whatever activates this hypothetical trigger, and that’d always dictate their plans and decisions in the moment.
Remember, no spoilers for us free readers!
Lilac
ohh bip you mysterious little digital worm…….
Claire
I continue to love the subtle but oh-so-expressive eyes that Bip has.
Green Heron
Bip what happened? 🙁
bitty
bip continues to have a mysterious and also tragic past eeee i wanna know more..!!!
holy moly what a mysterious statement… who is bip? used by others maybe, on the run from more than just the feds? this leaves so many questions /excited
Apollo235
I SEE THAT SLIP! WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO BIP????
Vinemaple
That was my first thought, too, but then I remembered how we’ve seen Bip act and talk, and… my narrative sense tells me Bip is just fine, maybe whatever Bip is hiding will come out in a plot twist or three, and it will be poignant and cute, but my human social sense is screaming at me to treat everything Bip says as performative and potential manipulation.
I guess primarily because we have no proof that AI can make “slips” when they don’t want to. And because of… my personal history.
Tentament
Bip slip