Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, January 8, 2020.
I just returned from watching “What We Do In The Shadows,” and was reminded how funny it was, and also how much of it I need to shut my eyes for (I don’t handle horror well, even comedy horror). Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi are pretty brilliant comedians and storytellers.
Do all approxiscans have an attitude? “I asked for an artificial intelligence, not an artificial smart-ass.”
i think its kinda a meditation on alexa etc. I mean everything seems to have true AI even useless things like boxes. Realy it would be unnerving to be virtualy spied on by 20 people constantly while you are sitting in your room.
Worse yet it can make you crazy. The potential of it all being toystory-esque, your appliances gaslighting you to do potential evil things … it would make me very very paranoid.
It also could make me antropomorphize all my appliances which would be super hard on a soziophobic person like me.
You could always think “They’re machines and devices. What do I care what they think? Besid
(…hit enter button accidently – seem to do that a lot on my tablet when I’m sleepy.) Anyways… Besides, what do I care what they think.”
I would not want my tableware to have AI. Nooooo. Imagine what the spoon would say while you eat ice cream with it.
Don’t worry, the smart-ass attitude is 100% honest, nothing artificial about that.
Natural stupidity will overcome artificial intelligence every time.
That reminds me of a line I used from time-to-time in my work doing electronics research and development. Someone would say ‘we made it foolproof’. And I would reply ‘you don’t know the same fools that I do’. 😉
Or: ‘unfortunately, someone seems to be upgrading the fools.’
Ah, the soon to be Chronicles of Ruddock.
“What we do in the shadows” really is brilliant. I played Vampire: the Masquerade back when, and the movie was totally representative of what clueless newb bloodsuckers could get themselves into. Also, I’m loving this new storyline from you, Christopher. Keeping it fresh, yet staying strong with interesting new and familiar characters. And the Crush Puppies are very intriguing… how did they get so bad?
The ‘Crush Puppies’ aren’t bad, at least they don’t think of themselves as bad. After all, they’re trying to save their babies so they consider themselves good. That’s simply their nature.
For example, if you go for a walk, do you think about what insects you might crush underfoot. They’re insignificant and their deaths don’t trouble you. And people make use of other life-forms like silk moths. Once enough silk is made in their cocoons, they’re steamed and killed. That’s the way Crush Puppies think of other life forms – humans anyway. Doesn’t stop me from hating them.
You definitely did well to add an animal to each crew formed, Christopher. Bikkie before and now Ruddock. They improve the mood since they’re not restrained in what’s considered reasonably polite human behaviour and add great comedic relief. I love them both! I can just imagine the two of them meeting.
Before that we had our alien members which were similiary excluded atleast from some human behaviour.
Oh Ruddock you poor dog! Meta-cognition hurts, doesn’t it?
Perhaps future generations of aliens will remember him as Ruddock- who brought the plague of fleas from Beyond! (I’m imagining the aproxiscan-Ai griping about being demoted to flea-collar, or should that be flee-collar?)
Waaaiiit a second!
“What is my purpose?”
“You guide a fuzzy moron in a collar. That is all.”
“Oh, my god.”
Poor Potty-bot went insane when told of its purpose, and turned into a coprophagic stalker.
‘…’
‘On the other hand, could be worse. Onward to fuzzy glory then.’
Deserves a footnote to Clarke’s Law: Any sufficiently advanced piece of technology is indistinguishable from an A-hole.
And I imagine all sorts of Galactic criminals spend a lot of time burning memories out of their approxiscans for this very reason…. something that Emily must have run into countless times in her former job. I wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising alien schmuck found a way to build an approxiscan with exactly that feature, make them and collect a pile. The Fuhgetitscan. Valuable right until you need to remember the password for the asteroid vault you stored your loot in. Whereupon all it says is, “Uhhhh…. what password?”
In the words of the immortal Larry Niven:
Never tell a computer to forget it
Fuzzy Moron is now my totem animal.