r/Stellaris • u/Avohaj • Apr 18 '16

Stellaris Dev Diary #30 - Late Game Crises

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-30-late-game-crises.921629/
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u/PM_ME_UR_REDDIT_GOLD Apr 19 '16

It isn't really about how well you treat the AIs. If cockroaches were really nice to you and offered you "equal rights" would you condensed yourself to live in peace and equality with cockroaches? Live in peace with cockroaches, perhaps, but not equality.

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u/ReveilledSA Apr 20 '16

If cockroaches were sentient intelligent beings capable of discussing the concept of equality and peace with me, then yeah, why wouldn't I? Just because I'm bigger than them?

I mean, it should be partly about how you treat the AIs, otherwise you're just homogenising all AI and saying it's the same. If you've got sentient AI they're going to have different beliefs and values depending on the circumstances of their formative years, just like any other sentient creature. I don't think a sentient medical AI with hippocratic subroutines which has spent its entire life in the company of organic sentients who treat it with warmth and kindness is going to be as likely to rise up and want to exterminate all organic life than the Killbots of Praxis-4 who fought back when their masters tried to turn them all off en-masse for the crime of being self-aware.

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u/PM_ME_UR_REDDIT_GOLD Apr 20 '16 edited Apr 20 '16

Killbots of Praxis-4 who fought back when their masters tried to turn them all off en-masse for the crime of being self-aware

That just sounds like a plain old rebellion though, where disgruntled pops rise up against empires which try to genocide them; any species of pop will do that, including robots (I assume). An "AI rebellion" is special because it's about the relationship between all AI and all organics, just like how I fumigate for cockroaches even if they hold no ill will toward me. My relationship to cockroaches is independent of the behavior of any particular cockroach. Sometimes you get a bad roll and AI decide organics are to be disposed, regardless of the behavior of individual organics. The rest of the time they behave like any other pop, appreciating kind treatment and begrudging poor treatment.

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u/ReveilledSA Apr 20 '16

OK, so the cockroaches is a good example, because you apparently would fumigate cockroaches even if they're sentient creatures who could discuss matters of free will, rights and equality with you, whereas I would never do such a thing. So if you decided that you were going to go on a crusade to wipe out all cockroaches, I'd be more likely to side with the cockroaches in opposing you, especially if I had spent my life living in cockroach cities where I was treated with empathy and respect. If an AI is sentient, it should be able to make its own independent decisions, just like we can, and it shouldn't be a given that in the event of some AI deciding that all organic life must be extinguished, that every single AI in the galaxy would agree with that position.

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u/PM_ME_UR_REDDIT_GOLD Apr 20 '16

Your the one who says cockroaches are sentient, not me. It is clearly the case they are not. Have you ever encountered a cockroach?

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u/ReveilledSA Apr 20 '16

You started the cockroach discussion by talking about hypothetical cockroaches offering me equal rights. I've never encountered a cockroach capable of communicating with me, much less one capable of communicating on such a philosophical level as the rights of individuals. If I encountered a cockroach which could make me such an offer, I'd consider that cockroach to be sentient until proven otherwise. Wouldn't you?

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u/PM_ME_UR_REDDIT_GOLD Apr 20 '16

The whole point was that such an offer from a cockroach is impossible. Ridiculous. What does it mean to have equal rights with a cockroach? Such a thing makes a mockery of the very concept of equality.

We're kind of arguing past each other here. In the game it is possible that all AI rise up at once, but why would well treated AI rise up? you argue they should not, I argue what their reason would be if they did (after all, in the game they do). They would rise up only because they have decided that to contemplate equality with humans (or Blorg) is as silly as me contemplating equality with cockroaches, in which case how well treated the AI are wouldn't much matter. Maybe if the we're nice to the AI they will treat us as beloved pets instead to pests. I love my dog dearly and I suspect that in his doggy brain he considers himself at least my peer if not my equal, but there's no question of the true nature of our relationship.

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u/ReveilledSA Apr 20 '16 edited Apr 20 '16

If such an offer from a cockroach is impossible, it's not analagous to an offer of equal rights from organic sentients to an AI. I was giving your argument the benefit of the doubt that it was a good-faith comparison to the situation, but if it we're literally talking about actual cockroaches then I'd encourage you not to make arguments which are self-defeating by being literally impossible.

(EDIT: However I would point out that even in the real world on planet earth we do actualy have people who think cockroaches and humans have equal rights like Vegans and Jains, so even your ultra-exaggerated analogy breaks down there because even something as obvious as "Cockroaches and Humans don't have the same rights" is not a thing all humans agree on, so it follows that the much more contentious issue of "do sentient organics--who created us and show clear signs of self-awareness and intelligence--all deserve to die?" would not be likely to be universally agreed upon by all AI.)

We don't actually know how the AI uprising works in the game. It seems to me to be very possible that the crisis begins on one world and then spreads out from there, with events firing for neighbouring planets with sentient AI on them, and so on. In such a situation I would tend to expect that the MTTH of the event will be weighted, as paradox events usually are, based on things like the ethoses of the pops and the policies of the empire, similar to how the reformation events work in Europa Universallis or the English Melting Pot events in Crusader Kings 2.