Hiyas:

Just to be 100% sure, instead of most scifi setting's robots (like Star Wars, the Jetsons, Paranoia XP, Asimov's) the W40k universe replaces them with servitors (without personality, of course), right?

To make it more plain: In the W40k universe fiction, the typical "role" of robots (menial tasks, battle, stuff like this) is given to servitors instead, right?

Lete

Who?

The quick answer is, Yes.

No droids in 40k.

Lobotomized quadruple-amputees; 40k's answer to robots! ;-)

Great way to make use of Heretics and incompitent Acolytes as well. We all serve the Emperor of Man, for He is the Morning and the Rising Sun, in one way or another.

Actually all forms of robots or computing systems without a 'soul' (i.e. without organic components) is banned and labelled as heresy.

Creation of true A.I. (called 'silica animus') is one of the gravest sins in the eyes of the Mechanicus and will most definitely (and most ironically) have the perpetrator ending up as a servitor.

Actually all forms of robots or computing systems without a 'soul' (i.e. without organic components) is banned and labelled as heresy.

Cogitators usually don't have organic components.

Creation of true A.I. (called 'silica animus') is one of the gravest sins in the eyes of the Mechanicus and will most definitely (and most ironically) have the perpetrator ending up as a servitor.

Of course, "true AI" is quite up to interpretation - everything up to a high level expert system (such as the one capable of driving the Land Raider) may be perfectly alright.

Cifer said:

I'm sure the Ad Mech pretty much have it set in stone (if not actually) and the limit is pretty low. I'm sure if a Land Raider ever started to 'Herbie' it it would put down pretty quickly.

After all Intellegent Machines did bring about the fall of Man previously.

Actually, Land Raiders have been known to 'Herbie' every once in a while- one of the best examples I can think of is in the Land Raider Index Astartes article- crew dead, a swarm of Orks charging towards it, it charges to meet them, shooting until the lascannon barrels fail, and the heavy bolter is out of ammo, then crushing them under its' treads until they're clogged. It then opens the hatches, waits until the warboss and his bodyguard have come in to investigate and seals them in. Then floods the inside with reactor fumes and gasses them to death.

Titans have been known to do similar things, especially if their princeps isn't strong-willed enough to rein them in, or if incapacitated or killed. Indeed, that's the reason you should never wake a titan without a princeps or his moderati present and connected (there's an Imperius Dictatio comic about just such an event, where a titan thought destroyed is being repaired, and they brought it too far up without a new princeps- it trashed a fair bit of the AdMech repair bays it was in (including at least one other titan undergoing repair work) before being brought down).

And as an aside, there are actual robots in the 40k universe, but their program is ridiculously limited (unless you used the wetware programming chips, you had to have someone actually there giving them orders, which had to be both simple and precise, and usually didn't let you use any weapons or special equipment they had been fitted with. If you used the wetware chips, they became effectively autonomous, and could use any special weapons and equipment their (rather simple) programming allowed, but had a habit of developing glitches in the programming (especially if damaged) and then going haywire- quite often ignoring all subsequent orders. Servitors apparently just freeze up if a similar glitch appears), they were very hard to build (the easiest way was to 'salvage' a dreadnaught, strip out the pilot and replace that with the cogitators. Needless to say, the Astartes don't like them much for that), and they weren't generally trusted.

Alasseo said:

Actually, I think what you are looking at here is less an A.I. response than the very essence of the "machine spirit" which resides in 40k devices. Whether it originated from the machines themselves or was generated from the strong belief - nay whorship - of the Imperium, the machine spirits seem to be very real entities in the setting. These are most evident in Titans, but any object which has spent a great deal of time in the pressence of passionate people and strong emotion is going to develop a spirit of some sort. Ships are said to have them - Titans, again, are specifically addressed in an Eisenhorn story - and "weapons of power" most certainly manifest that spirit in their own way.

As such, I wouldn't say either of the machines you mention are Intelligent (nor, artificially so) so much as they are doing what they are designed for - what they have been used for over centuries if not millenia. Beyond the measure of their purpose I doubt these machines could reason in any tangible way - no more than they could deviate from their purpose ... so no flower picking Titans or homebody Warp Ships.

Indeed the point about the Land Raider (and all machines that have automated functions) is that is specifically described as the machine spirit.

In the Land Raider example, if the it one LeMan's foiled a bank robbery, started hitting on a predator and got Lyndsey Lohan a date then it would be branded as tech Heresy. Otherwise it's just doing what it programmed to do (albeit in a way that they probably can't replicate anymore).

Although Robots are mostly distrusted (as is much technology) there are notable examples where Robot units have been made Honary space marines. Which illustrates how little even Space Marines understand technology.

Back onto the topic, I think there are likely to be robots working on forgeworlds where servitors are not sufficient but they probably more like modern day production line robots than droids.

40K also uses people for much menial service, they're simple to create, generally easy to maintain and never in short supply.

They tend to get faulty programming and malfunction more often than servitors though.

