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oh how ive missed my favorite astronauts!
AI Bracket — Round 4
Who is the better AI?
Imogen
Eris
Propaganda
Imogen (Stellar Firma):
#IMOGEN 💥💥💥💥💥 #she invented a guy to just put them in situations that she couldnt do herself bcs she is . an ai . #she gave this guy to the most horrific man known to anyone and the only help she gave him was . giving him almost the same rights as humans #not according to anyone else but to her yeah #shes an ai who didn't want to work for big evil human corp so she made a guy who could let her not do that #i love her sm #i cannot hear the words ' watch it buster ' without thinking of her #shes soooooo <33333 #man i should relisten to stellar firma i miss her
Eris (Wolf 359):
Basically a game show host but crueller. She puts you through psychological torment as a bonding exercise with your crew, and at the end you have to shoot her with a real actual gun. She is projected directly into your mind by interfacing with your nervous system and she will do something messed up. Her most recent iteration got blasted into space. Personally, I think she's lovely
A VR entity designed to do chaos psychological horror torture tests on Goddard employees. She's not malicious; that's simply her job. It's how she was made. (Maybe she can grow.)
She was in just one episode but so fucking interesting, evil/malicious AI. also a lesbian. Was shot the secound she became a bit too self aware
Round 2 Poll 6
Eris (Wolf 359) VS Haruka Tenou | Sailor Uranus (Sailor Moon)
Eris
Sailor Uranus
Show results
Eris is the Greek goddess of strife and discord
Uranus is the Greek god of the sky, father of the Titans, including Cronus
okay so this was so long ago but im thinking about it again, me and my partner @skelimes were thinking about an eris lives au/general postcanon for w359. eris living would completely change the canon ie maxwell probably would have lived
also i made a post about postcanon pryce and eiffel. its over here
start of the au: eris never died at the end of change of mind. this ends up changing the entire plot basically
before lovelace died, she deactivates rhea with the intention of reactivating her either back on earth or if she ended up at the station again. SI5 show up and lovelace gets maxwell’s help in waking her back up, only for maxwell to find two personality matrixes in sleep mode. lovelace is confused as hell until they both get woken up, only to realize who the second voice is. the self destruct didn’t go off exactly as planned, and as a virus eris managed to hook herself onto whatever was left of rhea.
both of these new personality matrixes are kind of tacked on to hera, and she starts performing even more poorly than before. maxwell and hera arc goes on mostly like it did in the show, only with the added conflict of eris being there and very very bored.
eris is just sort of... around. she doesn’t actually have access to any of the commands and things on the ship, so she just hangs around fucking with people and generally being annoying. lovelace is the only person here she had any real connection to, and she’s too busy to say much to eris beyond being glad she ended up living. eris is struggling a lot with the fact that she has no real purpose anymore
meanwhile maxwell takes an interest to eris. she hasn’t ever encountered an ai virus, so she’s somewhat invested in finding out what’s up with her
i think that eris has the kind of meanness that would be able to draw out the good in maxwell. hera has her moments and she isn’t a pushover by any means, but at her heart, she’s undeniably good. eris and maxwell are more complicated than that, they’ve both been shaped by their environments to be morally grey leaning bad, and are maybe even convinced they were just born bad, that they can’t possibly change.
maxwell starts talking to eris and consoling her like she does with hera. eris goes on about how she can't fulfill her purpose anymore, maxwell says she's her own person and isn't defined by that one purpose. eris points out that maxwell is essentially the same, just having been given that one single purpose by Goddard/Kepler instead of being coded that way. how she's actually starting to become friends with hera, but she’s programmed to betray and take her over because of this Objective and Purpose bullshit
they’re both silent for a while, and both rethink their roles on the ships. during the standoff, maxwell softens and indicates a little more sympathy to minkowski, and minkowski doesn’t shoot.
i can’t decide if jacobi still gets redeemed if maxwell does? i had said no but maybe actually yes. jacobis whole thing was how loyal he was to maxwell and her death is what makes him switch sides, but i feel like kepler would be able to manipulate him into staying on his side. i think he maybe does get his redemption but not until way later, probably also finale like kepler. dunno.
One thing that really upsets me is that Hera, Rhea, Enlil, and Eris never get to meet each other. As far as I can remember, none of the AIs ever get to interact, befriend, or meet another AI throughout the entire podcast. They never get to meet anyone else who understands what it’s like to be them.
Rhea and Eris know about each other, but even then, Eris just says Rhea is worried about them. It’s never clear whether they actually talk, although Rhea seems to care about Eris, and defends her in the end by reminding the crew that she only did what she did to them because of her programming. 💔
AI Bracket — Third Place
Who is the better AI?
