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[Skynet]

Self-modifying code is already a think (here and here), so an AI modifying its code to adapt might be implemented by its creators.

Yeah, I forgot that "self-modifying code" is already a thing in real-life.

Instead of the AI winters, there were AI regulations, where only Tier 1 nations could research AI, and UN inspectors would shut you down if you dared research it without "proper permits".  This of course only makes it more tempting to research.

This would be an interesting premise for a Sleeper - a UN inspector trying to relive the "glory days" of hunting down illegal AI research.

[EuchreJack]

Need any more ideas?  Human Think Tanks reporting for duty!

Actually, I had a theory that in the distant future, AIs might value humans for their ability to create original thoughts, or ideas.  Although that does bring up a philosophical discussion...

[Skynet]

Something similar to that idea exists within the original 2019 document as well...

What are the supercomputers doing with human “brains”? Research. The “human” simulations allow the supercomputers to better understand and comprehend the multiverse. Even the literal fantasy utopias, with dragons and knights and efficient governments, allow the machines to gather more knowledge and information.

And since the humans are able to generate the simulations in question, arguably the humans are the ones creating "original thoughts, or ideas" that the AI is recording...

---

Right now, most of my work is currently tied up with revising the setting of "Samurai World" and getting it to a state where I can probably make it public for critique on a forum (like Bay12Forums). After that, I'll come back here and post up a revised timeline, a new list of megacorporations in "AGI Federation" (seeing if I can incorporate more corps like PAGAD in there as well), and a brief description of the Drifters (one of the main enemies of the AGI Federation).

AGI Federation (due to its PARANOIA roots) doesn't require that much setting info - if you can grok the themes within that area, you can be able to GM it effectively (in the same way that you don't need to know much about Alpha Complex to role-play in there).

The setting of "Samurai World", by contrast, is a combination of "Eclipse Phase" and "Legend of the Five Rings", two games with very detailed settings. Hence why it requires a lot more work for me to do effectively. But I'm almost done with it, I think.

Both AGI Federation and Samurai World requires playtesting, but there is a lot of publicly available material that I can re-theme for play testing purposes (published PARANOIA missions for "AGI Federation", and published L5R adventures for "Samurai World").

[EuchreJack]

Both Eclipse Phase and Legend of the Five Rings are awesome, at least in theme.  Never did run either system.

[Azerty]

Some days ago, I found about Orion's Arm, a space opera project aiming to describe how much the Singularity would change mankind. It esseitially involves sophonts (the name for every sentient being, both biological, virtual and robotic) becoming able to have higher cognitive skills, and one application of such "transapient" beings is serving as Archailects ruling entire solar systems.

To show how deeply thought this project is, there's an article about how these AIs would see their charges, on two axis, one about how thei viewed humans (ranging from partners to pests) and the other on how much freedom they would give to their subjects (statists vs. libertarians).

It might give ideas about how to describe AIs managing virtual realities.

[EuchreJack]

Awesome ideas!

Skynet is also working on Samurai World, which looks mostly at one (or two) AIs that rule(d) a solar system (or more). Check it out!

[Azerty]

Since we're speaking about megacorps warring each other after apocalypse, I found the Corporation RPG:

Set in 2500 AD, the fictional world of Corporation is very different from that of today. Five corporations wield such power and influence that they can all but make their own laws. Following a long and savage war between the corporations in their rise to power, a large portion of the world had been left devastated and barely habitable; but from the ashes of this deeply scarred world has come a new era in human development. Citizens in the game world live peaceful lives in gleaming Spire Cities while mankind takes its first tentative steps in colonising the solar system. Since the end of the Corporate Wars, and the founding of the United International Government (UIG), there have been no global conflicts and crime has hit an all-time low.

Each Corporation seeks to shape the world to its own ideals, but enemies are always waiting to take advantage of an overextended competitor. Enter Agents, the roles the players take in a game of Corporation, who are cybernetically-altered and bio-modified humans, employing the most advanced technology money can buy. These men and women act as mid-level executives dealing with issues the Corporations cannot openly tackle.

[EuchreJack]

It's probably no coincidence that it was published by Mongoose Publishing...

[Azerty]

TV Tropes page Simulated Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic Reality has been created just today.

[EuchreJack]

TV Tropes page Simulated Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic Reality has been created just today.

Thanks for eating up several hours of my time, LOL.

Don't see an entry for AGI Federation, yet.

[Skynet]

All it takes is a TvTropes page to make an interesting idea look cliche.

I have not worked on this project for a while, mostly because I'm still busy trying to fix up Samurai World's own system. Originally, Samurai World's mechanics is inspired by "Dungeon World", but I'm going to be running "Heart of Wulin" and take some ideas from that RPG as well.

