Finally, some non-Jawa womanizer!

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Well, well, well, wasn't she tired of being chased around Ringo Vinda, both on the surface and in the ring station, by Jawa paparazzi and womanizers? If it was about technology design, wouldn't her coworkers Charzon and Marcia also be popular among Jawas as well? For all the descriptions the Ringo Vinda tabloids made of her, on Ringo Vinda, Jawas were those who tried the most to hit on her romantically by far. What made Jessica more desirable than the other two members of the Design Triumvirate to the eyes of these Jawas? Would Jawas outside Ringo Vinda still hit on her as much as the Jawas on Ringo Vinda? She got a ping from a dating agency whose motto was "Discreet and discrete" probably aimed at those whom the greater galaxy called geeks or nerds. But Jessica never registered an account with that dating agency, especially given that she still has household name status on Ringo Vinda; probably a slicer, she thought. But even male slicers could still click with her. She reads the message anyway:

--------------------------------

Dear Jessica,

If what I know about you is correct, you once turned down a contract from a Mandalorian fashion agency. But I believed that contract was legitimate at the time; in the meantime you've grown into something different from your average fashion model, Mandalorian or not: most of them are just so... vacuous.

Anonymous

--------------------------------

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

When she read the message, she could detect an attached program. The program was harmless, if you could call an instant messenger program harmless. It was attached by Warren to the email. A new Operating System in a compressed file was also attached to the email.

Use it well - Anonymous

Warren was waiting to see what she'd do.
The OS also had a tracker that could allow him to find her location.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

She just used a miniature datapad where she would install the attachments the slicer provided her, alongside her new subscription of Kadabra for future adventuring. It had to be a slicer that sent the stuff to her; suspicious programs of that nature were usually backdoors. Jawas may have been pretty insistent as of late, speaking of which, one of the Jawas that kept following her all the time on Ringo Vinda even went so far as to stalk her at every turn. A male Jawa even attempted to touch her, but to no avail. Nevertheless she sets out to test the program to see whether it actually was, well, a backdoor or just some harmless implement. Yet Jawas weren't the kind to slice to get their love interests' attention. Either it was a Jawa that actually sliced for a living, in which case that was a special snowflake among Jawas, or it was a non-Jawa. Nevertheless the Jawa still have his sights set on Jessica, carefully planning to jump at her:

"Togo togu! (Hands off!)"

But once the instant messenging program was active and she knew that it worked, she typed what she could in it.

"Hi, my name is Jessica. I'm not Force-sensitive but I would like you to get a feel for me in the Force, if you are a Force-user. Do tell me if there is anything you like about me internally. Anything is fair game: my Force-signature, my intellectual or physiological attributes. But, if you're not a Force-user, I won't hold that against you. Jawas don't go all the way to slice for their love interests after all, so you'll still prove to be different from those vapid Jawas"

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

Warren started to examine her force signature as best he could. "So could you tell me how good you are at programming?" asked Warren. "You seem to be skilled, otherwise you couldn't use the operating system I gave you to use, or the instant messaging program." Warren paused for a moment as he considered what was going on. She was a nice individual and a competent programmer. This made her actually useful to him. "We need to arrange a meeting. Would you be willing to meet me outside of the net?"

@Jessica Med-Beq

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Even though as far as the semi-failed KDY heist was concerned, Jessica was mostly counting on one [member="Silas Miu"], she was still able to slice some on Jabiim. But she definitely could slice. Yet he knows by now that Jessica is not just any lady with a brain. Or just about any lady, period; everyone is unique to an extent. She seems nice, it's just because she doesn't have a motive to get revenge with him as a vessel for it. She is pretty, all right, but to her outward beauty is a lot easier to obtain than smarts.

"I did slice a little back on some antiquated equipment back on Jabiim, so if it involve slicing through antiques up to about Darth Krayt's era I am your woman. But I am not a person that regularly slices for work. Just that I hated the surroundings around my professional home base on Ringo Vinda because some Jawas took it upon themselves to hit on me dead center as many runs as they could get. All I want at this point is to meet in a place devoid of Jawas, preferrably with some intimacy. But there has to be something that makes me attractive to Jawas; if there are some instruments to capture pheromones I could get, or perhaps design... I could get some nice Jawa bait or perfume"

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

"Very well. You can meet me at my base on Tatooine. The area is jawa and other pest free." Warren paused for a moment. "And don't worry, it will be just the two of us. My name is Warren Century. As for jawa bait, you could do that... and I could build some sort of trap that when the jawa get close it pumps them full of enough tranquilizers to put them down for a month." Warren said to her for a moment. "Feel free to dissect the OS I gave you, but I want any vulnerabilities you find written down."

