hi hi

I'm curious as to what people's opinions are, their in-character opinions and what you think world opinions are of Sapient AIs in Shadowrun.

I think it is obvious that there would be a number of people who would like AIs and actively work with them, but overall, I think the majority of people would be suspicious if not hostile to AIs (assuming they recognized one).

As far as human nature goes, I think the classic prisoner's dilemma is remarkably relevant here. If humanity decides to try to get along with AIs, and AIs try to get along with humanity, everyone is happy. (or at least as happy as you can get in the gritty and dirty sixth world of corporate overlords) If humanity tries to get along with AIs, but AIs don't try to get along with humanity, people are right screwed. If neither tries to get along, I imagine there would be lots of explosions everywhere, probably lasting several years after which nobody really wins.

On AI personality. While there might be some AIs who display human like consciousness and reactions, they are distinctly not human. Their true motivations and thought patterns could potentially be totally alien to human understanding regardless of whether or not they can pass the turing test. So I think in some cases it is a mistake to anthropomorphize them.

Personally, I think with AI as run previously, esp. considering the Renraku Arcology, I'd hate to have them show up in game without any serious Corp attempt to destroy them.

My character is a mage, not too bright, who's a bit of a technophobe in the first place. If you could show him an AI's aura, he'd be happy to accept them as "alive"; since that's impossible, he's pretty much of the opinion that they're hostile, soulless bits of machinery, and will happily blast them all to smithereens. As soon as he can find an aura to target.

Def agree that any AI is not human, and will think in alien and unusual ways. Unfortunately, truly alien behavious is difficult to really pull off, so I can accept my DM offering a more human interpretation.

One of the ways that AI could interact with metahumanity is by pretending to be gods or spirits. Metahumanity has a set of expectations on how to deal with those and expects them to be a bit alien. William Gibson introduced this trope in Count Zero to good effect with the remains of the Wintermute and Neuromancer AIs masquerading as Vodoun Loa.

That being said, I think the AI in SR need to die for metahumanity to survive. Their existence has the same problem as Orson Scott Card presented for Ender when faced with the Bugs in the novel Ender's Game, which, as you say, is the prisoner's dilemma. The Bugs analogy is especially apt given the damage AI have already caused the world, as hermit rightly points out.

In character, I play a transhumanist, so he sees them as equals and doesn't hold the body count against them.

Well in all honesty SR4's AI are far, far removed from the power level of Deus, Echo Mirage and the like. Would a character fear and despise komodo varans on account of the way Great Dragons have behaved in their dealings with methumanity ?

Komodo creepiness! They don't use poison, they infect you with their disgusting bleeding gums! And they look like Ghostwalker! Off with their heads!

I see your point.

On the other hand, Komodo dragons are not sapient... Drakes would be a better comparison, and yes, I do think people would react to them in part based off of their feeling towards Great Dragons.

Assuming in-game people know the stats of everything is wrong.


This.

Also, would you want an alligator that moved into your home to stay?

Personally, I agree with Walpurgisborn. Given their history in SR, them not facing immediate aggressive attempts at destruction would be unbelievable.

My characters:

Mage: Isn't interested in much except ancient artefacts and magical theory.
Rigger: Helped the Arc resistance to save someone inside and ended up in a Zombie room. Guess.
Tir Agent: Would not trust them, but isn't going to ask for their immediate annihilation.
Critter Hunter: If he met one and could bag it he would sell it.
Vigilante Steetsam: If they were tightly controlled and would prove themselves honest patriots, he would grudgingly accept them, if only to stick it to the Redskins and Japse.
Poseur Pink Mohawk Guy Who Looks Like Wesker: Would shoot them. However, that is his standard reaction to things he does not know.

Rember the Terminator movies, yeah you got it. Those old 2D flat vids with Schawntzenhammer guy. Yeah, the most unrealistic part of the movie was that any humans survived to fight the machines. And the premise of that story was that the machines attacked pretty much as soon as people found out they were AI. The AI wasn't given a few years to prepare.

Really the AI's could hammer us flat and there is little that we could do to stop them. I mean, they learn faster than we do, they never sleep. and they control everything.

hi hi

To be fair, AIs don't control everything in Shadowrun, people still have magic as a trump card up their sleeves. If AI made a power play, I could see there being a Ghost Dance 2.0.

Don't forget electroshock weaponry. They are the ultimate weapon in Shadowrun. They hurt people, they disrupt electronics, and they make spirits drop like flies.

"AI, huh?" **ZAP** "Yippie kye yay, mother socketer."

AI's aren't that stupid to pull of a Metahumanity enslavement campaign as soon as they emerge why should an AI seek control over everything since their "home plane" is the matrix? Would your flesh and blood mage seek to conquer the metaplanes just because he has a MA of 20 and a couple of bound spirits up his sleeve?
From the perspective of an AI : how much has it to gain by these attempts and how likely is it that he will suceed?
The Matrix is nowadays decentralized for good reasons so as long as they dont run on a skyscraper of nexi i dont see a real danger here
AI may have other goals in their life than become a supervillain how about an AI emerged from a botscript for Miracle Shooter attempting to become the greatest ego shooter pr0gamer on earth?

Just rebot the entire matrix. Kills them allright.


Because they were a threat to them. Because they controled the world the AI lives in and the AI would forever be at their mercy. That is why Mirage and Deus did what they did. Thing is, in the SR universe, this already happened. Twice.

I'm personally a fan of the 'watered-down' AIs as part of the setting, especially if they're still rare and not nearly as powerful as the originals.

