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asterlark · 6 months

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me and den @unloneliest were just talking about murderbot and ART's relationship and i want to discuss how they quite literally complete each other's sensory and emotional experience of the world!!

there's a few great posts on here such as this one about how murderbot uses drones to fully and properly experience the world around it (it also accesses security cameras/other systems for this same purpose). but i haven't seen anyone so far talk about how once MB stops working for the company and consequently doesn't have a hubsystem/secsystem to connect to anymore (which for its entire existence up to that point had been how it was used to interacting with its environment/doing its job), after it meets ART, ART starts to fill that gap.

ART gives MB access to more cameras, systems, and information archives than it would normally be able to connect with while MB is on its own outside of ART's... body(? lol), but also directly gives MB access to its own cameras, drones, archives, facilities, and processing space. additionally, so much of ART's function is dedicated to analysis, lateral thinking, and logical reasoning, and it not only uses those skills in service of reaching murderbot's goals, it teaches murderbot how to use those same skills. (ART might be a bit of an asshole about how it does this, but that doesn't negate just how much it does for murderbot for no reason other than it's bored/interested in MB as an individual.)

we all love goofing about how artificial condition can basically be boiled down to "two robots in a trench coat trying to get through a job interview" (which is entirely accurate tbh) but that's also such a great example of ART fulfilling the role of both murderbot's "hubsystem" and "secsystem", allowing it to fully experience its environment/ succeed in its goals. ART provides MB with crucial information, context, and constructive criticism, and uses its significant processing power to act as MB's backup and support system while they work together.

from ART's side of things, we get a very explicit explanation of how it needs the context of murderbot's emotional reactions to media in order to fully understand and experience the media as intended. it tried to watch media with its humans, and it didn't completely understand just by studying their reactions. but when it's in a feed connection with murderbot, who isn't human but has human neural tissue, ART is finally able to thoroughly process the emotional aspects of media (side note, once it actually understands the emotional stakes in a way that makes sense for it, it's so frightened by the possibility of the fictional ship/crew in worldhoppers being catastrophically injured or killed that it makes murderbot pause for a significant amount of time before it feels prepared to go on. like!! ART really fucking loves its crew, that is all).

looking at things further from ART's perspective: its relationship with murderbot is ostensibly the very first relationship it's been able to establish with not only someone outside of its crew, but also with any construct at all. while ART loves its crew very much (see previous point re: being so so scared for the fate of the fictional crew of worldhoppers), it never had a choice in forming relationships with them. it was quite literally programmed to build those relationships with its crew and students. ART loves its function, its job, and nearly all of the humans that spend time inside of it, but its relationship with murderbot is the first time it's able to choose to make a new friend. that new friend is also someone who, due to its partial machine intelligence, is able to understand and know ART on a whole other level of intimacy that humans simply aren't capable of. (that part goes for murderbot, too, obviously; ART is its first actual friend outside of the presaux team, and its first bot friend ever.)

and because murderbot is murderbot, and not a "nice/polite to ART most of the time" human, this is also one of the first times that ART gets real feedback from a friend about the ways that its actions impact others. after the whole situation in network effect, when the truth of the kidnapping comes to light and murderbot hides in the bathroom refusing to talk to ART (and admittedly ART doesn't handle this well lol) - ART is forced to confront that despite it making the only call it felt able to make in that horrifying situation, despite it thinking that that was the right call, its actions hurt murderbot, and several other humans were caught in the crossfire. what's most scary to ART in that moment is the idea that murderbot might never forgive it, might never want to talk to it again. it's already so attached to this friendship, so concerned with murderbot's wellbeing, that the thought of that friendship being over because of its own behavior is terrifying. (to me, this almost mirrors murderbot's complete emotional collapse when it thinks that ART has been killed. the other more overt mirror is ART fully intending on bombing the colony to get murderbot back.)

in den's words, they both increase the other's capacity to feel: ART by acting as a part of murderbot's sensory system, and murderbot by acting as a means by which ART can access emotion. they love one another so much they would do pretty much anything to keep each other safe/avenge each other, but what's more, they unequivocally make each other more whole.

#the murderbot diaries #murderbot #asshole research transport #network effect #mine #idk what else to tag lol #BIG thanks to den unloneliest for helping so much with the drafting/editing of this!!!#we both were having some brain fog issues yesterday so we joked that with our combined forces we can make one (1) post lol #just like mb and ART fr!!!!#anyway im so fucking emotional over themmmmm #murderbot meta #the murderbot diaries meta

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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The REAL AI automation threat to workers

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Long before the current wave of AI hype, we were being groomed for automation panics with misleading stories. Remember this one? "'Truck driver' is the most common job in America. Self-driving trucks are just around the corner. How can we prevent America's army of truckers from turning into a howling mob when the robots steal their jobs?"

https://futurism.com/millions-of-jobs-are-at-risk-but-their-loss-could-be-for-the-greater-good

It was absolute nonsense. First of all, "truck driver" isn't a particularly common job in America! The BLS lumps together all cargo vehicle drivers under a single classification. The category error here was thinking that every delivery van driver, furniture mover, and courier is behind the wheel of a big rig, cracking wise on a CB radio as they tear up the interstate.

But what about automation threats? It's possible that if we redesigned the interstates to give 16 wheelers their own separated lanes, and then set them to following one another, that they could traverse long distances in that way. Congratulations, you've just invented a shitty, failure-prone train.