Coordinates to his base were given to her by him.
"You can come here when you're ready to meet me."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Jessica knew that the best way to test her theory according to which her attractiveness to Jawas was due to pheromones would be to go out away from Tatooine, where she would assume the Jawas wouldn't hear about the KDY heist, or what happen in One Sith/Silver Sanctum space in general. She didn't need a pheromone catcher to actually get her sample of pheromones. What she actually needed as a baseline for producing her own Jawa bait for other chemicals to be added later, was just an old-fashioned squeegee, a funnel and some exercise, thinking that her pheromones would be contained in some sweat, or some other body fluid but she knew sweat was the only possible candidate. She lifted heavy loads a lot of times, so she chose to do cardio instead, so as to reinforce her lackluster endurance. As for actually synthetizing the culprit, if any, that was unfortunately outside her areas of knowledge. Humans didn't have native pheromones for their own use, much less control their content the way Jawas do, but other species did.

"I'm ready now. I have the sample of sweat, so all that remains to do is to find out which substance, if any, is responsible for this sudden attractiveness from Jawas. That is, which substance is the bait. After that the matter of producing these pheromones, assuming we find any, remains to be resolved. Unfortunately my expertise does not lie in biochemistry"

But without knowing which substance were the pheromones, or if there were any in the first place, she couldn't know which substance was at the crux of what made her attractive to Jawas. And hence she had no way whatsoever to make sure that there was going to be an anti-Jawa trap being built. If there was no pheromones in this, she knew for sure they were drawn to her by smarts or something else that wasn't scent-related.

"I have a plan, provided there actually are pheromones in this vial in the first place: the whole idea of a Jawa perfume is dependent on the presence of pheromones. No pheromones, no Jawa perfume. Pizza Hutt would probably not balk at manufacturing Jawa perfume"

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

"I'll get in touch with Pizza Hutt if you provide the pheromones, but I will also have them engineer a reverse pheromone that keeps Jawas away from my base." Warren said this as he listened to her. For the idea of pheromone bombs did appeal to him. If those could be used to attract jawas, they could be used as a repulsor for them as well, right? That was his hope anyway. "Very well. But since I'll be brokering the deal for you, and prototyping it so Pizza Hutt can buy and sell it, I get a 10% Commission on all profits from the substance. I also get a vaccine in case your pheromones work on me, even though I'm human, I want to be sure."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"What if my sweat didn't contain pheromones? You know that normal humans don't produce pheromones that affect other humans - what pheromones we may produce, if any, will likely affect other species, Near-Humans even, just not humans"

She started thinking about other possible reasons as to why Jessica was suddenly so attractive to Jawas. He must have realized by now that Jessica is a mentally active woman with a pretty big, well-trained brain. She doesn't think her brain waves are that different from those of other intellectually active women because even though she cannot use the Force, she know that one's brain waves is not the same as one's signature in the Force. And that would depend on one's mental activity more than on one's smarts. But Jawas weren't particularly attracted by the intellectual attributes of their love interests either. But did she work alongside Jawas back on Nar Shaddaa? (There weren't any in her team back at KDY) Why did the topic of Jawas suddenly appear on her radar? Warren would get to see her in person for the first time, upon arriving on Tatooine with a sealed tube and herself wearing a bikini due to the intense heat, nearly identical to what is the case on Ringo Vinda. She isn't afraid to show off a lot of skin on a desert planet.

"Hi, I'm Jessica. I see that you did a good job actually making sure that there are no Jawas around" she said, when she handed one [member="Warren Century"] a small test tube containing the fluid suspected of containing pheromones.

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

"As you can see I've done my best to ensure the surrounding area is jawa-free, like we agreed. Now, in return for 'prototyping' your Jawa Bait perfume and analyzing your sweat, I have a few jobs that require the services of a slicer as talented as yourself. Specifically, you'll be helping me with the creation of an AI of sorts that will be working for Century Technological Advancement Enterprises, which will be used by me in some products of CTAE in the near future."

