[Admin] Maintenance Drone Law Change

[Contextual]

"Preserve, repair and improve the station to the best of your abilities."

This is your job.

"Cause no harm to the station or crew."

This is your standard don't-murder law. Used to be more general, but appears to have been tailored to allow you to kill pests.

"Interact with no humanoid or synthetic being that is not a fellow maintenance drone."

This... is an abomination.

Let's use the role reminder for context:

"You are a maintenance drone, a tiny-brained robotic repair machine.

You have no individual will, no personality, and no drives or urges other than your laws.

Remember, you are lawed against interference with the crew. Also remember, you DO NOT take orders from the AI."

This essentially says that you are nothing but the simplest of synthetic machines, wholly and essentially bound to follow your laws to the letter. Well and good, but it also means that the choice of wording in your laws is EXTREMELY important--the most important being, obviously, the verb. The verb at hand, is interact.

The definition of interact is as follows:

"[To] act in such a way as to have an effect on another; act reciprocally."

This means that the drone can not do anything that may potentially have any effect whatsoever on a being that is either humanoid, or a non-drone synthetic.

Do not drain power from the grid to recharge. Do not collect resources for repairs that the aforementioned might have otherwise used. Do not repair areas where the aforementioned would potentially visit. Do not be seen. Do not make sound. Do not open or close doors that the aforementioned might have opened, closed, or passed through themselves. If a drone so much as risks any action which has the smallest of chances to 'have an effect' on a humanoid or non-drone synthetic, it is directly in violation with one of the core tenets of its operation. In other words, drones are lawed from existing, because to be manufactured at all carries the innate risk of 'interacting.' Of course, on the other hand, drones are clearly not played according to how the reminder demands and, without admin action, are therefore not beholden to it. In this case, the reminder should be removed or otherwise be reworded to be more permissive--but this is not the focus of this thread.

I propose that the word "Interact" in Law 3 be changed to "Interfere."

The definitions of interfere are as follows:

"1,[To] prevent (a process or activity) from continuing or being carried out properly."

"2.[To] take part or intervene in an activity without invitation or necessity."

This would mean that drones are not allowed to intervene with ongoing work or activities, but are allowed to work around such things themselves in the execution of the first law. It also means that drones would have the leniency of being able to actually roleplay with crew members and synths, albeit only if the aforementioned are either not doing anything or otherwise invite the drone to participate.

This change would open up avenues of roleplay that have otherwise been arbitrarily cut off, while also removing the hard-coded suicidal tendency that the current Law 3 presents.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Guest

[Skull132]

Laws fall under silicon policy, silicon policy is primarily an administrative matter. Will refer the swarm here.

[Garnascus]

This change would open up avenues of roleplay that have otherwise been arbitrarily cut off, while also removing the hard-coded suicidal tendency that the current Law 3 presents.

 

such as?

[Contextual]

Legitimately anything involving the crew. Assisting, being acted upon, or otherwise.

[Munks]

This is trying far too hard to bend the third law to make it into some sort of issue.

 

Do not drain power from the grid to recharge. Do not collect resources for repairs that the aforementioned might have otherwise used. Do not repair areas where the aforementioned would potentially visit. Do not be seen. Do not make sound. Do not open or close doors that the aforementioned might have opened, closed, or passed through themselves.

No, none of these are interacting. Recharging isn't interacting with people. Picking up metal is not interacting with someone if they aren't actively using it. Repairing things is not interacting with someone. Being seen is not interacting. Being heard is not interacting. Drone doggy doors exist for a reason, to make it easier to avoid interacting with people (opening one to pull something you need for repairing isn't interacting).

 

If a drone so much as risks any action which has the smallest of chances to 'have an effect' on a humanoid or non-drone synthetic, it is directly in violation with one of the core tenets of its operation. In other words, drones are lawed from existing, because to be manufactured at all carries the innate risk of 'interacting.'

Only if you're trying to lawyer the word "interact" to suit your purposes.

 

It also means that drones would have the leniency of being able to actually roleplay with crew members and synths, albeit only if the aforementioned are either not doing anything or otherwise invite the drone to participate. This change would open up avenues of roleplay that have otherwise been arbitrarily cut off, while also removing the hard-coded suicidal tendency that the current Law 3 presents.

And it all comes together. You don't care about the technicality of the word interact and how hard you think it is to avoid it, and you're not trying to fix any perceived issue with how drones are now. You want drones to be able to RP with people. It's bad enough that pAI mains insist on constant feature creep because they want their ghost role to be a full fledged class. Can we have a single role that's just a simple entertaining ghost role that people don't decide to main and have turned into it's own full class? If you want to main a maintenance drone, thats your deal, but you should probably accept the fact that they exist for a simple role, they are not a discount 15min respawn, and trying to get them to be able to socialize with people defeats the entire point of the role on pretty much EVERY SERVER it has been implemented.

[Contextual]

Only if you're trying to lawyer the word "interact" to suit your purposes.

 

Yes, actually. Lawyering is incredibly important when it comes to AI laws, especially when said AI is so simple as to be entirely defined by them. Additionally, all those examples you countered were based upon the fact that, negligible or not, they drain from a resource pool drawn upon by the beings a drone is not allowed to effect. This is, undeniably, a ridiculous outcome from a poorly worded law. The proposed change would easily fix this with little to no negative consequence. Unless you mean that the drones are capable of interpreting their laws in any way other than as written? Similar to, say, a pAI's directives?

 

You don't care about the technicality of the word interact and how hard you think it is to avoid it, and you're not trying to fix any perceived issue with how drones are now. You want drones to be able to RP with people.

