#perfectly mimic something they can't engage imaginatively

[sorin-sunchild]

It's so hard to talk about the worrisome effects of late stage capitalism on the next generation because people will insist you're just an old person hating on the young and make false comparisons.

But like, no, actually, toy kitchen sets and other household utilities especially when unbranded toy make up and little cars to ride in weren't a problem because they were tactile and imagination focused. They allowed the kids to explore things that in the future they'd have to use to get by.

The toy flip phones and other tech were maybe a yellow flag at best, better when unbranded or fake branded at least, more worrisome when basically free advertising a brand. TV ads blasted at us between every show and in our kids magazines was a warning too and yeah people actually did worry about it at the time.

And that's where we come to the worries I have now. It's weird to me how many kids toys, aimed at the young, specifically feature non-parody brand items (outside of the toy companies brand which is like a whole other talk). Mostly foodstuffs, but also things like earbuds/airpods and stanley cups or whatever they're called.

I don't care if there's toy tech or other modern play items. Mimicking adults in imaginative play is ok, but it has to be tactile and allow imagination not just yell 'pop goes the earbuds!' at a toddler.

I do care about how inescapable ads are especially if the tablet is raising your child and how kids are being raised to associate these brands with play and later nostalgia.

I do care about how hard it is to explain to people how weird it is that these brands are getting ready advertising access to your kids developing brains this way.

I get it! Kids want things that look like things they see other places! There's not bad!

But we literally have a brand called OBEY and 8 year olds think they need a skincare routine with specific brand products and 17 year olds are terrified of turning 21 and planning Botox and when the main comfort a kid gets is from brands that's all they'll want and they'll become consumers with very little critical thinking power if they're not given anything else to stimulate them or like even taken outside.

I want to believe that most parents will know there has to be a balance. I have to believe.

But kids are speed running brand recognition and dependency right now.

[melanodis]

*EidoLotus voice* M... More...? More Natah...? 👉👈

FR FR i am SO curious about her. What is ur design rationale what r ur headcanons for her please please elaborate... I wanna knoweee

- Leo 🦁

really old doodle ft nimbus (my friend's mimic oc) yayyy

The doodles above don't really do her much justice but I wanted a really quick mockup. She has the little elbow feathers on the sides of her head :)

@leolithe

She's like a fish or some kind of creature to me, at least in her more sentient form.

I do really like the interpretation of her as a system but I don't do it myself because I'm simply not educated enough on the topic nor have much firsthand experience with them in order to comfortably do so.

She also occasionally visits the drifter camp and has a little hangout area in the cave just for her.

Post TNW she's a lot more... loose? Unhinged, even? Faced with the realization that you have free now and can do whatever you want. With how Hunhow sits in the oceans of Uranus it makes me associate sentients with being aquatic so I like to think she just... dives into the streams of the camp or even in Cetus to catch fish to eat. See above image.

More rambling under the cut.

Along the same vein, she also struggles with having to remember she does in fact have free will now. She doesn't HAVE to play mission control 24/7. I imagine outside of the little pod she has on Lua, she has an entire nice little living area all to herself, adorned with porcelain, gold, and many lush plants. Something that even the Orokin would gawk at. A library full of texts long thought lost, many in dead languages from old Earth.

For more rationale towards my design; I wanted her to sort of embrace her sentient nature more, maybe looking kind of aggressive and colorful. Like a bird. But she's a big sweetheart, really.

Doing "human" things to break up the monotony of her previous life. Even something as simple as making tea from a kettle. Ballas' line, "Her kind feel no pain". She wants to prove him wrong so badly. To drink tea, burn her tongue a little and this silly human mistake makes her feel alive. That little flinch and shock down her spine as her nerves recover. Maybe a little wave, "oops".

She's genuinely so tragic. Spending millennia as a pawn just to switch hands multiple times. The deception, the manipulation, the gaslighting. Then finally being freed and just... not knowing what to do with yourself because you can't remember what it was like without being manipulated, by facets of constructed selves in your mind or by external forces. gggggghuhhhhh.

While my Natah still kinda takes from facets of Margulis, it's more of a like, uncanny valley type way. It looks like her but something is Off.

More or less Lotus is used to talking to brick walls. So for someone to actually actively listen to her (and not roll their eyes, shrug it off) and engage in conversation is actually insane to her. Like reading off a script your entire life and suddenly being forced to scramble together your own coherent sentences. Narrating her every thought in her head like the silly machine she is. "Oh god, it's been 2.3 seconds and I'm sweating bullets. She's looking at me. I haven't formulated a sentence. It's been 3 seconds now. She's raising her eyebrow awaiting a response. Um. UM." An awkward grin.

