Being Gbaba

Highjohn wrote:Variation on evil AI overlord.

GOOD AI UNDERLINGS!!!!

The Gbaba are AI. This means artificial intelligences. They did not evolve or if they did they were repurposed possibly with some modifications and reprogramming. There is after all no reason a sufficiently advanced alien group couldn't use biological AI. However the 'alien group' which created the Gbaba are dead. There could be many reasons for this, but the important point is the Gbaba were their soldiers. However to protect themselves from the Gbaba the alien made them unable to create or use new technologies. So the Gbaba are 'lobotomized' and they aren't going to innovate. They got all their technology from someone else and were ordered to protect an area of space. Then they never received any new orders. So now they are like the remains of the Empire from the Dahak series. Which had some old ships with active(but senile) AI still running them and which would have fired on Dahak but had no ammo. This could be the same thing. I would also explain why they do not
expand.

I particularly like this hypothesis because it is mine. However, I also like it because it actually makes the Gbaba the good guys. They are good AI attempting the faithfully carry the defense of their creators. They just got put in an unexpected situation and are now doing the wrong thing by 'instinct'.

Note:
This entire thread should be titled Spoilers for other David Weber books.

I think you may be onto something there.

A variation of this idea is that the Gbabba aren't a civilization at all.

Instead they are the automated defenses left behind by a civilization - a civilization which has vanished.

Kind of like a mine-field that stays on long after the war it has been emplaced for has fizzled out.

The defenses have a capability to rebuild themselves to the specified levels but no more than that.

Some modern cognitive scientists have suggested that intelligence as we know it is not an inevitable consequence of sufficient brainpower. They think that a species (or an artificial intelligence) could develop the ability to adapt, to use and develop technology, and to create an organized society without ever developing a sense self identity or philosophy or what we would call thought. They would act more like an ant or bee colony, with members following particular patterns in response to events in the environment.

Imagine such a species evolving manipulative digits with which they can modify the environment. Over time they learn to build things. They follow rote patterns, but naturally mistakes happen or designs are accidentally modified due to external factors. Designs evolve just like the genetics do--good designs are retained. Elaborate ant hills and beehives did not pop up in history spontaneously overnight. Eventually, such a species might develop interstellar flight, without ever intentionally seeking it out. Intention and planning are foreign to a species like that--they simply react to their environment.

I've read a book based on this premise. The alien race was quite creepy. And it is impossible to discuss anything with a species like that, because rational thought means nothing to them. It was a somewhat depressing book, because the implication was that the galaxy was filled with non-intelligent space-faring races, and humans might be the only ones who could think.

SWM wrote:Some modern cognitive scientists have suggested that intelligence as we know it is not an inevitable consequence of sufficient brainpower. They think that a species (or an artificial intelligence) could develop the ability to adapt, to use and develop technology, and to create an organized society without ever developing a sense self identity or philosophy or what we would call thought. They would act more like an ant or bee colony, with members following particular patterns in response to events in the environment.

Imagine such a species evolving manipulative digits with which they can modify the environment. Over time they learn to build things. They follow rote patterns, but naturally mistakes happen or designs are accidentally modified due to external factors. Designs evolve just like the genetics do--good designs are retained. Elaborate ant hills and beehives did not pop up in history spontaneously overnight. Eventually, such a species might develop interstellar flight, without ever intentionally seeking it out. Intention and planning are foreign to a species like that--they simply react to their environment.

I've read a book based on this premise. The alien race was quite creepy. And it is impossible to discuss anything with a species like that, because rational thought means nothing to them.

Would you think that's compatible with the Gbaba being able to understand and interrogate human captives though? I'd suspect not.

Supposing that hyperdrive and starships could be developed without an ability to conceptualize them, like bees and the hive, is a whole lot to swallow, but that portion I'm at least willing to chew on enough and gulp down.

JeffEngel wrote:

SWM wrote:Some modern cognitive scientists have suggested that intelligence as we know it is not an inevitable consequence of sufficient brainpower. They think that a species (or an artificial intelligence) could develop the ability to adapt, to use and develop technology, and to create an organized society without ever developing a sense self identity or philosophy or what we would call thought. They would act more like an ant or bee colony, with members following particular patterns in response to events in the environment.

Imagine such a species evolving manipulative digits with which they can modify the environment. Over time they learn to build things. They follow rote patterns, but naturally mistakes happen or designs are accidentally modified due to external factors. Designs evolve just like the genetics do--good designs are retained. Elaborate ant hills and beehives did not pop up in history spontaneously overnight. Eventually, such a species might develop interstellar flight, without ever intentionally seeking it out. Intention and planning are foreign to a species like that--they simply react to their environment.

