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.

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.

Thats enough out of you, you orange wearing sympathizer. I know you and your windmill ways.

You're so gonna get your ass handed to you in the world cup, America. And then ... ever notice the Dutch flag is almost like Russia's? Yeah. THAT IS NO ACCIDENT.

You just keep on insulting cute windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and tasty gouda. Then you'll get what'S coming to you. Like in Red Dawn. Only Orange.

-- Note that to the average citizen there is probably no difference between an AI, a great dragon, or a powerful corporate executive. On a scale of butchery Aden might still have a higher bodycount than Deus and the shenanigans of the corporations are on the news every day while the Arcology shutdown just fades into the past.

Only that people do trust entities which act indistinguishable from an intelligent lifeform, apparently without fearing world domination.

I think you have too much faith in metahumanity. I posit that an AI smart enough to figure out that the Uncanny Valley is why we hate them might make itself a cute little meat-world avatar with big eyes and a sad little puppy face that would instantly make everyone trust them despite knowing they were Deus.

"You know that thing you are petting there is Deus, right? The one that killed thousands of people in the Renraku Archology?"

"But it's so cuuuuuuuuuuute! Wooket dowes widdle eyes, oh who's the cwutest widdle AI? Yes you are, oh yes you are, you cwutest widdle fing."

"But it's gnawing on you leg. It's eyes are full of malevolence. How can you not see? Oh the humanity!"

Really, that only works on first impression. Also, the major motivation for distrust of AI is their genocidal tendencies displayed repeatedly in the SR universe. Not even cuddlyness will help that.

Well, yea. But then I couldn't have written a post with terrible baby-talk in it.

hi hi

Looking at the poll results, I imagine if there isn't a policlub type group for the extermination of and one for the preservation of AIs, perhaps there should be. I know Horizon is big on AIs, but who do you suppose would step up if/when there is another AI threat?

My current game has one AI in our party (though none of our characters know it yet). Once they find out... I imagine my character won't care much. The AI's done pretty well for us so far.

Vote: other
Explanation: I like the idea, but the rules for making one are confusing and can leave you with something underpowered quite easily.

Something about this should definitely got into a Space supplement, as it seems from this and other conversations that the question of letting an AI off the planet or not is contentious enough to draw blood.

Yeah, that's not true, and I'm not entirely sure how any biologist ever thought it was. Bacterial infection simply do not ever happen that fast. Therefore, komodo dragons must be using something else to disable/kill their prey with an otherwise nonlethal bite. Turns out the use the same thing everything else in the world that kills/incapacitates with relatively minor injuries uses: venom.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...agon-venom.html

Also, I dig the concept of AI, and have used several in my games. Good times were had by all (even if there were a few deaths).

-- I have no problems with AI in Shadowrun per se, they've been a (shadowy) part of the game since first edition. I do not like how they were introduced in Emergence though, and the Resonance stuff is ... well I'm not a fan of magical cyberspace. Perhaps most annoying, many elements of Emergence are introduced, railroaded in, and then just abandoned. What happened to Sojourner for example? The AI dude was threatening global terrorism and then just gets talked down and forgotten? We have another AI on the slowboat to Alpha Centauri (good luck with that).

-- Unwired further clouds the issue because they make no real sense. They count as a single program (so they can fit on a commlink or datajack I suppose), somehow lose cohesion without a home node, seemingly cannot copy themselves, and yet don't actually need a home system to survive. I believe tying them too closely with the (lets face it, magical) Resonance is just going to end up resulting in some ridiculousness down the road.

Yup. The "no copy" thing really confused me when it popped up in our game the first time. I understand the concept of having something that is too complicated to copy, but the way computers communicate is by making copies of the relevant data on a new node. Maybe these new "AI" are like Free Spirits, and the old AI were closer to the Wraiths of old?

Passions in ED. Totems in SR.


Read Runners Companion already? It introduces different rules. Also, Running Wild introduces feral AI, which are AI without the I, basically. Critters in cyberspace.

I pretty much concur from a meta perspective with you. Emergence is about the worst SR book ever published (not least because it directly contradicts numerous established facts about the Arcology Shutdown, and Arsenal, which claims fallout from the public knowledge of the shutdown as a reason for Raku to radically reengineer their applicance drones - that added to what you brought up). If there would be one sourcebook I'd kick from canon and write off as falsified postings on JP, it's Emergence.

I could also do without Technomancers entirely.

Actually in T1 and T2 it was noted the A.I. attacked once humans worked out it was self aware and tried to kill it.

