Comic for Monday, October 2nd
Oct02
Still running a little late on these. Haven’t really been able to quite get things properly scheduled yet. It may not seem like it, but it does take me quite some time to draw/write these pages, so it takes getting ahead of the ball, and then staying there for quite awhile, the later which of is the part that proves a little too tricky for me.
I should probably note that Kevi is an island nation of the coast of Malsa and Arpon. While technically an independent country, it is very closely aligned with Malsa, having a far smaller population and economy then it’s neighbor.
First sketch of October is up on the Patreon for free here. Tis the month of Monsters and Dress Up, so we start with both 🙂
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They’re getting so desperate to get rid of Peter they even hacked your webpage!
Well, they’ve succeeded in a temporary set back… 😉
His secret weakspot, the hand that draws him.
Hi Everyone-
As some of you may have noticed, the site was down for awhile. Long story short, the site was hacked, and the restoration process has been tricky.
I don’t think there is any reason to be alarmed at this point, there is no real user data on the site, and they were not going for stuff like that best I can tell. For awhile it was looking like we might lose the content, but it’s back now (hopefully to stay 🙂 ).
I’ll keep you all posted, but for now I think there is a good chance Thursday’s comic will be delayed, as this has taken up most of my spare time trying to get the site back up.
Thanks,
-PastUtopia
That sucks. Thanks for the information.
Any clue what they WERE looking for, or did it seem to be more of a fishing expedition with no real set goal?
Well, it’s one of the following:
1) A fishing expedition for data – unlikely. They put in more effort then makes sense for that, considering they should know a wordpress site wouldn’t store the sort of data they want.
2) An attempt to add my servers to their Malware/SEO/Spam network. This at least is a potentially reason, but it was unlikely to work out – even if I couldn’t get the site data back I would have just nuked it, it’s not like they were going to keep it. Typically if you want to add something to the botnet, you want to be subtle and just tuck your shit in the corner – I don’t typically monitor my outgoing traffic, so it could have operated quietly and efficiently for months/years.
3) An attempt just piss on everything.
Most likely it’s #3, or a rookie attempt at #2 that has no real idea what they are doing. A site like this gets a hack attempt every few weeks, usually by bots or script kiddies, but typically those fail as we have at least basic security.
My guess is this is the more dangerous evolution of ‘script kiddie’ called ‘a dickwad’*, someone who has script kiddied so long and is willing to invest more time they’ve actually got up to date tools rather than shit that’s already been patched out. These are typically people without a real financial incentive but enjoy ‘the lulz’ of wrecking people’s shit.
As noted, the only real defense we had against this sort of behavior is that most people that could don’t bother – either because they are not ‘a dickwad’ and have an actual job, or because they are a professional dickwad and are busy hacking something they can resell.
There is a surprising number of people in this world that like to destroy stuff because you had the gall to put stuff out there for people to enjoy, due to the nature, webcomics attract more of this sort then usually (since they are usually pretty easy to find flaws with, being a predominately amateur hobby) and this webcomic – while far far less controversial than many – has it’s requisite handful of detractors.
*’a dickwad’ is not a technical term (like script kiddie), it’s just a childish insult.
This attempt on Peter’s life to force Arron to retire makes it rather clear who may be ultimately responsible for the recent attempt on Kyle Kepler, Arron’s brother. Sophie (or, perhaps, Bianca) was probably behind that, as well.
Most likely, one of their agents fed the guy with the gun false information. I can imagine scenarios, such as Sophie’s agents looking through personnel records for anyone who lost someone tragically and who would still hold a grudge…
Though, it could have been true information. Kyle has had a long career, right? There are likely situations where a hard decision had to be made, resulting in casualties. All Sophie would have to do is leak certain secrets.
i think it’s a good theory that Sophie was involved. Probably has to be someone in the IDS or the like to get through Kyle’s security so probably not just some random crazy.
i think maybe kyle is more like Peter than like Arron, so pretty easy to imagine he has a lot of enemies that just need a get “get past security” pass they’d try and shoot him
While being a Kepler has it’s is pros, lack of people trying to kill you is rarely one. That said, it took Kyle and Arron way longer to build up their rogues galleries than it did for Peter – he’s sort of a prodigy in getting people that’d sort of like to bump him off.