Warren paused for a moment. "So can I see the sample?"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

(OOC: Per the rules of AI, if said AI was to be used in something other than a droid, A thesis must be written, either in a blog or over the course of a role-play thread, consisting of the concepts of your Artificial Intelligence’s design. Scientific journal excerpts from your character’s time spent designing the Artificial Intelligence must be included. Minimum 1000 words total.)

"Sure" she said, while handng the sweat ample on to Warren.

Jessica was visibly nervous. Despite not being a slicer whose expertise lied in artificial intelligence, Jessica knew there were a number of things that absolutely needs to be included in AI and machine learning being the first of these. She began to ponder what Marcia knew about AI that went into in a targeting computer, writing that down in a datapad. Plus her brain was seemingly glowing in the Force as she wrote even though Jessica couldn't feel its Force-glow, only that her brain (her prefrontal cortex to be exact) was about to burn her from the inside.

------------------------------------

The basic tools of Artificial Intelligence in general include adaptative pulldown, which conceptually consists of using a decision forest to decide which approach the AI will use, that is, which decisional tree to bark, like associative rule learning, deep learning, inductive logic and all the standard tools of AI, most of which is based on decision theory. If one wants it to recognize speech or sight, one absolutely needs the program to process Fourier transforms, in which case one can remove the Fourier transforms of the noise. Of course, clustering is one of the big tools for unsupervised learning - much of what makes AI valuable lies in its ability to learn from outside sources, as well as infer conclusions based on facts and hypotheses.

-----------------------------------

"You want to create AI that is as smart as either one of us... you have realized that each person you have met that was, in layman's terms, as smart as I is different as to what their intellectual compositions actually are, let alone in terms of feel in the Force; by now you know that I'm one of those people who always seem to be able of maintaining a high mental activity at all times. I'm warning you, no two units of the AI you enlist my help in developing will be the same after even limited use"

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

"I know. The main purpose of the AI is to help operate something I'll be having built. " Warren paused for a moment and looked over her Thesis. Warren then added a few notes of his own.

-----
The AI will not be able to hurt either of it's creators. The AI, unless under direct threat of self destruction will obey the orders given by it's creators. The AI will not attempt in any fashion to harm it's owners.
----
Those were the notes that Warren added to her thesis on the AI. "Those notes I added were to prevent the AI from even attempting to harm us. I've had a few projects of mine malfunction in the past, so with an AI we'll need to prevent such from even happening. In any case. We need to think of what we'll name our potential creation. Perhaps Solomon?"

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

(OOC: Okay.)

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Roger, I'm comfortable with naming this thing Solomon"

She continues to write below the notes Warren provided her, telling Warren what it really means in terms of practical implications. Jessica feels as if a symbiotic relationship was forming, intellectually, between the two of them before her eyes and Warren's eyes in the Force. It seems that her body was more willing to let her use her brain as intensively as she wants to, and she was floating on an cerebral cloud. But would Warren share her enthusiasm, Force or not?

---------------------------

The AI is part of an operating system, the very soul of Solomon, what makes Solomon, well, Solomon. The implementation of the above notes amount to embedding at the very core of the adaptative pulldown code of the operating system the Four Laws of Droids (the first two are omitted if one wants to use Solomon in weapons or battle droids):

1. A droid may not harm the sentient realm or, by inaction, allow the sentient realm to come to harm.
2. A droid may not harm a sentient or, by inaction, allow a sentient to come to harm.
3. A droid must obey the orders given toit by sentient beings except where such orders would conflict with the first or second laws.
4. A droid must protect its own existence so long as such protection does not conflict with the first, second or third laws.

The Four Laws of Droids being famous even to people who only had a very limited knowledge of AI or droids, this proves to be the tricky part: determining what constitutes harm to the sentient realm (i.e. the collection of sentient species, of which some may not even be discovered), initial databanks are necessary. It may update the databanks on its own, just that one needs to start somewhere. Nevertheless the commonly available databanks will be used in field-testing Solomon. That said, ethical issues are being raised as to exactly what constitutes harm. Some unscrupulous owners may be tempted to circumvent the Four Laws by modifying the definitions of what constitutes harm, either to sentients or to the sentient realm in general, and that might be difficult to determine how such actions can be taken at first glance.

---------------------------------------

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

They were getting along nicely. She was proving she could be his intellectual equal. Feelings that he refused to identify were surging within him. "We will need to program the AI so that it cannot cause either of us harm, under ANY circumstances. Just in case someone tries to assassinate the either of us..." He said as he looked at her notes. Writing that down, he wrote it in permanent marker. "Would you mind if I treated you to dinner after this?"


