Robot Brains

[drmemory]

So what ever happened to all of those robots in Robot Jail? It was implied that they were there because they wanted to or tried to leave the court, but not explicitly stated.

Kat has been on quite the drive to give all of the robots NP bodies and new lives, and I believe she said that the chips Loup brought to the surface were the last ones. Does that imply that she already did the jailbreak and made those chips into NP as well?

Annie knew they were there and almost certainly told Kat about them, as part of the S13 jailbreak story. Renard could have mentioned it as well, either during story time or during the explanation of the Wanted poster. We know Renard noticed them and knew what they were thanks to his "Trouble in Paradise?" comment.

I ask because I've always been sorta curious about why there were so many chips in Robot Jail. It would be nice if we found out why. Not that important in the grand scheme of things, just interesting.

[imaginaryfriend]

Nov 14, 2023 5:22:38 GMT drmemory said:

So what ever happened to all of those robots in Robot Jail? It was implied that they were there because they wanted to or tried to leave the court, but not explicitly stated.

Kat has been on quite the drive to give all of the robots NP bodies and new lives, and I believe she said that the chips Loup brought to the surface were the last ones. Does that imply that she already did the jailbreak and made those chips into NP as well?

Annie knew they were there and almost certainly told Kat about them, as part of the S13 jailbreak story. Renard could have mentioned it as well, either during story time or during the explanation of the Wanted poster. We know Renard noticed them and knew what they were thanks to his "Trouble in Paradise?" comment.

I ask because I've always been sorta curious about why there were so many chips in Robot Jail. It would be nice if we found out why. Not that important in the grand scheme of things, just interesting.

I remember people asking on formspring why Robot didn't set off the alarm when he left the Court, the answer being something about how the Court doesn't really care about the robots... don't recall it being said that robots in robot jail were there because they tried to leave too, though that should be where they'd end up. I can think of other reasons for robots to be in robot-jail, though.

Since the robots were designing their own successors there were bound to be some ideas that didn't work out well; their chips may have been preserved for research. Other chips stored in the facility may be busted either from accidents or violence, like that one watchman robot, and were put aside in case they could be repaired some day in the future. Those cases aside... Given what we know about robots I think the most common reason the rest are there was behavior that threatened robot society one way or other. Of behavior problems, I'll wildly speculate most were obsessive/stalker sorts of issues... but it could also be the case that the Seraphs put a lot of wrong-thinkers on ice over the years. I think any robot that wouldn't stop rebelling against robot authority or norms would probably get paper-clipped eventually.  Unrepentantly wanting to leave the Court would fit in that category, but begs the question of why (unless of course it was for stalking). I doubt it's common but there may be some robots who escalated their obsessive behavior to violence, maybe even be a wanna-be "kill all humans" cult leader; on the other hand there may be some robots wrongly there because they harmed someone by accident or damaged something expensive and the humans insisted.

Upshot: Kat may not have liberated any chips from robot-jail yet because of all the time/resources it took to get the current robots new bodies but if she hasn't she'll probably at least look into it in the future.  ...and Kat should probably decide on a case-by-case basis if she wants to reincarnate the inmates from robot jail.

[drmemory]

My theory on robot jail and robots leaving the court came from here.  It may not be the only reason to end up disembodied and with your chip in jail, but it is certainly one of them, according to Arthur.  Unless I misunderstood what he was saying.

[imaginaryfriend]

Not saying you're wrong... A lot of robots who wound up with their cpus on ice may have wanted to leave the Court because they wanted to do [taboo thing] and didn't want [the Court/other robots/laws of physics] to stop them, or didn't want to be forcibly reprogrammed or paperclipped for [reason] and wanted to escape. I think the emphasis should be on [taboo thing]s and [reason]s though I'm sure some did want to leave for the sake of leaving... not being under the Court's thumb rather than wanting to do/not do any particular thing. I think Juli and Art don't want to leave for sake of ideology or self-actualization; if they could safely be together in the Court they'd probably stay.

[blahzor]

Nov 14, 2023 9:38:12 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Nov 14, 2023 5:22:38 GMT drmemory said:

So what ever happened to all of those robots in Robot Jail? It was implied that they were there because they wanted to or tried to leave the court, but not explicitly stated.

Kat has been on quite the drive to give all of the robots NP bodies and new lives, and I believe she said that the chips Loup brought to the surface were the last ones. Does that imply that she already did the jailbreak and made those chips into NP as well?

Annie knew they were there and almost certainly told Kat about them, as part of the S13 jailbreak story. Renard could have mentioned it as well, either during story time or during the explanation of the Wanted poster. We know Renard noticed them and knew what they were thanks to his "Trouble in Paradise?" comment.

I ask because I've always been sorta curious about why there were so many chips in Robot Jail. It would be nice if we found out why. Not that important in the grand scheme of things, just interesting.

I remember people asking on formspring why Robot didn't set off the alarm when he left the Court, the answer being something about how the Court doesn't really care about the robots... don't recall it being said that robots in robot jail were there because they tried to leave too, though that should be where they'd end up. I can think of other reasons for robots to be in robot-jail, though.

Since the robots were designing their own successors there were bound to be some ideas that didn't work out well; their chips may have been preserved for research. Other chips stored in the facility may be busted either from accidents or violence, like that one watchman robot, and were put aside in case they could be repaired some day in the future. Those cases aside... Given what we know about robots I think the most common reason the rest are there was behavior that threatened robot society one way or other. Of behavior problems, I'll wildly speculate most were obsessive/stalker sorts of issues... but it could also be the case that the Seraphs put a lot of wrong-thinkers on ice over the years. I think any robot that wouldn't stop rebelling against robot authority or norms would probably get paper-clipped eventually.  Unrepentantly wanting to leave the Court would fit in that category, but begs the question of why (unless of course it was for stalking). I doubt it's common but there may be some robots who escalated their obsessive behavior to violence, maybe even be a wanna-be "kill all humans" cult leader; on the other hand there may be some robots wrongly there because they harmed someone by accident or damaged something expensive and the humans insisted.

Upshot: Kat may not have liberated any chips from robot-jail yet because of all the time/resources it took to get the current robots new bodies but if she hasn't she'll probably at least look into it in the future.  ...and Kat should probably decide on a case-by-case basis if she wants to reincarnate the inmates from robot jail.

the seraph's put robot on ice until simon phoenix from cryosleep

[imaginaryfriend]

You know, there probably is a Simon Phoenix robot cpu in there somewhere. They were fighting the Wood off and on for decades/centuries, lots of potential trauma, motivation to try to make a better combat model... and program them to be useful and good.

[arf]

That is likely where the Ship ended up.

[drmemory]

Nov 15, 2023 8:15:14 GMT arf said:

That is likely where the Ship ended up.

Yes, that totally seems right!  Also, that's a good example of another reason you can end up in Robot Jail.

So far we have three:

1. Rabble rousing (S13)

2. Attempt to leave the court (possibly just plans toward that end, not necessarily actual attempts)

3. Insanity, leading to an attempt to force the Angel to make a whale body that will be used to lure an alien crustacean lady into committing adultery (or something like that)

I bet there are more.  Probably additional subcategories of Insanity.  Though, we really don't know how often robots go insane, or even if they really do!  That whole thing with the boat was ultimately a plot by Robot, yes?  But I'm sure Ship's chip got clipped anyway... even though the whole mess was orchestrated to get Kat focused on robot work again.