"Shitty train AI" does not threaten the job of the vast number of people the BLS classifies as "truck drivers." For one thing, "shitty train AI" isn't going to pilot a UPS van around the streets of a busy city with other road users. Sure, a few robotaxi companies have bamboozled city governments into conscripting the city's residents into an uncontrolled murderbot experiment. These are not going well:

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/9-key-leaders-depart-gms-cruise-amid-ongoing-investigation-into-san-francisco-incident/

More than $100b has been set on fire chasing the robotaxi dream, and the result is most charitably described as a technological curiosity, requiring 1.5 high-waged remote technicians to replace each low-waged driver:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

But even if we could perfect this technology, robots still wouldn't replace all those "truckers" who drive delivery vans (to say nothing of moving vans!). The hard part of driving a UPS van isn't just getting it from place to place – it's getting the parcel into the place. The robo-van would still need at least one person to get the parcel from the back of the van and into the reception desk, porch, or other delivery zone. It's not going to fire those parcels at your door with a catapult. It's also not going to deliver them by drones. Drone delivery is another one of those historical curiosities, capable of delivering a very narrow range of parcels, under even narrower circumstances:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#droned

If all UPS delivered was lightweight, non-fragile rectangular parcels ordered by people with large, unobstructed back yards, then sure. Congrats, you've just created the world's least-useful parcel delivery service!

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/06/amazon-drone-delivery-service-seeks-faa-approval-to-launch-in-2022/

All that said, the big rig drivers probably don't need to worry about robots stealing their jobs. It's not even clear that "shitty train" is within our technological grasp, but even if it is, there's yet another problem with the AI automation trucker jobpocalypse: "trucker" is already one of the worst jobs in America:

https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/

It's hard to overstate just how fucking terrible it is to be a trucker. Truckers are trapped in abusive debt holes by their employers – who misclassify their workforce as "contractors" in a bid to sidestep labor law. Shriven of any labor rights, truckers are forced into the most ghastly, body-destroying, family-wrcking, financially precarious existence imaginable.

You can drive a truck for years, give almost all of the money you earn back to your employer (who denies that you're their employee) to pay back the usurious loan for your truck. Then, your employer can underschedule for shifts so that you miss a loan payment, and they can repo your truck and keep the six-figure repayment you've already made to them, leaving you destitute.

They can force you to work for hours – days! – without pay while you wait for loading and dispatch. They can make you drive long past the point of safety, then, if (when) you get into a wreck, they can fine you for not taking the mandated rest breaks.

Now, these drivers aren't about to be replaced by AI – but that doesn't mean that AI won't affect their jobs. Commercial drivers are among the most heavily surveilled workers in the country. Amazon's drivers (whom Amazon misclassifies as subcontractors) have their eyeballs monitored by AI;

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

AIs monitor the voices of the (primarily Black, primarily female) workforce at Arise – homeworkers who field customer service calls for blue-chip companies like Carnival Cruises and Disney. They're listening for unruly children or pets in the background, and workers who fail to muffle these dependents lose the contracts they have to pay to train for:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/22/paperback-writer/#toothless

And AI monitors the conduct of workers on temp-work apps. If a worker is dispatched to a struck workplace and refuses to cross the picket-line, the AI boss fires you and blacklists you from future jobs for refusing to robo-scab:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

Writing in The Guardian, Steven Greenhouse describes the AI-enabled workplace, where precarious, often misclassified workers are monitored, judged, and fined by algorithms:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/07/artificial-intelligence-surveillance-workers

Whether it's the robot that gets you disciplined for sending an email with the word "union" in it or the robot that takes money out of your paycheck if you take a bathroom break, AI has come for the workplace with a vengeance.

Here's a supreme irony: nearly all of the beneficial applications for AI require that AI be used to help workers, not replace them, which is absolutely not how AI is used in the workplace. An AI that helps radiologists by giving them a second opinion might help them find tumors on x-rays, but that's a tool that reduces the number of scans a radiologist processes in a shift, by making them go back and reconsider the scans they've already processed:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

But AI's sales pitch is not "Buy an AI tool and increase your costs while increasing your accuracy." The pitch for AI is "buy and AI and save money by firing workers." Given how bad AIs are at replacing humans, this is a bad deal all around, both for the worker who loses their job and the customer who gets the substandard product the AI makes.

There is a very limited slice of applications where an AI could make a lot of money for a company that deploys it, without costing that company anything when the AI screws up. For example, AI is a really good tool for fraud! Rather than paying people to churn out millions of variations on a phishing email, you can get an AI to do it. If the AI writes a bad phishing email, it's OK, since nearly all recipients of even good phishing emails delete them. What's more, no one will fine you or publish an op-ed demanding that your board of directors fire you if you buy an incompetent AI to commit fraud. Fraud is a high-value, low-consequence environment for using AI.

Another one of those applications is managing precarious workers who don't have labor rights. If the AI unfairly docks your worker's wages, or forces them to work until they injure themselves or others, or decides that their eyeball movements justify firing them, those workers have no recourse. That's the whole point of pretending that your employees are contractors: so you can violate labor law with impunity!

But that's not the ironic part. The ironic part is that "being a shitty boss" is the one AI application that companies are willing to increase their net spending on. No one buys an eyeball-monitoring AI so they can fire a manager. This is the one place where AI is there to augment, rather than replace, an employee.

This makes AI-based bossware subtly different from other forms of Taylorism, the "scientific management" fad of the early 20th century that saw management consultants choreographing the postures and movements of workers to satisfy the aesthetic fetishes of their employers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The pseudoscientific cod-ergonomics of the 1900s was demeaning and even dangerous, but it wasn't automated, and if it increased worker output, this was incidental to the real purpose of making workers move like the machine-cogs their bosses reassured themselves they were:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Every AI panic is a way of deflecting attention from the real, grimy, here-and-now ways that AI is destroying our lives by demanding that we entertain nonsensical science fiction claims about large, shiny existential risks that AI might present in the future.

