Pepper shook her head as she fussed with the mask. Sidra was unsurprised. There wasn’t much Pepper had read beyond tech manuals and food drone menus. ‘Is that what you’re processing now?’
‘Yes.’ Sidra saw no reason to supply the additional explanation that she was adding it to her local memory. Her memory banks were still filling faster than she was comfortable with, but she saw little point in reopening the argument, at least right now.
‘Are you enjoying it?’ Pepper asked.
‘Very much,’ Sidra said. ‘The phrasing can be challenging, but it’s a good translation, and the complexity makes for some wonderfully layered nuance.’ She was aware, as she said it, that she was repeating what Tak had said about it, word for word. Well, why not? He’d sounded smart when he’d said it; why couldn’t she?
Pepper raised her hairless brow with a smirk. ‘That’s a fancy way of saying “dense”.’
Sidra knew Pepper was kidding, but something in her bristled nonetheless. The words Pepper was scoffing at didn’t belong to Sidra, and she didn’t like Pepper’s implication that their original speaker was being pretentious. Tak was educated, and it was one of the things Sidra enjoyed most about speaking with him. Pepper was intelligent, no question, but . . .
She watched Pepper as she worked on the same project she’d been working on at the shop all day, the same project she’d been working on one-handed through dinner, the same project she’d been working on when Blue kissed the top of her head and bid them both goodnight. Sidra felt unkind in thinking it, but this was one of the things she enjoyed about Tak’s company. She was glad to have met someone who liked to read.
Feed source: unknown Encryption: 4
Translation: 0
Transcription: 0
Node identifier: unknown
pinch: hey, got another question for you guys. this one’s just out of curiosity. if you wanted to expand an AI’s memory capacity, how would you go about it?
ilikesmash: expand by how much?
pinch: a lot. enough to make her comparable with an organic’s ability to learn new stuff indefinitely tishtesh: are you talking about an intelligent sentient model? you know that’s why they have linking access, right?
pinch: let’s say linking access wasn’t a possibility nebbit: you’d need to install additional hardware to whatever housing it’s in. extra storage drives.
pinch: let’s say that that wasn’t a possibility, either tishtesh: uhhhhh okay. you’re fucking stuck then ilikesmash: you could pare down its cognitive processors to limit how much info it wants to access. slow the deluge a bit.
tishtesh: then what would even be the point of an intelligent sentient model AAAAAAAA: limiting processors would be cruel
ilikesmash: how is it cruel? you’re taking away the protocol that’s causing the issue. would make for a more stable installation.
AAAAAAAA: you’re taking away a crucial part of xyr cognitive processes. would you get rid of your own curiosity if it made you more ‘stable’?
tishtesh: stars, can we not
ilikesmash: ah, i see. you’re one of those. come back when you’ve realised they’re not people nebbit: friends, we have a separate thread for ethical arguments. please stay on topic.
JANE, AGE 10
She still wasn’t sure about the mushrooms. They tasted okay – more interesting than meals, anyway. They filled her up real good, and Owl said they were good for her, too, but making them into food was not a task Jane liked very much. Fixing scrap was much better. But like Owl had said, she couldn’t fix scrap if she didn’t fuel herself first. So, mushrooms.
As she cut up that morning’s handful of food, she wondered what other people ate. She wondered about other people a lot. Owl had explained that the planet they were on – which was still weird to think about – had lands on all sides of it, but the lands were separated by lots of water. The land on their side was where all the scrap went, and where all the factories were (there was more than just the one!). The land on the other side had cities. The cities were where the scrap came from. The people in the cities didn’t like scrap or think about it much, but they liked stuff, and since they didn’t talk to other Humans or species, they couldn’t get new stuff, or materials to make new stuff (they’d already used up everything they dug out of the ground, Owl said). If they wanted new stuff, they had to make it out of old stuff.
‘What do the other people on this planet do?’ Jane asked.
‘I don’t understand the question. What do you mean?’ Owl said.
‘I mean . . . what do they do? If the girls on this side take care of the scrap, what do they do?’ Jane was still trying to figure out the point of a city. And of most things. The more questions she asked, the more questions she thought up.
‘The same things people do everywhere, I suppose,’ Owl said. ‘They learn things, make families, ask questions, see places.’
‘Do they know about us on this side? Do they know we’re here?’
‘Yes. Not you and I specifically, but yes.’
‘Do they know about the Mothers?’
‘Yes. They made them. They made the factories, too. And the girls.’