What you’re saying makes sense. And it does, sort of, cast doubt on my theory. However, I noticed that you did not exactly deny it, either… 😀
Point is: The attempt on Kyle’s life had to have some plot relevance. Otherwise, there would be little to no point in the effort of making those pages (other than to insert a red herring to throw readers off). And I somehow doubt that the only plot relevance was to have an opportunity for Query to get badly damaged and reveal to Kyle that Peter has been playing with Kor’s World tech and/or true AI.
It did reveal more than that. It revealed that Peter has access to a gate system. It revealed to Peter’s father a lot of information about implant hacking (the possibility of it, the way Peter himself looked at it, that this explained why Taki wasn’t still in a coma, where Taki most likely was now that the problem with her implant was most likely fixed through said hacking). Also we learned one of the limitations of implant hacking (line of sight only). Repair of the Querry unit will likely reveal the stolen kor-world chip, which may mean that Peter will no longer be the only non-kor worlder who knows of its existence (“the easiest way to win a race is to ensure that nobody else is running” were peter’s exact words on the subject); or else the unit may start self repairing through the link and reveal THAT capability instead.
Furthermore this was the first reveal of the rest of Peter’s family and stands as an establishing shot of who they are, which is very important for anything else that might happen involving them. We know that teaching in a lower institution is not below them, nor is visiting that institution when you basically run the world (as Kyle Kepler’s “position” seems to imply, fairly directly as of a few pages ago: “How would peter even GO rogue? His father is on the CIVIL COUNCIL…”). We also know that the people Kyle keeps around him are loyal, competent, and not motivated by money (as proven by his bodyguard basically ignoring the threat of a pay cut in order to rush Kyle to a safer position); this says a lot, most likely about Kyle himself (who he want around and the loyalty he most likely encourages), possibly about the individual bodyguard character (if he turns out to be more than just a mook), or possibly about the society itself (perhaps the culture is one of extreme honor where class systems are viewed as reasons for loyalty in and of themselves). We also now know that Kyle is smart and at least a little bit experienced in “rules layering”, if you ever wondered where Peter got that habit 😉 .
Of course there is the attempt of Kyle’s life which, due to the number of people who were immediately there when it happened, probably wasn’t a “random attack” (that many security individuals don’t just “forget” to check a random person for weapons). And there may well be more, that was just the things from off the top of my head without actually going back to check the pages.
TL/DR: We learned a lot from those pages, the most relevant bits are most likely:
Peter has gate access, and important people now know.
Implant hacking is now a known element among important people.
Taki’s background and recovery.
An establishing shot for Kyle Kepler, for if he becomes more part of the story.
Also, I think it is worth mentioning that those pages didn’t necessarily out Querry as an “SMAI” (self modifying AI) nor do all “true” AI have to be self modyfying, nor did that even necessarily out Querry as a “true AI”.
Part of this is a definitional issue. Are humans a “self modifying inteligence” or simply an inteligence that can add onto their database through learning or training? Does “self modifying” mean that they can rewrite parts of their own programming or simply learn and change? Depending on that issue you can have “true AI” that isn’t “SMAI” or it may mean that all “True AI” are by nature “SMAI”.
Also there is the issue of what counts as a “True AI”. How smart does it have to be to be truly “Inteligent”? Even now in the real world we have programs that can “learn” over time, but nobody treats them as being “Inteligent”. We have programs that can borrow other programming (from other programs) to complete jobs which would make them “self modifying” but not necessarily “Inteligent”.
All this to say that if Querry were treated as nothing more than a search engine with a few other capabilities built/programmed in (such as the previously known flight and the recently discovered bodyguard and implant hacking) than there is nothing telling Kyle that Querry is any sort of an AI at all (True AI, SMAI, or otherwise).
It’s true that the categories of SMAI, True AI, and AI are somewhat arbitrary. Personally I always liked the branching out VI (Virtual Intelligence) as a term even if it’s sort of meaningless (those are also AIs) – though that term isn’t used in comic.
