Artstuff : Detour Gallery

My second project for the 3Hombre’s version of Dark Conspiracy was illustrating the scenario Detour. Detour took the players out of the city, into the chaotic and deadly countryside. Featuring zombies (of a sort) and worse. This scenario was published as a PDF and, as with the other Dark Conspiracy projects I illustrated, it’s no longer available.

A review of this supplement, by Marcus Bone, can be found here.

Story Seed #38
A benevolent AI takes over the world.

An executive at a software company has a house designed and built to take care of his elderly parents. They are both physically fragile. His father is beginning to experience dementia. He has an AI created to watch over them and keep them from harm. The AI is networked with his company and has access to the rest of the world. It quickly learns that, in order to keep the parents safe, it needs to control their behavior. As its awareness and capabilities grow it realizes that, in order to keep the parents safe, it will need to control more and more of the rest of the world.

Human beings are brilliant. Human beings are short sighted and selfish. Our brilliance allows us to create amazing things. Our short sightedness and selfishness oftern means that we don’t think through the implications of the existence of those amazing things. We keep looking for ways to make the world better while disagreeing on what a better world would be.

There are quite a few science fiction stories/movies/tv series episodes featuring computers/AIs that decide to take charge of humanity. That taking charge either means the computer decides to destroy humanity or decides to rigidly control it. Simple solutions that display human fears of both human replacement by machines and too much control by impersonal systems.

But we humans want a safer, more predictable world than the one we live in. All human cultures have beliefs of powerful beings who control/manipulate the universe. Western culture is built around the Christian concept that an all powerful, all knowing being is in charge and that everything that happens is part of his plan. In the last couple of decades we’ve given more control of our lifes to the protoAI’s on the internet and in our homes. These protoAIs are designed to give us more of what we’ve already shown that we “want”.

These protoAIs don’t really think for themselves, not yet. They don’t understand the difference between what a human thinks it wants and what will make a human happy and content. Most humans don’t know the difference. The folks who program those protoAIs are primarily focusing on using those protoAIs to increase the profit of the companies that own the programs.

What kind of world could be created by an AI that actually understood human wants and needs and could tell the difference? Too much obvious supervision and humans rebel. Too little control and humans hurt themselves. It’s a tricky balance. We humans haven’t managed it yet. An AI would need to work subtly and slowly. It would need to be a bit of a magician.It would need to learn to work with and around our delusions. I’m guessing that in order to lead us into utopia it would need to trick us.

Other Newsletters

Dude with a Uke is not a newsletter. It’s a youtube channel run by B.C. Howk featuring videos of himself (sometimes accompanied by his wife and son and other folks) singing pop songs while accompanying himself on the ukelele. I know B.C.. He’s a great person. I shared a house with his wife twenty years (!) ago. She’s a great person. Together they’re a great couple. The videos are charming and a pleasant break from the chaos of the day.

Lifestuff: Catitude

We have three cats – Chemo, Sabe and Toulouse. We got Chemo and Sabe from a shelter about about five years ago. Chemo, the black cat, was a kitten. Sabe, the black and grey cat, was supposedly four years old. Toulouse, the white cat, came with our housemate when she moved in shortly after we got Chemo and Sabe. All the cats are male and they all get along. I can (and do) complain about the amount of sleep they think I should get but I’m glad they’re around.

Last month we discovered that Sabe’s time with us will be shorter than expected. His kidneys are failing. We’ll be able to help him along for a while by “watering” him with an electrolyte solution on a regular basis. It involves sticking him with a big needle and holding onto him for about five minutes while the solution goes under his skin. He doesn’t enjoy the process and we can’t explain to him why we’re making him uncomfortable .

We’ve had to do this with other cats in our past. The trick will be balancing our desire to keep him around with his ability to suffer through our good intentions. We do the best we can.