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@not1stepbackwardLore Advisor:
@bulgarexB-Roll Footage: Cryptic North
Special Thanks To: Champions Online Roleplayers community site
Hi guys, I made this to share ideas and information with everyone in the Champions setting. With game content like Fatal Error, the Mechanon Invasion, the Automaton Archetype, I thought this story very relevant.
The Triple-A Act is not something I made up; it's actually part of the Champions setting which gives robotic characters human rights. If you're roleplaying a robotic character (as am I), I thought this might be an interesting topic.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Watch out for rioters and looters.
Comments
Her complete lack of consideration for collateral damage... is probably something they don't want brought up during this whole thing o.o
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
/steals Magneto's telepath-proof bucket
/puts bucket on head
I've always RP'd Si2 Prime under the assumption that while sentient AIs/androids may have legally recognized and protected rights, that doesn't mean they automatically earn the public's trust. As it's set up right now, it's up to player characters to overcome any bad reputation androids might have. AI good guys, at least as Cryptic has utilized the lore, are awfully thin on the ground. SOCRATES, Belle Steele... um... uh... I'm sure I'll think of a third before STO's next expansion comes out.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Though I don't RP (mostly because of lack of a group and time, as I pass most of the time in game creating char concepts or doing missions and alerts), I'm always interested in the lore.
Anyways, good work!
Edit: Nice design!
DoomedLuke at Primus Data Base
And at DeviantArt
Well, "deserve" doesn't equate to "have under law." In fact the Triple-A Act was enacted as a response to the American Supreme Court's decision that the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, guaranteeing equal protection under the law to all "persons," does not apply to beings not of human genetic stock, since only such human beings are "persons" by legal definition (all "men" being created equal). So the Act did indeed grant non-humans rights they didn't have previously. And it would be much easier for the legislature to repeal it than an amendment to the Constitution.
Many modern human governments don't guarantee or recognize comparable "rights." Neither does Nature. Ultimately they're a conceptualization a particular society bestows within its jurisdiction. Whether that society believes all others should accept their conceptualization doesn't make it so. That's why those of us living in societies that do need to continue to work not only to persuade others to come to the same conclusion, but to assure that those rights aren't eroded in our own.
Some of the debates on these very forums have demonstrated that a position that artificial intelligences are fundamentally different from humans, and should not have the same rights, is neither unreasonable nor logically unjustifiable. (Note that I'm not saying it's "right.")
Again, gradii, I agree with you that granting such a differently intelligent sapient equal rights would be dangerous. But that's a practical concern, not the same as excluding them in principle.
(The above undertaken purely in the spirit of intellectual debate.)
And so, whether or not an entity deserves rights, society can choose to grant or withhold them. Which brings us back to where we started.
It's a personal peeve of mine that many people use "sentient" when they mean having an intellect capable of reason and creativity. By definition "sentience" is simply the capacity to sense and feel, one defining feature of life versus things that are not alive. Even a paramecium is sentient.
Most of the hard-science writers I've read seem to prefer the term "sapient," as in "homo sapiens," to distinguish that kind of intelligence from the instinctive responses of other animals. (It's actually usually translated as "wise," which in itself is debatable, but it's the word they use.) :rolleyes:
I'll share my thoughts for this comic. I can suspend disbelief for super-powers, technology, magic, but I cannot believe American politics would not somehow react to A.I.-related attacks, like on Socrates or by Mechanon.
Because American politics would rename French Fries to Freedom Fries...but this is so not a criticism or cynicism about the U.S. It just seemed too unrealistic not to have something like this happen. Breaks immersion, lol.
And of course, this scenario is not something I invented. While I wasn't trying to be purely derivative or parody, Marvel Comics in particular talks about the Registration Act with mutants or just superheroes in general.
(Reminder - Captain America: Civil War coming in 2016.)
But most of all, this comic was not singling out android, A.I., robot (or brobot) characters. It's not there to cause grief for those that choose to play one. In fact, this comic was designed to protect those players, of which I am one.
The Triple-A Act exists. It's there for all. Does NOT cover undead, though!
This example is a great application of applying character to lore and lore to character, good stuff. It's this stuff, right here!
I've been talking to lawyers recently. I've come to a bit of a realisation.
It's this. There's the law. Then there's politics. Then there's right and wrong. They're different things. Any relationship between those elements should be considered purely coincidental! They're not a given.
This is an actual verbatim talking to the lawyer, I won't tell you the context, but it's so true.
Me: But this doesn't make any sense.
Lawyer: I agree; it doesn't make any sense, but it happens to be the law.
