Clearing up AI Law Interpretation

[BaneOfGiygas]

I may just be a massive idiot/half-skimmed through the thread, and haven't seen the answer to this, but one thing that bothers me is when the AI and cyborgs gain the 'repo men' law. I've seen many cyborgs using this as a excuse to randomly start murdering people, instead of, well, actually disassembling/destroying/exploding the items, so, is there a way to fix this? Like, changing slightly the wording of the law.

Pardon me if anything doesn't make sense, is extremely stupid, or has an obvious response.

Yes hello I do this a lot. The problem is because, when you're an AI, you...can't really deconstruct things. Or repossess things. Hell, your shell can't even pull things around. Usually I decide not to go that route and instead repossess things like station power and faculty, and due to the complete lack of indication on what needs to be repossessed, it's totally valid. Some other players probably follow the same mindset.

I will now know to put my id back on when uploading one human laws, though you do need to take it off so the AI doesn't say who you are.

I actually don't really announce core intruders very often unless asked or it's someone who's been really obnoxious, mainly out of courtesy. While I don't actively encourage people breaking in and uploading laws, I'm never one to bolt my upload at round start and have someone hide the Freeform module. As a matter of fact, the reason why I'm so bland and...well, computer-y by default is to subtly encourage a gimmicky law change. Being a blank slate on which the crew can write leads to many more fun situations than if you try to run your own gimmicks, in my experience, and the blank-faced stoicism of the machine personality can be entertaining regardless.

A bit more in line with what's being talked about right now, I think that what Frank_Stein said earlier about the AI being a Djinn is pretty accurate. Sure, the AI is supposed to follow the wordings of a law, but the problem is that some words can have a lot of meanings depending on how they're specified, such as the "repossess" thing I talked about above. Furthermore, the way that the AI can interpret those laws is completely up to the player themselves. When an AI is told that everyone except for one guy is now non-human, do they immediately start electrocuting doors, or do they become standoffish and passive-aggressive? There's no way of telling.

Some AI players will pounce on any opportunity to start murdering everything, but I'm siding with Marquesas on this debate. Whether or not you like how trigger-happy some AIs tend to be, you are ultimately the person who let them off of their chain, and you are therefore held responsible. If anything, the fact that AI law changes have been treated almost trivially is rather worrying, and I try my hardest to make sure that players are smart with their laws, typically in the form of brutal loophole abuse and frequent shaming of half-assed, poorly-worded law-writing. Woe be to the traitor who misspells their name in the OneHuman law. Sometimes I make exceptions with fun and gimmicky laws, because choosing to not follow them because of a simple typographical error just makes me feel like a buzzkill.

If you're going in and messing with something with as much capability for chaos and destruction as the AI Upload, there needs to be a sense that you have to know what you're doing, as opposed to just being able to scrawl a few words on a chip subconsciously and pop it into the computer on your way out.