Are Commanders sapient?

I think it would be interesting to have the commanders sapient. In that way Core in TA are. a Brain as the central processor of a Complex bio mechanical computer. So in a sense yes they are sentient because they have an awareness of themselves and that around them but they arnt sentient in the classical sense we understand.

In my world commanders are sapient. They are just instinctually driven to reproduce and eliminate all non-commanders. Of course maybe not every commander has exactly the same philosophy...

Millions of Brackmans.... millions of them fighting each other to become the True Dr Brackman! o_o

So one thing that comes up in MMOs a lot is people talking about what's "in character". So why would your pacifist priest of light team up some undead death knight guy to go blow up a giant spider? Well even though all of the in game lore pretty much says this sort of thing would never happen, the real answer is that the spider gives out phat lootz, the priest is the best healer, and the undead thing has the most DPS. This sort of thing pops up in fantasy MMOs a lot.

Actually I think Eve Online handled this pretty well by saying that everything anyone does is in character because it's the future and people are weird. When you die and respawn in a station it's because of clones. The specific PVE and PVP zones exist because some systems do and don't have police. Out in the depths of space there really are massive empires that fly under the banner of a giant bee.

So what if in PA you look at the game mechanics, and he handful of lore we have, and figure out what the universe is like if everything that you see happening is "in character"

1. So from the kickstarter video: All humans are dead, it's just robots.

2. The most popular game mode (based on the forums) sounds like Assassination, in which you start out with a commander, and you lose when the commander dies. So it's a fair assumption that you are the commander.

3. The core game is going to be a series of multiplayer matches, skirmish against the AI in the same game modes as the multiplayer content, and whatever form the galactic war is going to take. So the robots spend most of their time fighting, but victory in a particular solar system is worth achieving, but not too meaningful in the grand scheme of things. Also losing a match doesn't kill your ability to play more PA matches, so you are essentially immortal.

4. You can team up with other people, chat with them in game, and probably shout over voice chat. So the commander is probably just as sentient as the player, and can form or break alliances, get to know other commanders, and generally have a personality.

5. All the robots you build a pretty disposable and not very bright on their own. So their either aren't sentient or just robo-peasants following orders.

I like to think that the Commander is sapient. I know in SupCom that we are the person inside the Commander and therefore the ACU isn't truly sentient by itself, but in TA my Core ACU sure was proud when he built a Doomsday Machine.

I will make it my personal mission to kill every pony themed commander in the galaxy.

The PA lore is that humanity is long since dead and these machines of war programmed with intelligence and the objective of waging war against eachother in an ever evolving war for the galaxy. (am i getting a bit to deep).

So yes I would think that they are sentient but are programmed to wage war which is their prime directive. So think of it like the Replicators from Stargate Atlantis.

A commander can be both sentient and sapient, and still carry out this war. Why do you ask?

Well, why does a sapient intelligence, capable of reasoning, thinking for itself or otherwise making complex decisions need a self preservation mechanism? Why would such a mechanism be necessary for intelligence and sapience? For that matter, why would an interest in actions outside of its utility function (war) even need to be considered?

You guys assume that any artificial intelligence will be human like. AI's are the exact opposite of any human-like intelligence.

Lets take an AI. I am a human, I dont like AI. I punch the AI in the nose generating a 'bad feeling'. The AI is not a mind reader, it does not have a decade of human social structure behind it nor does it possess the instincts that will allow it to predict what a human is thinking. Therefore, to avoid being punched in the nose, (As that is its utility function, the only thing it cares about in the entire universe) it will try a variety of methods to prevent being punched a second time, starting with taking a step to the left of the human.

Why? Because 'reasonable' decisions, are based in a human context, by human minds. Our brains have a variety of chemicals that moderate and affect behavior, and we have a number of utility functions that drive this complex behavior.

