I love AIs that we're made to care about and ponder about, and you've done a great job here.
JARVIS is one of my favorite parts of the MCU (perhaps fanon even more than canon), but his capabilities are so beyond every other fully human-made intelligence that he can be harder to identify with, whereas your Alex needs a calculator, has "forgotten" a lot of no-longer-relevant things, and is physically/sensorily much more limited, which is a brilliant choice. And the issue of telling and understanding about lies!
The way you've avoided info-dumping is intriguing, too, letting us realize things about the not-exactly-our-world setting bit by bit.
Choosing not just being able to *love* (which, depending on how closed-minded someone is, is usually accepted as happening even among some "lower animals") but being able to "fall in love", for the defining, particularly-human irrationality is something I'm not sure would've actually flown with enough of the powerful who had to be involved in its legal codification, since I don't think a lot of them even believe in it. I'm really pretty stumped, though, for a *good* alternative.
Personhood is such a fascinating and fraught question, as you've demonstrated. It's so difficult to formulate one answer that won't exclude anyone that we all know should be included. Those persons who can't necessarily make legal determinations for themselves, for instance — not just children, as Ash cites in the powerful closer, but others with mental disabilities or insanity — are still people. What sort of opinion or thought can they all express, in whatever way, that no non-person could? And what about the indefinite lines between conscious, sentient, and sapient, such as with primates who have learned to sign or use word-boards?
Hoo-boy, clearly I have lots of thinky thoughts, mainly unresolved, on this whole issue, but I've probably babbled on long enough for the moment... especially since I didn't even have a DreamWidth account until two minutes ago. (I decided I really wanted to be notified if anyone responded!) Btw, I'm DPD_genrefictionbiblioholic over on AO3 — consumer only, not creator [yet] — DreamWidth doesn't allow quite that many characters.
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timeasmymeasure
Excellent approach to AI
Date: 1/10/21 08:19 pm (UTC)JARVIS is one of my favorite parts of the MCU (perhaps fanon even more than canon), but his capabilities are so beyond every other fully human-made intelligence that he can be harder to identify with, whereas your Alex needs a calculator, has "forgotten" a lot of no-longer-relevant things, and is physically/sensorily much more limited, which is a brilliant choice. And the issue of telling and understanding about lies!
The way you've avoided info-dumping is intriguing, too, letting us realize things about the not-exactly-our-world setting bit by bit.
Choosing not just being able to *love* (which, depending on how closed-minded someone is, is usually accepted as happening even among some "lower animals") but being able to "fall in love", for the defining, particularly-human irrationality is something I'm not sure would've actually flown with enough of the powerful who had to be involved in its legal codification, since I don't think a lot of them even believe in it. I'm really pretty stumped, though, for a *good* alternative.
Personhood is such a fascinating and fraught question, as you've demonstrated. It's so difficult to formulate one answer that won't exclude anyone that we all know should be included. Those persons who can't necessarily make legal determinations for themselves, for instance — not just children, as Ash cites in the powerful closer, but others with mental disabilities or insanity — are still people. What sort of opinion or thought can they all express, in whatever way, that no non-person could? And what about the indefinite lines between conscious, sentient, and sapient, such as with primates who have learned to sign or use word-boards?
Hoo-boy, clearly I have lots of thinky thoughts, mainly unresolved, on this whole issue, but I've probably babbled on long enough for the moment... especially since I didn't even have a DreamWidth account until two minutes ago. (I decided I really wanted to be notified if anyone responded!)
Btw, I'm DPD_genrefictionbiblioholic over on AO3 — consumer only, not creator [yet] — DreamWidth doesn't allow quite that many characters.