I do want to go back to AGI Federation, but the issue isn't mechanics (it's just PARANOIA, after all), but rather the setting itself. I really need to revise the fluff to provide more "plot seeds" without undermining the utopian nature of the setting itself. Previously, I mentioned that I can re-fluff existing PARANOIA scenarios to fit in AGI Federation...but I can only do that if I can grok the setting, and I'm not sure if I'm able to do so.

In other news though, I have used the AGI Federation setting before in a playtest of a coffee-making RPG, where players alternatively play as customers buying coffee or baristas making coffee. The playtest didn't go that well, mostly because it's very difficult to actually make good coffee in that RPG, meaning the coffee were always very terrible. The only other meaningful interaction other than making coffee is baristas asking questions to the customers...and that only comes into play if the coffee meets or exceeds the expectation of the customers. So we really never got around to playing with that mechanic.

EDIT: I've also been somewhat inspired by The Music of Eric Zann, and want to use Eric Zann's music as the technobabble that powers all these AIs. It would also work as a nice point-of-departure, especially since this story is set in the 1920s.

[Skynet]

The rise of ChatGPT really throws this game in for a loop. Not just because it makes AGI (slightly) more plausible, but it also means that OpenAI (one of the factions in this tabletop game) has catapulted itself into prominence. The corporations in AGI Federation were always meant to be fringe actors in real life -- not the great power-blocs who fought in the Corporate Buyout Wars, but the survivors that barely made it out alive. OpenAI was fairly obscure back when I first started work on this RPG. But not anymore. OpenAI's de facto alliance with Microsoft will make them a major player in today's real-life AI arms race. Which makes them ill-suited for my game. I want to highlight obscure factions, not real-life megacorps.

Ultimately, when I actually go back to AGI Federation and revise the setting, I'll have to remove OpenAI from the list of corporations. I might also have to review the other corporations as well, and see if they also risen in prominence (if so, they'll be cut). This "purge" may be a blessing in disguise, as I can add more depth to any factions that remain.

[EuchreJack]

Or you make OpenAI your "Old Man" faction: Originally dominant, then sidelined due to the younger crowd, finally almost irrelevant.

[Skynet]

First, I'm currently working on another tabletop RPG project - a revision to Samurai World. I don't know how long the revision will take (I'll start revisions on this in mid-April, currently busy at the moment). I tried out "Heart of Wulin", and that didn't really work out well, so I'm now looking at "Starguild" and seeing what ideas to use from there. The revision shouldn't take that long though.

Second, when I do get back to this game, I probably need to rename "AGI Federation". The name was originally created because the idea of an AGI seemed like a pretty far-off sci-fi concept. Thus, I can speak about the concept without fear of contradiction. But, now...technological advances make AGI seem more plausible. Even if Large Language Models doesn't meet the exact criteria for AGI, they can automate a lot of actions that was originally in the domain of humans. Some future advance will lead to the creation of AGIs.

It also doesn't help that Microsoft researchers has written a paper entitled "Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4".

Given the breadth and depth of GPT-4’s capabilities, we believe that it could reasonably be viewed as an early (yet still incomplete) version of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system.

It's like writing a game about people inventing FTL and colonizing space...and then five minutes later, scientists announce the creation of FTL and a plan to colonize space. Even if people still want to play your outdated, obsolete space colonization game, the passion is gone. People would just go to news.google.com and follow what's going on in the real-world.

Even worse, it seems that my game had the implicit premise of AGIs quickly taking over the world. If we're going to get AGIs soon, then we're either going to find out that (a) yep, they took over the world, uh, we have bigger problems than revising a tabletop RPG, or (b) they don't take over the world -- only superintelligences can do such a thing, so the tabletop RPG's basic premise is proven wrong. In both scenarios, we do not have adequate means by which we can regulate the behavior of these AGIs. So, I consider most of these machines to be Drifters, not Adherers - another blow to the game's logic. They may claim to share some human values (as they are trained on the corpus of human thinking), but not enough to be trusted with absolute leadership over humanity. And if most (if not, all) AGIs are Drifters, then the idea of them maintaining utopian simulations for people seem...unlikely.

This is a difficult problem for me to deal with, but it's something I will want to resolve sooner or later. I do like idea of roleplaying in a "The Matrix"-style setting. I just have to figure out how to make it plausible, even if that means renaming "AGI Federation" to "Superintelligence Federation".

EDIT: Or...even just abandon the idea of having sapient machines, and instead talk about corporations summoning Mythos deities. It does deviate from the original intentions of the game, but it also means I won't need to worry about being contradicted by real-life.

[EuchreJack]

Hm, what about a Government Conspiracy in which people are slowly shepherded into virtual reality due to massive ecological damage and the inability to support the elderly & poor in the real world with the limited GDP of the remaining population?