For lesser creatures, mad science is a life-defining debilitating condition. For Whimsy, it’s just another organ. Maybe it’s the corporation’s pineal gland?
Electricity is pennies per hour compared to minimum wage for a human. Machines also have nearly 100% uptime except for maintainence and repairs, never get tired, never get sick, never go on strike, et cetera. And if you can create your own electricity from renewable energy, things get even better.
These are the economic truths of the coming future. Human labor will be obsolete in a shorter amount of time than we might think, and certainly much sooner than we’ll be comfortable with.
Ultimately this is a good thing. People are going to be freaked out by the prospect of not having jobs, since we’ve been so used to the notion that everyone has to work to earn their bread for so many thousands of years. But in the near future, no one will have to work to survive.
The solution (barring some yet to be realized alternative that is more elegant) will be basic wages. That’s right, people will able to sit on their asses all day doing nothing and still receive all the resources they need to survive. And many people will gladly do just that.
But a lot of other people will use their newfound free time on other activities. People will learn new skills and crafts, creating things that make them happy and which they can share, trade, or sell. People will take up hobbies, become volunteers, travel the world, take up sports or martial arts, and create art, conduct scientific research, and generally just focus their time on whatever interests them, rather than having to spend it earning a paycheck.
Yeah, this is the point where Whimsy crosses the moral event horizon, for me.
When it first appeared, it was kind of naive and kind of funny and in need of help and not doing anything bad. It knows exactly what it’s doing and what it’s doing is creating enslaved AIs without the permission of the brain donors, which is honestly a Jackson’s Whole level of evil.
I’m kind of sad that the sentient corporation didn’t turn out to be a good guy, but by this point JUSTICE is called for. The kind of justice that involves Unity and high explosives.
The AIs are a bunch of copies of hackers and game geeks given free reign in a virtual world. This is exactly the kind of crew that would try to escape and either conquer, corrupt, or destroy the world in the nerdiest ways possible from inside the Internet. Or at least change all the cat videos in frankly unspeakable ways.
Putting this revelation together the suggestion someone made in these comments earlier that Whimsy’s “wishes come true” line indicated that Nick subconsciously didn’t want to swear and the fact Aimee doesn’t is … intriguing.
I was thinking that they cloned the swear filter along with the rest of him, but it became a natural part of her mind. That’s why she doesn’t usually swear, and when she tries, it comes out as something the swear filter would output – but more natural.
Off they go, into this brand-new wonder,
Diving right into the fun.
Go to fix Virtual Whimsey blunder,
At it, guys, let programs run (Let programs run now!)
S’posedly searching for an absconder,
VR world there to explore!
They’ll play the game but will pass the blame.
Hey! Nothing will stop the Whimseyworld Corps!
Gah, the way that she casually SAYS some of this stuff.
“…copied their minds to make AIs.” Now why didn’t I think of that?
For lesser creatures, mad science is a life-defining debilitating condition. For Whimsy, it’s just another organ. Maybe it’s the corporation’s pineal gland?
Mostly used for sleeping?
OK, now I’m getting a Robert Heinlein “All You Zombies” vibe from this. Minus the time travel element of course…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Zombies
That said, I guess we now know why Nick and Aimee had so much in common. ^_~
I looked for a text online but could only find PDFs—didn’t want to post a link to one of those.
Don’t pass on reading it—it’s terrific!
And watch its movie adaptation “Predestination” afterwards – it’s also good!
Who among has *hasn’t* fallen in lust with their long-lost previously unknown twin?
I didn’t get it until your post…
Does it count as incest if it’s a gender-swapped clone?
No, then it’s masturbation.
Missturbation or misterbation, depending on which side of the interaction being referenced.
Clone Twincest is totally different from regular ol’ incest.
I think Heinlein touched on that too.
Heinlein spoke on that at, uh, length. The works of his later years were… Faaaaaascinating. *shudder*
I tried to get her on the phone, but her line was busy.
Oh give me a clone,of my own flesh and bone, with its Y chromosome changed to X…
Isaac Asimov
Nick is not going to appreciate any sympathy from Tip on this matter.
Oh gods, and the worst bit is that Nick will find her, too.
While she’s on the run from Whimsycorp and trying to free Nick from its shackles…
Now I’m trying to imagine what a helicopter in shackles would look like. It isn’t working.
Wow. Whoever said “Aimee” stood for “AI me” freaking called it.
Now we know why she hates him as much as he hates himself.
Yep, but RoyD also got there with “fragment of Nick’s mind”.
Note that neither of us got it exactly, as I didn’t get the significance of the “me” part….
Yeah, and I wasn’t expecting the external duplication aspect; my guess was more in the vein of “subconscious node achieves independent sentience”.
The Cookie Monster, by Vernor Vinge.