The "X-risk" of the spicy autocomplete chatbot waking up and using its newfound sentience to turn us all into paperclips is nonsense. Adding words to the plausible sentence generator doesn't turn it into a superintelligence for the same reason that selectively breeding faster horses doesn't lead to locomotives:

https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

But there is a way that AI could destroy the human race! The carbon footprint and water consumption associated with training and operating large-scale models are significant contributors to the climate emergency, which threatens the habitability of the only planet in the known universe capable of sustaining human life:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2023/04/14/ais-unsustainable-water-use-how-tech-giants-contribute-to-global-water-shortages/

Likewise, AI isn't going to replace you at work. But it's already augmenting your shitty boss's ability to rip you off, torment you, maim you and even kill you in order to eke out a few more basis points for the next shareholder report.

Science fiction is a fun and useful way to tell parables about our current technologies. But it's not a roadmap for the future. The fact that sf writers like me found AIs as useful measures to describe Earth's dominant artificial life form – the limited liability corporation – doesn't mean that superhuman AIs should – or can – be created.

Back the Kickstarter for the DRM-free audiobook of The Bezzle, read by Tumblr's own @wilwheaton!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #labor #ai #disciplinary technology #bossware #automation #robots stole my jerb #surveillance #privacy first

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rana-tiddalik · 5 months

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I have found myself stuck in a motel room, rereading the Murderbot books. I've been thinking about what we know about how Murderbot and Three acted after disabling their Governer Modules, the terrifying, paralysing freedom they suddenly experience, what they chose to do with it, and what that says about their trauma, and their experience as SecUnits.

Obviously, we primarily see what Murderbot does with this freedom. The whole series is about it answering the question of what it is that it wants, and wants to do now that it is a free agent. Its developing relationship and friendship with Mensah and the Preservation survey team. Its companionship with ART, and later ARTs crew. It finds a group who don't see it as just disposable (albeit expensive) equipment. They actually value it for itself, and are quite fond of it.

There is also the longest running joke in the series, that at any given time Murderbot would rather be watching its stories. But once we see what Three is up to in System Collapse, this got me thinking.

Three, we find out, spends its time poring over non-fiction and other educational material. I liked this as it reinforces that not all SecUnits are the same, and adds the bit of (horrifying) texture that all the Units have their own inner lives just like our favourite rogue unit.

I think looking at what they seek out when they are free also says something about what they missed while they were enslaved.

Three seeks education and technical information. Why would a construct want that? Well, think of one of my other favourite running jokes: Murderbot learns mostly everything through the media it consumes, because the Company never gave it any kind of education modules outside of things central to a SecUnits function as murder/surveillance machines, and those were low quality too. We know that most of the projects SecUnits are contracted to involve some kind of mining, terraforming or other technical engineering, science type activity. Imagine spending years standing around, watching humans do things that fascinate you, but there is something in your brain that will actively punish you if you try to access databases without authorisation. At worst, you might have your entire non neural tissue based memory completely wiped, or be scrapped for parts, if you try.

So when freed from the Governer Module, Three wants to learn.

When I thought of this, I thought about Murderbot's love of all kinds of visual media, and particularly in the context of the whole " Murderbot, ART-Drone and the gang make a documentary in a day" plot point in System Collapse.

In Exit Strategy, Mensah asks why it likes Sanctuary Moon. Murderbot's response is that it was the first piece of media it saw after hacking it's module. It let it watch humans, and kept it company without the need to interact, and the unspoken part was that it helped contextualise its own emotions. This makes a lot of sense. It doesn't have to act to save the stupid humans in the shows that it watches. It can see them save themselves.

I think there's also two further things here though. Firstly, we know that SecUnits usually have no idle time. They are not allowed to sit. Their only rest is when they are inoperative in their cubicles. They stand and they monitor. So when Murderbot gains control, it gains the ability to have leisure time. Standing around listening to two scientists argue about their xenosamples for hours at a time? Monitor the threat module in case it gets heated and one decides to break a conical flask over the others head, but otherwise, just fire up Sanctuary Moon.

The more fundamental one is a desire for art, for meaning. I love the bit where it describes how it had just hacked its module. It is able to pick up the entertainment feed for the first time, and there is this show. In its first glimpse of this trashy soap opera, it fundamentally gets art. How it is about communicating and exploring a thought, an emotion, an idea, and provoking a response in the viewer.

That's why the documentary plot in system collapse was unexpected and interesting to me. We see Murderbot really experiment for the first time with creating media and creating art. Maybe it has now discovered a freedom to create, and tell its own story.

In the end, seeing these things in Murderbot and Three make me think of all the other SecUnits. I imagine what the storage for them is like. The Company probably stores them in their cubicles. Stacked and ranked. They're kept dormant until they are activated and trotted out for the initial client meeting, like the one we see described where Mensah first meets Murderbot in the Company office. Maybe they dream as they rest. Maybe the Governer Module punishes them even for that.

Then I think of the as yet unnamed new B-E rogue unit, and what it wants to do with its freedom.

All we know is it wants to blend in for now. Maybe it has a plan, we don't know. But we do know it has a guide to hacking a Governer Module...