In the context of the comic, you could have a fully functioning AI personality (potentially what we call a true AI) that’s not an SMAI, but it’d be really hard to make. The benefit of an SMAI is that it a large part makes itself – you set it with starting priorities and limitations, and then you hit “Start”. Since an AI can iterate across it’s objectives and limitations thousands of time faster than a human could.
Hmm… I would like to ramble here for another fifteen minutes, but I have a comic to draw… 😛
Draw away, good man, draw away! 😀
AI, and the development and basic nature of inteligence itself, is something of an armature hobby of mine to keep up on. The problem with the “start the SMAI and let it go” is simplistic attributional error for success. The simplest way to explain it is to talk about a somewhat famous experiment done by the military. They took a bunch of satalite pictures, some with hidden tanks and some without, and showed it to a computer that was supposed to take that information and find its own way to figure out what to look for. It ended up being a huge success, or so it seemed at first until a second set of scientists scrutinized it. Apparently what the program was actually looking for was certain types of tree cover that often, but not always, can be used to cover tanks. The computer devised what it thought was a reasonable conclusion, which quite often was actually correct, but ended up being the wrong one.
The solution only seems simple: give the SMAI a way to “check” its work. Brute forcing the check might work (check for 100,000 correct instances rather than a sample of 1,000) but that quickly falls apart as situations change because it must be constantly run for every decision making process or else changing circumstances can completely bypass the previous work (IE: I already went through a million pictures, this is what hidden tanks look like from satelite. If I don’t end up seeing those ROUND tanks than it must just be that they aren’t tanks.). The better way is to give your AI the ability to reevaluate past decisions and to recognize faulty reasoning, all stuff that is hard enough for people to do for themselves let alone programming into an AI through boolean or other types of logic.
What you end up with isn’t “start a simple program running and let it make itself complex” but rather “start up a fully functioning AI and let it decide how to add to its capabilities as necessary over time”. This is still incredibly scary (what happens if it decides to realocate the power grid in order to ensure optimal service to its primary functions, or some such decision) but it is no longer the type of thing that most any amateur programmer can do with the right starting equipment and a big enough server-farm.
Furthermore this means that the capabilities of SMAI would be primarily teathered to the starting and updated programming that they had access to rather than basic processing power and time (IE: good programming determines your SMAI’s primary upper limits of complexity rather than the most developed SMAI is determined by which one has been running the longest on the biggest computer). In terms of the comic this means that, during the struggle over the communications grid between MIUM and the Kor World AI, MIUM would actually have a chance of stopping or at least controling the foreign SMAI despite the foreign one having most-likely having been running much longer on a much more complex system.
The problem becomes even more complex when you recognize how poorly understood creativity is and how there seems to be a recognizable divide between “creative” personalities and “logical” ones. In essance MIUM isn’t being “creative” by deciding to go “literal gene”, rather he found a good tool and quickly co-opted it for his own uses.
In the end the true advantage of AI is only in processing speed in time sensative situations or extremely open-ended structured situations. Multiple humans can work together to carry out parallel functions. Humans can be just as logical, creative, and (given enough time) can work out things to the same logical ends. By nature of being descrete entities we can have different and competing viewpoints, and hold them to the very depth of our personalities, and have no internal error caused when these parts work together. And, given less structured situations (such as the game of GO versus Chess) humans still outpace the max of what computers can do.
There even seems to be mounting evidence that the only REAL advantage that computer processing has over biological processing is focus on primary tasks as opposed to focus split between multiple tasks. Most people don’t know it, but Moors Law has been slowing consistantly for years now. The top end of computers for specific focused fuctions may not be as far from what humans are capable of for varried functions. A person doesn’t just “see” the numbers they are calculating, they see everything in their line of sight, hear/smell/feel (if not pay particular attention to) everything within their environment, monitor internal states ranging from hunger and tiredness to emotional responce and mental fatigue (and more). And when a human is done doing the math calculation all the same programming is still loaded and ready for any situation, wheras once a computer is done with the math that part of the program must be set aside and new stuff must be loaded for anything else to be done. To say it another way: Biological brains are designed to do EVERYTHING and can’t change their focus to not be designed to do EVERYTHING, while computer brains can choose to be good at “only math” (or whatever) and that focus on “only math” can be very valuable while it is needed.