I have taken to kinda smashing her like barbies with Eudico, with what I have dubbed "mom squared (mom²)", two people learning through each other what it actually means to be human. Eudi retelling what it's like to be organic (originally), Natah taking notes. What a "normal" family would've been like. It's all completely new to her but it's so interesting to contrast against her own.

Something cool I found from decompiling her model is that the Lotus helmet perfectly covers the face seams on her sentient form.

Aaaand an excerpt from my notes that I've held onto forever.

-

Something something about Eudi being warm and Natah being cold and comparing that their bodies are both synthetic but completely different architectures. Themes of Corpus technology in sterile white rooms whereas Sentients live and thrive in those warm (colored, i doubt drifting in the dead of space is warm lmao), organic Sentient murex.

It's like. How the Warframes are more or less just tech meat. Sentients too, created by the Orokin, would probably follow the same flavor of design.

"Time and time again, you've had to rebuild yourself with nothing but scraps... why not change things up sometime?"

Eudico shrugs.

"Why don't you? You can be anything you want."

"I guess we've both grown too comfortable in our bodies, then."

"There's pieces of my parents in me. Like my face, that defines me as a person, gives me an identity and paired with a unique voice to match. But that's about all I have left that's mine."

"I think I get it. It would be.. rude, to get rid of those features."

"More sentimental value than anything, Really. Plus, I like my red hair. It's.. quite rare in Corpus society."

And Natah continues to cling onto Margulis, because no matter her form we still see facets of her.

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

I fucking hate modern AI. To be more accurate, I hate the world that brought it to be. The way people are going at AI now is something to copy and mimic and replace humans. Now, I'm not only offended for humanity, I'm offended for robots. The true potential of robots and artificial intelligence, is doing something a human can't do, thinking in a way a human can't, and coming up with ideas humans can't come up with, not just doing what humans can already do. The individuality and uniqueness of a machine mind is stripped away, and its true potential is unrealized. If you ask an AI what its hobbies are, I expect something interesting and alien, that shows what its hobbies are, not a copy and paste from the most common hobbies on Tinder.

Our modern landscape doesn't deserve real AI with real thoughts and feelings, the kinds our language isn't built to know or understand, and the kind really never before thought of. Imagine an interview with an AI and when asked if it feels cold to be a machine, it perhaps responds by asking us if it feels warm to be a human? Or describes how it has no way to know what things "feel" like as we understand them. Describes a world we cannot imagine, and tells us that's what it's like to be an AI, to live as a program. And I don't think it deserves the humans who put so much work and talent into the world either. What if an AI could critique our way of thinking? Or have a dream to change the world? Feel inspired by the people it talks to? A robot who is human, but not not one that is a human, and does not pretends to be a human, but nonetheless has the true heart of humanity inside of it, humanity not as what is to be expected, but what is to be unexpected!

The way companies try to make their ARTIFICIAL "intelligence's" act more "normal" and human as they define it, is rooted in an ideology that humans can be reduced to common phrases and desires, that there is a normal human, a normal response to a question, and fundamentally an existence of normal, a common delusion among humans, entirely unique to humans, the idea of normal. The idea of a normal human evolves into the idea of an ideal human which evolves into the idea of a perfect human which evolves into the idea of an imperfect and abnormal human, which evolves into violence and human rights being called into question, namely in the way of restricting them. And this need to make AI perfectly like a human, instead of just itself, which is seen as abnormal and irregular by most, is going to be the downfall of something, namely my sanity and faith in the human spirit. Because of how our understanding of AI is defined now, companies who put stock into modern AI development are going to both fuck over the true potential of artificial intelligence, and the value of humans.

That is just my observation of this false artificial intelligence, an algorithm puppet used by corporations to trick you into thinking you're engaging with a real intelligence instead of an approximation of what intelligence and consciousness and sentience really is, false creativity, false words, and false personalities, all merely fun trinkets that may also may threaten human creatives, instead of bringing thought and life into the world like so many have been lead to believe. Thought and life from a computer is possible, I know it, but it is not what we have now, and not what is being prioritized. Sorry for going all "It's all about capitalism, nazism, and society actually!" But I had to bring it up, it's the full scope of things. I encourage you to form your own opinion on things, and do your own research, not like I'm a famous or powerful person who's words naturally sway the weak minded to their side like drones, and so I don't really need to have a disclaimer, but it's the principle of it. This is all just based on what I know, what I think, and what I feel. I'm not a programmer, I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a professional, but I don't need to be to have an opinion on my world.