I thought that it was neat that the ship referred to the literal ship as their body, when it was more likely that the vessel was simply operated by an artificial intelligence. I just thought it was interesting that the construct had completely associated the frame as their own, saying things like "there is no air in me."
Another thing I liked about the ship was that they seemed decently sapient, expressing distress to themself in a less than formal manner, as well as expressing irritation with the tedium of finding a solution to the conscious Kemmings situation. It was interesting to see the ship go about witnessing and figuring Kemmings' hair-trigger paranoia, and trying to work around it without contaminating the rest of his memories and eventual perception (sadly to no success). I'd said it before, but I felt as thought the ship took a slight, irritated interest in relaying countless scenarios of arrival to Kemmings, and I couldn't begin to imagine how many of these scenarios were run through and how complex they got.
There's not a lot more for me to say about it, or anything in the story that was as subjectively interesting. I wish we'd gotten to hear from the ship in the end, but I can understand why such was left out as a story telling choice. AI's are awesome.
The ship must be truly sentient if it thinks like a human and reacts like a human. If any machines could get bored, it would be this ship getting bored of relaying the same memories to Kemming's brain.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that it would be difficult to program an even semi-human intelligence into anything that doesn't have some sort of body considering how much of human communication is based on the body, so to me it seems like it would almost be simpler to program a human-like intelligence when you could just tell it that the ship was its body and work from there.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't really thought about the specific phrases that the ship sad, or how human it felt. Personally I'm put off by the idea of robots acting human, most because I am paranoid and lowkey a doomsday prepper. So I don't know whether to embrace this AI or be fearful. Is it truly human at this point? Is it conscious? So many questions to be considered.
ReplyDeleteAIs ARE awesome! Write about them to your heart's content. Your insights reminded me a lot of Hal--referring to the ship itself as its body.
ReplyDeleteThe ship was rad, I liked it more than anything else in the story.
ReplyDeleteAlso in the story the ship is referred to as sentient "And, within its sentient works, the interstellar ship moaned."