Re: AI in FT (was Re: Be gentle...)

At 06:15 PM 7/13/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Allan forget your central computer brain running the ship and imagine
>this:	Throughout the ship are linked robots each capable of operating
>independantly.  Much like say, Terminators from the movies, distributed
>throughout the ship linked togethor in one large network.  When linked
>together they have their combined intelligence and storage to run the
>ship.	This way one hit doesn't destroy the ships 'brain'.  Also
imagine
>a turret cut off from the rest of the ship but still able to function
>because one or more robots is still linked to it.  This goes along with
>todays trend of moving from host based systems to a more distributed
>style of processing.
>
>One argument I can see is, well why not just distribute the 'brain'
>throughout the ship?  Well by having individual robots you have a ready
>made boarding, damage control and defense force.  I'm getting chills
>just imaging those Terminators just standing still with just the
flicker
>of activity lights to show that anything is going on.	Kinda makes the
>Borg collective laughable in comparison.
>

	This discussion has taken in a great many different things, from
simple 
automata up to Culture Minds (which I like, being a Iain Banks fan). 
Even a
 Culture drone is _way_ above most of the AIs in this thread, and a Mind
is
 so powerful it stays mostly in hyperspace (so it can operate faster),
leaving
 only a few thousand tons in normal space.  Using its fields, it is in a
real sense
 present throughout it's ship, which also tends to have a large human
and drone
 "crew" many or most of which are simply guests and friends.  The Borg 
Collective would be a fairly typical Hegemonising Swarm, the sort of
thing 
the Culture puts a stop to on a regular basis (not necessarily by
violence- not 
enough opportunity for a Mind to show off how clever it is...).

I can't recommend Banks' work too highly-  "Use of Weapons" is my
favourite.

cheers
Rob Paul
PS:  Culture ships have some of the best names in SF!

"
Rob Paul
Dept. of Zoology
University of Oxford
South Parks Road
Oxford
(01865) 271124

rpaul@worf.molbiol.ox.ac.uk

Once again, villainy is rotting meat before the maggots of justice!
"