Humanoid bodies may be somewhat of a luxury, but bodies themselves have never been portrayed as such. It very much seems like anyone who wants a body gets one. But May got a crappy one, and can’t get it serviced (healthcare) because she can’t get a good job and there is no AI equivalent to Medicaid. Her only chance was a charity, but that charity laughed Roko out for even suggesting they try to do better.
Roko’s mission has never been about May. She quit her police job over how ex-cons were treated. Her goal is to use May’s situation to help better the plight of ex-cons. She wants there to be an actual well-funded way to get AI ex-cons decent bodies and basic repairs (healthcare) to help them have a fair start in the world after they’ve served their time.
And May not jumping to get another body when she could is proof that her impulse control problems aren’t controlling her anymore. She’s able to decide “Yeah, I want a body, but I’d rather wait it out both for Roko, my friend, and to help out others in similar situations.”
I won’t argue that any of this is a perfect analogy to the real world, but why does it need to be? The whole reason he made it about AI instead of people is that he hates direct comparisons. He’s just appealing to the general idea that ex-cons are mistreated, and established what that looks like in his world.
Actually making parallels just invites the complaints like yours.
In-universe, because the way May and Roko view it is a matter of rights and not something for which you should depend on either charity or private patronage, nor something that you should say that the socioeconomically “unsuccesful” should settle for the crappiest bare minimum at the threshold of subsistence.
Ukelele Ike, can we please dial back the creepiness? This is a pattern for you. Yes, I know that you still remember the social standards of the 1970s. But this isn’t the 1970s any more, not by a long shot. Just because something was acceptable then doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable now, nor even that it should have been acceptable then.
Ukelele Ike, can we please dial back the creepiness? This is a pattern for you. Yes, I know that you still remember the social standards of the 1970s. But this isn’t the 1970s any more, not by a long shot. Just because something was acceptable then doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable now, nor even that it should have been acceptable then.
Human-like bodies are explicitly a luxury, not somewhat of a luxury. The cost of Momo’s body was enough to shock Hannelore when she bought it, and Momo has been paying off the body for some time. Roko’s new body was so nice because of good insurance, it isn’t something she would have been able to afford on her own. Far from ‘anybody who wants a human-like body can get one’, the people we’ve seen get one have had someone else with a lot of money pay for it - I don’t think we’ve actually seen a single robot buy their own human-like body, other than spookybot who is essentially a demi-god.
And that’s why the scenario is off - Roko got a low-end luxury body and its unreliable, but (like I said in my first post) why have her get what’s clearly been shown as the luxury model instead of something basic and less prone to trouble? And yet again, why is the fight for ‘medicaid only for felonious robots’? The idea that felons deserve better treatment than non-felons doesn’t make any sense, and definitely is not the ‘obviously right’ answer that it’s being portrayed as. “There is no robot Medicaid” would be a sensible crusade, “There is no robot Medicaid for felons, but I don’t care about robots who haven’t tried to rob people” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
As far as bodies go, May isn’t being treated any worse than the many AIs we’ve seen who have not tried to steal large sums of money to acquire military hardware for personal use. What he’s showing in this case is that ex-cons are treated slightly better than regular AIs (she did get a human-like body for free), not that ‘ex-cons are mistreated’.
If you’re going to try to make a point about serious issues, then you should expect people to try to figure out what you’re trying to say about the serious issue.
That is an incorrect summary of their position. What we’ve seen is that May and Roko apparently view it as a matter of rights FOR FELONS ONLY but not for ‘the socioeconomically unsuccessful’ in general. As I said in my initial post, the issue is the fact that they view it as a matter of rights only for AIs who have done something bad, not AIs in general. But they’re only fighting to get this aid FOR EX-CONS and not for robots in general, and making arguments specific to ex-cons (like Roko’s data on recidivism rates). If the problem was that felons didn’t get the ‘medicaid’ that other robots do, then it would work fine - but that hasn’t been shown to be the case.
The strip has clearly shown repeatedly that AIs who are at a ‘normal’ or ‘low’ level of economic success cannot afford to buy a chassis like May wants on their own. Every example of an AI buying one in the strip has involved someone else’s money. And we see plenty of AIs who are not in a human-like chassis in the strip as a matter of course, I didn’t add the idea to the world.
“Everyone gets a human-like body if they want one” is a sensible position. “Everyone who commits a felony gets a human-like body if they want one, but the rest of you better hope you have a rich friend willing to give a gift, well-off friend willing to make a major loan, or get in an accident caused by someone with good insurance if you want one” or “I tried to steal money from people, therefore I deserve a luxury, but you plebes who didn’t try and fail to take someone’s stuff should just suffer” just isn’t sensible or sympathetic.
