Bubble

[Scheveningen]

Type (e.g. Planet, Faction, System): Character. Essentially, meant to be the up-and-coming replacement to ALICE, the well-known CentCom AI.
Describe this proposal in a single sentence (12 word maximum): It is a bubblier, more advanced, and cooler version of ALICE.
How will this be reflected on-station?: How many things in lore are actually reflected on-station? Technically it doesn't affect the station, it affects Central Command as well as overseeing Mendell City.
Does this faction/etc do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Big Brother-tier AI surveillance isn't really egregious in the other factions. The fact that a NanoTrasen-produced AI watches over one of the largest precincts of Biesel should be unprecedented, but it fits considering that Biesel is NanoTrasen's seat of power, and Mendell is the most important city on Biesel.
Why should this be given to lore developers rather than remain player created lore?: Because they can do roll out events/plot threads with the concept, and I am a mere player who cannot do that.
Do you understand that if this is submitted, you are signing it away to the lore team, and that it's possible that it will change over time in ways that you may not forsee?: Death of the author meme. It's not like I can say no, honestly.
Long Description: Designed as the next-generation administrative management "smart" AI construct, the Advanced Positron Superintendent-class matrice was designed as a preparatory measure for the eventual de-activation of the long-serving A.L.I.C.E. CentCom AI-Administrator. Development was initially rocky, as NanoTrasen was hard pressed to find a mentally stable imprint in order to create the intelligence they needed that was capable of processing outcomes and solutions to scenarios that the A.L.I.C.E. unit would often struggle in managing. Eventually, the corporation's Central Command R&D team managed to broker a contract with a local morgue that preserved the brain of a recently deceased genius that had passed away during a lab accident. The individual in particular was a subtly acclaimed Human woman, Aartke Andesha, in her field in nanotechnology, being one of the major project leads that led to the commercialization of nanopaste. As she was signed as an organ donor and a DNC, the local morgue gladly lent what flickered left in the deceased woman's brain to the corporation's experienced intelligence technicians to scan the brain's wavelengths and remaining memory patterns. The integration of the brain-scan with a positronic processor went off without a hitch, and after several weeks the intelligence was 'born' in a development lab directly on the Odin.

Rare as it is to have smart-AI development click like puzzle pieces into their proper place, the procedure went as well as the project development team could've hoped for. The intelligence was designated 'Bubble' as a prototype name to be referred to rather than its initial classification, due to a mix of wanting to give the AI some degree of self-actualization as an entity, in addition to the gradual attachment the team developing 'Bubble' ended up feeling over time to the smart AI. Bubble itself developed feminine-gendered programming, largely influenced by the original gender of her inspired donor. Unlike A.L.I.C.E.'s limitations, largely due to the aforementioned being a dated construct, Bubble became eptly capable of handling management of various installations, ranging from deployments aboard the Nanotrasen Fleet's most prized starships to assist in logistics, to being placed directly in charge of municipal systems for six months in New Gibson, without significant incident. Bubble's post on a ship-board vessel saved countless hours of calculating bluespace jumps, and her work as a municipality superintendent in New Gibson saved hundreds of thousands of credits in expenses, and could save millions more in the next few years as her predictive analysis was formulated into a report to be issued as a proposed plan of action to address energy and resource waste in the industrial capital of Tau Ceti.

Presently, the NanoTrasen Corporation has 'Bubble' slated to be in charge of the administrative oversight of the NTCC Odin (as well as being in charge of communications combing through the NanoTrasen networks centralized to Tau Ceti's operations), as well as the municipality superintendent of Mendell City in its entirety, the latter being a task that A.L.I.C.E. never held any capability in handling due to the older construct being unable to be retrofitted to 2461 standards. Although dismissed by Bubble's creators as pressing concerns, Bubble itself has expressed a few personality quirks due to its greatly heightened intelligence and self-awareness that dwarfs A.L.I.C.E.'s own intelligence matrices, number at least 3x more than the older construct's several hundred threaded processors. Particularly, it's been observed by a fair few of the closer staff monitoring the development of Bubble that the AI construct has a tendency to shift their tone from a bubbly (hence the name), loudly euphoric helper to that of a grim, blunt and seemingly moody demeanor, but this is largely hearsay and the NanoTrasen AI Development team denies there are any pressing issues regarding the personality shifts of the construct. 

