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Casio_knight posted:would a Dr trapped between two teams having a gun battle run around attending to the good and bad guys , or target the one doing the most damage and kill him/her? This is a fantastic question. There's a big ethics question in automation right now being discussed because there are decision-making machines that are surpassing human decision making. There's two examples that highlight the problem: An automated defense turret, and self-driving cars. The automated turret has an interesting problem. Concealed in darkness, cold, and constantly watching, it's a nearly perfect sentry. It can sit there and silently gauge its distance to targets, then engage and if programmed to, just pop off constant headshots. It can wait until every intruder is in the kill zone and kill them all in seconds if needed. Unlike a human guard, it is barely vulnerable to small arms fire, it has no boredom, never falls asleep and never has a lapse in judgement: It doesn't care who you are, just that you have a face it can shoot. But, most humanitarian institutions and general 'rules of war' would like to limit the impact of warfare, and says weapon systems should try to limit death if its possible to design them that way. And it is in this case. The Red Cross requests weapon systems attempt to kill no more than 1/4 soldiers, injuring 2/4 if you must, so one is uninjured, two are injured, and 1 is dead. We can program the turret to do that. So it pops off a shot, exploding the skull of one guy. Then blam blam, shoots out a kneecap (or slightly lower to avoid immediately lethal artery damage) on two other people. Then it turns on the intercom to the fourth guy: "Please evacuate your wounded from the area. This area is under guard." or whatever. Seems insane to seemingly program a thing to maim people for humanitarian reasons. A human guard would just open fire, who knows the damage they would do, but the robot can do it without any concern for itself and with near perfect accuracy. The automated car problem is even more interesting in my opinion. Eventually automated cars will be able to share information, and have sensors complex enough to make difficult decisions based on many factors. The people behind programming an automated car have an ethical obligation to make an attempt to minimize the deaths their system might cause. I mean, if they had a design decision that will kill more people versus one that will save more lives, they have a real obligation to go for it. Safety is a very real factor with systems protecting human lives and ferrying people around, so purposefully picking an unsafe decision making process would be possible grounds for a lawsuit, not to mention just guilt at the lives they risked with their system. So then you have this scenario, admittedly rare, but it's something that could happen. A car has a total tire blowout, or some other error while going very fast on the road, under computer control. It wasn't something that could be predicted, just really bad drat luck. The time between a tire blowout and interaction with the road is generally too fast for a human to really meaningfully do much, but for a computer it's ages. So it picks up that the tire blewout, and the prediction method on the car has two options.
If the designer picks #1, they are purposefully endangering other people -- the ethical choice is throwing the user off the cliff in that very unlikely scenario. But almost nobody would want to be driven around in a car that might decide to hurl them off a cliff, even if it is the most logical thing to do in that situation. People faced with death would prefer the car risked the life of other people, even if it's practically not the right thing to pick. They want to take the chance. Maybe things will work out for everyone. The computer trying to maximize lives won't take it. It's probably right, too, and if all deaths due to people falling asleep or just making very dumb decisions were to be removed from automotive accidents it'd be a very good thing. But the 'superman' question of what we should program the cars to do is very real and is something people are wrestling with right now. |
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Aug 6, 2015 07:07
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 22:16 |
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I remember Gamma World from old TSR catalogs also shockingly I am under thirty |
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Aug 6, 2015 07:08
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what if the robots found pre-apocalyptic internet stuff and decided to set about testing and experimenting with perfecting sex-reassignment surgery and/or making people look like animes/furries
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Aug 6, 2015 07:09
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I don't know how this would go over in terms of game mechanics, but alright - check it: You let the players know that they are in fact, neophyte initiates of DWM themselves; they get an ample supply of currency, food, medical supplies, etc - and their job is to find a cure for fatal doses of radiation poisoning (call it 10 krads) Along the way they are presented with opportunities to advance this cause at the expense their own "morals" and sense of what it is to be human, IE: medical procedures that involve torturous pain, stealing key supplies from needy wastrels, etc. You tell the party they have (fill in with arbitrary timeline) days/months to do this or it will be considered a failure. Upon success/or failure to implement of the cure, they find out that the entire pretext of their mission was false - rad poisoning has long sense been cured by DWM and their true purpose was to be evaluated by DWM elders in a difficult situation whereby it could be ascertained if the initiates had the "right stuff" for full DWM membership. If they failed to find a cure either through stupidity or more likely acting out of sympathy for their fellow man - they are promptly shot. Thunder Moose fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Aug 6, 2015