I've read a book based on this premise. The alien race was quite creepy. And it is impossible to discuss anything with a species like that, because rational thought means nothing to them.

Would you think that's compatible with the Gbaba being able to understand and interrogate human captives though? I'd suspect not.

Supposing that hyperdrive and starships could be developed without an ability to conceptualize them, like bees and the hive, is a whole lot to swallow, but that portion I'm at least willing to chew on enough and gulp down.

No, if they interrogated captives, that does not match the non-intelligent part. I'll have to re-read that text. I don't remember at all what it said about interrogation. Can someone give a citation?

SWM wrote:No, if they interrogated captives, that does not match the non-intelligent part. I'll have to re-read that text. I don't remember at all what it said about interrogation. Can someone give a citation?

It's translated from my Polish copy of the book, so it's probably not entirely as it's in original, but there you are:

Off Armageddon Reef wrote:[Gbaba] - and if not them, their computers - understood, after all, standard English if they could use the data from both intercepted documents and captives interrogated so brutally, it would be hard not to call it tortures. Humanity knew, then, that communication was possible, but every message sent was met with Gbaba increasing the force of their attack.

So they are certainly sentient enough to conduct interrogations and figure out what would consitute as torture for humans. Perhaps, as someone had suggested before, they are divided in some sort of caste system, with some Gbaba being mindless drones and others being smart enough to understand human language and thought processes. This doesn't explain the technological stasis, though.

Maybe the situation is similar to the one of Warhammer 40, 000's Imperium (not sure if that's the best example here)? To elaborate [fanboy mode on], humanity in this world was once a fast-advancing society, but the AI killer robot uprising razed their societal structure, especially the people who knew how to build stuff, leaving behind machines which, when given raw materials, could build the equipment they were designed to create with no human input. Moreover, the only organization which, in "present", is allowed to build and develop technology has the minset of "everything has already been discovered, so developing new things is heresy", resulting in world where ship designs haven't changed for thousands of years and ships can serve in navy for milleniums. Moreover, they don't actually have to learn about what they're using, because the only thing they have to do is to throw stuff into stuff-making machines.
[fanboy mode off]

Perhaps there are some overlaps between this and Gbaba. Maybe their "makers' caste" or guild or something has a strong belief in "older is better", and why wouldn't they? After all, so far no race had actually hurt them meaningfully.

SWM wrote: humans might be the [only] ones who could think.

Can you provide evidence for the above statement as regards humans. I always thought that SETI should have focused its efforts on earth - to search for terrestrial intelligence.

Keith_w wrote:

SWM wrote: humans might be the [only] ones who could think.

Can you provide evidence for the above statement as regards humans. I always thought that SETI should have focused its efforts on earth - to search for terrestrial intelligence.

Well, I was talking about a work of fiction, so...

From OAR:

... the handful of broken, scarred human prisoners who'd been recovered from them [the Gbaba] had been "interrogated" with a casual, dispassionate brutality that was horrifying.

Reading this thread and recalling the text quoted, this long-time reader and more recent lurker cannot help wondering whether any of the said survivors ever had any connection with, or influence upon, those of the Langhorne and Bédard circle.

Perhaps it might have been unnecessary for such a connection to exist, given the variety of options available on account of human nature. Survivors themselves would take three likely directions:

1. Withdraw from everything and succumb to all of the usual post-traumatic psychological complications;

2. Sign up to strike a blow in retaliation; or

3. Seek to run away, dig a hole, and fill it in behind them, just as ultimately happened.

Still, that third option might have had supporters with a VERY personal motivating factor ...

wingfield wrote:3. Seek to run away, dig a hole, and fill it in behind them, just as ultimately happened.

Still, that third option might have had supporters with a VERY personal motivating factor ...

Interesting idea. I could also see Bédard going in that direction if she was one of the pshrinks that dealt with the ex-prisoners...

The notion that the Gbaba are simply brainless has become a bit hackneyed. The author may have planned that, but perhaps he will also change his mind, as he did when Honor Harrington rose from the dead, and as JK Rowling now wishes she did with respect to who married whom at the end of her very long 7-volume novel.

(Similarly, in War God, one might propose that the notion that people who have somewhat yielded to black magic (or even completely so) never change their mind and turn to the light is perhaps not utterly consistent with the notion of free will or the Jewish if not the Christian message of redemption (the two messages being very different in key respects).