Why No Robots?

[ShawnDriscoll]

I read somewhere a long time ago about the 3rd Imperium not approving of robots in their culture. Can't remember where.

DUNE's ancient history has a bad time with robots, which I thought was ok. Robots were more of a creature feature in that book.

Last night I found in Isaac Asimov's Foundation's Edge an explanation for why robots would be a bad idea for humanity before ever being tried. And it made much more sense to me why the 3rd Imperium is not fond of such robotic ideas either. I don't want to spoil it for those that haven't read the book.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Third Imperium uses a lot of robots, but due to an assassin bot incident in the years leading up to the Imperium, and an ancient phobia of death machines held by the Vilani, the Imperium does not approve of *armed* robots.

 

[aramis]

I read somewhere a long time ago about the 3rd Imperium not approving of robots in their culture. Can't remember where.

DUNE's ancient history has a bad time with robots, which I thought was ok. Robots were more of a creature feature in that book.

Last night I found in Isaac Asimov's Foundation's Edge 2 an explanation for why robots would be a bad idea for humanity before ever being tried. And it made much more sense to me why the 3rd Imperium is not fond of such robotic ideas either. I don't want to spoil it for those that haven't read the book.

there are [spoiler][/spoiler] tags for a reason, Shawn...

... some of us cannot drag ourselves through Asimov's style.

 

[Timerover51]

there are [spoiler][/spoiler] tags for a reason, Shawn...

... some of us cannot drag ourselves through Asimov's style.

I second that. I never got through Foundation, as I started to get really bored. I like his factual essays much more than his science fiction, which I have never viewed as that good.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

there are [spoiler][/spoiler] tags for a reason, Shawn...

... some of us cannot drag ourselves through Asimov's style.

Can I do a link to an audiobook on YouTube, pointing to the 2-minute read part? We'll find out.

Spoiler:

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kalXOejQASM&t=4h39m23s

 

[BlackBat242]

"Robots" are perfectly legal throughout the 3I. Even ones with a high level of artificial intelligence (AI) are legal.

So are weapon-carrying "robots", although there are laws concerning safety protocols, etc. See Book 8 Robots (CT, by GDW).

However, sentient (self-aware) "robots" (or computers, or any constructed device) are illegal in most places. This is a legacy of the Shudusham Accords, an agreement between the worlds of the Sylean Federation. The 37th Amendment to the accords states that no "pseudo-biological robot" (one designed to externally mimic a living creature or species) may attempt to pass itself off as a living being (paraphrased version of the actual wording).

While the Accords lost their legal authority and standing when the 3I was formed, most worlds, and indeed the 3I itself base their laws on the principles of the Accords - including the ban on an artificially-created entity claiming to be more than a machine.

After all, being "self-aware" is normally considered to be the differentiation point between an entity that can be considered property and an entity with its own sovereign legal rights.

 

[Condottiere]

Comes down to legal and financial liability.

While the chances would seem somewhat minimal, what happens if they get hacked, or go crazy on their own? Especially if they all go mass hysteric at the same time. The Zhodani have been probing Imperium computer networks for weaknesses for centuries.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Comes down to legal and financial liability.

While the chances would seem somewhat minimal, what happens if they get hacked, or go crazy on their own? Especially if they all go mass hysteric at the same time. The Zhodani have been probing Imperium computer networks for weaknesses for centuries.

Source for this?

 

[LeperColony]

I think the reason may have to do with LBB Traveller's general attitude towards technology.

If you look at computers, life extension, cybernetics and robotics (the TL-15 robot can play cards and dance!), the LBBs had a pretty dim view of our potential advances. Other than jump drives and gravitics, that is.

Once the normative environment of the 3I is established, the Zhodani become even more alien by their extensive use of warbots.

Of course, in newer materials like Agent of the Imperium, we're seeing a more nuanced and developed technological environment, but originally I think there was this idea that robotics and technology were going to advance, naturally, but not really change life as we know it, such that 3I society was more or less recognizable to us.

The reality is the OTU is set so far in the future (as much time as separates us from the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt), that technology and its attendant social and cultural impacts, to say nothing of extraterrestrials, should probably make the 3I quite bizarre to us.

 

[Timerover51]

The reality is the OTU is set so far in the future (as much time as separates us from the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt), that technology and its attendant social and cultural impacts, to say nothing of extraterrestrials, should probably make the 3I quite bizarre to us.

One thing that is not going to change is human nature. Also, if someone makes a game that assumes close to 5,000 years of technical advancement, it will be "quite bizarre" as you said, and probably incomprehensible to play. If you want to sell a game, you have to make it in terms that players can understand.

 

[Spenser TR]

...If you want to sell a game, you have to make it in terms that players can understand.

Perhaps nitpicky, but along with understandable I’d add “that they’ll buy into.”