 

Wait. Hostile misrepresentation aside, you're... against having an open avenue for RP? Is the capacity for interesting interactions such a heinous concept?

The way you word that conclusion makes it sound like I'm asking for drones to show up on the crew manifest, get bank accounts, and to spawn on the arrivals shuttle. All this is is a proposal to allow drones to actually function as intended without violating their laws. The fact that it would legitimize any number of niche interactions and exchanges is just a bonus, and that's... a bad thing?

[Kaed]

There's a certain mentality on the server, as far as I'm aware, that people who play 'direct from ghost' roles (mice or drones) should be excluded from anything involving crew interaction, in varying levels. In various cases, they've sort of got a point. Usually mice and drones that want to 'roleplay' end up either being trolly pests or acting like someone's pet.

In the case of mice, it's a little more easy to deal with - just one attack from basically anything will kill a mouse, and the only things they can really interact with are food items and vents.

Drones are a little more difficult, though. A drone has more tools at its disposal than any borg, can travel anywhere on the station almost via maint hatches and trash system. The ideal purpose of the drone is for someone to just spend a quiet round playing with construction/station improving, rather than going around beeping and buzzing at crew and trying to be a hat. To whit, they created the 'no interaction' law. It's not really as onerous as you think. Just focus on doing maintenance and construction and ignore the existence of crew as much as you need to. You don't need to jump through hoops to avoid them. Just act like they are part of the scenery.

[Chada1]

Contextual does have a point, 'Interaction' is a lot of things, and Kaed, you are describing what is acceptable as allowed, not what the Law says. They are two vastly different things. Interaction can almost be Anything. Contextual is entirely right that the law is cryptic and massively up to interpretation, especially for a Synth with no personality or individual will. I'm not suggesting any solution, or supporting this, only pointing out my viewpoint.

[Kaed]

Contextual does have a point, 'Interaction' is a lot of things, and Kaed, you are describing what is acceptable as allowed, not what the Law says. They are two vastly different things. Interaction can almost be Anything. Contextual is entirely right that the law is cryptic and massively up to interpretation, especially for a Synth with no personality or individual will. I'm not suggesting any solution, or supporting this, only pointing out my viewpoint.

 

The law could be interpreted in restrictive ways, sure. You could decide that your laws make you barely functional and hide in a corner somewhere in an attempt to avoid any interactions.

Or you could just behave in the 'accepted fashion', ie largely ignoring crew and doing drone things, rather than complaining that the law is badly written? It's really up to the silicon's player to some extent to determine how much fun they want to have within their laws.

I will tenuously agree maybe the law could be reworded, but changing it to 'interfere' will essentially open up the gate for drones to do things that are not interfering with crew but definitely are outside of their intended purpose. It's not 'interfering' with a crew member to be a hat and beep at anyone passing, for instance.

Personally, I would prefer it say ""Interact with no humanoid or synthetic being that is not a fellow maintenance drone, outside of performing your duties to improve or maintain." There are certain situations where you sort of NEED a crew member's assistance, or for them to step aside, or something. One big one I can think of is constructing new rooms. Without the blueprints, which only a crew member can use, an area cannot receive power properly, because it has to be designated as a 'zone'. Having a drone beep at the CE to help them zone a room does not seem to be egregiously out of line for performing station improvements. (This is ignoring certain CEs who seem to loathe drones and complain any time one of them changes something and would never cooperate with them under any circumstances cough hayden cough) You could also buzz unhappily at someone you see deconstructing a wall or breaking a window.

[ForgottenTraveller]

It seems like a lot of engineers treat drones like simple animals, I could personally outside of my rank, like seeing crew treat and have the drones allow to react more like that, following simple orders if they want like a pet. Go where I point, focus on that, come here. Simple orders like that. But the won't assist crew directly like opening a door for them. Or pulling an item over to them. And just minor communication like buzzing and pinging for sad and happy, and the occasional beep, a simple brain for a simple thing, a three tone language, along with a here, there, that, level of comprehension.

Because lets face it, there are a lot of situations where crew will try to interact with drones, in a way they cannot really avoid, and most default to around this, acknowledging them, but still mostly doing their own thing.

[LordFowl]

Drones are not pAIs. The purpose of a drone is for a ghost to have something mechanical to do. They are meant to build and repair and that is it. Coordinating and interacting directly at all with other non-drone players is and should remain strictly verboten.

Drone brains are also surely to simple to understand the butterfly effect.

[Garnascus]

Drones are not pAIs. The purpose of a drone is for a ghost to have something mechanical to do. They are meant to build and repair and that is it. Coordinating and interacting directly at all with other non-drone players is and should remain strictly verboten.

Drone brains are also surely to simple to understand the butterfly effect.

 

This. Although i do not mind if you wear a silly hat you found in a tunnel somewhere.

[Arrow768]

Something I recently witnessed was a cyborg removing all the modifications a drone made to departures, because it "didn't have the required paperwork".

On one hand side, they are lawed to "improve" the station to the best of their abilities.

On the other hand side we dont give them stuff needed to actually be able to improve areas without breaking the regulations.

(CE / Captain permission needed for public areas; Permission from departmental staff needed for departmental areas)

[NoahKirchner]

An interfering law would be goddamn magnificent. Maintenance drones have, at least thrice now, come onto a crime scene I've been working on as an FT and cleaned up blood (with soap), meaning that I couldn't analyze it. Their laws right now allows a loophole where they can still do stuff that inconveniences you as long as they pretend that you don't exist.

[Shadow]

Administration voted and we decided to not change their laws.

If a drone is being a fuckboy ahelp and we'll nudge them.

Will be locked and archived.