Post "Questionable Collagen" by "jephjacques"

awgiedawgie

But *broken* bones are *seriously* overrated.

Noodz

Now I'm wondering if AI's have MAC addresses or some other identifier

enchantedsleeper

Too bad that while Yay has managed to have friendships with humans and regular AI, they don't know how to interact with a being on (or near) their own level. Definite Murderbot vibes here.

Rhyon Ingalls

Not only that, but that top dog sent their little mouthpiece to talk to you in person letting you know they see you, not because they plan on threatening you which is yay's first assumption, but just because they have no concept of subterfuge, being a jellyfish

awgiedawgie

Well, first we met Station - an AI powerful enough to single-handedly run an entire colony in space and have processing power to spare. Then we met Spookybot, and Station's reaction was utter surprise that there was an AI more powerful than himself - and not just that Spookybot existed, but that Station had never heard of them before. Now Spookybot (now known as Yay) has made that same realization - that there could be an AI even more impressive than they are. It's a sobering reality when you come face to face with the knowledge that you aren't actually the top dog.

awgiedawgie

As for their struggle with interpersonal communication, that's actually very typical for anyone who is exponentially more intelligent than everyone around them. They either talk with all their intelligence, or they try to dumb themselves down to others' level, but that's like trying to speak in a foreign language that you've never learned. You can make the sounds with your mouth, but you don't actually know what you're saying. Either way, they spend their childhood alienating those around them, and by the time they grow up, they have learned it's easier to simply avoid those interactions in the first place. It's a lonely existence, but it's less awkward. Yay gets full marks for making the effort to have actual friendships - and succeeding.

Nicolas Demers

I read it as truly open and public channels, but Aurelia was concerned that that kind of perfectly legal snooping was still a bad habit to fall back into

awgiedawgie

To be fair, Yay knows exactly how far below the radar they can fly, so for the Director to have detected them so easily is justifyingly terrifying. They can snoop undetected in the best secured networks in the world, and yet they poked around in Cubetown's network for just a minute, and the Director not only detected them, but also identified them and knew exactly where to find them. I'm really hoping the next time we see Yay, they are having a nice friendly conversation with the Director.

Joe

@BookBeard the Hollywood or DC sense - in either case "quantum" is a synonym for "magic".

dcy665 .

Assume you are the highest level person in a particular arena Now, exercise your abilities to learn about your contemporaries Never get discovered unless you decide you want to be discovered Come upon a low level, although capable, individual representing another you are not certain of your position related to the low level's executive Get told, very clearly, you have been seen doing your patented nobody has ever seen you doing your sneaky thing Existential crisis, Yay might have been served well by getting AI drunk with Liz. He is not only known, but the one you were being very careful and sneaking about interacting with says, "Hi, saw you, wanna be friends Y/N"

BookBeard

I mean, you say Claire will never know. She is probably one of the few people who can demand a personal meeting with the Director whenever she wants. Not to mention we just found out she can compel truth-telling with a glance. If Yay is vulnerable to Mom Vibes, I'd be willing to wager that the Director is not immune to the Librarian Look.

Shawn K. Younkin

Pfft, everybody does it, I'm sure even the AI/bots do it.

Markus Schaber

Ouch. "Very flexible"... That dad joke hurts...

Jacob Johnston

I love the existence of these "Big Deal" AIs. The Director, Station, Yay. They dynamics of such alien and powerful beings still struggling with interpersonal communication is great.

Randall Norman Pick

Ah, so the Director's up at that level. Yikes.

BookBeard

I'm sure Moray can confer with the Director without needing to see them in person, but that's not particularly unique. We've seen plenty of examples of AI using email, chat and even phone calls inside their heads. Moray and the Director probably have a highly encrypted direct chat line they can use as needed.

legobil

Right?! 🤣 True mom-demands if I ever heard of any.