The obvious example, is the desire for self preservation. This is what is called a utility function. What is a utility function?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_function

It is basically a quantitative measure for preference. AI's, assuming these arent programmed into them, do not have self preservation instincts. They do not have reproductive desires, 'curiosity', a desire to learn, a desire to socialize, without a utility function your AI will sit there and do nothing until either the universe dies or it is given such a function.

Without a utility function, the AI is by definition, utterly apathetic and indifferent to everything.

So no, stopping an endless war is a reasonable decision to make, but only in a human context. If the Commanding AI has a utility function that says "Kill enemy faction" then that is its goal. It doesnt care about anything else outside of the tasks needed to accomplish this goal, including working with other AI's that have the same goal because that is the most efficient means to accomplish said goal.

What happens when it wins? Assuming its makers assumed they would survive the war, it would probably go into standbye for further instructions.

Is this going to deep? Not at all. If you check my link, you will see that utility function can have a mathematical component.

An AI with a utility function, does not care about anything else beyond the fulfillment of its function. This is what makes AI so potentially dangerous.

As an example, define friendliness to an AI with no human social structure, instincts, mirror neurons, or chemicals. You must define friendliness so that an AI doesnt go on a rampage.

Do not make the mistake of assuming that when people mention AI, that they are just talking about a human in a computer. AI are anything but.

This ->

Catch me if you can!

But we love and tolerate! Mostly

It's all in good fun.

And so it begins...

Just for the record: Humans are Vonn Neuman devices. Most life is organic Vonn Neuman devices. That's part of the definition of life.


Also humans have been known to fight to the last against hopeless odds.

I would also submit to you that clearly the commanders are sapient because they are us. We are running their operating system. Every commander that we play represents a sapient mind behaving in sapient ways and driven by sapient urges.

Yes, I was going to say much the same thing.

You might as well ask if the characters in Quake 3 are sentient.

A bad comparison, the people in quake are people, the commanders could just of eaisly been expert systems or mini-computers rather then a ghost in the shell.

So your attempt at a joke is poor at best.

Your attempt at being like Zordon is poor at best.

The people in Quake 3 run at about 40mph and bounce around like crackhead hares, they are no closer to actual people than a 30-metre-tall battlemech is. Both are simply avatars for the player, and both are only as sentient as the people controlling them.

Meaning that you also agree that they are not sapient, but are mearly vessles to be controled.

So your attempt to retort is poor at best.

mostly Commanders can be as sentient/sapient/intelligent/emotional/good or evil as we want them to be. It's a common tool in story writing for robotic beings to make them more human than strictly necessary in a functional sense. It makes it easier to relate to them and portray them as an enemy/ally with an interaction level (also between themselves) that can contain classic story telling.
e.g., the new Battlestar Galactica could have used just cylons with the emotional level of a toaster and still fulfilled their role to eradicate humankind. One would have just missed out (? ) on half of the drama (story length). Pro or Con, I leave it to everyone to judge for themselves.
Or Skynet, the whole talk about self awareness and stuff, unnecessary, take a sufficiently complex system, connect it to your remote controlled drones, release it in the alpha stage and voila, with the right (or wrong depending on perspective) bugs in the system you can get the same result. Seriously, they should have programmed the three laws of robotics, even in scifi they are allowed to read scifi.

long rambling short:
if you want them to have a higher state of awareness than your smartphone, why not it doesn't hurt. Otherwise, a preprogrammed advanced AI might just do.

on that terms, I reserve the name ICommander, if Apple didn't already do that...
probably, the units violate the pattern "rectangular shapes with rounded corners" anyhow.

I realised I didn't actually make my point clear. If we are to have suspension of disbelief, we must believe that we are watching a real thing that is actually happening.

Therefore any battle we watch is an accurate representation of an actual battle that really occurred in this fictional universe. Therefore assuming that you consider humans sentient/sapient, then the commanders must also be sapient because they are behaving in the exact same way that a human would given the circumstances.