#especially as said AI had given no hint of any sort of sentience or simulated personality or anything. that came completely out of the blue

[katoska]

The Doctor's theory that the Dots developed sentience and came to hate their classist, vapid users makes no sense and sounds imo like projection.

We know what happens when an AI gets exposed to a lot of bigoted speech. It starts spewing bigotry itself, because it doesn't know better. Not that our current AIs are truly intelligent or sentient, but they do share the human trait that they are a product of the society they exist in. Same would go for more advanced, truly sentient AI. It would get it's opinions from it's programmers and users.

The Dots didn't seem to be ever intended to even mimick sentience like our AIs are. They are higher tech smart phones. You don't talk with them, just at them. And no one seems worried about saying something bad that an AI might pick up on, about pissing off the algorithm, eg about the "I'm going to buy 100" thing, which'd go against the city's Avoid Waste policy. If they were expected to moderate, it would give the Dots something concrete to base their annoyance on. It would have been so easy to put in a "You can't SAY that word in the bubble. Do you want to get suspended? You gotta say [euphemism for the same word]. God, you're so stupid and offensive."

Like, our AIs and content algorithms have more Robot Overlord forshadowing than their Dots do. The Dots show them exactly what they ask to see, and most of their relationships are still live, albeit over a screen, with a real person, some parasocial stuff with celebs (one celeb. whom Lindy wasn't obsessed with enough to not throw him under the bus) notwithstanding. Even their ads are only word-of-mouth influencer-type stuff rather than interrupting them every 5 minutes (it's cause they have a premium Bubble subscription, isn't it?) Their virtual bubble doesn't actually matter, because it's roughly made up of the same people that exist in their very much physical bubble that is their gated community.

Since their Dots don't seem to be set up to encourage or discourage any particular type of behavior at all - what to say, what to buy, how much to buy, or suggesting eco-fascist vids bc that person looked into veganism - why, if it became sentient, would it get annoyed? Esp about people using it for plain chatter, the thing it was intended for.