/tg/Station 13

So on a round, the AI and borgs got the following laws due to ion shenanigans; The Silicons had been getting ganked by cultists at the time, and so took this as a chance to get a little payback. Another admin and I had some disagreements on if that was allowed, so I figured it was worth a policy thread.

The two arguments are as follows:

- The "First Law" in the ion law refers to the one labeled as 1, and as such, the silicons needed to respect the don't harm humans law.
- The "First Law" in the ion law refers to the first law listed (itself) and so the clause has no effect.

I couldn't find anything listed in silicon policy about this specific case, except the rules for ambiguous laws. I'll grant that the capitalization of "First or Second Law" could hint that it means a specific law and not just the order of the laws as listed, but it seems at the very least ambiguous enough for the AI to get to choose an interpretation to stick with.

If I was the AI this lawset happened to, I would see it as the first law is the numbered one as the Ion one would basically be a Null value. Seems easier to see it that way for newer players aswell since it is literally numbered.

If you had a Law 0 would you call that the First Law
The answer should be the same here

Is this happening a feature or a bug cause I noticed it start happening lately but don't remember a PR relating to it

Far as I can tell from the code, it's just a thing ion storms can do.

AI discretion. Both interpretations are valid as long as they are consistently applied.


Trying to make policies for all edge cases like this will lead to nothing.

The shuffling thing was a relatively recent change to ion storms: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/24223

But it didn't address specifically what the "first law" or whatever would refer to in this case.

2 years ago what the shit, I've never noticed this happen until a few weeks ago

CPTANT wrote:AI discretion. Both interpretations are valid as long as they are consistently applied.


Trying to make policies for all edge cases like this will lead to nothing.

This minus considering the situation, especially when it can run for any ion storm, an "edge case".

First Law refers to the first in numbered sequence. If it didn't mean that, then EVERY ion law would invalidate Asimov Law 2 and 3 if the second interpretation were true - the first law being shuffled to an ionic value does not alter the first law's interpretation.

Really, that ion storm didn't change anything except that all crewmembers were head of staff and all the privileges that brought (such as Upload access).

For example:
Under the first argument, nothing really changes except that the AI must always say that the lights are on, even if they're off (Laws define reality/actions, if the Law says the lights are on then they must be on, broken and disabled lights are clearly sensor glitches), and must follow orders to disable lights but still report them as being on.

Under the second argument, the AI must refuse to follow orders to disable lights, report them as being on, even if they're off, and now has the power to kill human beings if ordered to (first law now refers to the ion law)_. Obviously, this is a pretty huge problem and means ion laws are one of the most serious threats to the station, potentially on the same level as a Blob as anyone can order the AI to release plasma/delam the SM at any time.

Edit: I expect someone to say something about this.

The first law says "may" and the second law says "must". In context, "may" is permission, while "must" is an imperative. In other words, You do not have permission to allow a human being to come to harm, if it is within your capacity to intervene, while "must" is an obligation that has to be performed to the best of your ability if you have the capacity to do so. You are obligated to follow orders, but not permitted to harm humans. The second laws' clause forbids this normally via the "so long as it does not conflict..." clause. Altering this changes a lot.

Know your verbs.

anonmare you're a fucking genius
either the first law is law 1, or we've been interpreting shit wrong all along.

TL;DR you're overthinking it.

anonmare is right and the intent of the ion law to respect the real asimov laws 1 and 2 is pretty crystal clear.