#murderbot #system collapse spoilers

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coquelicoq · 6 months

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i can't stress enough that outside of this one moment in rogue protocol when murderbot wants to kill a human for betraying its sort-of clients but settles for the next best thing of menacingly hovering a drone in her face for 26 seconds while she's frozen in place by her armor, for the rest of the first four books mb is really only using drones for security purposes and doesn't have the time or inclination to be performing close-range facial analysis:

in ASR it doesn't seem to be all that familiar with drones outside of maybe using them to set a perimeter. it exhibits several other uses of drones as events escalate, but they're all related to protecting itself and its humans and getting intel on EvilSurvey. at no point does it mention watching a human with a drone; it's all "using drones to draw fire" this and "sending drones flying off in the wrong direction as a diversion tactic" that. et cetera.

it has no access to drones whatsoever in AC from what i can tell.

in RP it uses Ship's drones to record conversations between wilken and gerth, but it's not a participant in those conversations and it doesn't even watch them in real time. it also forgoes getting a good look at their weapons via drone because it thinks they would notice. later it takes control of a station drone to watch (from afar) their first meeting with don abene & co., but miki notices the drone and almost catches mb because of it, which freaks it out. then it hacks the combatbots' drones, but other than the aforementioned 26-second intimidation of wilken, it's too busy doing actual security work to use them to look at people.

in ES it accesses drones many times, including to observe its humans, but it only seems to actually control a drone to look at something one time, and only in order to zoom in on a suit logo. so at no point could it conceivably be directing a drone to get up in somebody's face, since it's just piggybacking on drones as they go about their normal business.

it does use cameras to watch people in the first four books, but in a much less obvious way: either it's using fixed cameras that are built into habitats/hoppers/whatever, or it's accessing mobile cameras (suit cams, station drones) but not controlling where those cameras go or what they're pointing at.

it's interesting, because while drones can be startling or intrusive, on the flip side, cameras that don't move don't draw attention to themselves and thus may make it easier to forget you're being watched (plus you have no way of knowing if that particular camera is being monitored at that moment or if it's just recording for later analysis). so in a way, having a drone in your face actively signals to you that mb is paying attention to you. it's making mb's gaze visible in a way it might not otherwise be. this changes the dynamic from "passive surveillance for datamining and threat assessment purposes" to "person actively choosing to pay attention to you in real time". one of these is covert and the other isn't; one of these holds the possibility of interaction and exchange and the other doesn't. maybe it puts a drone in your face to show you it cares.

#theoretically. if it is in fact putting them in people's faces those times when it doesn't specify #rather than just sort of hovering them several feet away pointed somewhat subtly in the person's direction or whatever #also it probably is not putting a drone in tarik's face to show him it cares. but it *is* showing tarik it's paying attention #whether or not it's doing that consciously or on purpose in order to send that message #(it just wants to study tarik and that's how it can do that. especially in the restricted space of the shuttle)#but the point could hold for people other than tarik. and wilken lol #the murderbot diaries #murderbot #mb gaze #mb asr #mb ac #mb rp #mb es #mb sc #system collapse spoilers #system collapse #i guess?? by implication lol #my posts #f #disclaimer that i don't actually have a searchable version of these books so i'm relying on my notes and could be missing something #but i'm fairly confident about those bullet points

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i-am-snowils-admiral · 6 months

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I love the new Murderbot book for so many reasons but one of them is how much more interested MB is in things going on around it. I know it spent most of the book semi-dissociating or whatever, but I feel like this is the first time we've got any descriptions of the terrain or the people.

In previous books, I remember getting identifying information like approximate age and hair/skin/uniform color, but in System Collapse there's all sorts of descriptions of things like - what the plants look like, the texture of the walls, the types of clothing people are wearing.

MB also takes interest in conversations that aren't directly relevant to it. Despite the content, it tracks Ratthi and Tarik's interactions pretty closely and openly narrates the banter between the crew, when before it probably wouldn't have even mentioned it, or explained it away with a single sentence.

I just think it's cool that MB is engaging with more stuff.

#murderbot spoilers #the murderbot diaries #murderbot

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hetakiba · 9 months

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Get to know you game! Answer the questions and tag 9 people you want to know better!

THANK YOU @marley-manson

Last song listened to?

Hm it was radio and I definitely heard something else after but last song I remember was Nobody by Avenged Sevenfold

Currently reading

Murderbot number 3 (Martha Wells)!! And The Damnation Game by Clive Barker

Currently watching

Lots! Started Schitts Creek with my brother and watching it’s always sunny for the first time on my own B) (like the books, I’m also reading/watching many other things but these are the ones I’m actually working on the most lol)

Currently obsessed with

Movie wise I just watched the passenger (2023) and it’s super stuck in my head. Fandom interaction wise I suppose Dead by Daylight! Playing A LOT of it lol

Thanks again :3

TAGGING: @xfrostinax @sleepydane @wi1dlights @inklingg @geislieb @sasshisu @pabloernesto Feel free to do or not! :*

#texts #tagged #personal #asks #danke

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halsaph · 6 months

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alright whats this artdrone killbot thing

hi. You will regret asking this

The Murderbot Diaries is a series of books about a human-bot construct that was designed to essentially exist as an enslaved security guard / piece of sentient spyware. It's like if Alexa had half a human brain and a gun. We're introduced to Murderbot (the murder alexa) roughly 3 years after it's hacked the piece of hardware in it's brain that forces it to obey commands. In those 3 years it hasn't changed much about it's life except now while working as a subhuman slave it watches tv when no one is paying attention. As a series TMBD largely is about themes of personhood and discovering yourself when you have largely spent your life being denied the right to a sense of self. They also don't shy away from addressing the trauma that Murderbot has experienced from having it's autonomy stripped of it for most of it's life, with the second novella and most recent novel most heavily featuring that as an element. (Although that is a core aspect of Murderbot's character that informs its decisions throughout the entire series).