I don’t think the comic has portrayed human bodies as an explicit luxury. Most of the AIs we see in the comic - counting background robots and one-off characters - have human bodies, which implies that’s more the default than something special that only a lucky few can afford. The business model for Faye and Bubbles’ repair shop doesn’t seem based on serving high-end clientele, either. Roko’s body is explicitly high end, Momo’s body was on the upper edge of what Marigold could afford, but we don’t really know how high-end that’s supposed to be. But May’s body certainly isn’t a luxury - it’s a pile of crap that’s constantly falling apart or malfunctioning. That’s not something we’ve seen with, really, any other AI’s body, which all seem to be pretty robust, even when abused. Punchbot would need lots of repairs after a fight, but didn’t seem to have any problems with his body between fights. Pintsize’s chassis can be punted across the room or stuffed with chocolate frosting, and it doesn’t give him any long-term operational problems. Whereas May’s leg just falls off sometimes for basically no reason, which is the sort of problem that seems to only affect her - and, by extension, other ex-con AIs - and is not just a function of being a poor/working class robot.
On further review with the other moderators, I find that you have already been given multiple instructions to stop the creepy behavior to women. I am therefore upgrading this to a Warning. We are also instituting a formal topic ban: you are hereby prohibited from any further creepy behavior towards women, including (but not limited to) sexual objectivication or bringing up sex with regard to a woman. Do not say anything about a woman that you would not say about a man in the same situation. Yes, this is a broad injunction. If you are unsure whether something would violate it, don’t post it
Actually, Marigold (not Hannelore) forgave that debt almost immediately in exchange for a Harem Fighter video game. So it couldn’t have been that pricey.
I have no idea where you’re getting ‘a lucky few’, I certainly didn’t say that. A new car costs $20-$50k, and is definitely a luxury. But they’re not so rare that you don’t see them all the time, and there are plenty of businesses that service cars that function without focusing on ‘high end clientele’. What May is doing is saying “I got out of prison, and they just gave me an old clunker. I could take the bus or walk, but instead of doing what non-felon plebs have to do, I deserve a new car for… reasons”.
Punchbot has a non-human body. So does Pintsize. So did Momo and Winston originally. Why doesn’t May get a body like one of those, or even Momo’s or Winston’s cast off original body if her current body is ‘not a luxury’? Again, I don’t see why should May get a luxury body for free when the others don’t.
Like I keep saying, if the idea is “AIs should have a human like body if they want without having to buy it”, I find that a sensible position. But I can’t get behind “AIs should have a human like body if they want and have committed a felony, otherwise they have to buy it or use someone else’s money”. “If you are a disembodied AI that wants a human-like body, either commit a felony or use someone else’s money to get one” just doesn’t seem like a good policy if you want to discourage felonies being done.
It doesn’t affect most other ex-con AIs because most ex-con AIs either have another body to return to or don’t want a body. This has been explained in comic and mentioned in the thread already. And it clearly affects poor/working class robots, because they’re shown as not being able to afford on their own what May believes she’s entitled to by virtue of being a felon.
Or she could have felt bad about it being a loan and decided to turn a loan for an expensive item into a gift. If a human-like chassis really only costs as much as a video game (under $100) then why is May even bothering to repair the chassis when she got that much from her face sitting (and non-sitting) adventures with pPntsize?
May doesn’t want a brand new car, she wants one where the wheels aren’t constantly falling off. Your assuming that the “looks human” part is a special luxury, but I don’t think that’s supportable from what we’ve seen in the comic. Momo and Winslowe couldn’t afford the human bodies they eventually upgraded into, but those were relatively expensive, high-end bodies. Could Momo have gotten a crap-pile body like the one May currently has, without having to rely on Marigold’s generosity? Possibly, but she’d probably have preferred to keep her chibi-bod rather than deal with one that’s breaking down all the time. Could May get an anthroPC chassis? Possibly, but she’d probably be stuck with a worn out piece of crap that breaks all the time, like her current human body.
A few strips later, when she settled on what was later described as a Sony KawaiiPC HPC-4100X, the price was so high it made blood shoot out of Marigold’s nose. So the price had to be significantly higher than $30k.
But tucked in that sequence of comics is an essay from the author which seems to imply that once AI’s achieve sentience, they get to choose what they do, which seems to include a free body at that time. And the salesrobot in the store has moved from being a forklift, to the AI on a nuclear ballistic missile sub to her current chassis. Presumably she was being paid for being a forklift and running a submarine, which is how she afforded the body she’s in now?
So last week, Claire passed her test, and they had a party to celebrate. She didn’t want to make Faye uncomfortable by having it at a bar, so they went to Coffee of Doom and had a weed party. I understand that alcohol and weed are very different, and that there’s not really a chemical dependency issue with weed like there is with alcoholism. But it struck me as odd. I no longer have any alcoholics in my life, and no longer smoke weed or hang out with any smokers. Was this as short-sighted as I initially feel it was? Are weed and alcohol different enough (at least to the extent that they can be abused) that it’s not an issue?
Speaking only from anecdotal personal experience: I used to be a occasional-to-frequent binge drinker, and my wife is a severe alcoholic with a bit over two years of sobriety now. Neither of us has had any issues with marijuana. We have both tried it in the past, and don’t feel any urge to use it as a “replacement” for alcohol.