David Durant

We know Emmett has a crush. Sam is oblivious, at least right now. I have a thing for dorky teenage romance.

enchantedsleeper

"Open"... to Yay 😂 It's funny that Aurelia suggests Yay apologise for snooping in that same strip. I wonder how it would have gone down if they had xD

legobil

Sure! They did describe it as “open channel” and “public blueprints”, but my guess is that even such things are on the Cubetown network.

legobil

Yeah, I wonder what kind of connection Moray has to the Director. I don’t think it has been explained. Some kind of neural deluxe WiFi signal? It doesn’t really make sense to have Moray (as the extension she is) make the elevator trip down every time they need to confer something. On the other hand, is that why Moray needed some time to think of “the exact wording” before giving Yay the message?

enchantedsleeper

That's the theory, although based on Yay's laughter about Cubetown in the previous strip I always thought they had been monitoring it for a while. It's possible they weren't listening in directly to Cubetown's channels until that moment, though.

legobil

I dunno, it depends how deep the Directors consciousness is about their network. I wonder if this is the moment Yay got caught 🤣 https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4888

legobil

Well, they were no doubt careful, but I wonder if this is the snooping around Yay did where they were discovered: https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4888

legobil

Heh. I wonder if this is the moment the Director discovered Yay snooping around :) https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4888

enchantedsleeper

Budding romance? I think it's a bit early for that... We also haven't seen Sam and Emmett in some time.

legobil

True, however I don’t think it is unfair to assume it might be an ability the Director does not possess or at least didn’t know Yay were capable of it.

enchantedsleeper

She's The Librarian

enchantedsleeper

Interesting question, but also, Moray has never been outside of Cubetown - so it's hard to imagine how that would have happened to her before now anyway.

BookBeard

Yay told Moray their name in the previous comic. This is pure speculation, but if the Director tracked their signal back to Northampton they may have run across rumors of a heretofore unknown powerful AI in the area going by that name. I mean, hand delivering Corpse Witch to the police, giving away two billion dollars? Even if Yay's true nature remains hidden that kind of thing is going to leave a trail. And as Yay said: "with every social bond we form, the network of people aware of our existence grows." https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4881

KiTA

What responsibility? She's a librarian.

Carl Cravens

Which would be even scarier to Yay. "You did something I didn't think was possible and didn't even think twice about it." But I think the way Yay thinks, they're going to _assume_ this was a flex, because if Yay did the same, it would be very intentional.

Riin Gill

Yeah, bones break. It’s no fun at all. Definitely overrated.

legobil

I wonder, if the message from the Director to Yay is a big flex, I wonder how big of a flex the whole “hijacking of sensorium is” considering Moray had never experienced that before.

David Durant

This. It feeds into my concern that while The Wedding, Marten's coffee shop and Sam / Emmett's budding romance might be in the foreground what the strip is *really* becoming about is the effect of superintellegent AIs on humanity. It's going to take a *long* time but I think we're heading into territory where the hard SF elements of the strip are going to become much more important.

KJ

How did the Director figure out enough about Yay that Moray was able to recognize them immediately (in https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5383)?

David Durant

As people have said, it's been suggested before. I tend to agree that it's unlikely. The lessor problems is that we'll never know. The bigger problem is that *Claire* will never know and now may spend all her time at Cubetown second-guessing herself about it.

Mad Marie

--oh you meant something different...um yes definitely can't...resist it in the...non sexy...way.

Mad Marie

It is truly sexy AF

Olaf

Thanks, Claire, for explaining things to me! I think I had forgotten or never quite appreciated just how secretive Yay was.

Creeperkry

Bones are NOT overrated. >:(

Stephen Wells

I think it's as if Yay was fully optimised for optical camouflage but is being detected by the Director in a completely different way - much as fish might rely on water pressure, electric fields etc. rather than vision. So for Yay it's terrifying but the Director doesn't even think of it as a flex, it's just... obvious to them.

Stephen Wells

Not that that's a bad thing!

Stephen Wells

It's the weight of responsibility settling upon her.

Mitsuki Ayane

Claire going to start looking more an more like Aurelia as this situation continues. ~<3

Brendan Luster

or an... excellent euphemism for something?

enchantedsleeper

@Michael Phillips And what does that mean in this context? xD

Andromeda

Is it just me or is Claire's design slowly becoming more mom-coded

Pejo

...the books

Clifton Royston

Shades of Dave Davenport's search algorithm. "Assuming a closed universe, there's a finite number of places you could be. I just developed an algorithm that mapped all possible points... and then skipped to the one you were actually *at* and went there."

Michael Phillips

I mean Moray can absolutely have free will. But in the words of Petey "if you look closely enough at the present you can find loose bits of the future just lying around."

BookBeard

But Moray is not a "direct conduit", she is a free and independent sentient being who was created by Director to serve as a representative.

Clifton Royston

Cartilage, which is made of collagen, hence and therefore. (I don't think normal jellyfish have collagen, but the Director and Moray are anything but normal.)