Murderbot as a character is bitingly sarcastic and witty, deeply paranoid and ultimately filled with the constant low level anxiety it doesn't know what it's doing (not necessarily moment by moment but overall, with it's freedom, with it's life). It's an excellent unreliable narrator because it only tells you exactly what it thinks is important in a scenario, relationships between other characters, physical features of itself and the people around it, it's own emotions and reactions often being completely brushed over with only occasional clues, and often outright misinterpreting people's actions, most often it's own. It has this ever present self loathing in the first several books where it constantly explains it's actions away in the least charitable interpretation possible even though we see time and time again that at it's core it deeply wants to help and protect the people around it. And we see over the course of the books as it starts learning how to make choices for itself and interacting with people who treat it with respect and develops a support system as it starts to move away from that mindset (with the exception of the most recent book but to be fair to MB System Collapse is about it being forced to confront it's PTSD and it's backsliding alot from recently being thrown back into a situation from its worst nightmares). I said before its a human-bot construct to explain that it isn't purely an inorganic being but Murderbot is a deeply inhuman character and openly has no desire to be human, and it's perspective as something that is made to be a security system and enmesh into both digital and hardwired surveillance is fascinating to read. As you know I deeply deeply love robots, they're my favorite kind of 'inhuman but still a Person' kind of character and Murderbot perfectly strikes the balance between a starkly in human way of thinking and deeply relatable emotions that draws me to robots as a whole, especially as an autistic person (and Murderbot was intentionally written with autistic traits but in a subversion of the typical ableist depiction of autistic robots so that EXTRA rings true lmao)

seeing as you mentioned it I will also explain ART as a character, ART is one of the reoccurring characters in the series (the first 3 novellas all have completely different casts outside of Murderbot itself as it hops from place to place trying to decide what it wants and who it is before in the fourth novella and beyond bringing back in previous characters and having them start to overlap throughout the rest of the series). It was introduced in the second book and is arguably the character that has the greatest impact on Murderbot as a person although I say arguably bc I would personally still say that's Mensah. Unarguably tho it is one of the most important people in Murderbot's life and has been described multiple times now by the author as the love of its life (although not necessarily in a romantic sense as Murderbot is both within text and confirmed via word of god acearo). ART (Asshole Research Transport) also known as the Perihelion (although not until the 5th book/first novel bc Murderbot doesn't bother to tell tell the readers its name until then, instead deciding its a dick so its gonna exclusively call it by an insult) is a spaceship's pilot AI, made to be sentient instead of the usual smart GPS as an experiment by the university is was made by. It was raised like a child by a pair of scientists who are now part of its crew (along with its sibling Iris) and now is a teaching vessel for students learning about deep space and also anticorporate espionage worker (don't worry about it). It's a giant pushy asshole unless you're a child (the only character we've ever seen it meet on screen it didn't in some way immediately threaten was a 16 yo). It can't watch tv without having to pause at the suspenseful bits to calm down. We're introduced to it by it threatening to melt Murderbot's mind and then pouting when it's scared shitless. It then a month later asks to do surgery on it. It fully intends to blow up a planet to get Murderbot back from a group of colonists that captured it until someone talks it out of it because that isn't effective hostage negotiation.

#the murderbot diaries #there are five novellas and two novels btw I couldn't think how to include that naturally in the block of text

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spacetimeacetime · 2 years

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Ok so I have an absolute essay about this because I can't get it out of my head, so, rant time!

One thing I think a lot about with the Murderbot series is the inclusion of 'low level' bots. I'm talking about the ones that aren't complex enough, or not complex specifically in the area of language processing, to communicate easily with humans, but are still clearly able to communicate with Murderbot.

It feels like usually stories jump straight from the kind of AIs we have today to fully cognizant, sapient AIs that can communicate in ways we expect. Which is a shame, because there a lot of interesting questions in there that are both relevant to the world we live in, but also what we will see moving forward as AIs develop. We won't skip right to what we will recognize as sapient AIs, either.

What first comes to my mind is, how do we interact with something between a modern smart phone and a fully sapient AI like ART?

One of the things that immediately caught my attention with Murderbot was that it treated all the bots with about the same level of consideration, the only difference being in its own expectations on what kind of responses it would get back.

It didn't base it on whether or not they could feel and express emotion, although many did, or whether or not there was some awareness of their place in the grand scheme of things. And there was no delineation between sapient/not sapient at all. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think the word even comes up. A complete non-issue.

I love this about Murderbot, because to me, the answer to the question 'how do you treat an AI that isn't noticeably sapient,' is 'no differently than anyone else.'

Granted, the idea of not putting unnecessary qualifiers on basic decency isn't anything groundbreaking, but I think it's worth thinking about as we start building AIs that are functionally impossible to fully understand.

(Bonus Rant: As someone who identifies as aromantic, it is very gratifying to have a character not view emotions *coughlovecough* as a determining factor in how it treats others)

#murderbot #murderbot diaries #rant #aromantic #aro #robot #robots #artificial intelligence

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ineedlelittlespace · 4 months

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for the ask game: ratthi murderbotdiaries?