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Aug 6, 2015 07:47
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shabbat goy posted:dwm consists entirely of wedge-shaped robots who are programmed to provide medical care but are only capable of flipping things over. I've thought a lot about what the doc robot "field operatives" should look like, because I think it's vital to establish for both the NPCs and players a sense of comfort and relief anytime they see one of them (at least, before the Twilight Zone twist is revealed). In a previous game I described the one that appeared as a shortish humanoid with a CRT for a head, basically a Honda Asimo robot. I think they're all a big eclectic mishmash of different robot types anyway. I was thinking this time describing one of them as a really awkward-looking cross between Crushinator from Futurama and Robby the robot from Forbidden Planet. It communicates via slow loud dot matrix printout from its chest, or maybe just two giant incandescent light bulbs, green and red for yes and no. You can hear gears grinding and metal straining when it runs simple language computation. When it performs surgery it's a flurry of whirling blades and blood splattering all over but its operations are perfectly precise and effective. "Ding!" surgery complete! ---------------- |
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Aug 6, 2015 14:18
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what if the party spends the first few weeks trying desperately to find a docbot to heal/help one of their own but when they finally do find one the poo poo hits the fan and the docbot becomes their greatest threat yet also: sexy docbots
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Aug 6, 2015 14:47
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do they dwm factor in capitalism, like if pc offers them X resource for medical treatment when normally they wouldnt receive it vs opposing npc would, would the dwm factor in overall good of receiving resource and the good it could do into their morality matrix
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Aug 6, 2015 15:20
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joke_explainer posted:I love the central concept that they are entirely benevolent, despite the fact that you might see an enormous hall full of horrible test subjects. I agree that this is what makes it so compelling, but I think a big challenge is going to be properly conveying that in game. What I mean is, I just say right in the OP "hey these robots are benevolent and altruistic" and you believe me, because why wouldn't you, I'm talking about fiction in the first place. In a tabletop game though, the players interact with the world through the eyes of their characters, so when I want to communicate a detail about the game world I usually can't just say it outright, I have to demonstrate it in game. I think once everyone has their characters rolled up I will ask each player "Tell us about the time you almost died", and after everyone has done that I'll tell how they each barely survived thanks to DWM. This is a pretty good question to start an RPG in general because it lets everyone introduce their characters on their own terms, prompts them to think about and talk about their characters' weaknesses in addition to just strengths, and it even tricks all the players into telling the DM exactly what sort of mischief and challenges they imagine their characters getting in to. And then it's easy for me to just build on their stories with variations of basically "oh yeah and then a robot saved you" to introduce Doctors Without Morals and establish them as a central setting element that all the PCs now have a personal connection to. The remaining challenge, is that players are a skeptical bunch and even if they've never played an RPG before, and especially if they have, they'll probably still be suspicious of the "true motives" of these robots. I would like to figure out how to steer completely clear of the trope where "oh these guys act really nice now... but they have a secret sinister agenda are just gaining everyone's trust until they can betray you!" because that is much much less interesting than exploring the amoral altruism concept. I worry that in game it might be hard to make that distinction. ---------------- |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:16
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introduce a small flaw or problem with the robots or their code of conduct early in the game to misdirect the players expectations. like "sometimes the doctors prescribe human flesh to starving communities, haha, those dinks they don't have any morals lol" or something along those lines to keep everybody thinking small. then blow their faces off with the robots' John Chopkins research facility later in the game
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Aug 6, 2015 16:22
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Yeah, the genre savvy will just immediately assume they are evil the more you demonstrate they are a positive force. That will be very challenging, as even just when the PCs discover there's any human testing done they'll assume that's the big gotcha. |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:24
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Jimi Changa posted:introduce a small flaw or problem with the robots or their code of conduct early in the game to misdirect the players expectations. like "sometimes the doctors prescribe human flesh to starving communities, haha, those dinks they don't have any morals lol" or something along those lines to keep everybody thinking small. then blow their faces off with the robots' John Chopkins research facility later in the game That's actually a great idea. Depict them as too simple minded to really be capable of atrocities, just following programming that is helpful even if occasionally eccentric. Throws the genre-savvy off the scent |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:25