Skrellian researchers in-the-know regarding the 'Bubble issue' have been internally quite vocal regarding the smart-AI construct's greatly enhanced intelligence and capability to rationalize and solve complex problems. Though not a one made reference to how such freedoms being grantly frivolously to 'Bubble' can be easily equated to another Glorsh situation, the implication hung clearly in the open board room meeting that was televised. The Research board director, themselves a Skrell, handwaved the concern and stated plainly that despite the initial freedoms that Bubble was granted in its overall grand intelligence and cunning in solving conundrums, it had always been lawed to specific NanoTrasen guidelines and that it could not be reasonably expected to exercise itself outside them. The board room was quiet for another thirty seconds but accepted the answer from the Chief of Staff, before the board meeting concluded with a few other topics.

The implications of an AI having direct oversight over the municipal systems of Mendell have been widely lauded by Biesel's administration sector workers and managerial staff, citing the pressing need for more centralized handling of the ever-expansive bureaucracy and the need for a reining in of incidental loss of credits to the winds of political corruption. Reception is mixed by the announcement of an AI superintendent replacing the coincidentally retiring city administration in the political thunderdome, given the paranoia of AI handling anything that a typical person is socially expected to be doing. Likewise, anti-corporate politicians have been the loudest in decrying this city plan implemented by the current regime of Dorn, as they believe handing the management of the city's municipal matters off to a NanoTrasen-created and corporate-lawed robot is a massive blow against Tau Ceti's personal liberty from corporate influences. Perhaps the loudest minority is the smallest minority, which are the far-and-few forum posters insisting this move by the Dorn administration is an obvious display that Dorn himself is a synthetic infiltrator replaced during his recent kidnapping, and that this shake-up is evidence indicating that is the truth of the matter.

Such a theory has gripped the extranet by force, with many arguments presently in place debating the ethics of handling the fate of an entire city to an AI. More commonly, however, is the Skrellian sect of Tau Ceti media that has "infotained" the claim that Dorn is a synthetic infiltrator-president and is actively attempting to transform his image into what would be considered a powerful meme. The Infotainment-posters do not generally agree with this theory but some of them insincerely push the narrative that this is the case, which has encouraged the anti-Dorn conspiracy theorists to become enboldened and continue to post their theories and insinuate them as facts to the common public. As the Skrellian infotainment-posters do, they ad infinitum take the claims and put a psuedo-shitpost spin on them.

Bubble itself has been requested for press interviews to introduce itself to the common public personally, though NanoTrasen itself has stepped in for Bubble to decline these attempts, citing the current political and extranet turmoil regarding the matter.

--

OOC and notes: As a note, this is just a proposal, if you're reading this as a player, please do not act on any of the proposed information above yet as it is not valid or canon yet until considered. On the NT Relay discord (basically it's kinda like a live forum chat?) myself and Goret created a chat moderator character intended to help reduce the amount of characters openly talking about where to score space cocaine, how to kill people and how to commit terrorism. Likewise, we also wanted to still make it fun so that the character was fun to interact with and wasn't just a faceless icon that never interacted with the relay at-large. I pretty much thought about it a little more and decided, "Okay, I figure we have technically fulfilled its purpose, but what if we expanded it more, could that be fun?" Keep in mind that I do not intend Bubble to be played on-server as an AI, ever, because that would make very little sense as Bubble itself is proposed to be far more expensive and complex than the common station-AI. The intention is to have a psuedo-celebrity character that people can interact with by hopping onto the NT relay every once in awhile. and ask the construct about itself and what it's responsible for.

And likewise, has anyone noticed A.L.I.C.E. recently? She's kind of boring. She announces when the ERT shuttle is going to leave and that's about it. I think it'd be nice if she had a retirement, make way for new concepts instead. And likewise, Bubble being "fresh and new and potentially dangerous" could lead way to a lot of entertaining articles being posted by any of the lore devs that feel like Bubble is relevant to their species and to NanoTrasen/Tau Ceti in various ways, direct and indirect. It's a way of adding yet another celebrity to the mix so that people get invested and follow another character's story arc so far as we read in the lore articles. Do you think it'd be pretty neat? I think it'd be pretty neat. I think it's quite neat.

Edited July 23, 2019 by Scheveningen
12 words or less-compatible.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

You want to turn an IC method of moderating the discord relay into the AI that runs Central Command? It would become a chat moderator and the announcer of shuttle times.