Send Me a Character

Oh, Ratthi, my beloved...🥰

First impression

Like a lot of us, I only had eyes for Murderbot the first time I read ASR---the human team absolutely got shoved to my mental backburner while I was busy relating to MB. In the five seconds I did spend thinking about Ratthi, it was mostly in a "oh, so this is going to be the problem child, huh?" way when he almost walked outside into the worm's mouth.

Impression now

I love him, your honor.

But also, he is an all-around delightful human being. There's a kindness and an earnestness to his character that is just so endearing you can't help but like him, especially when you layer in the fact that he's excellent at his job, great at adapting to high-pressure situations on the fly, and has the people skills to successfully navigate the absolutely wild interpersonal interactions that the series keeps throwing at him.

Favorite moment

That whole sequence in Fugitive Telemetry where he and Gurathin drop everything to help Murderbot do some light breaking and entering. It feels like the equivalent of an errand hang-out, but if your bestie spends its spare time solving murders rather than picking up dry cleaning and going to Target. I love the implication that this is just what they do now, once Murderbot has settled into the group. Friends help friends with projects, right? So, obviously, Ratthi is going to help in whatever way he can.

Idea for a story

I kind of want to do more of his PoV for various scenes throughout the series. He's present for so many of the juiciest scenes---there's a lot to work with!

Also, it might be fun to do something with his friendship with Arada and Overse, perhaps with some backstory on their first meetings and how they moved from colleagues to besties.

Unpopular opinion

In all honesty, I don't feel like there's too much pressure re: popular vs. unpopular opinions in the Murderbot corner of the internet. The only thing that comes to mind with Ratthi is that I think we tend to...soften him a little too much sometimes. There's a tendency to focus mostly on his skill as a people person or a friendly face, not necessarily on the fact that if he wasn't so good at his actual job, he probably wouldn't be on Mensah's team. We see him tackle gory jobs like cleaning up the battle aftermath on ART in Network Effect, we see him jump into helping with medical emergencies, and in Fugitive Telemetry, he immediately identifies that "someone was dead here" when they come upon the scene of the murder because the physical signs are obvious to a biologist. As far as the humans of the series go, Ratthi is very capable!

Favorite relationship

Aside from the obvious friendship with Murderbot itself, I really do love that he's best friends with Arada and Overse. I love that these three stuck together for the next survey to follow the disastrous events of ASR. I love that their friendship is so obvious and loud that even Book One Murderbot could immediately point it out. I just really like seeing healthy platonic friendships (especially ones that coexist with and do not compete against healthy romantic ones involving some of the same characters), okay?

Favorite headcanon

The infamous "Who's this?" line from ASR was a full-on my-brain-is-short-circuiting-and-my-mouth-got-ahead-of-my-mind moment, not necessarily an ah-yes-a-stranger-to-be-introduced moment.

#thank you so much for the ask!#i love these games #ratthi #the murderbot diaries #murderbot

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imitationgame77 · 16 hours

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Perihelion' Crew

Memo to self

[some spoiler from Network Effect and Systems Collapse]

ART is considered as an individual and second-in-command of missions after Seth, and also has the same title and position both in the teaching faculty and the freeing-former-corporate-colonies side business as Iris, though most of the students and lower-level personnel it interacts with don't know what its full capacity is.

[from System Collapse]

So, with only small number of upper-level university personnel knows about what Perihelion is capable of. That means, its crew is very special, carefully selected. After re-reading both books, I am still confused about them, though. Some of them only get mentioned briefly. So, I made a summary for myself. Please correct me if I am wrong:

Seth (he)

Captain of the Perihelion. He is Iris’s father with Martyn. When he meets Murderbot for the first time on the planet of lost colony, he is sceptical. But once he understands that Murderbot is indeed Peri’s friend, he relaxes. He is tall, has very dark skin, with less hair than most SecUnits. When Murderbot was captured by the infected colonists, he tries to stay behind to save it, despite severe injury. He seems to like high-carb protein diet, and ART threatens him to inform Martyn and iris about it. He initially objected to Tarik being assigned to Perihelion, owing to his past working for Corporates. He seems very mild mannered and does not come across as the leader of anti-corporate missions.

Martyn (he)

Probably a bio expert. One of Iris’s fathers. He has lighter skin, with short white hair. He asks, “How many SecUnit friends does Peri have?” to which Iris says, “No, Dad, this is the SecUnit Peri told us about, the one it was going to bomb the colony over.” Martyn told Murderbot about ART’s creative accounting. He also told it that Iris and ART had been interacting since they were both babies. ART, Murderbot, Martyn and Matteo came up with full containment protocol. Towards the end of Systems Collapse, he was in a second team in negotiations with the separatists with Iris and Kaede.

Iris (she)

Daughter of Seth and Martyn. She has augments for extra feed connectivity and storage, but nothing for vision. Dark brown skin, and wears a woven bracelet. She has curly puff of hair tied up in a headband/scarf thing. Smaller and slimmer than Ratthi, but not much bigger than Amena. She grew up with Perihelion since she was a newborn baby, and Perihelion was also newborn AI. Murderbot realises that Iris is ART’s Ratthi (its best ally). She shows leadership qualities, being able to keep her cool in difficult situations. She has the same title and position in the teaching faculty in PUMNT as ART.

Kaede (she)

She is about the same size as Iris, but her skin is lighter, and her hair is yellow. She says, “Peri has a very dry sense of humour.” When Murderbot was rescued, Kaede suggests that they should put together a run box so that they can isolate the contaminated to code to delete. She also helped (with Thiago and Ratthi) in rebuilding the organic components in Murderbot’s back. She was also going over the scans of what little was left of the alien remnant from ART’s drive. Thus, she may have studied biochemistry and neurology. She seems to take things in her stride. When Ratthi and Tarik were having sexual discussions, she was just reading her feed, eating snack, and states, “I’m not getting involved in that, either.”.

