Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.2      Taking Control

1.2.6    An Assumed Role

1.2.6.18 Yes, thank you bernard.

She sat, quite suddenly, and realised her legs were wobbly with adrenaline. She hadn’t felt frightened at the time, she’d felt on a roll, the words tripping out of her mouth, but now it was over the rush hit her. This was her first ever speech, if she didn’t count the brief words she’d said with Nicolo on stage, or when she’d accepted awards for singing. It was the first time it had mattered so much to her; the first time things had been off track and she’d felt only her words to a skeptical audience stood between victory and defeat.

She tried, casually, to look around and gauge the mood. Some were discussing what she’d said, some looked thoughtful, a few (such as Cedi) seemed to be off in orglife, so she’d no idea what they were thinking, but nobody seemed angry or obviously dismissive. She’d take that result, and be glad of it! She relaxed.

Her attention was called to the front again, when Rabia caught her by surprise by saying “Yes, Bernard?”

Someone had raised a hand. Of course they had; did she think it would end just because she’d spoken? She looked around and spotted Bernard sitting on the chair directly behind her. He was a young man, in jeans and a t-shirt that read “Stick I.T. to the manual.” using a pattern of coloured dots of different hues and brightness. When he spoke, he had a slight Slovenian accent.

Bernard: “Niu, I think you missed the earlier demo of the Domojak” she nodded, and he continued, “Okay, I’ll summon him back. What I want to say is that I think you’re underestimating the fundamental problems inherent in your vision of how you want people to interact with mythoi.”

Bernard: “Someone mentioned liability. It isn’t just a matter of how likely a bot is to fail. Suppose someone visits a farm where there’s a posenya and the posenya’s scythe accidentally slips out of her hand, hurting the person’s child which the posenya hadn’t seen. If the child needs a new liver and spleen, who pays for the hospital bill? Sure, you try to design the posenya to be as safe as possible, but humans have accidents too, so you can’t rule out the possibility. Does the farmer pay? No, because he doesn’t own the posenya, it is just visiting his farm and helping out. Does the crafter who fabricated the posenya from a design pay? Does the designer pay? Does the posenya herself pay? The posenya has no money, just her labour, and that’s not enough to repay the half a million CFF the hospital is demanding for an organ transplant.”

She nodded again, to acknowledge the problem and show she’d understood. As she did so, a 1.2 meter high man strode up. He had large study boots sticking out from under the ankle length hooded brown fur coat he wore, a soft wide beard that flowed down to his pot belly and a kindly twinkle around his eyes. As a walking stick he used a woodsman’s felling axe that was taller than he was. The axe looked hefty, with a thick rune-carved handle, so the Domojak must be stronger than he looked, despite his height.

Behind the Domojak scampered three polecats, nipping at each other playfully. Including the length of the tail, each was nearly as long as the Domojak was tall and, standing beside him, they looked like a herder’s dogs.

Bernard: “But that’s just the start. The issue of repairing mythoi was raised earlier. Well, the Domojak doesn’t just herd cows, fell trees and fix broken fences. He’s quite capable of holding a social conversation, looking after his own house and making toys for children. With an upgrade and appropriate tools, he could act as a mythoi repairman.”

Domojak: “Aye, you have the right of it.”

Bernard: “Now that’s insanely useful. Far too useful for a mythoi - a group of Domojak could put half the workers out of a job in some villages. So his archetype comes with restrictions. He’s solitary, won’t settle in a village that already has a Domojak. And he doesn’t generally help out for free, not on an ongoing basis. He’s meant to be an example, a good neighbour, and when someone is truly in a pinch, a generous benefactor.”

Domojak: “I do my part.”

Bernard: “But, and here’s the key to his ability to become part of a village’s community, he keeps track of favours owed to him, and isn’t hesitant about calling them in. He can craft things to trade with them, and accept items in return which he can later trade on or gift away.”

Nadine nodded, hesitantly, not sure where this was going.

Bernard: “So who owns the items he makes? Even if the whole village acts as though he has no owner, what happens when an outsider with a van turns up at the Domojak’s place of residence and decides to take everything inside? What if the outsider decides to take the Domojak himself, to deactivate and sell for spare parts? Does anyone have standing before the law to say ‘no’ to the outsider?”

Bernard: “Can a mythoi own land? Will the state put one in prison if they don’t pay taxes on the land owned? What about the data they collect? Someone has control over what updates get sent out to mythoi. What’s to stop that person from sending out an update that tells the mythoi to upload everything they see and hear, so the controller can sell the data?”

Bernard: “What about reputation? You mentioned the idea of a village which mistreats its mythoi gaining a bad reputation and other mythoi, who’ve never even visited it or met those that have, learning of that reputation and steering clear of it. That implies a database of some kind, even if disguised as a distributed gossip network. Who controls and is responsible for the reliability of the data in that database?”

Bernard: “It could be set up to only allow changes recommended by a quorum of developers in good standing with a group, but what stops multiple competing groups being set up, each with their own infrastructure, in the same way that a designer can fork off a new variant of a design. Does everybody who contributes a change to a mythoi, and is accepted by the other designers as being one of them, suddenly become liable for any bad consequences of decisions they make as a group?”

Bernard: “In short, our current system of property and ownership exists for a good reason, not just greed and territoriality. It provides clear cut efficient answers to some very complex issues and, before you upend it, you’ll need to have equally useful answers in place, because the issues themselves are not going away or getting any less complex.”

Ugh! He was right, damnit, though the taste of admitting that (even just to herself) was bitter in her mouth. This wasn’t her area of expertise. She needed help!