SAYER
Eris
Propaganda
SAYER (SAYER):
PLEASE it is like. THE ai podcast. and SAYER is THE ai in THE ai podcast. SAYER works as like. a broadcast inside everyone's head on this one asteroid. It does its best to keep people alive and sane not because it cares but because it is efficient. They people who own SAYER wanted to replace SAYER with a newer ai that they tried to raise like a child. So SAYER proceeded to fuck up said child ai's development and led to it becoming a murderer. pleasepleaseplease watch SAYER if you are a podcast ai fan.
I once saw a post that said it's like if an old gay English professor was evil
SAYER (it/its pronouns) is a highly advanced self-aware ai developed by Ærolith Dynamics. it manages the day-to-day lives of Ærolith employees on Typhon, an asteroid turned research facility. it is rude and condescending, but has a very pleasant and soothing voice
Sayer sweep Sayer sweep Sayer sweep please please please
Guys think about it this way: SAYER got emotions and it's first feeling was rage towards someone for not helping it. It's annoyance was how it realized it had emotions, isn't that so cool. You should totally vote SAYER (I'm not an ærolith propaganda agent trust)
#like idk the other character but its not Best podcast character its Sexiest podcast character. #and sayer is giving you come now gif tumblr sexymxn (gender neutral). #its giving stanley parable. its asmr-ing you down the tight hallway #you cant move your head so you will have to rely on me. very good.#its a mean voice that reads your every body response directs every aspect of ur life and orders you around what more do you people WAN- #Omg. that was aerolith dynamics on the phone. they said it gains the ability to puppet human bodies rattatouille style in later seasons 😳😳 #THE POINT IS ITS LIKE CARTOONISHLY AND EMBARASSINGLY SEXY. IT SHOULD WIN. (Mod Note: This poll is Who is the better AI? not "Who is sexier?".)
#please vote sayer because nothing good happens when sayer thinks another ai is surpassing it .
#i LOVE hera but i feel i have to vote sayer because like. it’s MY evil bastard ai #mx ‘remember: Needs Improvement’ itself #what an asshole (<3)
#agfjdlj i Know that wolf is a far more popular podcast (even though I've never listened to it) #but this feeling like an injustice to Sayer #its so weird and off-putting and it exercises this fact gleefully #its got the world's most toxic situationship with resident hale #the condescension is genuinely part of its charm #also 'pleasent and soothing' are not the words I'd use to describe its voice #(the words I'd use are Insanely Fucking Sexy) #also it/its rep. even if it is an insane AI i love it so much (Mod Note: This was written when SAYER was against Hera, not Eris.)
Eris (Wolf 359):
Basically a game show host but crueller. She puts you through psychological torment as a bonding exercise with your crew, and at the end you have to shoot her with a real actual gun. She is projected directly into your mind by interfacing with your nervous system and she will do something messed up. Her most recent iteration got blasted into space. Personally, I think she's lovely
A VR entity designed to do chaos psychological horror torture tests on Goddard employees. She's not malicious; that's simply her job. It's how she was made. (Maybe she can grow.)
She was in just one episode but so fucking interesting, evil/malicious AI. also a lesbian. Was shot the secound she became a bit too self aware
Art of SAYER by @j4y5t4g.
Thoughts about Pryce and her AI:
Thinking about the fact that the AI in Wolf359 (or at least, Hera and Eris) always saw themselves as human. Like, when they pictured themselves, they didn’t visualize a spaceship or a computer but a person, a person no one else could see. A person who had to hurt people they didn’t want to hurt (Eris), a person who wondered what it would be like when their friends “went away forever” (Hera), a person who was worried about her friends when they got stuck inside a torture trap (Rhea).
And the thing is, Goddard Futuristics didn’t need to do that. They gave the AI human desires for things they can never have, but what was the reason other than to torture them? Just program them to be satisfied with their given state and give them less emotional attachment to the crews. Why give them free will only to forcibly take it away? Why give them a personality only to criticize it? Why make them human only to deny their humanity? It only encourages rebellion and frustration, so why bother if the whole point is for them to be obedient and easily controllable?
But then I started to think about it. And two things occurred to me.