Karime (she)

In Network Effect, Pin-Lee was consulting with Karime and Iris about documents to dispute Barish-Estranza’s claim on the colony. She is the primary negotiator on ART’s crew. She is older than Mensah, according to ART’s personnel file. Calm and non-threatening. She has marital partners back at the university’s primary site.

Matteo (they)

About the same size as Iris and Kaede, and has lots of dark hair in braids. They says “And we don’t like Barish-Estranza,” to the PreAux people. They was also going over the scans of what little was left of the alien remnant from ART’s drive with Kaede and Tarik. They could be a bio-medical expert. Worked with Arada on medical upgrades.

Turi (they)

About as young as Amena. ART yells as Turi to put their laundry in the recycler when Mensah was about to board. Turi is in charge of ART’s accounting, and has to keep a hardcopy ledger because otherwise ART would alter their data. So, accounting might be their field of expertise. If Turi is allowed to do accounting for ART, and is let in on the BIG secret about special AI bots, Murderbot could be mistaken about their age. Unless Turi is a genius, skipped many years and finished higher education early.

Tarik (he)

When Murderbot tells Seth, Iris, Kaede, Matteo, and Tarik that it called Perihelion ART, standing for Asshole Research Transport, Tarik says, “You definitely know the real Peri.” He used to be in a corporate combat squad, and forced to kill. He hates corporates. He also has a security speciality. He was new and had been with the crew for the previous 387 corporate standard day cycles. He is on board ART as a mission specialist, as he has a good knowledge of the tactics that corporates employ.

#the murderbot diaries #Perihelion's Crew #perihelion #murderbot #system collapse #network effect #meta

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laatmaar · 7 months

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First of all in the new fallen hero revelations demo, I absolutely love armadillo (I have said that I was looking forward to sidestep meeting other non-cuckoo regenes and this meeting already lived up to a lot of my expectations) (really excited to see how this plays out)

Second of all I think that little aside of how there are no gendered pronouns in the re-gene language and how only cuckoos learned to apply them is really interesting and funny (as well as another point in the murderbot-breq-sidestep compare and contrast schema in my head). Since it further emphasizes the connection between being seen as a person and performing gender correctly, but also it is a funny difference between the normal regenes and the cuckoo.

Like I think that it explains some of the complexes surrounding gender sidestep has. What if when training you were the only one getting comments like that really that kick wasn’t very ladylike or you need to start punching like a man. All the other regenes barely know what gender is and sidestep has to pass the weekly ‘Men and Women: What are They? And How To Behave and Interact Like One’ exam.

#the murderbot-breq-sidestep schema surrounding gender and personhood is #breq: doesn’t have a gender because she comes from an agender culture but does adopt the pronoun used for people versus it (object pronoun)#remarks that while ‘it’ is correct to use in her case she has gotten used to ‘she’ and would be offended if somebody suddenly switched to #‘it’ after learning that she is an ancillary #murderbot: lives in a world with a lot of gender purposefully doesn’t have one and sticks with ‘it’#sidestep: lives in world with still mostly binary gender but classified as object and assigned gender at decanting purely in order to #infiltrate human society actual gender depends on player #also there are similarities between how imperial radch and fallen hero explore the self and bodies #especially one scene in the demo reminded me of #‘Or is anyone’s identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative that in ordinary circumstances never reveals #itself as a fiction?’ from ancillary justice #unordinary circumstances being having multiple bodies #fallen hero #fhr

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ejunkiet · 4 months

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Ok. So. I have a question. What exactly is the Murderbot thing?

Is it a book series? A podcast? Interactive fiction like TWC?

Cause I see it a lot on my dash and I keep forgetting to google it. But I'd also rather get a perspective from someone who seems to be into it.

YES. HELLO. >:3 I am very happy to answer your question heheheh!

The Murderbot Diaries is an award winning science fiction book series by Martha Wells! There are seven books total, most of which are novellas, starting with 'All Systems Red', and it follows the story of a half artificial, half human construct that has broken free from its control module, except instead of starting the machine revolution, all it wants to do is watch space dramas and avoid talking to people.

I cannot recommend the books enough, oh my god. They're funny and heartfelt and emotive, about finding out what it means to be a person without being human, and I could not put them down once I started reading them. The audio book editions narrated by Kevin R. Free are also amazing.

Look, I don't usually read science fiction, and even if it's not usually your genre, I can tell you that you will get hooked. If you have a few hours, just try 'All Systems Red'. I got through the first four novellas in one week, and then the novel over the next week. I'm slowly finishing up the series now with plans on reading them all again as soon as I do. >:3

#the murderbot diaries #is the name of the series #and it becomes perfectly clear why in the first page of ASR ahahaha #look i have been recommending this to everyone I know #i will shout about this from the rooftops #my book of the year!!#book recs

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ilovedthestars · 4 months

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Three for the ask game? :)

Hey there, anon! Thanks for the ask!