Now, Si2 Prime has been doing the robot thing longer than Arnie's done his thing, so please share more of your headcanon or experiences. 'Cos your Magneto helmet buckethead's working, I can't read your mind no more.
I appreciate everyone's feedback, but it happens here is something I never considered.
I try to write about the Champions world, because everyone here is part of this world. If I were to write mainly on my characters, only people who know me benefits. Thus, it's not lore for lore's sake, but for the setting and everyone in it.
However, I never considered lore as something that directly enhances characters. It's so obvious, but I completely overlooked it. Lore can be like a costume piece or an aura, there to augment your character. That's valuable...and free!
That's something I'll keep in mind. That's a cool idea.
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She was a clone, of technically human stock.
A person with unstable DNA, which someone wanted to find out what would happen if you cloned them.
200 completely ,different people later.
Ingame, she had to keep it hidden.
compared to the rest of the party, she was fairly normal and some of them were human.
also Clouds at dawn, my micro dragon(25cm at start of game)... (ok mutant,baby chinese dragon. she had horns, legs and everything from her hatching)
Was sentient, definately not human. Was intelligent, did think like a human, which covers quite a few horrifying ways of thinking.
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There's a significant imbalance between heroes and villains in the Champions universe, especially within CO, and I think it certainly applies to the public perception of that imbalance.
On one side, you have Cyberlord, Cybermind, Dr. Destroyer, Mechanon, VIPER, all building and/or hacking computers and robots for evil purposes. Mechanon hasn't worked up the guts to go after a sentient AI, but Cybermind has. And we know Mechanon has built infiltration units that impersonate humans, although we haven't seen them in-game yet. I don't know how well known Cyberlord and Cybermind are to the general public, but Dr. D, Mechanon, and VIPER are the Big Three.
On the other side, we have a void. We don't have a Vision or Citadel & Luminary to carry the banner for benevolent AIs. The closest we have is SOCRATES, but to the public, she's little more than Siri for Superheroes. ([ding-ding] "I have found three muggings, one drug deal, and one Purple Gang member violating Michigan's open-carry laws in your area.")
And I get the impression that it's by design. Champions lore defines magic as the root cause of all super-heroic power. So at a macro level, Magic vs. Technology has worked its way into the story as a proxy for Good vs. Evil. The closest the Champions themselves have come to AI, outside of SOCRATES, was DEFTRON, and that ended poorly enough that Harmon hasn't messed with AI since. But Dr. Destroyer, builder of Destroids and death-ray satellites, abhors magic.
With no prevailing counter-example, then, I find it hard to believe any citizen would look at an android hero and not fear that they'd eventually get hacked or go rampant.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
I do agree that published precedents for "heroic" or "good" AIs in the current official CU are thin, but they aren't totally lacking. UNTIL's AI HUGIN has served the entire agency well since 1983. There was also at least one such being in the ranks of the heroes, the "living robot" called Transac who was a member of Chicago's superhero team, the Peacekeepers; but it was destroyed by Taipan in 2000.
Yeah, that's true. I just used lore for more user-friendly text! I never thought me and mine could benefit.
You wrote the Unique Origins thread a while back. With that in mind, I'll be bugging you again in the near future.
See, perfect. Not the same law, but the same issue, and this is a comic issue about that issue.
At what point is a person a person? We can use a concept like sentience, but then it becomes an issue of how is that defined, how is it measured. We can't even decide on IQ tests or SATs for humans.
CU describes the Triple-A Act as having some sort of sentience test, but you can see how lawyers can argue that.
An excellent example. CU does not have a "face" to represent A.I.s.
The closest is Socrates, who is not so much a face as she is an App.
I see the point that it's not good vs. evil in magic vs. technology, but simply that A.I.s are like the Frankenstein's Monster. The science that created it is not inherently evil, but the creation somehow remains the Monster.
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maybe i could work this into annie matronic's backstory
Nope.
That's not the thing.
There are no in-universe equivalents for Jocasta or Vision, because CU setting was written for PnP game sessions with an assumption that premiere roles can be filled by player characters.
Robot characters are minority in comic books when compared to organics. A niche for this minority was left to fill by player -created heroes in PnP games.
On the other hand, CU villains are more diverse and come with every possible background because there must be enough of them to allow for themed PnP campaign for pretty much every possible superhero team.
Also, an inhuman character being eligible to fall under the Triple-A act does not makes them falling under this act automatically. Firstly they need to be evaluated by authorities before they are being acknowledged as being protected by this bill.
And the bill itself is US only. Supposedly similar rights could be in place in EU countries, looking at Sr Silverback being UK citizen, but still some authority would need to evaluate first if the creature is sentient and free-willed at all.
