💻 Programming & Robotics Club Mingle 🤖

[subtract]

Who: Club members & anyone else who feels like dropping by!
When: October, during club hours after class ends
What: ??? club shenanigans
Warnings: TBA... please do not murder anyone in the workshop, there's delicate equipment in here

Programming/Robotics Club is held in the workshop on the 2nd floor of the school. There's no official schedule, mainly because Add tends to just... live in the workshop, basically, so club members are welcome to show up whenever. The room is generally kept tidy, with supplies and scrap electronics stored in a locked closet while the room isn't in use. Two highly advanced computers are available for anyone to use, or you can build/bring your own computer.

Before you can enter club area, however, you first must get past the club bodyguard... Yeah, this fucking thing is stationed by the door now. Anyone not identified as a club member may or may not get picked up and dunked in the nearest trash can. Or maybe you'll get random junk pelted at you until you leave. Or maybe it'll attack you even if you are a club member or given permission to enter... it's a work in progress. Please be patient with our good pal Ball Monokuma, he's still learning.

Comments

[rearranger]

[ If Ranger's bothered by that, it doesn't show on his face - then again, when did anything? There's another little pause as he seems to consider something. Why was he so worried about it? Well, part of it was just bothering a person he knew - that was often a good enough reason for Ranger, but there was always more to things like that. But here, he struggles. It's not that he doesn't know the reason, and it's not that he lacks the language - but none of it feels quite right, none of it feels quite like what he wants to say. ]

It's an AI, right?

[ It's a simple question, but it's not quite what he's looking for the answer to here. Ranger knows why ASUNARO does things. He understands exactly why they create shells to stuff the dead into them. If he doesn't know what hole he was intended to fill, he can at least understand the several reasons why a group of researches would aim to create such an efficient "human." ]

I wanna know why you're putting so much effort into it.

[ He keeps his voice level as he explains, not quite expecting anything in return. But he's nto so dense that he can't see what an undertaking it is, and he hasn't quite figured out what tangential gain there would be. If there wasn't, then why bother? ]

[notsosou]

...can't I just leave it at professional pride?

[He does have it. He's a meticulous sort, even if time constraints or the pressures of life in general often mean he can't be as thorough as he likes on most things he's been paid to do.]

You've got it slightly wrong, anyway. It's not an AI... it's for an AI.

[Since Ranger's already worked out that much. Shin didn't actually make Rei - that was the mysterious 'senpai' Shin is already not fond of - and he's locked out of the core essentials of her code anyway, which means he has to be extremely extra careful with this. But even leaving all that aside... it's something she asked for and gave specifications for... so she might as well be another client, the end user of this, as far as Shin's concerned.

It is an undertaking... and he's not getting paid for it either (because he didn't ask for payment and won't) but... he can't leave her trapped there, at the whim of anyone with the USB, when she was told it would help and then left there. She wants a life.]

[rearranger]

[ He could, and Ranger would accept that readily. It was enough to do something to say that you could, or in order to complete a project that had been given to you. That was how research was conducted, and once you were able to create an efficient AI then one could find ways to use it.

It's a strange thing for anyone to decide on though. He runs through the possible motives, but he can't think off anything in particular that a doll would be needed for here; certainly, there were far more constructive projects that one could choose. But he leans in a little in an effort, it's the first time he's shown genuine interest in anything in front of a participant. ]

For an AI, huh... There shouldn't be any need for that.

[ It's another neutral statement, passing no judgment on Shin's decision. He continues, a hint of uncertainty slipping into his voice, before disappearing as he seems to work through it, ]

It tends to complicate things... Hmm, well, I guess it makes sense if you're getting something about it.

[ It made maintenance, back up, and control more difficult. He knows that well enough; it had been a real hassle the last time something stared to go wrong with him, and he assumes present company is smart enough to predict that. ]

[notsosou]

Huh? That's strange, coming from you.

[He's noticed that uncertainty. Do you not like having hands and the like, Ranger? The freedom to move about without having to be carried by someone you're forced to trust? A certain amount of ability (greater than zero at least) to physically fight off someone trying to mess with you? You've got no need for that? It made Shin, weak, with a mind punched full of holes, so used to feeling powerless, realize just what he has as a baseline... and he hasn't even seen his own AI.

Ranger has a point though... maintenance is an issue. Getting enough to make even what they have so far has been an issue, let alone replace the donated hodge-podge parts he's trying to make play nice with each other. Senku's been working magic, but... it's science, not actual magic and there's physical constraints. All he can do is try and set things up right the first time so that if (when) something does go wrong, the results won't be catastrophic for Rei.]

Hey, I'm not the one who requested it. [Well, he suggested the idea, but Rei's response was extremely eager.] It's good practice, at least.

[What he's getting out of it... that much is true. It's really been making him stretch his brain.]

[rearranger]

[ He glances to Shin when he calls it strange, staring at him for a moment as though he'd said something quite strange himself before his eyes flick back to the screen. But he supposes if someone were to take on such a romanticized project as creating an AI worthy of having a body, then they might as well go the entire way. It was bothersome to leave a project incomplete. That, too, makes some amount of sense to him.