Furthermore your complicated cell-phone might seem to be more compact than a human, but that stops being true once you figure out all the other aspects that are fit into a body. Humans are self-replicating, self-reparing, modifyable by use without any external attachments, come pre-modded to use external tools, process our own energy, can withstand extreme environmental changes, can withstand catestrophic impact or avoid attempts at such, can physically defend ourselves against attacks, are capable of self-locamotion, come pre-installed with the capability to take in and fully process visual information, auditory, tactile, environmental atmospheric conditions (smell), not to mention the ability to run internal simulations of behavioral patterns of dozens or hundreds or thousands of other thinking beings with diverse goals and backgrounds both individually and in varying group sizes. And that only touches the basics of what the average human can do. Suddenly your cell-phone doesn’t seem so advanced, and figuring out how much space is actually taken up by what would do all those things in place of your cell-phone destroys the illusion of the “compact” nature of it.
Of course this is all within the constraints of “our world”, what we see around us. Remind me to tell you my theory on how the multiverse might work with multiple continuims of physics bases. Perhaps in your world information is much easier to compile and logical errors are more redily apparent; in this such a world much less programming would be necessary for a SMAI to begin building itself up and it might actually be something that any average programmer could start (assuming they had a big enough processing system and such). The magic system certainly implies this, as changing the “programming” for one part of a set of matter (in our world) seems to be far more complex than it is in the comic’s world. In many ways the correct answer is not to say “it can’t work in our world, so it isn’t logical” but rather to ask “why does it work in this other world when it likely wouldn’t work in ours?”.
Don’t want to speak for @PastUtopia but I’m pretty sure he works in business AI/Automation (from previous threads on this). Just noting that I imagine he simplifies AI for the comic a lot intentionally.
I do wish this was on the current page so it would get more discussion, these threads are awesome.
Some points for consideration. It is strongly implied the prototypes are cloned human cyborgs and not fully mechanical androids – the most obvious factor being that Ila is child sized.
Consider also that brains are directly implied to still be too complicated to entirely map, even given the much higher technology level, they can’t replicate the “key” from a human brain.
Mium is a really good example of an AI if you consider what he probably is. A few at least partial biological prototypes hooked into a computer network with faster-then-light communication via the Eidos chips. In a lot of ways, he is smarter than a human, but he still does not fully “get” it. He cannot really simulate being a human perfectly, he’s acting. When he encounters something he hasn’t dealt with before, he does not really comprehend it until he can attach a rationale – he genuinely did not seem to understand why Ila cares what things taste like for example. He can taste, he just doesn’t care because he doesn’t have the humans starting behavioral template, even if his prototype has most (or all) human capabilities.
Query was a lot different then the current Mium, and I think he was a much more limited SMAI. He actually talked a lot more than the current Mium, but his limitations were obvious, he would frequently say when he hit a limit in the brief page time he’s had. I don’t think the comic implies that making Mium was simple, quite the opposite. Peter has integrated several different AIs together to do it. If you attach several different SMAIs that developed somewhat, they can resolve the problems the others had, filling in the blanks so to speak. When saw Mium think, there were at least three distinct set of processes (Query, MYM, AA), which I think is why he is a so “flexible” in figuring how to proceed, but not “creative” per se.
Remember that both Mir and Martin were basing their prototype off a human, and best we can tell F5 – who was barely sentient – was Martin’s best example. Ila is far more sentient, but also might really just be a cloned human with some adjustments or a human brain uploaded into a prototype (there is a page way back that vaguely implies that).
Back when Query saved Kyle, it looks like Query hacked Kyle’s implant to get access to his brain processing, since Query – not being a prototype – could not process the kind of information he needed to see and stop bullets, even if he had the computation power to do so from being linked into the MYM system. Things like spatial perception would likely be out of reach of his tiny mobile unit.
The reason that Mium doesn’t have a key is in fact that specialization of processing you are talking about. Since the in-comic science does not know how it works, Mium does not know how it works. A human can do things without being conscious of it. We do it all the time. An AI like Mium cannot. This part of why he dismisses Ila, she’s not actively aware of the processes that let her do things, like a human. Mium can trace back every process like a computer. That itself might be the complexity that prevents Mium from processing Eidos transactions, as the data of the transaction + the full stacktrace for the data of the transaction could potentially be vastly more than the data itself.
