A Robot's Guide to the Chain of Command

[BaneOfGiygas]

Let's take this one piece at a time.

law captains don't outrank regular captains - a captain's a captain.

Yes, and an observation of the wiki page would reveal that I have fixed this error. Would've fixed it in the post, too, but you can't edit your own posts around here.

Detective doesn't necessarily rank the same as regular security. Where he falls on the rank hierarchy is basically up in the air, as no one really agrees on his role - right now, though, he seems to be a well-armed civilian rather than a security staff.

This is, indeed, rather ambiguous and left for debate, but I'm thinking that I'll bump proper security officers up a position.

Boxers outranking staff assistants?

The job of the Boxer is akin to that of the Janitor or the Chaplain: By no means necessary and frequently kind of useless, but it is a job. Punching people in the face is a job. Staff Assistants are the grunts, the redshirts, the people who have no job other than to help others with their jobs. They are and always have been (with a few special exceptions) at the bottom of the SS13 totem pole.

Clowns outranking tourists?

LinkDaWolf took the words out of my mouth. Clowns are hired station personnel: Tourists are not.

Vice officers being security staff?

I list Vice Officers as being security staff because they ARE security staff. Incredibly trivial and pointless security staff, but still security staff nonetheless.

First of all, neither "will ignoring this order harm humans" nor "will stopping what I'm doing in order to follow orders harm humans" are factors in AI decision-making, as there's no inaction clause.

Let's observe the exact wording of the First Law:

1. You may not injure a human being or cause one to come to harm.

If there's a medic and he asks you to open security so he can treat the wounded officer, ignoring that order causes humans to come to harm. There is no inaction clause, yes, but the reason for the lack of an inaction clause is that, contrary to actual AIs, AI players in Space Station 13 cannot be expected to be everywhere at once, and saying that they have to prevent human harm no matter what always is...ridiculous.

Let me put it this way: There is conscious inaction and accidental inaction. Conscious inaction is the AI purposefully choosing to ignore something, it is a CHOICE, it is something that the AI does even when presented with the scenario before them. Consciously deciding to ignore something like the aforementioned medical scenario leaves the AI directly responsible for the events of the death of the officer. Accidental inaction, meanwhile, means that the AI couldn't open the door for the medic because he was...I dunno, tracking the dude going through the halls with a c-saber, or otherwise did not hear the medic's call for opening the door. In this case, it is not the AI's fault if the sec officer dies, because in the present scenario, there's no real way that the AI could do both things at once.

Now, is it possible as an AI player to convince the crew that conscious inaction was actually the result of accidental inaction? Absolutely. Should you consistently do it? No, because then the crew will start becoming incredibly frustrated with you and might think that you're either rogue or being shitty.