Mr Zoat
Dedicated ragequitter
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20th July 2013
21:52 GMT
Kara looks around the arctic panorama. 24 hour sunlight, air temperature a balmy 1oC and filled with intermittent sleet. Fortunately, my armour is sealed and Kara's robes are hydrophobic.
"Am I going to be shooting at targets again?"
Between my ring and her super senses, we have no difficulty communicating with one another. I scheduled almost all of our previous sessions during dry days… Possibly an oversight on my part, but at the time she was fairly clear about not intending to get into fights.
"No, that was an exercise to help you maintain control of your abilities when under stress. This is about how to actually fight."
"Ah-. Against you?"
"We will be sparring, but I think I'll start you off against something a little easier."
I fabricate… A basic humanoid robot frame, with a kinetic belt to let it fly, and… Basic combat programming. The O.M.A.C.s were probably more intelligent, but we can work up to that. Uh… Ah. Heat-resistant armour panels but leave the joints exposed, add a low-power plasma pulse gun to the head and… Weaker crumbler gauntlets to the hands. Enough to sting, not enough to actually disintegrate her.
And activate.
"You'll be fighting this thing."
"Did you have that in subspace?"
"No, I just built it. I'm not expecting-."
She holds up her right hand in a 'stop' gesture. "Wait a moment. You can just create a robot out of nothing?"
"Not out of nothing. I need ring power, and I'm not a technologist or programmer myself so I'm mostly copying other people's work."
"But you don't need raw materials or parts?"
"That reduces the cost, but no. Why?"
"There's been a few times lately where it might have been nice to have an army of robots."
"Alright. Do you know any A.I. programmers you would trust with programming their brains with the capacity to make the complexity of judgements that they would need? Because the best I could do would be a telepresence system or making them fully intelligent in their own right. And I don't really have time to be the father of a new machine species at the moment."
She frowns thoughtfully. "I could.. do it."
"Really? I thought you were focused on pure maths."
"Yes, but I could adapt the Eradicator program-."
"Noooo."
"Okay, the name's a bit misleading, but they were really just high quality security robots."
"Which need constant oversight and direction and whose evaluation matrix makes them a bit weird about kryptonian societal norms."
"I could change those!"
"You could, except that humans aren't a monoculture. There's no such thing as 'human cultural norms', and from what I remember about their value judgement system they need something in there in order to judge anything."
She exhales, eyes dipping as she thinks it over. "It should still be a solvable problem."
"Feel free to look into it. But this drone has basic combat programming and nothing else."
She nods. "And the dangerous parts are the hands and the face, just like the Operatives."
"It uses far less power, but you should act as if they were dangerous."
"But they're not?"
"A hit wouldn't be. If it could grab you for several minutes it would be, but I'd call it off if that was happening."
She nods. "What should I do?"
"To start with, evade it for a minute and then destroy it." I make a stopwatch construct behind me. "I'll lecture you while you're doing that as an additional distraction."
"Right." She nods, locking her eyes on the robot.
"Activate."
I release the robot and start the clock. It drops a little in the air before activating its kinetic belt, then checks its surroundings. Then it locks onto Kara and charges its plasma gun.
"Is it on easy mode?"
"You heard me say that I'm-" The robot takes a long ranged shot, which Kara effortlessly evades. "-not a programmer, right? There's an adaptive component, so it won't just-" It takes another shot which Kara evades again, and then starts flying towards her with its hands to its sides. "-keep taking long ranged shots forever. If it can't learn quickly enough, I'll make a few more and network-" Three shots in quick succession, and Kara has to actually put a little effort into dodging in the right direction to avoid all three. "-them together."
"Does it know that I only have to survive a minute?"
"Not in any meaningful sense. It will learn that you only attack after a minute, but it's not mentally complex enough to 'know' things. It doesn't have abstract reasoning."
The robot accelerates as Kara backs up. Since she has no particular reason to let it get close enough to punch her until the minute is up, it's going to have to pursue her. I might add a restriction after the first couple of bouts, but that's an intelligent thing to realise.
"One thing you should always-" The robot continues making shots, and-. Ah, it's realised that it can vary the speed at which they move. It tries a trio of faster shots, but all they do is increase Kara's focus. "-do is evaluate where the danger comes from, both to yourself and others. Sometimes, it's best to keep away-" I gesture to her and the robot. "-while in others it's better -or essential- to rush down the target as quickly as possible. If you encountered this robot in the wild you'd be better off attacking it the moment you realised that its weapons weren't dangerous to you, because they are more dangerous to other people."
She glances at the clock behind me, then dodges a cluster of shots the robot times to bracket her at the same time. She's forced to move upwards more, but that's about all it achieved.
"What if it's not obvious?"
"You can provisionally estimate it based on known factors, such as available power supply and any previous examples of weapons from the same villain. You can hold back and test it, for example by throwing things at it to see how it responds. Does it ignore things it doesn't consider threats, or dodge or deflect everything? Can it dodge? What's its peripheral vision like? And depending on what else is going on you might decide that it doesn't matter and just try to avoid getting hit."
Kara nods, watches the time run out and then fires her heat vision at the robot's neck. It melts through, head and body falling towards the arctic ground.
I catch both, and reattach them.
