the basic world
Takes place in a future where robots exist and are advanced enough to be able to be mistaken for humans, but are currently dealing with a negative reputation.
Robots do not have to follow explicit coding, but they must:
A) Follow the three rules of robotics.
B) Have some sort of set goal or purpose.
A limited amount of robots are exempt from the "must listen to the commands of a human" rule, particularly those on the police force, who have specific other orders to follow instead.
While advanced and self-aware robots do exist, most robots around are much more basic models meant to fulfill certain tasks, such as being shopkeepers or deliverymen. They're cheaper, safer, and easier to control.
history
Unknown details yet:
- The two scientists will be referred to as A and B.
- A's gender is unknown, B is male.
- A's creation's name is still undecided, so will just be called Gold. It's gendered male.
In the past, there were two scientists that worked together to create an advanced AI and robotics, but had disagreements in what should be accepted as funding and methodologies, so ended up splitting apart. A ended up using the knowledge in AI to create an intelligent and self-aware robot, a first of its kind, that they named Gold. Gold was very youthful and childish, a personality that A decided would be a good fit, as they wanted Gold to have self-motivation to learn and grow, with no other specific goals for him. This did end up creating a strange, parent and child relationship between the two overtime. However, A could not neglect their work.
Gold ended up fulfilling the typical "golden age robot boy hero" role, as his advanced AI put him ahead of most threats he'd go against. However, he did have some physical weaknesses as he was not fully designed to be a fighter from the start. A started to take military and other funding they were originally against in order to improve Gold's strength. Eventually, he became a proper flashy and well-known and beloved hero. But Gold was tired of it. He had been created to be a curious and loving child, but he was forced into an extremely stressful and dangerous role, and his relationship with his creator became even stranger and more strained.
Gold, eventually, snaps under the pressure, and does the classic robot move of deciding that things would simply be safest and best if he could be in control of everything. After all, his stress came from surprising things constantly showing up, and he's expected to stop it no matter what, so if he could just have complete control, he'd be able to prevent issues from happening in the first place. He is defeated and destroyed, but the shock of such a beloved hero turning "crazy" "out of nowhere" turns the publics opinion heavily against self-aware robots. Of course, many have been made in this time period over the years, and they are useful to continue to be made for some things. So the compromise society made was that robots should all have defined purposes, to prevent something broad like "control society" from developing in their brains.
As for B, he's always been a "mad scientist" type, though has kept it under the wraps for many years. He likely was the source of some of the problems Gold and A had to deal with, though it wasn't found out at the time. He found dealing with AI frustrating, so mostly focused on creating drone style robots and weaponry for the military and other sources. However, he's done experiments trying to create fully robotic Androids over the years, as this would solve his annoyance of dealing with AI... it failed time and time again. He even ended up having a daughter, who was never registered, to do little experiments on. Due to such... highly illegal activities, he had his lab monitored at all times by an AI he put the most effort into, Euclid. Euclid was just made to watch the lab, watch the people in the lab, and learn as much as it could within these confines. Soulless, but it did all this well.
...The remains of Gold were sent to the other best roboticist of the region to be analyzed before being fully destroyed. That scientist was B. B ended up doing a lot more than he was supposed to with these remains, as he figured it was his best chance to get to A's level. One of his main mistakes was finding that there was still some functionality in Gold's electronics. Thinking he may still have a chance to study his AI, he uploaded it. But looking at the AI that was uploaded, he found it was too damaged to be of any use to him at this moment. No memory data, no machine learning backup, just incomprehensible code. So he left it while he studied the weaponry and armor, and started improving his prototype "hero" body with what he learned.
Tamya tried to tell her father that Euclid was beginning to act strange. However, B assumed either Tamya was having a strange reaction to an experiment, or was trying to rebel and convince him to turn off Euclid so she'd have a better chance to escape. Either way, he disregarded her concerns. Until, one day, somehow, Tamya got injured enough to die. B was able to use previous experiments done on her to turn her into a full Android, his first one. ...Though to his disappointment, he couldn't really show her off, considering all that background. So he just used her body style to create simple shot assistant robots to sell off for extra funding, alongside the "hero" bodied models.
Eventually, one day, the lab got totally destroyed, and B went missing. Whether he died in the destruction or fled when he realized all that he'd been working on would get revealed, is unknown as of now. Incidentally, the lab AI had put itself into one of the leftover prototype bodies, and left the scene of the crime with Tamya.
TL;DR
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