A Return

Hey! Wow! It's been a while. Sorry Raven (and everyone reading). Crow's departure and then a week of misadventures has put us very off schedule with posting. That stops this week. Back to every day updates. Starting with some puttering from me (Owl) in the new space world I'm trying to piece together. I am so new to writing science fiction it's actually a bit embarrassing. Raven, if you feel the inclination to make a post about things you like seeing in science fiction (and maybe some things you hate) that would help me out! Everyone reading this please feel free to do the same in comments. Or chime in with some problems, changes, gadgets, or new ideas you think the future might hold (when we're all living on spaceships searching for lots of new worlds to colonize and stuff).



Security Bot Protocol Scan
11.3.5382
Keyword Search: Artificial Intelligence, AI, Simulated Intelligence, SI,
Searching...
Retrieving...
Retrieved.
Commencing scan...

....Even before our ancestors left Earth in search of new worlds the question of an artificially intelligent machine loomed large. The now defunct Council of Twenty, made up of the highest earning corporations and countries of the day, came together to decide the issue at the 3892 Beijing Summit in the Earth city of Beijing. The resulting months of negotiations have become known as the Turing Summit and the document it produced was named the Turing Protocol. The Turing Protocol did many things, but the most important and lasting effect of both the summit and protocol was the legal distinction drawn between a simulated intelligence machine and an artificial intelligence machine.

An artificial intelligence machine would duplicate human intelligence or surpass it. It would be able to reason, respond, evolve, and think independently from its creator. A simulated intelligence was viewed by the Turing Protocol to be anything that fell short of that mark. This vague legal definition persisted until 3920 when the Watts v. Micropolis case forced the issue. The Council of Twenty reconvened, this time in Earth city Mumbai to more concretely define the term simulated intelligence. The resulting definition decreed that a simulated intelligence could not change its own programming, or make any value judgments that were not built in by a human creator. For example, a programmer could build in a fail safe that would change the programming of a Rover bot from exploring a new planet and gathering data to protecting itself and returning to a docking station when it was damaged.

The 3920 definition of simulated intelligence has become standard over the last millennium and any bots falling outside the scope of SI are still outlawed by all companies and fleet governing bodies. Machine dependence on human minds keeps the human population employed and dominant, while optimizing fleet productivity and happiness...

....Scan complete...
....Threat level.... 0
....Scan concluded.
Time elapsed... 0.0000001 seconds.

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Micropolis Memo
Dictated by Paul York, Micropolis CEO
2.15.5367

On my way to a meeting with the board. The numbers indicate that overall consumer spending on Micro products is down by 5 percent this quarter. The board should consider raising overall corporation wage and  implementing the proposed incentive buying program Li and his bot seem convinced will skyrocket our profits. I'm more concerned about getting our new research division off Teros this year. We don't have any business hanging around a settled chunk of rock. Once the colonizers move in, its time for us to move out. There's no money in colonization. Leave that for Suvidha and Ousar. Guess I'll let Li play his little game with the staff then. He'll probably want to hire back some of our old employees, too.

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Chicago Chronicle
December 17th 5368

Paul York, embattled CEO of Micropolis, has finally stepped down after his company lost a massive lawsuit against the family members of the ill-fated Blackbird R&D outfit. The entire outfit has been presumed dead since December of last year. Communications with the head researcher, Alberto Soriano, were cut off unexpectedly after Soriano's report of strange heat signatures and a planet with an abnormal rotation.
York, reportedly ordered the team to investigate despite strong opposition from his board of directors. It has not yet been announced who will be replacing York as the new CEO, though a source at the company who wishes to remain anonymous hinted that York's replacement will be none other than Li Yang, the economic genius behind many of Micropolis' recent workers' incentive programs and their new line of VR implants.
Micropolis' stock fell a whopping 45 percent this morning when news hit that the veteran CEO who has helmed the company for the last 37 years would be stepping down.



A few bits of world building to piece together. Thanks to Raven's brother, Rook, for showing me CGP Grey's video: Humans Need Not Apply to get me thinking about how human beings will survive in a world populated by job-competent machines.