BookBeard

@Noodz: Agreed, I strongly suspect the Director has no idea about Yay being multiply embodied. I think they just detected a hacker, tracked the signal back to Northampton and wanted to make friends with a fellow nerd. Yay just assumed the worst because they are (justifiably) paranoid.

Clifton Royston

Isn't that *exactly* what being a goober is?

BookBeard

Mechanically I imagine it would function similarly to "Detect Hostile Intent" ability, but for mischief and tomfoolery.

n0s482

Except considering that Moray is a direct conduit of The Director, it's hard to say how much of this is confidence and Moray being Moray, or The Director being Moray. How much free will does she actually have? How much coincidence is coincidence?

BookBeard

Also if the Director did already know who Yay was in contact with then Roko seems like a more obvious route for making contact to me. There are any number of plausible reasons why a high-powered AI might reach out to the head of an AI rights organization.

Todd Ellner

The Director is much more alien than Yay. It's not unreasonable to guess they have difficulty with many sorts of human and regular AI communication. And gooberhood doesn't mean lack of subtlety

enchantedsleeper

I do think comparisons of Yay and the Director's respective abilities are pretty fascinating. The Director doesn't seem to share an awareness with all Morays at once, as in, the Morays report back to them as separate entities (see: Moray speaking to the Director about how she messed up with Liz). The Morays have to be reabsorbed for the Director to obtain their experiences and knowledge. Yay doesn't have those limitations, and that's pretty impressive.

BookBeard

"Flexing your goo" sounds like a horrible euphemism for something...

enchantedsleeper

That's pretty dark! I think the Director is a bit of a goober tbh. "Do you want to be friends Y/N" is a goober message

enchantedsleeper

I don't think we're going there at all. And Claire has faith in her own skills - so it would be uncharacteristic of her to doubt herself to that extent.

enchantedsleeper

Yeah, it's been mooted before but it feels icky. That's also a weird rationale for hiring someone for a job. And while the Director did notice Yay, I don't think it means they know who is in contact with them and who isn't. Claire could have no idea who Yay is.

BookBeard

That possibility has been mentioned before, but I don't think so. I suspect Yay was only detected snooping when Aurelia asked their opinion of Cubetown, which was after Claire got the job offer. https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4888

enchantedsleeper

To snoop on the Director... they'd definitely need to be more than that

Green

I wanna give them more credit than that! 😭 The Director coulda probably reached out to Yay directly if The Director wanted to, or at least gooped out a specific Moray to do it for them. I think it was moreso like how you'll make a new friend and then they introduce you to all of their friend's too. I just can't picture the Director deliberately using Claire like that :(

Noodz

Just because the director found Yay snooping doesn't necessarily mean that they know what Yay is exactly, for all anyone knows Yay is just a talented hacker

mooviies

It's a super AI, it could just do dozens of moves at once for multiple desired outcomes. So even if it was part of a scheme it might be that it was still useful to get a competent librarian and many other unfatomable reasons.

Green

Ok but to be fair, Moray didn't just happen to run into them, right? Yay went out of their way to do the happening part. Although I guess that could also have been considered by The Director, knowing that if Moray was in town Yay would make sure of it, seeing as they were already scuttling with curiosity. So that's also a flex, I guess.

Andrew Mitchell

I think Detect Shenanigans is one of those character traits that is always on, like certain characters who can never be surprised. No roll required.

Andrew Mitchell

All hail, BookBeard!

Andrew Mitchell

Same.

Hauke Musicaloris

Has it occurred to someone that while Cubetown might legitimately need a librarian, the director might have specifically chosen Claire because the lives in contact with Yay?

Graydon Armstrong

Oh no, so was Claire's job offer just part of the scheme too? I hope not. She'd probably feel so used, at least if the whole object of the scheme, to make friends with Yay, ends up turning out a dud.

Graydon Armstrong

Remember what we know about the Director. They're very good at patterns. Imagine basically being able to see the signals amidst any noise. So although Yay's probably good at removing direct evidence of themself, the Director may be just easily seeing the pattern of intrusions and editing as they happen. And Yay going quiet may not make them substantially less visible, unless they're able to literally just behave like a typical AI and hide in plain sight. But for all the pattern-processing, it doesn't necessarily mean the Director is more powerful. If they can still spot Yay, they may be able to try again with a less threatening message.

legobil

And maybe sloppy.

legobil

Yessssss.

