Author Topic: EP403: Saving Alan Idle  (Read 14050 times)

InfiniteMonkey

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Reply #25 on: July 19, 2013, 04:58:01 AM
The most interesting thing to me is Alan's evolving attitude to towards his siblings. Because of course they aren't siblings in the human sense, but they do seem to be the first creatures of a new species.



TheArchivist

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Reply #26 on: July 22, 2013, 09:22:14 AM
Meh.

Error 2145 : Suspension of disbelief failure - insufficent resources

There were good points to it, and they've been discussed. But for a story so centrally wrapped in computer technology the absurdity of supposing that, even in the future, it would ever be worth implementing enough processing power in a modem to support AI - let alone a UPS! - just broke it.

I'm not against AI stories as such. AI can be enormous fun. But when the author goes into so much technical detail (the router runs embedded Linux - which most of them do - and thus can support any Linux program - utter B"$"(&^^) it makes it absurd. True AI is a fair way off even on the world's best supercomputers.



ElectricPaladin

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Reply #27 on: July 22, 2013, 10:07:45 PM
True AI is a fair way off even on the world's best supercomputers.

Here that, Scattercat? This guy doesn't believe in you!

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matweller

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Reply #28 on: July 23, 2013, 01:35:23 PM
I liked this story; I thought it was an interesting view of the relationship between an AI and its maker/keeper.  My credulity was strained more by Alan's "humanness" than it was by him running on a laptop.  I've long thought that when we build true artificial intelligence, it will be because we've radically rethought the way we code, not because we've learned to throw huge amounts of hardware resource at the problem.
This was my thought too. I mean, we run "electronic life" programs on computers only a little stronger than the first Macintosh. I realize we're talking about orders of magnitude of software complexity, but computers are exponentially better in the 30 years since that Mac too. It's less likely a mater of computing power and more likely a matter of getting the right operator in the programming chair.



Devoted135

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Reply #29 on: July 26, 2013, 03:21:45 PM
I enjoyed this story for the most part, especially the sections involving interaction between Eileen and Alan. The outside world never really solidified for me, especially the random mugger in the hospital, but in a way that almost seemed appropriate. I mean, Eileen is the type of person who won't even let her closest friends in, much less the rest of the outside world. This is very much Alan and Eileen's story, not the story of the greater disaster (whatever it is).



flippertie

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Reply #30 on: July 27, 2013, 03:58:28 PM
This story really got to me - because it took me straight back to the first AI book I remember reading (in the late 70s!) : The adolescence of P1.  I was in my teens then, and that book was one of the major factors that got me to take my first BASIC programming class...

I some of the problems with suspension of disbelief that others have mentioned: the AI trapped in the UPS was a bit much, and a world where a laptop has enough ooomph to load 3 subversions is far enough away that they won't still be futzing about with USB ports.

But Hey! Maybe it's a quantum compaq?

That said I was engaged enough to care what happened to Alan, and happy that the Mexican cousin came back.



benjaminjb

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Reply #31 on: August 07, 2013, 03:31:55 PM
Like many of the commenters, I enjoyed some of the detail work--Hornblower slash fiction--but thought some of the big picture issues weren't so compelling. As others have noted, lots of tiny moments of tension don't build up; and I'm not sure I see all that much in the way of character growth over those obstacles.

Which brings me to my biggest complaint: Alan never really feels like AI. For instance, we get the three different instances of Alan acting differently, but how does that happen? If we're looking at this as a story about how people make decisions--how the human decides to cut herself off from people in real life, how one Alan decides to risk going to Mexico, etc.--I'd like some more light shone on the process behind Alan. What does it really feel like to be Alan?

Well, I'm off to write Knight Rider slash about KITT falling in love with Michael Knight--a man who does not exist.



CorsairJack

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Reply #32 on: September 18, 2013, 02:57:02 AM
So, I realized in the last three minutes of the story that I was clutching my ipod nearly hard enough to crack it, hopping that, for the love of god, Alan would survive till the end. Going to go buy a new screen now...



CryptoMe

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Reply #33 on: November 02, 2013, 12:36:17 AM
Wow! Very polarized opinions here.

I stand firmly with the liked it crowd. I didn't have any of the problems that others have noted. As Devoted135 pointed out, this was Aileen and Alan's story, so I was fine with the disaster (including all the mini-tension) being just a distant back-drop to that relationship. I also didn't have a problem with the AI's running on a laptop. Computer advances, sea changes in programming, etc. have all been mentioned as reasonable explanations for this, but I think think the best explanation is that this is science *fiction*. We are more than willing to suspend disbelief for *way* more crazy things, but this knocks people out of the story? Really? I just don't get that.

Well, I guess I'm just happy the nay-sayers didn't ruin this one for me. I still like it even after reading the forums. :)



hardware

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Reply #34 on: January 21, 2014, 10:59:14 AM
This story worked pretty well for me, if there was a lack of tension it was pretty liberating and gave it a real life feeling that fit well to the strong but not too dramatic relation between Alan and Eileen. Not every story needs huge stakes and when you look back on it quite a lot happened. A group of AI:s were distributed and are now multiplying in the worlds networks. Eileen broke her isolation and seems to start living in the physical world. If I had any technical nitpick it was that the AI could not understand the motivations of a clone of itself that was so new. Where would such a huge change in "personality" come from. If I was Alan, I would worry about the integrity of my identity ...



Myrealana

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Reply #35 on: January 21, 2014, 04:24:50 PM
I really enjoyed this one.

Sure, when I read through this thread and started really analyzing the outside world and the unlikely events, things started to fray around the edges, but in the moment, I didn't even care. I was completely wrapped up in Alan and his dilemma. I loved the character, and I care what he thought and what happened to him, and through him, I cared about Eileen.

This one gets a serious thumbs up from me.

"You don't fix faith. Faith fixes you." - Shepherd Book