At a meta level, though, it's much easier to make your own fame in your own P'n'P campaign than in an MMO, especially one like CO that does a halfway decent job of avoiding the 1,000,000 Chosen Ones trope.* We're all one big happy roster of good guys here, and no single character is going to steer lore development in any given direction. Cryptic shouldn't allow that anyway, since it would only create resentment and dissention in the community.
Not with player characters, at least. NPCs are how MMO "gamemasters" set the tone and direct the story, and it's up to RP players to find their character's place from there. That's why I point out the imbalance between android heroes and villains. Those back bench android heroes from the source books aren't even name checked. I'm even pulling DEFTRON from the Champions Universe book, which, as I understand it, retcons the 5th ed lore through the MMO for the 6th ed. And given how many times I could read the eye-rolling in Bulgarex's explanations of how Cryptic's writing deviates from the books, it would be wise to stick to the MMO's established lore anyway, lest an editorial retcon hit you in the face.
Aaaaaanyway, to bring this back around to the Triple-A Act, Tiger's observation sounds perfectly reasonable, as members of the [Mumble] Party point at all those Destroids and Mechanon units as a reason to restrict or even repeal the act, while members of the *Cough* Party speak of the principles involved, even though they can't come up with a name off the top of their heads.
* As opposed to a certain other game I could mention, where the final confrontation with the villain of the last major expansion is scripted for the players' "chosen ones" to fail so the lead writer's mary sue NPC can jump in and kill-steal.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
It is kinda irrelevant, because this lore was written precisely for PnP campaigns, not for mmo. This is why it has no NPCs like that.
Cryptic didn't set the tone, they just did not care enoguh to modify it and add (or don't add on the purpose) robotic hero NPCs.
What you are reading as an intentional writing is just a leftover from the way how manuals were written for PnP game groups...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Was I that obvious? Sorry. :redface: I guess my subjective opinions on some of the changes and additions Cryptic made to the setting do bleed through, although a few I actually like and approve of. But that's not really relevant, as what Cryptic decides takes priority for what's "official."
IMHO Meedacthunist is accurate as to the reason behind the generally lower profile of NPC heroes vs. villains in Champions. But I long ago noticed that heroic NPC robots, androids, cyborgs, and the like were a rather more prominent feature of the previous incarnation of the CU, before the Fifth Edition reboot. I think it's fair to say they're under-represented compared to their villainous counterparts in the current setting, even given the hero/villain disparity. However, I don't get the impression that was a deliberate choice by the writers of the PnP game, nor that there's any particular significance to it.
But IME Cryptic stay true to the spirit if not the letter of the PnP game lore far more often that they deviate from it. The differences often have more to do with the differing priorities of MMO vs. PnP. In places where Champions Online is still silent, I consider it fair to draw from the tabletop game books for inspiration. Cryptic has mostly done the same thing.
So I fall under this category for this act right?
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Yeah, 10-4.
Your sovereignty, though, I don't know. We'll have to find a real lawyer on that.
So I was reading the Committee Study on CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, which you may have seen in the news. Most of it is about Gitmo. You wouldn't believe how many times "rectal" is used.
(Tbh, it was about 50 times in 500 pages. But still.)
Feel free to insert your own "Don't Drop The Soap" reference here.
Way to have situational awareness for your character in the public's eyes.
A minor thing, but so far we had 3 specific mentions or pictures of gynoids and female A.I. Keep in mind the Triple-A Act was ratified in 1979, the same year as the Equal Rights Amendment IRL, which says:
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
As we talk about complex things like sentience tests, or if a program program counts as a person, etc. (all good questions), let us keep in mind U.S. law only recognised women as having equal rights 35 years ago.
There's complex political issues everywhere, it's complicated, but srsly take nothing for granted.
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Pardon the thread necro, but I overlooked a very prominent artificially-intelligent superhero from Champions lore. Lightwave was an android with potent light-manipulating powers who was created by one Dr. Victor Padgett in 1971. He served with the renowned superhero team, the Sentinels, for nearly twenty years, until being destroyed in battle with Dark Seraph in 1991.
Lightwave is written up in issue #19 of Hero Games's electronic magazine, Digital Hero, in one of a series of articles detailing the history of the Sentinels. The article doesn't discuss Lightwave's legal status, but as a well-known member of a famous hero team with government connections, some kind of accommodation must have been made for him, even before the Triple-A Act was passed by Congress.
(And yes, Lightwave is very clearly an homage to the Vision, of Marvel's Avengers.)