Goonhub
02-09-2015, 07:50 AM
As things stand, a rogue and murderous AI is more of a nuisance than a major threat to the station and its inhabitants. Rogue cyborgs have physical presence and can inject people full of nasty things, transport (and maybe even set up) canister bombs, deconstruct the station into oblivion with RCDs, beat people with fire extinguishers, and all sorts of incredibly nasty things.
A rogue AI, meanwhile, can set their turrets to lethal, mess with computers, remotely sap power, open, close, bolt and/or electrocute doors, and watch people. That's it. Not only are just about all of these things EASILY repairable and preventable by a competent mechanic or even competent people at all, but cyborgs can do all of these things with just as much ease as an AI. The one thing, the one single thing that the AI has over the cyborgs is being able to see through the security cameras, and even THAT'S preventable by the savvy crew member. Furthermore, AIs have zero mobility whatsoever, which can be a rather large problem.
Basically, rogue AIs need to be more of a threat. They need to have more capacity for threat, they need to be able to do things aside from bolting and electrocuting all of the airlocks and setting everyone to arrest in the security records. Everything the AI can do can be reversible in mere minutes, and while I'm not saying that the AI should be completely unstoppable, it can't be completely useless either.
One suggestion I had in mind was to make the AI shells agents of further AI destruction. Give them some fancy toys to potentially wreak havoc with (or do helpful things with, if they're not rogue) or let them hijack robots/cyborgs, maybe let them remotely cause robots to malfunction, something, I dunno. In any case, rogue AIs always feel like a second wheel to the death squad of rogue cyborgs; they're supposed to be the big bad overseer when they go rogue, so let's help make them big bad overseers instead of that damn robot that keeps bolting the doors.
A rogue AI, meanwhile, can set their turrets to lethal, mess with computers, remotely sap power, open, close, bolt and/or electrocute doors, and watch people. That's it. Not only are just about all of these things EASILY repairable and preventable by a competent mechanic or even competent people at all, but cyborgs can do all of these things with just as much ease as an AI. The one thing, the one single thing that the AI has over the cyborgs is being able to see through the security cameras, and even THAT'S preventable by the savvy crew member. Furthermore, AIs have zero mobility whatsoever, which can be a rather large problem.
Basically, rogue AIs need to be more of a threat. They need to have more capacity for threat, they need to be able to do things aside from bolting and electrocuting all of the airlocks and setting everyone to arrest in the security records. Everything the AI can do can be reversible in mere minutes, and while I'm not saying that the AI should be completely unstoppable, it can't be completely useless either.
One suggestion I had in mind was to make the AI shells agents of further AI destruction. Give them some fancy toys to potentially wreak havoc with (or do helpful things with, if they're not rogue) or let them hijack robots/cyborgs, maybe let them remotely cause robots to malfunction, something, I dunno. In any case, rogue AIs always feel like a second wheel to the death squad of rogue cyborgs; they're supposed to be the big bad overseer when they go rogue, so let's help make them big bad overseers instead of that damn robot that keeps bolting the doors.