My Characters:

Hacker/Sniper: Negotiated with several, and programmed one. Good buddies with them.
Fun-with-Science Close Combat/Demoman: Suspicious of and confused by them. Doesn't trust magic, either, though.
Crash Cart Employee: Was in a coma when everything went down. Blissfully ignorant of their existence, among other things.
Smuggler/Face: Willing to let just about anything prove its worth, and takes everything on a case-by-case basis. Reserving judgment.

I missed that; however, in a world where there're real Loa, that might be hard to pull off convincingly. Besides, real gods and spirits might take offense in this.

I'm going to say AI's are a very iffy thing in SR some have moved to help humanity some are completely ailen and go round collecting seamingly random items of data. With sprites and TMs it gets even messier.

However AIs have caused two past major events and a bundle of minor ones. The issue is the matrix isn't really as a whole reboot-able. Some AIs have proven them selves to be non-hostail and such. Also we could keep killing them off as they appear but we have no idea why the spawn randomly and a history of agresstion or aggressive action could lead to formally unknown/passive ATs turning aggressive.

So what we really have is a world rightfully fearful of AIs but open aggressive action just isn't feasible. Also while it might not be full know these are watered down AIs I'm sure people would have spotted a bit og a trend in an issue that could quite well cause crash 3.0

Of course! And then, with my invincible army of spirits I shall rule over all that I survey, enforcing my tiniest whim on the populace! ...Oh, wait. Ghostwalker did it first. Guess I'll just have to keep working on the giant ritual-powered death ray.

Horizon likes AIs so I like AIs. [/average joe]

Of course! I'm imagining an AI trying to be Damballah, but only having bad trideo recordings to work with. They'd show up to to celebrations wearing a ridiculous snake suit and tick off the real loa proper like. You could write an entire campaign around the fall out from that one.

That gives me another question: How do Free Spirits and AI get along? The few of them that try and be celebrities would be fighting for the same slice of air time, and must get into tiffs given how different their views of reality are from each other.

Of course! I'm imagining an AI trying to be Damballah, but only having bad trideo recordings to work with. They'd show up to to celebrations wearing a ridiculous snake suit and tick off the real loa proper like. You could write an entire campaign around the fall out from that one.

That gives me another question: How do Free Spirits and AI get along? The few of them that try and be celebrities would be fighting for the same slice of air time, and must get into tiffs given how different their views of reality are from each other.

The killswitch saved SK's and the Euocorps' Matrix after the crash. I doubt the other corps would not install such measures in case anything like that ever happens again either. Nobody wants to lose data if they can help it, and if that means a killswitch, so be it. Besides, it'S a security measure against AI as a whole to boot, who should rank rather high on the corps' and governments' threat rating, given their previous history, possibilities and current deeds (look at Geneva).


'nother thing I missed. Of course he would. That's the character concept. He does all that research for a reason, after all. Dark King mentor spirit and all, y'know. Guess what form the Dark King has for him.


Actually, I imagine this more to be a one-off, combat oriented event. Loa take no shit from nobody.


I imagine the vast majority of each would not care a bit about the other, with AI being probably a bit more wary of spirits than spirits being of AI.

Vote: Don't Like em

We did Renraku Shutdown (but altered as our GM never runs as written in ze books).
Managed to stop Deus in the Archology but unfortunately he still managed to escape and is now free on the matrix (we think). We know of another AI that is out there too, but a lesser generation AI.

Deus still keeps coming back on us with his strange eye'd freaks. The fact our deckers was mind hacked by the AI probably doesn't help our situation either.

Generally, as long as an AI isn't causing trouble, leave it be. If it is, hunt its core systems down and destroy them. Problem of course is, thats actually impossible once they are in the matrix.


Metahumanity still has the edge over AI anyway. At any point, they can just pull the plug and turn it all off.

The 6th World has experienced two major Matrix Crashs, each killing (at least) thousands, as well as a whole lot of smaller matrix-related disasters. Emergence told us that based on this experience, people have a latent fear of technology and that the whole thing could come down again...but where are those scared people, actually?

The reaction to both crashs was not that people view the matrix and everything vaguely related with extreme suspicion, it was more technology and an even more powerful and ubiquitous matrix. People are using the matrix in every aspect of their lives, and in the year 207x this means they are also interacting with highly sophisticated agents and pilot programs for every aspect of their lives. While technically not "intelligent", many of these programs would pass a Turing Test with flying colours, combine that with mankind's love for the anthropomorphic fallacy and the whole question of AIs should sound like an awfully academic question to the average wageslave - some eggheads get all worked up about it, but what's the difference between this Pulsar and MCT's helpdesk agent?
If anything, the social awkwardness of AIs should make them look a bit retarded in the eyes of the public, which is used to sophisticated human interaction routines.

Frankenstein syndrome, To quote a great writer from the last century wire an electromagnetic shotgun to their foreheads if you can't do that destroy them. Humans will not tolerate there own creations jumping them on the food chain and with the ai's track record NO ONE with the brains of a canned sardine would trust them Barks at the moon dog shaman

As long as the AI can't get access to nano's and rebuild those kill switches into decorative cupholders this would be viable. With drones and nanotech I don't feel you can trust them toasters at all....damn there was another one of them shows with machines rebelling and wiping out their human masters Battlestar Andromeda (mumbles while looking through stack of media chips) anyhow the risk is too high.

Take the chance of one of them killing off all of metahumanity, thats just crazy short sightedness. Like building your country below sea level, putting up dikes and installing pumps to pump out the water, yes I am pointing at you Holland, you tulip smelling, wooden shoe wearing......

To be fair, when they first settled there, the ground was still higher and the sea level lower. It's only after the Mannsdränke of the 1300s that they had to fight the sea for land like that. Unlike New Orleans, which was very floodable from the beginning. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Also, they're considering giving up polders one by one and moving into giant ponton houses instead, because that's much less of a bother.