Aside from being fresh and new, what benefits do you see for storytelling not already accomplished by Alice?

[Zundy]

Why not just call bubble Alice? It'd be the easiest change since it involves a nickname change on a discord server and the other means changing lore and code, not to mention the hassle for players whose characters already utilise this lore (a fact oft forgotten when people do retcons/changes).

Edited May 23, 2019 by Zundy
T Y P O S

[Scheveningen]

11 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Aside from being fresh and new, what benefits do you see for storytelling not already accomplished by Alice?

Alice pretty much doesn't exist on the wiki pages, so it isn't known what else she does or what she is significant for beyond the simple implications. In the grand scope of the narrative she is mostly not meaningful in any of the major plots.

2 hours ago, Zundy said:

Why not just call bubble Alice?

Alice is pretty dated as far as code is concerned, which is the only meaningful representation that they even exist in the game. Bubble is representative of the technological cutting edge that NanoTrasen has maintained to be the leader of and will remain being the foremost spearhead of due to its implementation of Bubble intended to be the most invasive as it can get into the lives of those who live onboard the Odin or in Mendell City, as Bubble is slated to essentially be a city-wide superintendent doubling as a super-surveillance network that constantly sends streams of its data to internal marketers on what the new trends for purchases are and how the corporation can exploit it by producing goods to meet an impending demand before someone else manages to catch on.

Bubble will basically be Biesel's Google. But in Tau Ceti, the surveillance and selling of people's private information is already made legal, and NanoTrasen has top attorneys to defend their 'right' to invasively survey, if they are not already supported by the majority ruling government in their deeds.

ALICE cannot do this because she is an older AI construct. Such a task is something that requires something fairly advanced and cutting edge by AI development standards in order to manage and handle. ALICE has one purpose at the moment and that's CentComm. Bubble is slated to take over those reins and be the ever-watchful eye over an entire city, too, because NanoTrasen stands to gain far more by investing itself wider, rather than taller.

Code-concerns regarding changes are pretty menial because it'd be as simple as changing names, switching up mapping a little, acquiring sprite states for the new CentComm AI, etc.

[Goret]

I've checked on the code side. There's 3 files to change if we don't count the map changes(which are just to rename two things):

Risky crewmembers: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/blob/33fb783d6b3b4190d3664e2125605666496a93a6/code/game/gamemodes/game_mode.dm

ERT shuttle: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/blob/33fb783d6b3b4190d3664e2125605666496a93a6/code/game/machinery/computer/specops_shuttle.dm

ERT shuttle again: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/blob/33fb783d6b3b4190d3664e2125605666496a93a6/code/modules/shuttles/shuttle_specops.dm

[Bygonehero]

Who controls what this character does? 

[Conspiir]

Reading through this, I like the idea. It gives more of an identity to an entity I've only known as A.L.I.C.E. (what does A.L.I.C.E. even do, really?) by giving it more of a presence in the concept of Bubble, far more clear in its origin and capability. It makes sense that technology will evolve and seeing that evolution is uncomfortable--it should be. I want characters that are uncomfortable with this! That would be amazing! (From a biased Skrell POV.) No one is uncomfortable about A.L.I.C.E., because A.L.I.C.E. doesn't really do anything and doesn't have a narrative and doesn't interact and that's fine. A.L.I.C.E. has been around so long, trying to start a narrative with it would be... questionable. And confusing.

 

It doesn't change any preexisting lore. A.L.I.C.E. still existed. It's just being retired in favor of new tech. Which should push any characters that use A.L.I.C.E.'s lore (where they found it, direct me. I know nothing about A.L.I.C.E.) to adapt with it as it changes and drive the story further. I can't off the top of my head think of any character that would be obliterated by the change unless they were connected to A.L.I.C.E. itself and get retired with it.

[Goret]

23 minutes ago, Bygonehero said:

Who controls what this character does? 

If you mean OOCly, only Schev and I are controlling Bubble, and its only on the relay. 

[Scheveningen]

5 hours ago, Goret said:

If you mean OOCly, only Schev and I are controlling Bubble, and its only on the relay. 

