I decided to answer more than two questions, because I'm chronically overambitious. Here's some info from Calcery while he's still available, since he's going to be missing from the comic for uhhhhhhhh a while. 🙂
Transcript
Anonymous asked: Cal, how did you get hired on Dirtball, and what's your job there?Calcery: I had previously been the overseer for a large microgravity recycling station. When Ixion inquired about on-planet work, I was interested, but conflicted about leaving. I compromised by budding off this individual, Calcery, to work at IRP. My parent iteration, Calcine, stayed at the microgravity plant. We keep in touch. My job on Ixion-3... or "Dirtball," haha, was not a huge change of pace. I managed IRP's fleet of autonomous harvesting vehicles. During the workday I actively controlled the vehicles, and during my off hours they followed autonomous routines I programmed for them.
Anonymous asked: Calcery, how do you usually communicate with bug ferrets? With sound, or do you use a screen or something like Nedebug's tactile sign peripheral?
Calcery: Most of the time, I communicate with written text on screens. Barking, flashing a light, or blowing a puff of air cues bug ferrets who aren't looking to notice the communication. They usually reply in the visual variant of BFL-2 sign language, which transposes the arm touch locations into hand positions relative to the signer's body. Other communication options include using an icon of visual sign language, or robotic arms. I find the latter rather clunky and prone to breaking down at the worst moments; but I'm not really a fan of animated icons either. Some A.I. find a lot of joy in cultivating an avatar to represent themselves to organic sophonts, but I don't know... to me, that's always felt rather... garish. I prefer not having a face.
47 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 1”
Archie
Do AI have to like… prepare for budding off a new individual in terms of hardware, since many of the ones we know need to have pretty hefty servers to hold their consciousness?
Ronnie
I’ve been wondering this as well!
Jay Eaton
They can only do it if there’s available server space. Usually an entire new empty rig is assembled for the “child” to copied into.
eden
is the first ai still alive? what Is it like? also do ai use pronouns?
Peter Jensen
The first AI, Nedebug, is still around:
https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Sophonts/SapientAI
Jay Eaton
Some AI have pronoun and gender preferences for languages that make the distinction (like Calcery being male and he/him). Many don’t care and go with defaults or neutrals.
Cognitiveshock
Wait is Calcery trans! Or at least trans-adjacent being and ai and all
Septemberdale
The concept seems like it wouldn’t at all apply to an entity without a physical body, seeing as that the mental parts of identity are a series of overlapping statistical probabilities of traits and interests and perhaps one’s personal feelings about these.
un_pogaz
Calcine at the time of the job offer for Dirtball:
“Both?”
“Both.”
“Both is good.”
TotallySomebody
Is this a reference to El Dorado?
Bay
I envy Calcery. I’d love to become a grand faceless entity. Or at least have the option
Internet Stranger
As an organic being, I find the concept of not having nor wanting a face to be somewhat.. unnerving
Calcery’s awesome tho
feesh
i just realized calcine’s logo is the Aries zodiac symbol! very cool, i wonder what the reason was
Jay Eaton
That symbol has another, more obscure meaning 😁
Spekkio
That one’s clear (and I wonder if it’s also a Calcifer reference) but I’m not sure if I understand what Calcery’s symbol is. If I’m understanding the pattern of these symbols, he’s possibly an acid-of-nickel, or “antimonium spagyriae praep”. An exaltation of antimony? I feel like if Calcine is the exaltation, Calcery should be normal antimony, but I can’t see that symbol with that meaning anywhere. Reveal nothing clearly to the uninitiated, indeed!
Maia
Alchemical symbols! Calcine uses the symbol for calcination. Calcery uses the symbol for calcinated copper? Why copper?
notanocelot
*slaps top of head* “E”
Trees
Bug ferrets looking on: ‘I don’t know, they just seem to be saying “eef” over and over?’
notanocelot
in order to eef visually, would you not have to tap the top of your head twice before pointing up and to the left though?
Jay Eaton
I know y’all are being silly but if you’re curious the letters are arbitrary replacements for bug ferret symbols that have no associated phonemes lol, you would say eef by saying eef. Vocal noises in BFL-2 are referred to in text by sign terms, not onomatopoeia, because casual language doesn’t have detailed terms to specify phonemes
Trees
Dear Jay Eaton,
I don’t know what feelings it conjures up in you when you have clearly invested such incredible amounts of thought and work to actualise multiple, credible alien languages, biologies, cultures and technologies only to have us down here in the comments gleefully ‘eef’ back and forth at each other every third page like happy children.
What can I say? The lowest common denominator is a fun denominator!
Despite this please know that the steel spine of verisimilitude you have worked so hard to instil in this comic is absolutely appreciated and regarded with more than a little awe, certainly by this reader. And this from someone who has not read ahead and had to tear himself away from reading the entire lore website (carnalists!) like it was the Mass Effect codex.