There’s an interesting distinction between Traveller fans who are down with what is now a retrotech point of view, and those who prefer what feels sensible and playable given today’s common/foreseeable tech.

 

[BwapTED]

One thing that is not going to change is human nature. Also, if someone makes a game that assumes close to 5,000 years of technical advancement, it will be "quite bizarre" as you said, and probably incomprehensible to play. If you want to sell a game, you have to make it in terms that players can understand.

There are some people living on Earth today who live much as people did over 5K years ago.

In the OTU the Vilani cultural aversion to innovation and major de-civilizing/isolating events like the Long Night surely have retarded the spread and pace of technical and scientific developments.

I agree about making a game setting players can understand.

 

[Timerover51]

Perhaps nitpicky, but along with understandable I’d add “that they’ll buy into.”

There’s an interesting distinction between Traveller fans who are down with what is now a retrotech point of view, and those who prefer what feels sensible and playable given today’s common/foreseeable tech.

I agree with the "buy into" comment. The key with Dungeons and Dragons and other fantasy games was that they had a milieu and genre of literature that a very large number of people could buy into, and clearly the enormous success of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit did not hurt either.

In science fiction writing, it is not the technology that drives the story, although it helps, but the how the characters react to the situation that they are in. In Andre Norton's Voodoo Planet, the "Solar Queen" crew is essentially dealing with "magic", not technology.

As for robots, in Randall Garrett's Unwise Child, you have an Artificial Intelligence gradually going insane, and how do the characters deal with that, and also a murderer in their midst.

Both Voodoo Planet and Unwise Child can be found on Project Gutenberg.

 

[BwapTED]

And off to Project Gutenberg I go.

Thanks!

 

[mike wightman]

I'm all for players being able to start with the familiar, but they have to soon realise they are not in Kansas anymore.

Human cultures, what would be considered typical human nature, has changed massively over the course of recorded history in the various countries and cultural regions of the world.

While the typical 21st century Traveller player may like the idea that their character comes from a society that is similar to a contemporary liberal democracy the truth is very different.

The 3I is a feudal dictatorship, with no democratic processes at all beyond the protocols of frontier planet local governments, a subsector duke rules with the authority of the Emperor.

Cultures change over time. The Vilani pre-Imperium were explorers, merchants, colonisers, adventurers. They then became blood thirsty oppressors for a thousand years of consolidation wars. They then settles into deliberate cultural and technological stagnation. Which of these three represents the true nature of the Vilani?

How would Vilani worlds, cut off from the authorities that enforced the cultural stagnation change over nearly two thousand years?

How different are the Solomani colony worlds developed by transhumanists, genetically engineered uplifts and the like from mainstream polities within the Confederation?

You don't need aliens when every world can have a unique human culture - take examples from real world history and adapt to the far future.

Back to robots - I have never read Asimov either for pretty much the same reasons given by Timerover and Aramis, and yet I came up with a pretty similar explanation as to where the machine intelligences went at the end of the Rule of Man.

A1 - sentient AI on derelict starship, JTAS Robots articles, A2 rules for robots. We got rules for robots before we got rules for alien races. There is one other option - you and the referee could decide using nothing more than LBB1 that your character is a sentient robot...

 

[Enoki]

In game terms, the lack of robots can most easily be attributed to one thing: They're boring.

Robots are no different in essence than using firearms, driving an air raft, or using other technology. That's what they are... a piece of technology. When you try to put them into a storyline, or game as anything else they fail as boring.
Traveller doesn't have the technology level within it normally (TL ~ 18+) where you start to get true general purpose AI and a robot / android / something similar that can become an NPC or even a character and makes decisions that adds to the game beyond simply being there and doing something everyone expects.

Interacting with a kiosk that has some minimum AI or a robot with specific, limited, functions just isn't going to add much excitement or game value.

 

[aramis]

Interacting with a kiosk that has some minimum AI or a robot with specific, limited, functions just isn't going to add much excitement or game value.

that depends upon the GM and the players.

I've often used the automation levels to good dramatic effect for the reminder "you're not in the modern era."

 

[Condottiere]

If you don't think that Alien Nations aren't trying to hack into each other's communication and computer networks, then the Great Game is no longer being played in this galaxy.

Taking real life examples, election machines could have their tallies altered, nuclear processing plants can be hacked by social engineering, industrial espionage is now conducted at a distance, and who's liable if a self driving car crashes?

 

[aramis]

If you don't think that Alien Nations aren't trying to hack into each other's communication and computer networks, then the Great Game is no longer being played in this galaxy.

Taking real life examples, election machines could have their tallies altered, nuclear processing plants can be hacked by social engineering, industrial espionage is now conducted at a distance, and who's liable if a self driving car crashes?

Only if (1) they can get to them and (2) their tech is compatible enough to do so.

 

[Condottiere]

They've had centuries of contact. And collaborators can be found to point out and interpret critical data points.

I think that Hivers would be very interested in social media.