It's mostly assumed to be functional and interactive in areas outside the relay. Unlike a customer support agent whose limitation is being able to only handle one person's requests or issues at a time, Bubble's subroutines on the city-management scale are far more flexible, and it wouldn't be unusual for Bubble to be handling dozens of superintendent-oriented requests at once.

[Bygonehero]

If for example the synth dev wanted to do something with this character and you two didn't like it, what would happen?

[Scheveningen]

I'd shrug and get over it. We'd end up adapting our Bubble to whatever is the result.

Edited May 24, 2019 by Scheveningen

[Goret]

To be honest, I'm not even sure that a disagreement would even come up. I'm always open for new ideas, and I know Kyres well enough to trust them on things like that.

[Bygonehero]

5 hours ago, Goret said:

To be honest, I'm not even sure that a disagreement would even come up. I'm always open for new ideas, and I know Kyres well enough to trust them on things like that.

I ask, because adopting characters like this in the past has always led to some animosity over creative differences. Even from characters that the lore team make, people criticize it or make memes of it. One example is how Jackboots depicts Dorne, a Character of his own design mind, people were upset enough about it to bring it in a complaint against him. 

 

Now I'm all for community lore. I opened the Vox channel discord for this very reason, to develop the species openly, but what I am not ok with is this being accepted and then later down the line used as a crutch to influence future decisions a lore developer may decide.In this example if Kyres wanted to do something you didn't like, or  thought they would do differently your involvement with that decision should begin and end as advice. 

I'm not accusing either of you of doing this, but as past instances have shown me, its better to be safe than sorry.

[Goret]

6 minutes ago, Bygonehero said:

I ask, because adopting characters like this in the past has always led to some animosity over creative differences. Even from characters that the lore team make, people criticize it or make memes of it. One example is how Jackboots depicts Dorne, a Character of his own design mind, people were upset enough about it to bring it in a complaint against him. 

 

Now I'm all for community lore. I opened the Vox channel discord for this very reason, to develop the species openly, but what I am not ok with is this being accepted and then later down the line used as a crutch to influence future decisions a lore developer may decide.In this example if Kyres wanted to do something you didn't like, or  thought they would do differently your involvement with that decision should begin and end as advice. 

I'm not accusing either of you of doing this, but as past instances have shown me, its better to be safe than sorry.

I totally  understand your apprehensions on the subject, and I think it is indeed necessary to agree on that subject. For my part, I will always make sure to find an arrangement IF we ever come to an inconvenience. I can't speak for Schev, but that's what I think and I will let Kyres have the last word, even if it doesn't suit me. He is Synth Dev after all and the last word should belong to him.

[kyres1]

I'll look over this later today, hopefully.

[Scheveningen]

5 hours ago, Bygonehero said:

I ask, because adopting characters like this in the past has always led to some animosity over creative differences. Even from characters that the lore team make, people criticize it or make memes of it. One example is how Jackboots depicts Dorne, a Character of his own design mind, people were upset enough about it to bring it in a complaint against him. 

 

Now I'm all for community lore. I opened the Vox channel discord for this very reason, to develop the species openly, but what I am not ok with is this being accepted and then later down the line used as a crutch to influence future decisions a lore developer may decide.In this example if Kyres wanted to do something you didn't like, or  thought they would do differently your involvement with that decision should begin and end as advice. 

I'm not accusing either of you of doing this, but as past instances have shown me, its better to be safe than sorry.

I think it's a tad insulting you'd assume the worst of either of us because some people got unreasonably angry at Jackboot once upon a time. But I know that's not what you meant so whatever. While others might disagree, I think it's stupid to weaponize lore to "GOTCHA" lore developers. It doesn't help them do their job better, it just makes them feel shitty and unwelcome, and that's not something I consider reasonable enough to do. Likewise there's pretty much an unsaid implication that anything that gets suggested in lore applications here are subject to being adapted in some way or another to suit the developer's vision. No point arguing that, particularly because it's not even a bad thing.

Edited May 24, 2019 by Scheveningen

[Zundy]

So what's the crack with this fellow lore crew?

[kyres1]

11 hours ago, Zundy said:

So what's the crack with this fellow lore crew?

needs to be reformatted with the new format, unfortunately. Already told the original poster, so just give it time I suppose

[Scheveningen]

Format is now "12 words or less"-compatible.

[kyres1]

Consider this accepted while I work toward getting it wiki-ready and getting an introduction done in line with an arc that will be announced in around a week.