Anyway, we eef here with respect, i hope!
07 07 0/
/| /| /|
/\ /\ /\
Jay Eaton
Lol you’re fine I’m just a compulsive overexplainer. Eefing is allowed
Duna
Press [Bug-Ferret] to ‘E’
betsumei
*pokes eye*
“I”
Gar G
So cool. Particularly the idea of an AI being able to bud off from a “parent”. I guess that’s basically like creating a clone of themselves, but “budding” does sound like a very accurate term to describe this method of quote-unquote “reproduction”.
Sio
So cool to see questions for the AI
Amanda/OwlBear
I can sympathise with being more comfortable faceless
eel
Wow, how old is Calcery? Wild to know that they were made for this job.
Septemberdale
How is it wild? It’s no different from anyone else, though, barring unfortunate circumstances. I am fairly certain that all wanted children born within a fairly broad general range of expected function are created with a specific intent in mind and continue to have strong expectations of their life paths that it would be difficult for them to defy. For instance, I was raised with the intention that I would someday become a scientist. I had to go rogue, run away from home, and immigrate to a different continent to instead pursue a career in education.
Unless, of course, I have misunderstood you and you are referring to within the context of the Runaway to the Stars setting, wherein it seems that only artificial intelligences, and some but not all genetically-modified humans, are born with the explicit purpose of a specific career, whereas typ humans in the setting seem to have more free and choose-your-own-adventure lives and the aliens generally are living within their own biopsychosocial contexts.
Jay Eaton
Older than 15, but with probably over a hundred years of memories (though the oldest ones are much more selectively pruned than recent ones). Age is a weird subject when it comes to AI.
zaratustra
Do budded AIs consider themselves to be “newborn” or do they carry consciousness continuously? If the latter, all AIs would have the same “age”.
feesh
i think it’s sort of a mix of the two– a newly budded ai is the same consciousness as the old, but through being its own entity and gaining new life experiences, they become their own separate person
Septemberdale
And how do they decide who’s the original?
Trees
To Septemberdale: If Calcery and his dozens of massive server blocks is any indication an AI requires considerable computing power and physical equipment to live. An AI wishing to have a child would probably need to beg, borrow, steal or buy a rig capable of running themselves to put their child into. The AI offspring would immediately be able to tell it wasn’t the original when it boots up in new hardware, right?
I wonder is it weird and disorienting to be decanted into a new ‘body’? Like getting a new pair of glasses but for your entire brain.
Liza
I’m mildly freaked out by those robot bug ferret arms and I’m not sure why. I think it’s the abnormally uniform whiskers.
Fallingfeather
Oh- is there a way to send in questions? I think I missed it…
But also yaaaay Cal!
Jay Eaton
Sorry I wasn’t more loud about it, there was a link to the Google form under the avian lore page. I’ll be taking more questions after chapter 2 wraps up.
Fallingfeather
OH shoot yeah I totally missed that. Oh well, better luck next time haha
Septemberdale
The animated bugferret looks charmingly rabbitish.
Calvert
I love you Calcery!
Mr. Skeleton
Have any A.I. taken offense to the idea that they were created to do a job that their progenitor didn’t want to do?
It seems like Calcery doesn’t bear Calcine any ill will, which is nice.
Jay Eaton
It happens, most often because of outside coercion offering something the progenitor wants/needs, or a careless personality in the progenitor AI. If they didn’t want to do the job, then their copy won’t either, is the issue. It tends to make for a job done poorly and a resentful AI who will leave at the first opportunity.
Calcine was just genuinely conflicted, wanting to do both things, and compromised by making a version of themself (who had the exact same feelings, being identical at the point of separation) who could go to Ixion. Calcery’s falling out with IRP management wasn’t something either could have foreseen. Shit happens. They’re not that different as people and share a lot of memories still. Perhaps more comparable to siblings, rather than parent and child?
Phasma Felis
This vaguely reminds me of the Goblin Punch blog’s interpretation of slaad (D&D chaos frog things). When a slaad wants to do two different things and can’t decide between them, it may dig its claws into its chest, rip itself in half, and reform into two smaller slaad which scamper off to do both things at once. https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/12/slaad.html
Tero
i love to see bug ferrets in this simpler style it kinda makes features i overlook pop out more like those stick-out bits in their chin
Viashino_wizard
The chin bits are pretty important, actually. They’re the main way bug ferrets make physical expressions since their faces are pretty rigid and inflexible.
J
It’s so interesting to see the blurring of the line between Calcery and their parent iteration (if I’m understanding this correctly). So Calcine, Calcery’s parent was conflicted about whether to stay or go to a new job opportunity. So to solve this, Calcine stayed, and Calcery was “born” and went to work on Dirtball?
Jay Eaton
Yep! At a certain point in the past, Calcine and Calcery were the same person, so the concept of identity gets weird. This is how all new sapient AI are produced in this setting, they’re kinda like microbes.