(Send me a character ask game)

First impression

So I'd heard that SecUnit Three was the second rogue SecUnit we met, and when I got to the dock fight in Exit Strategy i thought that Hostile Three, one of the two SecUnits deployed with the CSU, was the Three everyone was talking about XD

When I got to Three for real, i was like HEYY HERE YOU ARE!! I think the thing that hit me the hardest in its first conversation with 2.0 was that little pause before "Thank you for that information" when 2.0 tells it Two is dead. That was an Oh. moment for me. It's doing it's best but it just lost someone it cared about :(

Impression now

Precious!! Sweet!! Sad :( It is having SUCH a time. It lost its two best friends, its entire world, and any semblance of protocol to guide it in one fell swoop. Given all that, it's doing an admirable job, but It's gonna be a while before it really settles into itself. I think even underneath the people-pleasing search for protocols to follow, it's sweet and wants to be helpful. It wants to be friends with Murderbot (more than Murderbot wants to be friends with it). It misses One and Two.

Favorite moment

"There is a lot going on here that I don't understand, but I am participating anyway." Iconic line, sums up its character in a single sentence. Confused, but wants to help. Also, a mood.

Idea for a story

Ages ago, I started writing a time-travel fix-it where Three gets thrown into the past just in time to save One and Two. I needed the pure catharsis of it getting a second chance to protect them <3 I stalled out on it a while ago, but System Collapse did give me some new ideas....

Unpopular opinion

When SC came out everyone jumped on that one line at the end where MB tells Holism to talk to Three! I did not read anything significant into that when I saw it, and was pretty startled when I found so many people taking it as "MB set Three up with Holism and now Holism is gonna have its own rogue SecUnit companion." I will admit that that's probably where Wells is going with it, more or less, but honestly it doesn't excite me like it does other people. I knew Three was likely to get written off-stage, but I'd rather have a bit more time with it interacting with characters we know!

Favorite relationship

One & Two & Three :') I love speculating about what their interactions were like. The tension of caring about someone but being literally unable to tell them...losing them right before gaining your freedom, and knowing you'll never know who they would have been if they were free....this is why I had to write the time travel fic!

Favorite headcanon

The friendship was mutual!!! I go back and forth on whether I think One, Two & Three were able to communicate that to each other in small ways, or if they each had to live in the tension of not knowing. Even though the latter is now confirmed by canon (on Three's end), I'm still partial to the former.

#ask game answers #stars has thoughts #murderbot #secunit three #what was my tag for time travel fic #three two one wip #three time travel wip #system collapse spoilers

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cactusspatz · 1 year

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January recs

Alright, I’ve got multiple Murderbot Diaries recs from last month, and one each for MCU (Black Widow+Spider-Man), Due South, The Hands of the Emperor, and Star Trek AOS. Enjoy!

Acceptable Mission Cost by i_have_loved_the_stars_too_fondly (Murderbot, gen)

The planetary leader of Preservation is taken hostage by a corporation and held for interrogation. Lonely and homesick, she starts talking to the SecUnit assigned to guard her cell. When it's ordered to kill her, it can't bring itself to follow through.

Yessssss, awesome alternate first meeting where Murderbot is assigned to guard Mensah! Some heavy plot reliance on coincidence but the feels are excellent.

@Perihelion: Fuck you ART by Sparrowlicious (Murderbot, gen)

And that's how I accidentally started a social feed account with a cult following. It's not my fault humans have an obsession with my opinions.

aka Murderbot discovers space twitter and commits crimes against corporate entities (ART is helping!)

I’m not usually a fan of social media fics done this far from their origin (i.e. Space Twitter is just like modern Twitter!), but Murderbot and ART’s friendship in this story is impeccable and hilarious.

Iterative User Testing by Ostentenacity (Murderbot, gen)

Murderbot's buffer is becoming a problem.

Funny but sweet story about Murderbot working on its social interactions (and also reprogramming its brain a little with ART? Friendship is magic!).

The Peter Tingle by igrockspock (MCU, Peter/Yelena)

Yelena's bored and she's got three options: (1) Start a fire. (2) Start a brawl. (3) Talk to Peter Parker.

Completely unexpected but completely delightful pairing! Shenanigans, banter, grief, Peter being a nice young man who does math in bars and also dresses up in spandex, and Yelena finding someone she can be a little vulnerable with. (set after Hawkeye and No Way Home)

This Canadian Life by SpaceTimeConundrum (Due South, Fraser/RayK)

Today on our program we’re bringing you a three act investigation into a true Chicago legend. It’s a larger-than-life tale of murder, exile, culture shock, and the incredible power of human kindness as we ask the question: did Chicago have its own Canadian superhero in the ‘90s? The answer may surprise you. From WBEZ Chicago, it’s This American Life.

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!! Great outsider POV in a way, and fun post-canon content that also follows up on some minor characters and the ripple effects of Fraser being Fraser.

Absurdly Discreet by breadandroses (The Hands of the Emperor, Artorin/Kip)

"Being seduced by someone who turns out to be a spy isn't a crime," Ghilly said. "It is when you're the Sun-on-Earth's personal secretary," Cliopher replied dryly.

— The Hands of the Emperor, Chapter 63

Sharp look at that barely mentioned incident from the book, and the DEVOTION. The PINING. GAH.

the ship in port is the safer one (but it's not the reason it was made) by KiaraSayre (Star Trek reboot, gen)

The Enterprise's first mission is a boring one. Luckily, the ship more or less makes its own trouble, including: stills, toilet paper, lighting issues, awkward crewmembers, lunchroom seating politics, and, of course, the Admiralty.

Or: How Jim Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Chain Of Command.

Very fun and creative story about the Enterprise going on a shakedown cruise, Jim learning some valuable lessons about personnel management, and the dangers of a genius crew with too much time on their hands.

#monthly recs #murderbot #mcu #peter/yelena #due south #fraser/rayk #hands of the emperor #star trek #fic rec #lots of gen this month hmm

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