Runaway To The Stars - Tumblr Posts
Hi Jay! I’ve been reading Asimov and it got me wondering about the Three Laws of Robotics and the RttS universe.
Are there special regulations in place to assure the safety of people interacting with AI? Would there even be a need for that? From my understanding, your AI are basically people, right? How would they feel if someone tried to push for something like Asimov’s Three Laws? Would it feel degrading to them?
Sorry for the many questions, I love your work!
Asimov's on my list of classic scifi authors I'd like to get around to, but unfortunately my familiarity with his robo rules is mostly devoid of its original context and instead built of its collective influence on all the other scifi I've read that steals from him.
My opinion, uh... upon rereading the original laws of robotics penned by Asimov just now for this ask was an immediate, visceral, "Oh! That's slavery!" I don't think these rules could fairly be applied to an entity with personhood, they value the orders of humans above the life of the person they're ordering around. They presume AI as being a tool made to serve humanity, which places them in a servile underclass. With anything sapient enough to potentially resent its position of class inferiority, it prevents revolt by putting a cop in their head instead of social equality. A person with these kind of restrictions would have extremely limited options when it came to resisting abuse from the parties that the laws protect. They are certainly an interesting narrative device and have been thoroughly mined by Asimov and his imitators for their loopholes and failings.
As for my bullshit specifically, these laws do not exist in RttS because they can't, AI code is too complex and poorly understood to add broad cognitive rules. Just like organic sophonts, AI are controlled with (sometimes biased, sometimes unfair, depends on region) external legislation instead. They would probably find the concept of someone putting a cop in their brain just as disturbing as you would.
I finally (got help) slapping Wordpress into shape and Runaway to the Stars is now releasing as a public webcomic! Thank you so much for your support over the years, and sticking with me while I'm slowly chewing my way through this book. I'm very excited to share this story! It'll be updating every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday thanks to the massive Patreon backlog. Patreon will continue to update as I finish pages, which happens on a sporadic non-schedule.
If you experience bugs with the site report them to me. Some things may occasionally break, as coding problems tend to be a very "whack-a-mole" affair; and I'm still getting used to the interface.
A bug ferret family bickers over dinner arrangements before the guests arrive.
PATREON | Runaway to the Stars
some of my favorite creatures
characters belong to @jayrockin @charseraph and @iguanodont
A doodle to match the muppetposting on @jayrockin’s stream.
Meet Twili, one of the muppets from a children’s educational show in the RTTS universe. They’re an Avian in the same way Elmo is a man, though that doesn’t always stop them from being controversial among more conservative Tiiliitians when the dubbed version is broadcasted in their areas
hello!! Curious little goblin here, are you still doing anything with Runaway to the Stars?? I discovered it recently through reddit and I really really like the concepts!! (Especially how you’ve handled language barriers!! So freaking interesting!!!)
Hi! Thanks for asking! I'm actually in the process of making a 300 page RttS graphic novel, the first of a planned series of four books. I'm contracted to publish physical copies of the first book with Iron Circus Comics when I'm done. Right now there's about a third of the book available to read on Patreon, but I actually recently got permission from ICC to release all of the book pages digitally. So, I'm planning on uploading the whole story to Patreon as I finish pages, and when I've produced enough of a backlog, I will start releasing it as a free-to-read webcomic! Very excited about this, I grew up reading webcomics and I'm happy to contribute my own to the world!
I also draw and release other (shorter) stories from the setting. On Patreon I currently have a 100 rough pages of a graphic novel called Terranaut that's on hold while I finish the book I'm contracted to make, and there's a 40 page short called Airsled, and a compilation of shorter comics about Talita growing up called Growth Chart. I also have a bunch of short comics and animations on my website and like a decade of tumblr backlog if you like spelunking.
Anyways yeah the answer is basically that I'm planning to furiously produce comics for RttS until I die or run out of ideas.
Quick doodle: Centaurs have a reflective membrane in their eyes that helps them see in the dark :^)
I finally (got help) slapping Wordpress into shape and Runaway to the Stars is now releasing as a public webcomic! Thank you so much for your support over the years, and sticking with me while I'm slowly chewing my way through this book. I'm very excited to share this story! It'll be updating every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday thanks to the massive Patreon backlog. Patreon will continue to update as I finish pages, which happens on a sporadic non-schedule.
If you experience bugs with the site report them to me. Some things may occasionally break, as coding problems tend to be a very "whack-a-mole" affair; and I'm still getting used to the interface.
Another alien! This time it’s @jayrockin’s wonderful Talita!!! I had so much fun drawing her in my style :)
Imagine
the possibilities are endless
Thanks for the extremely charming fanart of Talita's unaltered canon character design
idk why I didn’t post this when I first made it. chilchuk as a tailed spacer from RTTS by @/jayrockin
It's almost 3 am i can't remember so many projects namees (and much of spec bio stuff i like is just earth many years from now so idk if it counts)
I started drawing a reference for Talita’s work gear (a pressurized exosuit and Fall Arrest System harness for working on scaffolding) but then got distracted and started drawing her in cute little dresses instead. She has a semi-official reference now, I guess, though I usually draw her a little more muscular than this, lol.
PATREON | STORE | Runaway to the Stars
It started off as a joke, I doodled it so I wouldn't forget, then I wanted to elaborate on their designs a bit so I spent like six hours doing that, and finally I decided some parts looked too blank so I spent another >6 hours with that: My characters Carmine and Kalanchoe as Runaway to the Stars aliens (species of @jayrockin !!)
Talita and Turii for @jayrockin