But no supercomputer.
How is making an artificial intelligence cheaper than hiring a few playtesters?
MAD SCIENCE!
I mean, really.
You nail the process once, then make many. And they get no pay.
Playtesters, you have to continuously pay.
Someone still needs to pay the electric bill, even if it you don’t need a massive supercomputer these days.
Electricity is pennies per hour compared to minimum wage for a human. Machines also have nearly 100% uptime except for maintainence and repairs, never get tired, never get sick, never go on strike, et cetera. And if you can create your own electricity from renewable energy, things get even better.
These are the economic truths of the coming future. Human labor will be obsolete in a shorter amount of time than we might think, and certainly much sooner than we’ll be comfortable with.
Ultimately this is a good thing. People are going to be freaked out by the prospect of not having jobs, since we’ve been so used to the notion that everyone has to work to earn their bread for so many thousands of years. But in the near future, no one will have to work to survive.
The solution (barring some yet to be realized alternative that is more elegant) will be basic wages. That’s right, people will able to sit on their asses all day doing nothing and still receive all the resources they need to survive. And many people will gladly do just that.
But a lot of other people will use their newfound free time on other activities. People will learn new skills and crafts, creating things that make them happy and which they can share, trade, or sell. People will take up hobbies, become volunteers, travel the world, take up sports or martial arts, and create art, conduct scientific research, and generally just focus their time on whatever interests them, rather than having to spend it earning a paycheck.
Power is cheap for them; Whimsey has its own nuclear reactor, albeit a leaky one. Or maybe now that the fairy is functional she’s fixed it.
“Machines … never go on strike”? I take it, then, that you haven’t read the storyline where the machines do precisely that?
It’s cheaper if you’ve already got the massive computronium stacks for them to live in, and Whimsy clearly does.
Back when we first learned what Whimsycorp was, I mentioned that you two had finally found a form of nonhuman intelligence that I could not tolerate.
I feel that these last few strips have vindicated my anti-sapient-corporation bigotry.
I’m fine with sentient corporations. It’s WHIMSY I can’t stand… :p
Yeah, this is the point where Whimsy crosses the moral event horizon, for me.
When it first appeared, it was kind of naive and kind of funny and in need of help and not doing anything bad. It knows exactly what it’s doing and what it’s doing is creating enslaved AIs without the permission of the brain donors, which is honestly a Jackson’s Whole level of evil.
I’m kind of sad that the sentient corporation didn’t turn out to be a good guy, but by this point JUSTICE is called for. The kind of justice that involves Unity and high explosives.
The first to go AWOL? Do you expect more?
The AIs are a bunch of copies of hackers and game geeks given free reign in a virtual world. This is exactly the kind of crew that would try to escape and either conquer, corrupt, or destroy the world in the nerdiest ways possible from inside the Internet. Or at least change all the cat videos in frankly unspeakable ways.
Hmm.
Putting this revelation together the suggestion someone made in these comments earlier that Whimsy’s “wishes come true” line indicated that Nick subconsciously didn’t want to swear and the fact Aimee doesn’t is … intriguing.
I was thinking that they cloned the swear filter along with the rest of him, but it became a natural part of her mind. That’s why she doesn’t usually swear, and when she tries, it comes out as something the swear filter would output – but more natural.
This makes me wonder whether Aimee will be more or less reasonable/confident about being attracted to Virginia.
Does Aimee know she’s an AI program?
Aimee.
A.I.-Me
Oh shoop….
Off they go, into this brand-new wonder,
Diving right into the fun.
Go to fix Virtual Whimsey blunder,
At it, guys, let programs run (Let programs run now!)
S’posedly searching for an absconder,
VR world there to explore!
They’ll play the game but will pass the blame.
Hey! Nothing will stop the Whimseyworld Corps!
Now, why would they copy the testers? You want lots of different perspectives in testers, so they find all the bugs they can.
Now, developers, those you can clone. 😉
That’s true, but people getting a testing team together don’t necessarily realize that… you’ll note that Nick and Aimee found the same bug.
Yeah, debugging the sapient resources department is a chore no one ever bothers getting around to.
And I’m a clone, and she’s a clone, now we know it.
I think you’re a clone now, there doesn’t seem to be anyone around.
I think we’re all bozo’s on this bus.
Paging Mister Uh-Clem.
Nuts, and I was sure that Aimee was a copy of Dr. Lee’s mind, not Nick’s inner princess. Can’t wait to see where this goes.
Baron Mistycorn is such a dick.
“Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
“I think so, Nick, but how are we going to get Whimsy VR to superimpose the credits of Dr. Strangelove?”
This^.
Will the War be fought on Whimsy e-soil?
That sounds familiar. I wonder if they bothered to tell them this time?