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ChatlaninKyr — Some sort of futuristic combat unit
Published: 2017-04-26 19:40:12 +0000 UTC; Views: 1348; Favourites: 10; Downloads: 3
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Description
An exercise, or, rather, an attempt of exercise at perspective, shadows, lights, etc. The result isn't very good, but still better than I expected.This thing is unrelated to my worldbuilding project. It isn't supposed to be realistic or even original, as it was influenced by (and strongly resembles concepts from) at least three different sci-fi universes.
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Comments: 17
Very nice design. I like designs that combine the mechanical and the biological. They look much more advanced and efficient than big, clunky robots.
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impressive 
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Thank you
Mainly Grey Goo faction of the game with the same name and some Scrin units from C&C 3 Tiberium Wars; later I was told that it also resembles acklay from Star Wars, which is one of my favourite creatures in SW universe, so I guess it subconsciously influenced the design as well. And wheeled legs are one of distinctive features of combat vehicles from Ghost in the Shell series.
I think it can be assumed that further technological progress will cause mechanisms to have more organic look, but mainly it's due to the fact that I still have problems drawing mechanisms
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Depends on how you define shapeshifting. It has deployable shields on its legs, variable geometry radar plate and small prehensile retractable limbs on the "head", its frame is obviously flexible and its movements resemble that of organic being, but it can't change its overall appearance or grow additional appendages.
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I see~
Quite interesting
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Still looks fairly good. Especially with those emotes.
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Thanks
Yes, I think it probably has a simple artificial personality and is able to experience emotions. Who says a machine designed to eliminate military threats can't enjoy its job?.. I mean, until it enjoys providing security, not destroying everything, lest we get another Skynet.
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Your welcome!
Yeah, if you need your drone to operate independently, you might as well allow it to like its job. Even if it needs a commander, only needing to tell it what to shoot/protect would be more useful than having to tell it how to do it.
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Most importantly, it can come up with ideas of how to perform its job better. That is probably the main reason to create nearly sentient combat system. And as a drawback there are all sorts of ethical issues that ensue from words "nearly sentient combat system".
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Yeah, I´m thinking that that is one of the main reasons behind limiting AI in my universe. Drones need to be smart enough to operate with minimal overview, typically just the officer of the unit, but dumb enough that nobody thinks of the ethical issues, most importantly that the AIs dont. Human hippies can be chased away by drones, but its hard to retrieve a deserting drone without disabling it. Anything self-aware, sapient or not, will likely disapprove of being disabled.
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The last point is in fact arguable; I'm not saying that it's necesarry wrong though — without a real life example the whole thing is a speculation anyway. However, there's a widespread assumption that self-awareness and free will go side by side — but there's also some teoretical evidence that it may not. In other words, you can create a self-aware being and still effectively program it to disable itself if it faces a possibility of becoming a threat to its creators; you can program it to want to avoid becoming such threat by any means possible, and you can program it to be OK with self-destruction.
That's how the things are in the I.S. universe. Specifically designed expendable sentient combat vehicles are shunned in most civilizations because, with I.S. science having comprehensive understanding of consciousness, there's too small practical and ethical difference between pre-programming artificial minds and pre-programming ordinary citizens.
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Hmm, what about creating beings with intelligence but not consciousness?
(That's a pretty scary thought, but may well turn out to be possible, given that we presently don't understand how or why consciousness exists.)
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You mean, like the aliens from Peter Watts's Blindsight? I must say, cold logic behind this concept and its apparent feasibility gave me some fright as well. Later, though, I settled on the opinion that consciousness is inevitable side effect of higher nervous activity — or any processes close enough in complexity to it. AI technology and other related concepts of my fictional universe are built upon this assumption.
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Yeah, like the scramblers. The creepiest alien race ever conceived...
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Yeah, even if something is self aware it might not be self determining. But as you said, that would also rise a lot of ethical questions that might be even harder to go around; an artificial being with imposed limits in its thinking and opinion-building would operatively be very similar to imposing said limits on a sentient organic, which pretty much everyone thinks is illegal. With tech allowing for transition from organic being into digital, the term AI gets very loose as well.
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