"Good. Again."
21:52 GMT
Kara looks around the arctic panorama. 24 hour sunlight, air temperature a balmy 1oC and filled with intermittent sleet. Fortunately, my armour is sealed and Kara's robes are hydrophobic.
"Am I going to be shooting at targets again?"
Between my ring and her super senses, we have no difficulty communicating with one another. I scheduled almost all of our previous sessions during dry days… Possibly an oversight on my part, but at the time she was fairly clear about not intending to get into fights.
"No, that was an exercise to help you maintain control of your abilities when under stress. This is about how to actually fight."
"Ah-. Against you?"
"We will be sparring, but I think I'll start you off against something a little easier."
I fabricate… A basic humanoid robot frame, with a kinetic belt to let it fly, and… Basic combat programming. The O.M.A.C.s were probably more intelligent, but we can work up to that. Uh… Ah. Heat-resistant armour panels but leave the joints exposed, add a low-power plasma pulse gun to the head and… Weaker crumbler gauntlets to the hands. Enough to sting, not enough to actually disintegrate her.
And activate.
"You'll be fighting this thing."
"Did you have that in subspace?"
"No, I just built it. I'm not expecting-."
She holds up her right hand in a 'stop' gesture. "Wait a moment. You can just create a robot out of nothing?"
"Not out of nothing. I need ring power, and I'm not a technologist or programmer myself so I'm mostly copying other people's work."
"But you don't need raw materials or parts?"
"That reduces the cost, but no. Why?"
"There's been a few times lately where it might have been nice to have an army of robots."
"Alright. Do you know any A.I. programmers you would trust with programming their brains with the capacity to make the complexity of judgements that they would need? Because the best I could do would be a telepresence system or making them fully intelligent in their own right. And I don't really have time to be the father of a new machine species at the moment."
She frowns thoughtfully. "I could.. do it."
"Really? I thought you were focused on pure maths."
"Yes, but I could adapt the Eradicator program-."
"Noooo."
"Okay, the name's a bit misleading, but they were really just high quality security robots."
"Which need constant oversight and direction and whose evaluation matrix makes them a bit weird about kryptonian societal norms."
"I could change those!"
"You could, except that humans aren't a monoculture. There's no such thing as 'human cultural norms', and from what I remember about their value judgement system they need something in there in order to judge anything."
She exhales, eyes dipping as she thinks it over. "It should still be a solvable problem."
"Feel free to look into it. But this drone has basic combat programming and nothing else."
She nods. "And the dangerous parts are the hands and the face, just like the Operatives."
"It uses far less power, but you should act as if they were dangerous."
"But they're not?"
"A hit wouldn't be. If it could grab you for several minutes it would be, but I'd call it off if that was happening."
She nods. "What should I do?"
"To start with, evade it for a minute and then destroy it." I make a stopwatch construct behind me. "I'll lecture you while you're doing that as an additional distraction."
"Right." She nods, locking her eyes on the robot.
"Activate."
I release the robot and start the clock. It drops a little in the air before activating its kinetic belt, then checks its surroundings. Then it locks onto Kara and charges its plasma gun.
"Is it on easy mode?"
"You heard me say that I'm-" The robot takes a long ranged shot, which Kara effortlessly evades. "-not a programmer, right? There's an adaptive component, so it won't just-" It takes another shot which Kara evades again, and then starts flying towards her with its hands to its sides. "-keep taking long ranged shots forever. If it can't learn quickly enough, I'll make a few more and network-" Three shots in quick succession, and Kara has to actually put a little effort into dodging in the right direction to avoid all three. "-them together."
"Does it know that I only have to survive a minute?"
"Not in any meaningful sense. It will learn that you only attack after a minute, but it's not mentally complex enough to 'know' things. It doesn't have abstract reasoning."
The robot accelerates as Kara backs up. Since she has no particular reason to let it get close enough to punch her until the minute is up, it's going to have to pursue her. I might add a restriction after the first couple of bouts, but that's an intelligent thing to realise.
"One thing you should always-" The robot continues making shots, and-. Ah, it's realised that it can vary the speed at which they move. It tries a trio of faster shots, but all they do is increase Kara's focus. "-do is evaluate where the danger comes from, both to yourself and others. Sometimes, it's best to keep away-" I gesture to her and the robot. "-while in others it's better -or essential- to rush down the target as quickly as possible. If you encountered this robot in the wild you'd be better off attacking it the moment you realised that its weapons weren't dangerous to you, because they are more dangerous to other people."
She glances at the clock behind me, then dodges a cluster of shots the robot times to bracket her at the same time. She's forced to move upwards more, but that's about all it achieved.
"What if it's not obvious?"
"You can provisionally estimate it based on known factors, such as available power supply and any previous examples of weapons from the same villain. You can hold back and test it, for example by throwing things at it to see how it responds. Does it ignore things it doesn't consider threats, or dodge or deflect everything? Can it dodge? What's its peripheral vision like? And depending on what else is going on you might decide that it doesn't matter and just try to avoid getting hit."
Kara nods, watches the time run out and then fires her heat vision at the robot's neck. It melts through, head and body falling towards the arctic ground.
I catch both, and reattach them.
"Good. Again."
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