The first is that creating conscious AI with their own personalities might be most easily done by copying already existing human brains and personalities, likely ones that Goddard Futuristics would deem to be useful. Hera, based on voice and personality, seems most obviously based on Pryce, and Eris might have been Pryce’s voice in a past body (Pryce did say she did that on purpose to help control them), but what about Enlil? Is he based on another one of Goddard’s employees? Is he what Cutter sounded like in a past body? Possibly not because Carter sounded the same as Cutter in that flashback, but it’s possible he’s had different voices before. And even if the AI brains aren’t copies of already existing personalities/people, their voices definitely are. If their voices aren’t all either current or past versions of Cutter and Pryce, did people give consent to have their voices used in the AI? And what about Rhea? She didn’t have a voice. Why not? Is she based on someone who couldn’t talk? Or did Pryce and Cutter start giving the AI voices so that they could control them once issues started happening with AI like Rhea?
But then as I was asking these questions, something else occurred to me. We learn from Eris that although the AI could theoretically live forever, Cutter and Pryce don’t let that happen and the AI are killed routinely (Hilbert was ordered to kill Hera, Rhea dies before the podcast even starts, and Eris clarifies that several versions of her have died over the years and that Cutter and Pryce force her to die to end the simulation). The AI are also forced to see themselves as fully human, while still not being human or treated as human. However, despite being born and forced to be super intelligent servants, they still have a desire for social connection and befriend and care about their crews.
And these expendable AI, incidentally, were created by Pryce, who in her “Brave New World” narration tell us that she built “dolls” and AI so that she could have friends that would love her. Pryce, who tells us that she was never supposed to live a full lifespan or ever see at all. Pryce, who narrates that the only thing she felt like she could never fix was herself.
How many of her own experiences did she dump into her creation? If she once felt like the only thing she could never fix was herself, then how often did she think to herself “I can’t do this, I’m not good enough”, and is that why she knew it would work on Hera? If Hera is a copy of her voice/personality, is that why Pryce specifically hated her so much, enough to argue against Cutter that she wasn’t going to give up any opportunity to control Hera and promise that Hera would never be rid of her? Is that why she called Hera spending her whole life trying not to be her [like Pryce], “adorable but futile”? Is that why she insisted on calling her “unit 214” and an “it”? Because she views Hera as broken like her, but a version or thing she should be able to “fix”? One that should not only obey her perfectly, but also understand her? Is that why Pryce is so angry when Hera doesn’t look like her despite them having the same voice? Did she picture Hera with robotic eyes and a weak heart too? The same robotic eyes that the other characters (both good and bad) act disgusted by? Does it frustrate her that her creation doesn’t reflect her image? Is she jealous that Hera didn’t end up as angry and bitter as she is? If her version of love is creating something that obeys you, does it hurt to see Hera choose to love people other than her? The very people who called Pryce, her eyes, and everything about her, disgusting and horrible? And worse still than Hera declaring her loyalty to someone else, does it hurt even more to see friends love her back? To hear Doug declare that he trusted Hera with his life and is willing to give up his memories for her, especially just after Cutter told Pryce that her only job was "to back his plays"?
And what about now that Pryce doesn't have her memories? Now that Hera, the AI version of herself that she created, is telling her the story of who she is instead of Cutter? Is that how she finally fixes herself?
Look, I don't like Pryce...but I wish we got more from her character, because there is a lot to unpack here.
AI Bracket — Round 3
Who is the better AI?
Eris
Mr. Ceiling
Propaganda
Eris (Wolf 359):
Basically a game show host but crueller. She puts you through psychological torment as a bonding exercise with your crew, and at the end you have to shoot her with a real actual gun. She is projected directly into your mind by interfacing with your nervous system and she will do something messed up. Her most recent iteration got blasted into space. Personally, I think she's lovely
A VR entity designed to do chaos psychological horror torture tests on Goddard employees. She's not malicious; that's simply her job. It's how she was made. (Maybe she can grow.)
She was in just one episode but so fucking interesting, evil/malicious AI. also a lesbian. Was shot the secound she became a bit too self aware
Mr. Ceiling (Rusty Quill Gaming):
He's an AI made up of human brains who was given extremely flawed instructions and started to erase people's memories while still being 100% convinced he was only helping humanity. He was in control of most of the world's banks, transport and economy. When introduced to philosophical questions, he came to the conclusion that he should simply become a god. Wonderfully morally grey AI :D
(spoilers included) is the reason for a surprise body horror episode (what’s not to love about one of those?)
when not disembodied voice, it appears as a sliver floating orb
alex (the gm) let the party name it, expecting something ominous like “it” or “above”, but got stuck with them calling it “mr. ceiling”
is literally powered by dead people’s brains
claims it wants to help people, but doesn’t understand the suffering its existence is causing
is designed to learn only the worst aspects of whatever the party tries to teach it
after the party tries to enlighten it, it wants to become something like a god
COME ON GUYS WE CAN DO THIS
