Another Robot Faction?

[Ayem]

This proposal of yours is very interesting, Dreygon. When one of the above posters said that if you roleplay an AI like a human, you may as well play a human I snorted. Why play a ginger, one legged trader with a penchant for alcohol that tastes like engine grease but lusts after a more cultured lifestyle and is slowly earning their way to living that dream? I mean, he's just a human like everyone else. Why bother?

An AI who acts like a human, who interfaces with humans at a level they are familiar with, Turing-passing conversation and independent thought is not a human. It is an AI that has been programmed, or has programmed itself to conform to a certain framework that humans can comprehend. In order to pass Turing, a robot is indistinguishable from a human in communication. However, they are still made of different things.

A boy who grows up in a trailer park in Louisiana is not the same as a woman who commands a starship. Different experiences, physiological peculiarities and training will produce different people. If you are not a human to start with, then you will have a different mind set than a human will, even if they went through the same experiences as you. First, humans will treat a human differently. Second, you are not made of squishy things (unless you are, eg. Battlestar Gallactica skinjobs). Third, the human brain is prone to data corruption and fuzzy logic to a greater degree than computer's. Humans forget, an AI would need a memory wipe- a conscious or programmed choice to wipe their own memory.

The Nomad are not human, they attacked the humans and war was waged.

The AI are not human, but this faction can choose another path than war. There are four houses of humans in vanilla, all there because they have not waged war to the point of genocide on one another. The principle reasons for this (beyond authorial design) would be economy, popular disapproval and communication between the houses, and the people within the houses. Communication is key. If it is easier for nation x to buy material y from nation z than to annex that part of the galaxy, then they will buy it, unless there is some other driving factor.

A hatred of AI is not historic in Sirius as far as I am aware. The AI conglomerate, confederation or whatever it comes to be called, could be considered humankind's favored child, born of their own technological exploration. Diplomacy will decide.

As an aside: There is nothing wrong with *scanning*.
What irritates me is the wave of insults from humans that follow that *scanning*. Are you surprised that there is some hostility from a borderline sentient being when you shout at and attack it? Even a dog fights back, and if forced to for long enough, it will pre-emptively fight back. Just give them some oil. 'kay? Be polite every now and then. It's not a toaster, just as a black person isn't a... you get the picture.

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