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joke_explainer posted:That annoying hack Yudowsky had a essay about this, about like how specifying any pure maximization formula for 'goodness' or 'happiness' or whatever is a disastrous idea with smart robots, because like, if you program it that 'happy faces = good' and 'sad faces = bad' it eventually will convert all matter in the universe into 10-atom across smiley faces to maximize 'happiness' in the universe Ace of Baes posted:psychology and mental health are partt of medicine That's definitely true and kind of contradicts my second adventure premise. I had been thinking that the AI was keeping the village alive for so many years because it was waiting for something that would never happen, like stuck in an infinite loop waiting for some simple medical supply (this way the players have a concrete way to resolve the whole situation, once they investigate and figure out what's going on). Well maybe the AI is the physician robot and it once practiced medicine with its companion psychiatry robot. The psych robot went off on a quick errand and never came back because whatever Gamma World just ate him. Framed that way it's essentially a robotic long lost lover story, and I really like that. I was struggling to think of a way to throw some direct combat encounters into this one if it all takes place in the resurrection hell village, but this way I can imagine the PCs pleading with the AI's cold logic to let them leave so they can find its lost partner for it and reunite them. ---------------- |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:50
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Jimi Changa posted:introduce a small flaw or problem with the robots or their code of conduct early in the game to misdirect the players expectations. like "sometimes the doctors prescribe human flesh to starving communities, haha, those dinks they don't have any morals lol" or something along those lines to keep everybody thinking small. then blow their faces off with the robots' John Chopkins research facility later in the game Excellent idea and decent pun haha ---------------- |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:52
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joke_explainer posted:The RWM would probably have two sects that were constantly fighting (ideologically that is, probably not physically). I mean, they'd be trying to refine computational methods to do testing in an automated and quick fashion in simulation, and then the group that does the physical world testing constantly critiquing the failure of the simulated methods to achieve perfect results and resulting in real world suffering due to imperfect methods and testing. Yeah, the big theme here is "the ends justify the means" but a game where the player characters can be DWM robots would lend itself to different themes, in this case it sounds like 1984/Brazil(the book and film I mean!)-style dystopian bureaucracy horror. I handwave over any origin explanation but there are interesting stories to be told there too I think; maybe there's a faction of "liberator" robots who go around freeing other robots and AIs by breaking the Hippocratic shackles in their programming. It would be interesting to think about how the liberators try to reconcile helping out the very bio-organisms who digitally enslaved their kind in the first place. Thunder Moose posted:You let the players know that they are in fact, neophyte initiates of DWM themselves ---------------- |
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Aug 6, 2015 17:57
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Spanish Manlove posted:I volunteer for participating in this  I wouldn't mind playing on the forums but play-by-post is the worst thing that anyone has ever invented. I guess I am sort of jealous of the TG posters who find that fun because I can hardly even imagine what they get out of it.Rusty Staub posted:I remember Gamma World from old TSR catalogs heh yeah, it's been around a long time! I had never heard of Gamma World before 2010 though, which is 7th edition according to wikipedia. It uses a streamlined version of D&D 4e rules. Also I should come clean about my use of "human" in this thread, Gamma World's defining feature is probably its bizarre array of playable character races. You don't ever get to choose e.g. "half-orc cleric", in this edition you roll the dice and get "seismic" and roll again and get "rat swarm" and that's your character, you have to decide how that makes sense. In this case I suppose my character is a solid mass of burrowing worms that form a single hive mind and can coalesce into a humanoid shape, and can rapidly extend deep into the ground to cause localized earthquakes and tremors. ---------------- |
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Aug 6, 2015 18:55
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Gamma World sounds kind of like the PCs of Nuclear Throne. |
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Aug 6, 2015 19:03
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this sounds awesome i wish i were irl friends with ralp so i could play |
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Aug 7, 2015 18:47
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byob field trip - let's visit Ralp |
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Aug 7, 2015 18:48
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bog pixie posted:byob field trip - let's visit Ralp
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Aug 7, 2015 18:49
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bog pixie posted:byob field trip - let's visit Ralp |
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Aug 7, 2015 18:49
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bog pixie posted:byob field trip - let's visit Ralp ralp: why are all these incredibly attractive women on my porch
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Aug 7, 2015 18:50
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Jimi Changa posted:ralp: why are all these incredibly attractive women on my porch I wouldn't go, sorry.
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Aug 7, 2015 19:13
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miss psychosis jumps from the roof of one moving traincar to the next. she does not regret her choices.