Actually, I think what you are looking at here is less an A.I. response than the very essence of the "machine spirit" which resides in 40k devices. Whether it originated from the machines themselves or was generated from the strong belief - nay whorship - of the Imperium, the machine spirits seem to be very real entities in the setting. These are most evident in Titans, but any object which has spent a great deal of time in the pressence of passionate people and strong emotion is going to develop a spirit of some sort. Ships are said to have them - Titans, again, are specifically addressed in an Eisenhorn story - and "weapons of power" most certainly manifest that spirit in their own way.

I have yet to see any indication that machine spirits are anything other than either pure superstition (lasgun) or the combination of an expert system (Land Raider) and/or high tech gadgets (Gun Blessing/Technical Knock).

Face Eater said:

Wow. Couldya please enlighten me on this topic? Is it like Dune's Butlerian Jihad ?

Lete

Thanks you...

Cifer said:

There's some method to that idea.

Demons were created from the Warp based on man's subconsious fears and definition of evil, etc etc. Chaos was shaped by humanity and other races.

Therefore, it seems possible that if enough people believe strongly enough in machine spirits they may manifest in the immaterium. However, that opens up a whole can of worms concerning concentual reality, which is metaphysics that is better suited to a White Wolf Mage message board.

Otherwise, how would Blessed Machine Oil improve a weapon with no moving parts?

I guess I take the concept of concensual reality for granted and through the examples you mentioned - as well as at least one beastie in the CA book - I took the 40k universe to be much the same; it is not a concious act, it simply is.

Not all machines had a strong spirit, however. For many they are no more concious than the flickering of a candle flame - but over time and exposure to emotionally strong stimulus, that flame may grow.

LETE said:

Hi Lete, yep, like so much of 40k its a direct rip off of the Dune series, in this case the Butlerian Jihad (an event that led to the outlawing of technology such as 'thinking machines').

In 40k it reared its head probably most clearly in the 'Journal of Keeper Cripias', a page of fluff in the 40k Tabletop rules (3rd Ed.), that covered details of Imperial ancient history concerning the mysterious 'Gold Men, Iron Men and Stone Men'...not much else has been written on these, but essentially the Iron Men (that cropped up in a Gaunt's Ghost novel if i recall) were AI robots built by the Gold Men (??) who rebelled in a Terminator-style 'Rise of the Machines', leading to the Imperium/AdMech banning Artificial Intelligence.

As to 'basic servitors', yes from a metagame perspective servitors are the 40k equivalent of robots.

However, i feel that given their nature 'half man half machine' they are ripe for all sorts of other roleplaying and philosophical overlays. For example, they could be seen as the ultimate expression of technological enslavement, with humans literally becoming 'ghosts int he machine', etc...

There's some method to that idea.

Demons were created from the Warp based on man's subconsious fears and definition of evil, etc etc. Chaos was shaped by humanity and other races.

Therefore, it seems possible that if enough people believe strongly enough in machine spirits they may manifest in the immaterium. However, that opens up a whole can of worms concerning concentual reality, which is metaphysics that is better suited to a White Wolf Mage message board.

Apart from Warp entities usually needing specific circumstances to manifest in the real world at all , do you think the belief in machine spirits would be equivalent in strength to the emotions of rage, hope, despair and lust? I don't.

Otherwise, how would Blessed Machine Oil improve a weapon with no moving parts?

Considering its price, let's just shout "Nano!" a few times and feel better.

I guess I take the concept of concensual reality for granted and through the examples you mentioned - as well as at least one beastie in the CA book - I took the 40k universe to be much the same; it is not a concious act, it simply is.

Which beastie would that be? That machine virus thingy? I don't see where this can't be explained as a complex virus.

There are robots in 40k, but robots are not allowed to appear human (EXTERMINATUS!) or have anything more than the most rudimentary of intelligence. Basically, in 40k, machines can't ever be "self aware" without eliciting the most brutal and dreadful of crackdowns and purges.

Just checked some references and I have to correct my previous statement. There's no indication that organic components are a must for hightech gadgets to remain legal.

The outlawing of AI and artificial life - as already stated - goes back to after the Dark Age of Technology and was intended to keep thinking machines from rising against their masters again. But as with all good intentions in grimdark, it hast devolved into hypocrisy and superstition over the mil

As long as a higly sophisticated expert system or low-level A.I. conforms to the teachings of the Mechanicum and remains controllable and docile, its a hallowed and revered machine spirit.

As soon as it gets its own ideas, it is marked heretical and pursued with the utmost zeal... You just have to love human nature

It's a piece of fluff in the WH40k tabletop that Orks generate some of their effects simply by their belief in them (most specifically, the belief that painting something red makes it goes faster means that Ork vehicles painted red *do* go faster); this is explained as their latent racial psychic power at work. So the foundation for humans creating a Machine Spirit is sort of already laid.

But in my campaign, there simply are Machine Spirits, just like there are simply daemons and whatnot. This is in part because I like the idea, and in part because I want to reinforce to the players that they want to pray before reloading their weapons, or use Blessed Machine Oil rather than any old oil. Otherwise, they, being modern 21st-century type individuals, aren't going to bother as much.

Thanks for the answers.

Dead/lobotomised peeps instead of robots... The whole thing's just creeps me out.

L

Who?