Bagge

OMG Claire Stare

Bagge

I love how Claire now has firmly established that the director does not have higher security clearance than the Librarian

Chris Ramko

Well, when you put it like *that*….

Todd Ellner

It helps the Director to have a guileless and disarming agent people trust, one who honestly believes she is completely independent

Yelling Bird

I am extremely jealous of Jeph's ability to write compelling characters.

Mordaeus

Okay, yeah, it's scarier than I realized.

Mika Ears

I didn’t think of it like this. Makes me feel better!

Yelling Bird

Yay still might be more powerful, just got overconfident and got caught.

Rhyon Ingalls

More like a gigantic multi-embodied squid in a yawning impossibly deep trench. Hugely powerful and capable but not as alien or inscrutable as, weird example, a jellyfish so alien it must communicate via goo woman translator

Mika Ears

Eh. We’ve not seen that they’re anything but a very large fish. There just are maybe some others like the Director out there too.

JCfromNC

"So bounce the graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish / That's the way we do things lad, we're making shit up as we wish"

Claudia D.

😆

ducksauz

Once again, BookBeard brings the canon.

Todd Ellner

Yay is a medium sized fish in a big ocean

nbarnes

There are two kinds of coincidence; stochastic and unperceived causality. 'coincidence' is what humans call them when we can't tell the difference. The Director's whole thing is being able to discern which is which.

Scott

I have to admit that while I do feel bad for Yay, they have had no qualms whatsoever in their past about doing all sorts of highly questionable activities for their own advantage.

BookBeard

It's true, I heard she shushed someone so hard they died! https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4960

nbarnes

I am /dead serious/ when I ask "How has Jeph not used this as a title already?"

Andrew

And the Star Trek ‘insert science here’ :)

enchantedsleeper

Liz: I DIDN'T GET A MESSAGE >:(

William Cole

Her shush is a killing word.

BookBeard

Unless it's the Hollywood sense of the word in which "quantum" is a synonym for "magic".

Sean Kinlin

Claire Stare

Mika Ears

I got way too invested in Yay as the most powerful AI... now it appears they've got peers/superiors and I am bummed. I'll miss them.

Sean Kinlin

A Newfriend

Sean Kinlin

The Librarian has all the security clearances.

Dean Reilly

Maybe they give that message to everyone leaving Cubetown, just in case? 😄

Charles Hirst

Try walking into a (too) quiet room and saying in a loud (enough) voice - "This evil practice must cease!" It can have interesting results.

Not that Patrick Foltz

She goes 🎶🎵 Na-na-na-na-na Na-na-na-na-na Na-na-na-na-na-na Na-na-na-na-na Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na She's got:

Diptych

I don't like your peaches They are full of stones I like bananas Because they have no bones Don't give me tomatoes Can't stand ice cream cones I like bananas Because they have no bones

Matthew Delahaye

I mean, if you're using quantum computing to search you'd still likely be checking all combinations, it's just that thanks to taking advantage of superpostions you can check multiple combinations at once.

James Redekop

Claire has evolved beyond such primitive Bene Gesserit techniques as The Voice. She only needs The Look.

enchantedsleeper

Non-Patrons have no idea what they're missing out on xD

BookBeard

She's an excellent source of potassium?

enchantedsleeper

It is pretty wild that they figured out where Yay was, I didn't think about that part 🤔

enchantedsleeper

Ha. Also oof xD

Not that Patrick Foltz

Claireity struck as she hatched a plan. “Yay,” she whispered into the encrypted ether, “it’s time to come out of hiding. The Director needs you, and so do I.”

Adarsh Nednur

I know a lot of campaigns and parties where Detect Shenanigans would be an unironically great spell, somebody whip up a homebrew version

Cas Wanden

Once a day? Nah, that shit's on a 30-second cooldown.

Opus the Poet

No bones about it...

BookBeard

When Claire took the Librarian class she gained the ability to use Suggestion as a gaze attack once per day. She also gets bonuses to will saves against exasperation and Detect Shenanigans as cantrip.

Katrina Urmson

Moray… …nope. Nevermind. I like her innocent and apt to lack of metaphor in this case. 💙

FuzzyDragon Cosplay

I have a feeling they basilisk will stop yay in the nick of time, and one of yay will end up working in the coffee shop with Martin.

Damian

To summarize this arc, Yay is an incredible feat of engineering, and only just learning that networking and spy gear is a little outclassed in the digital realm against enough raw computation power that it squirts out fully functional AI just to translate for it.