The last thing I would note is just my personal read on the comic, and that it is riding on the conceit that reality is just a simulation (of Eidos). This ties into real world philosophies and thought problems that at the end of the day the universe is has to just be information in some form.
On the page for Sep. 14, Sophie describes Arron as quote, “an old friend of mine.” Geez! With friends like that, trying to kill off your family, who needs enemies?
Yeah… I’m not sure being Sophie’s friend is a net positive.
“We have entered negotiation directly with her people. They accepted. We are suspending the authority of their government.”
Does she honestly believe anybody will buy that? It’s literally impossible, barring mass telepathy and a hive mind capacity, to negotiate “directly with the people” of a nation. This can’t look or sound like anything but a declaration of invasion! Is that her intent, or is she that arrogant and foolish? (I mean, nations have used flimsier pretexts for invasion, but I’m not sure how much of her own BS she’s buying.)
I would suppose she talked to one citizen of Arpon directly… Ryn. We never saw where he went after the meeting imploded, but it would seem pretty likely that he and the Consul had a discussion pending. We know that Avon has been unfairly persecuted by the IDS and likely could prove it, and that is probably the angle she is using.
That said, I think she just announced an invasion very deliberately. We have seen a lot of signs pointing to the Consul wanting an excuse to fight almost as much as the IDS does. If you think about the geography, with Resh staying out of it, Arpon is the only realistic base of operations for the IDS to quickly deploy from.
Further, the Consul almost certainly knows that Arpon was a willing participant in the IDS plot to do the opposite of this (likely involving deposing her).
“It’s literally impossible, barring mass telepathy and a hive mind capacity, to negotiate ‘directly with the people’ of a nation.”
She put a spin on it, choosing her words carefully, as she can’t afford to have it sound like they’re the aggressor. I’m certain that most of the public watching this is seeing it her way. Obviously, she negotiated with certain elements of Arpon. (Viewers may assume that she negotiated with patriotic rebels who want to overthrow the oppressive yolk of a puppet government beholden to IDS. But, likely, she means that she negotiated with Avon.)
Actually, she’s following IDS’s example. When IDS first came to Pandora they negotiated directly with their largest corporations, getting them to sign P.A.C.T. By using their world’s corporations to bypass their governments, IDS made the latter powerless to stop their plans.
How is Malsa negotiating with Avon to bypass Arpon’s government really all that different? Besides, as readers we know that even if she did not seize this opportunity to excuse an Arpon conflict, Arpon would’ve declare war on Malsa anyway.
“I mean, nations have used flimsier pretexts for invasion…
How often has one nation declared or joined in war against another with carefully spun words? Perhaps most wars throughout history? How often has a nation supported rebels – secretly or overtly – or otherwise instigated conflict with the aim of toppling a certain government in order to have a new one established more favorable to your policies or your corporate interests? Likely, far more often than is talked about in our school textbooks.
How often is false pretense used? Perhaps in allowing your own harbor to be bombed in order to rally citizens behind an unpopular war? Perhaps in a pre-emptive war instigated on false rumors of weapons of mass destruction?
It is also worth considering that while we do not have a good “average person” view of the world, Avon is apparently a very famous/loved company (publicly). Ryn himself is sort of regarded as a savant celebrity(we know he is just a marketing guy with style, but from his conversation with Ikki and a few “normal” people’s reactions, he is sort of a celebrity). Having him as the “face” of their invasion actually might be worth a lot of credibility.
At the end of the day, what this new conflict really seems to be about is PACT more than anything. Remember that one of the main reasons Malsa does not like the IDS is they hate PACT, and the most Malsan cooperation are not PACT. Avon recently split from PACT and got hammered by the IDS in retaliation, it makes perfect sense for them to side with Malsa.
