Loroi Ship Design

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Mjolnir
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Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 1:24 pm

Re: Loroi Ship Design

Post by Mjolnir »

LegioCI wrote:As opposed to an intelligent, self aware human?
A human is an intelligent, self-aware entity. Anything in that category, natural or synthetic, as opposed to a machine pilot system that is not intelligent and self aware.

Absalom
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Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: Loroi Ship Design

Post by Absalom »

LegioCI wrote:
Mjolnir wrote: ...You also have the ethical questions of whether you should be putting an intelligent, self aware entity in harm's way unnecessarily.
As opposed to an intelligent, self aware human? (This is actually brought up in a few Bolo stories; later on in the timeline having a human commander in the bolo is actually fairly useless, since the Bolos themselves are easily as intelligent as a human, but it's mused that we continue to have human commanders partnered with Bolos out of a sense of responsibility, that the danger that we put Bolos into should be shared by a human. It's actually sort of touching.)
According to my copy of Bolo! (anthology by David Weber) the last few generations did have a use for a human commander: Bolos have personality restrictions to keep them safer... but humans don't.
LegioCI wrote:Though I do like the idea of perhaps having a single self-aware Bolo-esque AI controlling an entire squadron of strikecraft from a central command ship.
Also from Bolo!: such AIs are apparently standard on Concordiate warships.

discord
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Location: Umeå, Sweden

Re: Loroi Ship Design

Post by discord »

absalom: combined with neural interfaces to improve reaction speeds, so the humans can actually stay inside the data loop without increasing command delay too damn much...if i recall correctly....or was that from 'in fury born'...?

Absalom
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Re: Loroi Ship Design

Post by Absalom »

Yes, I assume that the Bolo AIs were designed in such a way that only such a direct connection would be enough to provide an 'end-run' processing path around such restrictions. I'd question the precise level of 'in-the-loop', but it's implied that the human personality somewhat merges into the Bolo personality, so the question of the human brain's ability to process Bolo-level volumes of data isn't necessarily an issue.

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