Only if they're 'sleeping' at the time. Otherwise, they blink off, then on again, and that is assuming you were able to reboot their specific home node.


And you seem totally against the notion of A.I.'s having their own matrix to play in, so either pick living in peace with them, or don't. But picking war when every war machine on the planet has a matrix hookup is not the wisest decision I've ever heard. Like like a mundane who's been forced into an astral gateway picking a fight with a spirit. You 'could' do it, I'd just recommend against it.

The only way to prevent an A.I. from leaving is to either kill them all, or to allow no piece of technology more complicated then a sundial off the planet. Neither are particularly feasible.

I wholly agree with this. A.I.'s should be programs, and nothing more. Given how badly technology interacts with magic, I even find the idea of technomancers nauseating. Either magic and technology CAN interact, or they can't, but to say I can't copy and A.I. because its 'magical', but has no aura, or anything else, just pisses me off.

Well atleast we can agree on something.

A matrix hookup you can easily turn off.


As I have stated before, the problem is to not allow an AI to play with world destruction level technology. But you don't seem to get this. Nevermind that I fail to see where you expect people in the 6th world to get a naive worship of AI from that you seem to profess. But to your credit, ever since SR4, people in the 6th world have stopped to make sense (the crash and matrix rebuild makes as much sense as installing block nuclear power plants in every city so everyoone can benefit off nuclear power as a reaction to the Tschernobyl meltdown).

Well, the introduction of AIs was the better half of Emergence - because at least they were not trying to reveal something had already been spelled out two years ago with ZERO indication that this was strictly OOC knowledge and a big mystery ingame...


The AI-Resonance link was only IC speculation based on what little people knew about AIs during Emergence, it did not appear in any game rules. Although the idea is not exactly new, the old AIs also had some connection to the Deep Resonance.

Which would leave an army with on really rudimentary communication methods. Not impossible to cope with, but really a bitch if you have to fight someone who doesn't have those restrictions.


Actually its that you don't think they should have a right to exist based on your previous quotes. I believe you said they hadn't earned it yet.


Maybe its not a 'worship', but more a realization that marginalizing an entire sentient population is going to have repercussions you are not going to like in the long run. Doing so to human societies has ALWAYS caused problems, and many of them we are still fixing today. Doing so to a creature who learns, and maintains its world view in the first 18 months of its potentially eternal existence, is going to be a disaster. Teaching something that you hate it for simply existing, especially when it knows, that baring accident or murder, it WILL outlive you, is about as bad an idea as I can imagine. You would be far better off spending that time teaching it you value it BECAUSE it is sentient, and doing what you can to equate sentience, and respect of sentience with being valuable, and hope it takes that lesson to heart.

All the things I've heard people say about the concept of A.I., "they're not alive", "its not racism, their not a species", "their just a program, and the property of whoever wrote them", "They are all dangerous/evil/alien". All of that has been said, in one from or another about various human racial groups at some point. While I will agree some A.I.'s are quite alien, both in outlook, and action, and some are dangerous. The same can be said of some humans, but we do not condemn the whole of humanity for that. When a human murders, we blame the human, not humanity. You however wish to blame taxi cab driving program for the crimes of Deus. Given the cab program had not even been complied until some years after Deus was dead, this is akin to me blaming you for some random crime committed by a random human who likely carries no direct blood relation to you, and died years before you were conceived.

If anything would spark an A.I. vs living war, it won't be the A.I.'s. They exist in the matrix, and in general have no care for a world made of anything other then data. It will be humans who fear them, and hope to win in a first strike scenario.

Congratulations General Genocide, what are you orders?

Because jammers don't exist? The whole wireless fad is easily defeatble.


Quote it, then. Belief is best left in temples and cemetraries.


BUG RIGHTS!!! Seriously, all you saifd can be said about free spirits, especially free flesh forms, too. And anthorpomorphising the nonhuman always is a stupid idea. Yeah, it didn't work okay with the West because we developed the idea that all humans are equal. It DID work well for 95% of human recorded history though, and India's caste system is the most stable society that has ever existed, so even there your point does not hold.


Because fundamentally alien creatures are sure to have the same kind of empathy humans have, especially if they are solitary instead of pack based, where Empathy actually makes sense.


Oh cry me a river. That is anthropomorphising and arrogant and insulting all in one. Not to mention again trying to morally bully me into fanbunnying an RPG concept. That is so out there I don't really know what to replay anymore.


Read more, lurk more, post less. Dude, that is bullshit and you ought to know it. So read up if you want to talk AI or shut it.

Compared to SR3 wireless, SR4 wireless is ultrarobust and portable jammers are jokes.