Comic for Monday, September 28th, 2020
Mium’s hair seems to be back to blue.
Mium can actually taste things. He just doesn’t inherently care what things taste like. This is an ongoing point of contention between him and Ila. Sounds like Kally ended up getting lucky there was any cereal left…
Eliana clearly knows Mium from somewhere before, and knows enough to guess that Ila’s brother referred to him relatively quickly. How much she knows, well, we’ll see.
As for flying up stairs… well, all I’m going to say is that if you could fly, you’d probably fly up stairs too. Stairs suck. Flagerantly using magic for mundane things isn’t particularly uncommon, like Oriah making an umbrella with magic. While being able to fly is pretty rare for a mage, elongated hops aren’t as hard, though still challenging as generally a mage is going to want to slow down before landing, a step Ila here is skipping, though with a small hop like that it, even a human could probably land relatively safely (and many mages could solve that in various ways, such as boosting their durability a little). Of course, a booster like Naomi could probably just leap the stairs without much issue.
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I think Mium knows that the only way he could be taken down fully is if Peter gives the command. I think Mium and Peter are ok with this understanding based on their understanding of a bigger picture, but Mium is now concerned how others may react.
This hadn’t occurred to me but is a really good point.
Our favourite little murderess returns, keep a safe distance, people! (examples of safe distance do include:
-A different dimensions- as far for a gateway as possible
-Potentially, the bottom of the ocean
-On the other side of ALL the tasty food
Safety, not guaranteed, YMMV)
One may want to engage in a little more discretion than ‘on the other side of ALL the tasty food’. It’s possible for magic to do things differently than science, but I’m rather familiar with Larry Niven’s concept of “any Newtonian propulsion device is also a weapon.” (Although, to be fair, it’s my recollection that Larry was more precise in the definition of said concept, to make it clearly integral to the Sci-Fi nature of the work being written.) I thus generally prefer being orthogonal to’ ALL the tasty food’ instead.
I think only true safety can be found by being an indispensable source of tasty food. But with Mium as a brother, figuring out a way to be such a source is the real trick.
Cute outfit – perhaps even more so in the company of “big brother” there.
Panel two: “Elaina” should be “Eliana” (unless my memory and your commentary both fail me).
Panel four: “an nagging” should be “a nagging”.
Fixed, thanks 🙂
It is suspiciously well coordinated considering who would be on hand to provide Ila fashion advice (Naomi, Kally, Peter, Mium… that’s 0/4).
Though I suppose Mium probably could if he wanted. My personal guess is Arkady and Lisa though, as I believe they were involved in shopping. Ila’s clothes line seems to have survived better than Mium or Naomi’s.
The scarf does look very Mium-like. Perhaps there is a reason for that?
If the gift of a scarf is deserving of special thanks, I wonder who gave Mium his? I remember Miko repairing it at one point.
I would definitely fly up stairs.
It seems like Ila isn’t forgetting she owes her big bro a favor for saving Arkady from Kardus… and potentially realizing exactly how powerful he is in the process.
Its a sliding scale sorta thing.
Ila has threatened to go “Full Naomi” on one occasion, and I suspect we have yet to see what that would entail if *Naomi* went “Full Naomi”.
Noting that the famous “doll of destruction” got her ass handed to her by an IDS agent without a great deal of effort, but then there is the Dragon Witch, Nathan, Tyler… it’s all relative 🙂
I’m interpreting Mium’s appearance in that last panel as “I’ve unleashed a monster”.
That and/or he is calculating the all the ways in which he can use a monster in his plans. He likely cannot directly have her kill something he couldn’t kill himself, but he has been known to be creative.
I did enjoy that earlier conversation between Peter and Mium:
“Why do you have a tank? You’re not allowed military hardware.”
“It’s not military, it’s ex-military. Prototype is also allowed since that comes under R&D.”
…or thereabouts. An SMAI might not be artistically creative but it would be extremely good at problem solving and probably quite literal.
In a way, that Ila has “free will” makes Mium’s life easier. Sure, he doesn’t know for certain what she will do because she has that strange human unpredictability, but he is really good at predicting humans, and consequently, pretty good at predicting her.
So rather than telling her to do something, he just has to set in course a chain of events that will probabilistically lead to the outcome he wants.