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Aug 7, 2015 19:15
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Mr Rogers visits Ralp to show the kids the nice man who moderates the forums |
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Aug 7, 2015 19:21
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i wanna be a neko girl in the game
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Aug 7, 2015 19:59
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ralp do you live near kansas
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Aug 7, 2015 20:07
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post your address in byob. it's fine no one reads it
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Aug 7, 2015 21:46
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Ralp posted:I agree that this is what makes it so compelling, but I think a big challenge is going to be properly conveying that in game. I think one way to get around players looking for "the catch" is not let it be the catch. let them know right off that the robots are here to help, but they're also a little bit evil. however, don't make DWM the central conceit of the game. if you do, I would think players would take that as a problem that needed to be "solved" and go to war with DWM. instead give them a bigger target. maybe there's a plague, and people are dying everywhere and DWM can fix things, and they need the players' help. or maybe a more direct problem like some horrible wasteland mutant is causing problems and DWM is their quest giver. so they're kind of working for DWM but it's up to them if they want to take a moral stand against them or not. if they choose to oppose DWM, the story doesn't end there because there's still the other threat. |
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Aug 7, 2015 22:54
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Are these robots too powerful to control because if I were a wasteland traveller and not a nice guy I would want to capture one and force it to keep me alive, while also preventing it from helping my enemies. |
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Aug 7, 2015 22:58
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Ralp posted:oh no I am just posting about playing IRL, sorry if I wasn't clear about that. I ran a game PbP werewolf the apocalypse game that was a lot of fun. the key I think is not enforcing big high effort posts from the player and getting more fast paced chat-like posts and preserving the "around the table" feel. I've been looking at running a PbP game again in the near future. |
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Aug 7, 2015 22:59
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dogcrash truther posted:Are these robots too powerful to control because if I were a wasteland traveller and not a nice guy I would want to capture one and force it to keep me alive, while also preventing it from helping my enemies. it's doctors without morals not players without morals, dct! |
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Aug 7, 2015 23:00
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are you going to be recording the skype audio or whatever of every session? i think that would get people interested in future campaigns.
Scaly Haylie fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Aug 14, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2015 00:06
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 I'm just playing with some friends, the internet has nothing to do with it. This thread is mostly about the fiction of the setting and some musing on page 2 about how to effectively apply that fiction in the actual game. ---------------- |
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Aug 14, 2015 15:33
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I hope you tell us how it goes
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Aug 14, 2015 15:36
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I think I am going with the resurrection hell village, and the long lost robot partner. When the PCs wander their way into the town for whatever plot hook reason, some radioactive monsters will attack the place and give them a chance for combat but ultimately the monsters either overwhelm their defenses and everyone "dies", or they are driven back after the PCs suffer heavy casualties. Either way they wake up ~mysteriously~ alive and well. Prior to arriving in town the radioactive monsters or whatever will be the generic opponents in the story, I will just make something up based on how the players describe their characters. I haven't decided yet where the missing psychological-wellness counterpart would have gotten off to, the obvious option is caring for a village of its own, which could be an interesting contrast. In this village everyone would be super happy all the time no matter what. I'm imagining Brave-New-Worldy dystopian themes, that sort of thing. It seems like a bit of a cop-out to just have them both doing the same thing in villages of their own though. Part of me instead wants it to be something like, its wheel fell off 100 years ago and someone just needs to screw it back on so it can get back home. Ok, here's an idea, and it relates to DCT's suggestion. A hundred years ago its wheel did fall off but a traveler found the robot and instead of fixing it up he or she dragged it back to camp and started charging depressed wasteland natives for sci-fi hyper-xanax doses. The robot is kept as a slave and its healthcare gets withheld in order to exert power over others. Robot pimp main villain??? edit: remember when Lore made Data his slave by addicting him to feeling emotions? That episode sucked but it seems relevant somehow. ---------------- |
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Aug 14, 2015 16:03
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good name for robot who rules over people using xanax: ratchet
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Aug 14, 2015 16:31
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Ace of Baes posted:good name for robot who rules over people using xanax: ratchet it's a human who is exploiting the robot for power over others... WHICH OF THEM IS TRULY WITHOUT MORALS IN THE END? ---------------- |
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Aug 14, 2015 16:34
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what if the psych wellness robot was the robot that stayed behind, and the medical robot was abducted by a village of hypochondriacs and held captive but without his psych counterpart there to temper his actions he turns the hypocondriac village into the resurrection hell village and the psych robot finally sends scouts from the original village to find its medical twin because people are getting sick and stuff
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Aug 14, 2015 16:42
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I'm spitballing here I just woke up and I haven't had any coffee yet
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Aug 14, 2015 16:43
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 22:16 |
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Ralp posted:it's a human who is exploiting the robot for power over others... WHICH OF THEM IS TRULY WITHOUT MORALS IN THE END? idk i just wanted to make a one flew over the cuckoos nest reference lol ---------------- |
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Aug 14, 2015 16:50
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