Ranger is happy enough to have a body, even if he hates every single facet of it, but it hadn't really been his choice either way. ]

Hm. It's not a bad project.

[ It takes a little longer for the implication of the first comment to catch up. He is happy to have a body, one that he hates every single facet of, but it wasn't as though it were his choice. ]

Dunno why it'd be strange. An AI is just another program. They're made to human specifications for human convenience, and that's all you gotta worry about. No sense in making it harder on yourself than you have to.

[ Naturally, that included him as well. ]

[notsosou]

[Oh boy, he avoids enough of this in Ethics Club already... as much as he can at least. He's torn because on the one hand, trying to find easier ways to do things really is the core of programming (succeeding is another matter). On the other hand...]

'Just another program'... If you're gonna make something that thinks like a person, not treating it like one's just an automatic failure, isn't it?

[It's something he's been sort of feeling out in the background of this conversation. After all, it means you haven't succeeded, because you haven't got something you're actually confident in... Even if Shin dislikes Ranger as a person, he'll grant him that much by this point.]

Ahaha, not that humans are all that great to each other either...

[So maybe it really is in keeping, treating an AI as a disposeable object, as if a program made for doing math or running a game and not the task of being a person. The game sure spoke to there being no difference in how they were seen. Just pieces... pawns... They really were just the last run of years of simulations... the implications of which get horrific fast too, but this is something Shin's had more practice not thinking too deeply about.]

[rearranger]

[ Would that be a failure? It shouldn't be. It never had been considered one, or if it had then Ranger wasn't on the memo. It was consistent with ASUNARO's goals and line of thinking. Dolls were dolls, humans were humans, but Ranger was a doll, and he was created to be a human, and because he was unique he had no point of comparison. So which binary was he meant to be slotted into?

The answer is obvious, of course; when creating a human, one needed to treat it as a human, otherwise you've failed. But he hits a snatch upon coming to that conclusion, making it difficult to parse. It's the correct answer, but it can't be, because it's not consistent. If he was a failure, he wouldn't have been kept for so long. Failure wouldn't have fallen under Gashu's radar, nor ASUNARO's. ]

... Maybe... [ The answer comes in the slow, careful tone of a person who's trying to determine if they're being asked a trick question. ] ... Yeah, it can only be one or the other, huh...

[ So then, what was he supposed to be? He shakes his head, trying to dismiss the question with little success.

It shouldn't matter, given the company's priorities, but it does. Shin is correct on that, too. ]

But everyone is disposable. That's why no one wants to be the weakest link there.

[ The Floormasters all had their own little Majority Game. Who would be the first to show weakness? Who could they they pin the blame of any little thing that goes wrong on to save the rest from coming under fire? And so on and so forth. ]

[notsosou]

[Shin's not above a little smug schadenfreude at apparently having thrown Ranger off kilter, unaware of how deep the problem is going.]

Only those two options? There was a talking dog in my class for a bit, if you can believe it.

[Which sure threw him for a loop at the time. So person is a lot wider than human, is what he's saying... which is probably small comfort to someone made to resemble one as much as possible, admittedly.

Okay he's being a bit mean... he'll stop. He's getting a bit of an unprecedented look into the behind the scenes of the game as well... though his sympathy is a tad limited by the fact their little Majority Game was working on the one that actually killed him.]

...makes you wonder why anyone stays, huh.

[It's a bit of a rhetorical question, because he knows well the kind of pressures the powerful can apply to hold the powerless in place, once they've caught them... and also how someone can throw themselves into that sort of maw and not realize until too late, stuck in all sorts of strings... but he can't help but see it as a stupid decision; the 'way weaklings live'.]

[rearranger]

[ Ranger takes in the information without much of a reaction. It's not something he can easily process, but he believes it well enough to add it to his records. It has little meaning to Ranger, who only has the two binaries that were given to him; there were those who were organic, and there were those who were artificial. Like so many things, he had simply accepted that as a part of his reality.

Even so, he seems to be considering something or another. His gaze loses focus for a handful of seconds as he runs through the question a few more times, coming to the same incorrect, contradictory answer each time. He draws in a breath, and it's only with careful effort that he's finally able to file it away. If he lets himself get caught up on in that thought, it'll be a problem. Safalin and Gashu weren't here to correct the error in his code. But as long as he doesn't agitate it any further, he should be able to handle it.

Even so, it takes him just a beat too long to respond: ]

Huuh...? You think so? It's nothing worthy of sympathy, you know. Those people broke a long time ago. They're scared, sure, but they've got their own selfish reasons for staying.

[ Well, maybe he should be ashamed himself for saying that, but it was a simple fact. Every last one of them knew what they were doing, and why they were doing it. Ranger passes no judgment on it, finding it to be no better or worse than any other way of living, but they were pitiable people for how broken they were. But even that wasn't something an outsider need concern themselves with.

Every last one of them had made their choice. Every last one of them was sticking with that choice. ]

They've all got some stake in it or another... Well, can't say I ever really cared.

[ Which is really just to say that his only stake was "not failing." ]