Debatably, he’s done that before. While I don’t think he actually cared that much of Kardus was killed, he did essentially leave him to die-by-Ila in a set up to fail scenario.
Hopefully Arkady is a good influence on her, because I am not sure Mium will be. He seems to have a “no mass murder” protocol, but views that as just a fact of life he has to work with rather than any sort of morale imperative.
Mym has a “creative interpretation” flag that gets set, I guess, about once per hour 🙂
I interpret Mium’s look in the final panel: Mium’s eventual demise is a calculated and plotted eventuality by Mium. Mium isn’t intended to last forever, just to last long enough. He is recalculating and adjusting for Ila’s new information.
I’ve not gotten that vibe, that Mium’s demise is inevitable. I think he knows long term AIs tend not to be, well, long term. However i think he and Peter have worked hard at changing some of the underlying assumptions that lead to what is widely considered an inevitable fate.
I suspect the last panel is Mium being concerned about Ila’s longevity. Possibly from a standpoint of not wanting to stand too close to the flames, but possibly simply being concerned for someone headed for pain without knowing it.
If the latter, he might very well be on his way to a very long, balanced stability.
I think it depends on what dying means. Mium changes over time, from Query, to Mium, etc. He is likely anticipating that he will keep adapting (perhaps into whatever VI Mium is), and consequently he won’t be the nagging supercomputer she is used it.
Mium currently split between the F8 in Central, the F5 (here), wherever/whatever MYM is (especially after Miko “killed” off the part that was in the Avon lab), and now VI Mium which is the left over copy from running on Ila… not to mention potentially also the Interface!Miko might be essentially a copy of a copy of Mium fused with Miko.
This here is F5, which while now part of MYM does have a habit of being somewhat more expressive than F8 (such as when he actually smiled slightly when merging into MYM, though he was MYM at that point, it seemed to indicate that F5 merging into MYM made it become more human, or at least more capable of feeling satisfaction).
Now with VI Mium (who is a Mium somewhat influenced by Miko and Ila and who had the ability to think like a human well enough to run on Ila’s system) in the mix it who knows.
I’m not sure how much Query (the one that Kyle had) was still linked to the overall MYM system.
All known instances of Mium…
-F8 (On central)
-F5 (Here, Malsa)
-Query (Broken, central)
-Avon Lab (Offline, terminated by Miko)
-VI Mium (Last seen in Miko’s head, but likely has it’s own body or something now?)
-Interface Miko? (May be a copy of VI Mium set to think it is Miko)
-MYM (Unclear, likely still exists in some form)
-Peter’s sister’s back up version (from the thumb drive, unknown).
-Potentially the AA System? (Not clear on if it is sentient on its own).
I’m not sure that F5 gained more capable of feeling satisfaction. But F5 definitely became more capable of expressing satisfaction, in that we could tell there was now satisfaction being expressed, regardless of how much or little there was before as compared to after.
To be clear, I’m trying to not make a point about whether F5 was able to feel satisfaction before or whether F5 is able to feel satisfaction now. As someone with a rather flattened affect, I’m fairly comfortable with the idea of the presence or absence of emotion being disconnected with the ability to express it.
I do understand that it appears to be conceptually difficult to display an emotion without having it, but this is essentially what actors are supposed to do much of the time they’re working. Many actors learn instead to feel emotion on command, but it’s certainly not the only way to get that job done.
Shouldn’t the instance left with the Consul count on that list?
I believe the MYM talking with the Consul has not been conclusively determined to be a distinct instance. Sure, Miko *suggested* that maybe Tamara had turned it into a distinct instance, but we have not had confirmation that really happened. It feels like the possibility that Miko was just misdirecting Peter to give herself enough time to get to Lab 5 shouldn’t be discounted.
Still, that’s one of those threads that it feels like we should find out more about shortly. I mean, either Peter will find out that it was the case, or he’ll find out it wasn’t the case. I’d expect that either discovery would have repercussions that made it into the comic.
Mym has avoided a lot of AI dead-ends so far… bearing in mind of course that every day is a fresh roll of the dice. His integration with Miko may be a big part of that, although its also possible that eventually there may not be a separate Mym, just memories held by Miko in her interface form.
But regardless, none of us last forever; even if Mym lives long enough to outlive Peter’s children, that’s still a finite lifespan.