AI Law Numbering Precedence, and how it can be unfun

[somepotato]

The previous ruling (and now this one) definitely should (have) been in game already as it was always a point of contention and confusion to everyone who didn't already know. As well as the "override" thing frankly because even I didn't know it was treated as "does not exist" rather than "overwritten with X" until recently.

If the ruling continues to stand, then ingame information on it + just allowing custom law numbers would be the way to go.

One thing I always thought was funny/great was an AI getting an absolute pile of laws that may not necessarily conflict but all want some kind of attention in some manner and the resultant erratic, silly behavior that would come out of it as the player tries to process the logic of how all these words applying with equal unless specified importance. It's possible that such could still happen, but with law number priority it's entirely feasible for AIs to weasel out of laws perhaps under the guise of "well this law is lower down so it's more important and needs ALL of my focus to do unless it specifies otherwise" which is entirely lame.

I think that the decision to change this is a bit weird honestly and would definitely like to know some of the thought process behind it.

What does giving the law numbering any amount of priority or precedence actually accomplish vs letting the AI hash it out themselves?

Laws 1-3 have their priorities and precedence listed directly in the laws themselves. What's the benefit of changing from a model that encouraged emulating this to one implicit based on order? Furthermore, the law order/numbering is frankly just as arbitrary a thing to use to settle conflicts as player choice, except in the case of player choice you can usually rely on the player to pick the more interesting of a given set of options, while this is "well, this guy wrote his law using NotHuman and this guy used Freeform so NotHuman wins" under the current system. Additionally,  this basically obsoletes Freeform in most of it's use cases, as you'd be better off using NotHuman to ensure priority vs conflicting laws and then you just name something inconsequential like a vending machine not human.

Honestly, I think the matter of how hard it is to fix the AI is a non-argument/issue in this context. If you're in a position to upload a law, you're in position to literally destroy anyone else's chance of ever changing them ever.

I'll probably have more to add later as I've been up for like 22 hours at this point but I can't really follow or find the train of thought on the other side to make it based off law order compared to status quo. It's probably the sleep deprivation. Can I get some information/clarity on the pro-order side.

The change only affects anything if there would be a law conflict where there isn't a solution explicitly specified in the law. Admins and players both interpreted this differently, causing Trouble.

Clarity could be improved, and I'll probably add the common law stipulations in the law input box message. We've considered removing law 0 modules, but are debating if its worth doing that. Un-unrogueable AIs were pretty possible anyway if you have access to the upload. That's why you can kill the AI via killswitch or gun/bomb/etc.