Agent programs are just a quick start.

What you might do is just stat out an AI like a normal technomancer or hacker, leaving off inappropriate real world attributes in exchange for appropriate cyberspace stats.

That'd be a very good start, particularly if you follow the Transhuman Space scheme and wanted ideas for low-sapient AIs or sapient AIs with little to do with the real world.

Of course, AIs could appear fairly human-like in personality, too. They aren't restricted to being the emotionless 'bot.

And how do you mean that?

Dr. Baron-Cohen suggested that folks who suffer from ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders, of which Asperger's is one) lack a fundamental empathic mechanism that allows them to intuitively understand that other people also have thoughts and emotions that are equal in value. As a result, they have difficulty developing socially because they don't see the same value in communication as many of the rest of us.

Folks with Asberger's rarely exhibit any of the other symptoms of ASDs, they usually just have a general social awkwardness and/or a lack of caring about developing socially. This affliction is fairly common, you probably know a few folks like this, they have genuinely no interest in anything but what they are into, work, school, whatever.

An Autistic AI makes a shit ton of sense from a personality perspective. The AI's mind would see the action of other minds as inconsequential. It would have no drive to be socially apt unless absolutely necessary. It would also be unable to understand many metahuman motivations, given that many of our motivations are social.

The good Dr. is off a bit. It isn't so much a lack of empathy as it is face blindness. Most emotion is expressed by the face rather than the voice. Much of that can be very fast and subtle. With face blindness, even the more obivous expressions can be missed, unless exaggerated like in the cartoons. Anime really has a leg up on that what with the symbols and greatly exaggerated expressions.

I can see how that could be considered a lack of empathy. It is very hard to respond to an emotional state you don't even realize the other person has. That cause a disadvantage in social situtation because people with AS completely miss the subtle interactions that come naturally to NT (NeuroTypicals, the older canon term).

Now, this disadvantage causes a difference in communication style. NT's enjoy a lot of social chatter, gossip and so on. Most people with AS find that boring and even inane. Most AS communication is to transmit information. For example: NT females might find it great sport to gossip about another woman's choice of clothing, but an AS female would probably not see the point, at least not in dwelling on it or making fun of them behind their backs about it. On the other hand, if said AS female liked astronomy and you asked about it, you'd probably get a great deal of communication about astronomy. Just don't be surprised if it goes on for a while since, because of face blindness, she probably won't be able to tell if you are getting bored.

Your second paragraph isn't quite right. It is true that people with ASDs are generally shy and socially awkward, but so would you be in situations you found almost incomprehensible. Perhaps the best way to put it would be if you were at a gathering where everyone had on an expressionless version of their face, maybe one that allowed gross shifts, like the Ancient Greek Theatre Masks. You would have to judge everything by what you heard, what people said, how they said it, etc. Since communication is 90% nonverbal, you would be missing the majority of what was going on. Kind of hard to keep, wouldn't you think?

Most ASDs have also been pushed to the margins all of their lives and so don't have much practice with social situations. That only makes social situations even worse or even phobic. However, it is possible to learn to compensate, to learn the skill that come naturally to NTs. Probably won't become social butterflies, but they can fit in better.

As for a lack of caring about developing socially, that isn't entirely true. Most would like to be more socialiable, just that most of what society does doesn't make much sense. It also doesn't help that most people are more inclined to, well, be less than helpful or kind to a socially inept person than to be friendly to them.

You'd also be surprised about the interest thing. Most ASD have a few strong interests, but also others. Some of the more severe cases might do nothing but focus on those interests, but that's getting to classic autism. Most of the rest are fully capable and indeed willing to participate in the world, just that they lack the basic social social skills as I have describe. Those can be learned, however, just most never get taught.

I could go on about ASD, but I'm probably boring you. Some smart ass will probably post an agreement to that too.

I think the biggest problem with an AI would that it isn't metahuman. We have no idea how it would think or what its motivations would be. On thing is almost certain: it wouldn't have a sense of ethics and morality like we do. However, I think it could understand out motivations quite well. There is a wealth of information out there about human psychology that it could study, in nanoseconds. It could figure us out in an instant.

So far, all of the SR AIs have been brought into existence with some sort of tight interaction with metahuman minds or emotions, which gave them metahuman-like minds and emotions in return. Deus much less so, but Mirage is a big softy and Morgan was in love. Deus certainly lacked any sense of ethics or morality in the metahuman sense, but it could be easily argued that was a result of metahuman mind and/or emotions, not a lack of same.

For the first part, thanks. If you have any other questions you can ask here or send me a message to continue there.

Deus was based on the mind of, can't think of his name, but he was a top researcher at Renraku. Deus actually does show many of his traits: paranoid, power hungry, ruthless, etc. That would probably explain why Deus wanted to control the Matrix while the other AIs more or less wanted to be left alone, but had to fight because they opposed Deus.

Inazo Aneki was the Renraku CEO. I really feel that the SR writers gave Deus a sense of betrayal from when Aneki installed hard-coded kill switches the SCIRE host. Any ability to love that Deus could have gotten from Morgan's mangled code was turned to hate by Aneki's kill switches.

So SR AI is usually quite human with emotions and all.

He did, didn't he? Aneki also had his own sense of betrayal about his treatment by the Corp if I recall.

Sounds like it might be smarter to not develop AIs based on a specific human model.

Ok, i know this doesn't include all the complex issues of asperger's syndrome (I studied in learning disorders, and i had a class specialized in Troubles Envahissant du Développement, which translates into General Development Disorder, which autism is part of) but the movie Rainmain, Rain Man is a good start to understand how an autist can perceive the world.

Rain man? That's classic autism, not Asperger's Syndrome. That comparison is quite common, and annoying.

I've been trying to think of good examples all day, but really haven't come up with anything since most portrayals are classic autism, like Rain Man, or characatured into parodies for comic relief, like Monk.

If I think of any, I'll post them.

That describes me pretty well, too. I couldn't catch to save my life, but I could throw and shoot. Big vocabulary, knew a lot about a lot of things, but usually missed sarcasm, jokes and so on, assuming everyone was as serious as me. Roleplaying games were great because they were worlds with rules you could actually read and understand what was going on.

Got my DX about 5 years ago, btw.

Monk isn't autistic. He's an obsessive compulsive germaphobe.

A good eample of AS would be Jerry Espenson from Boston Legal. I don't know how accurate the portrayl is, but it is certainly not a caricature. And Boston Legal is worth watching just for Captain Kirk, Odo, Daniel Jackson, Murphy Brown and Keen Eddie working together in a law firm.