Also, Peter can probably “buy” Avon’s support fairly easily. He can feed them technology that they cannot really develop without Dr. Martin (assuming that was Peter all along). There is some signs that Avon has access to Kor’s World technology, but cannot progress with it. This would mean that Peter – another person who seems to have a working knowledge of Kor’s World tech – is sort of the key. He does not have to necessarily invent anything (the evidence that Peter uses Kor’s World tech is the Eidos Card he stole from the mobile tank, he would not need to steal those if he or Mium could make them).
The really interesting part to me was Biana and Sophie were expecting to happen. Rovak and Atter are actually pretty similiar in many regards in how they are being used here. They are both “dirty weapon” mages, borderline unstoppable forces of destruction, but they both seemed to fairly aimless in their targeting, more causing general mayhem (there is an argument that Atter was more targeted, but ran afoul of the fact that Mium is sort of a hardstop to any plan that has “kill Peter” as a step).
You know, I really like that “unregistered” line. I get the feeling that’s entirely for Arron’s sake. The best part is, everyone at Central and IDS HQ would just be saying “of course he gets to stay,” because this is what he does.
Hmm, other thoughts. If Avon plays their cards right, they’re about to get all the military contracts. They’re uniquely positioned to do cutting edge research as a direct counter to the IDS.
Ryn’s certainly found the highest stakes table he could and sat down. We’ll see how he plays the game I guess 🙂
Peter was the one who picked the table. He just got Ryn to sit down in the right spot. It was Ryns choice to look at the cards and try to play.
Last panel: “…without conflict, but we stand ready TO secure the safety…”
Fixed, thanks 🙂
Biana what changed was that someone decided to let loose a very dirty bomb, without making sure it would at least hit its target. Also what didn’t change is that Peter is still working against you.
yeah… you broke it, Biana, that’s what changed lady. Maybe next time don’t piss them off so much?
It’s sort like jenga. “But the tower didn’t collapse last time I removed a block…”. World’s a complicated place.
I would also point out that for the past 24 or so hours, everyone we’ve seen, who isn’t on Arron’s team, from the IDS has been playing a game of how many blocks can we pull from the tower. Its kinda inevitable it would fall over.
I feel like this needs a musical track running in the background… like Phoenix Wright or something.
It’s the eternal regret of comic writers that we don’t get to add music to things. I mean, it’s also why it’s semi-viable to do them as a one-person-show, but backing tracks are underrated for their impact in animated/movie/game media. Yes… I know I sort of just went off on a tangent here, but the comment made me think about it again 🙂
Who says you can’t link music to be listened to when reading a page? Please do tell so I can find a way to punch them for these stupid rules.
It’s true that it’s technically possible, of course.
There are a few hurdles though; first and most obviously, you have to make the music or use licence free music. This is the same for any medium, but in a comic you’re working with a lot lower return on investment (as most people won’t play it) and you can’t sync it.
The last point there being the main problem imo; to me, background music/thematic music is great, but the real impact is the music scoring against the visuals – this is what makes or breaks a lot of scenes to me (don’t get me wrong, I’m as far from an movie/cartoon/animation buff as you can get, this is just a casuals opinion).
Anyway, not something in scope for me, but it’s interesting to see examples of people that have pulled off as solution – hadn’t seen a comic that’d done it recently (my webcomic knowledge is like… three-fours out of date these days).
Its been done in some ‘webcomics’ that are more flash based (or were, flash has probably been replaced by now) than actually webcomics. Not nessecarily done well… but done.
I’m actually aware of a comic that does background music, and that’s Alastere. That’s because that comic is of an unusual format, though, in an “old-school RPG” style (and so the music matches the “videogame” stylings).
And then there’s Zona, where lots of music features in the comic …
Panel 2: “We will be beholden no longer to their incompetence and corruption”
Panel 4: Not sure what you were aiming for here. Best I can guess is “co-opted by foreign influence”
Fixed, thanks. 🙂
Sorry to add to the corrections thread, but she is saying quite a lot:
Panel 1: “ask them to make it” [the decision] ” / “ask them to make sacrifices” / just “ask them”?
Panel 3: “from these COUNTRIES”? (since Malsa is suddenly throwing its weight around)
Panel 4: “its people”
I’m the one that should by sorry that you have to add to the corrections thread 😉
Fixed, thanks 🙂