----------------------
The creators of the AI construct "Solomon" may under no circumstances be hurt, IE Stabbed, Maimed, Blasted, Blown Up, Lasered or otherwise assaulted by the AI under any circumstance.

--------------------------

"We need to make sure the AI cannot turn on us, under any circumstances, beautiful."

Warren then said to her. "So, would you be okay with us dating?"

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

That may solve the problem of what consitutes harm, but I'd change the word creator for owners here, or simply add "and/or owners", she thought.

----------------------------

The Solomon will feature the most advanced machine learning algorithms in the galaxy that can possibly be made into a semi-sentient machine. There is smarts and there is sentience. Legal sentience programs only gave automatons so equipped with semi-sentience. One needs to be careful: current galactic regulations only allow semi-sentient machinery at best, even with machines that are compliant with the Four Laws of Droids. The Four Laws of Droids are the only certainties about what to expect from Solomon that is independent of what Solomon is used for. I would also have to say that the qualification issue, that is, its common sense, will have to be active while the device carrying it is active, and using fuzzy logic systems, most of which are probabilistic in nature, will require more read-access memory than strict symbolic logic alone. The main issue being: how long does a device equipped with a Solomon can last before requiring a memory wipe? As far back as the Clone Wars, we know that advanced AI can only last so long until data overflow corrupts the data, and the Confederacy of Independent Systems learned the hard way that corrupted data would reduce the effectiveness of AI, rendering it ineffectual after a while, and the more input devices (photoreceptors, sound modulators, and other sensory devices) the faster it happened. Some algorithm that ensure partial memory purges (based on criteria mostly based on how often the data is used and how ancient is the data - old, seldom-used data would be removed) would need to be designed or used. Will the use of the Solomon negate the need for a restraining bolt?

---------------------------

"It's just a short-term trial at this stage. Our intellects may click but there is more to romance than just making our intellects click. Perhaps there is something that makes me special to you in the Force that I can't fully ascertain, if only because I can't use the Force. But I think I was under the effect of a Force-roadblock until a few weeks ago where I can gradually access the chunks of my memory that was sealed off with the Force-roadblock, although I cannot be sure"

Jessica hoped that Warren wouldn't see through her ruse. She might have been bright in her own right, and Warren readily accepted as much. Perhaps her memory is just a subconscious Force-sponge, soaking up knowledge, with a massive, astronomical even, capacity, much like Cathul once described her own memory that way (she met Cathul exactly once). Force-roadblocks, as its name implies, blocks the target from consciously accessing certain memories without destroying them. Cathul has had to remove Force-roadblocks from patients at times but was it Cathul that removed hers, if there even was any in the first place?

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

Warren nodded, and then added some of his own notes to the notes she'd made. "I thought the AI might have a problem if we labeled it as just Creator."

-------------------------

The AI Solomon will under no circumstances be capable of harm, in any fashion against the owner of the AI, or the creator. The AI Solomon is also prohibited from wiping out the species of it's owner or creator in order to 'free' itself from them.
--------------------------

He'd pause for a moment. "You're right, we'd need to get to know each other more first...." He'd sigh. "So what do you think of my additions to the AI?" He'd ask her.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"That's one issue resolved on my side"

-----------------------------------------

To enable Solomon to operate under uncertainty, evolutionary algorithms, also known as genetic algorithms, are used, with statistical twists. Because AIs that advanced usually develop personalities of their own over time, that is, a range of AI behaviors that they usually fall into, one would think that only a limited range of emotions is needed because other emotions that lie outside the range may end up violating the Four Laws of Droids. Anger, rage, fear, madness are emotions we seek not to reproduce because it could lead a device equipped with Solomon to violate the sacro-sanct Laws. But one should expect customization to occur naturally as a result of the databanks being device-specific and such databanks are designed for a specific subject matter. Also there are those problems encountered that just can't be represented with accuracy with symbols; luckily for sub-symbolic problems, the tendency of machines equipped with such advanced AI to develop artificial personalities over time is due to behavior-based algorithms, coupled with machine learning algorithms, which are used in combination to process just that type of problems. Now that the long-and-short of what makes Solomon one of the most advanced AI in the galaxy has been presented, one needs to ponder whether it will render a machine so equipped sentient.

-----------------------------------------

"By now I may have given you the impression that my brain is a Force-computer, or something like that, as if my memory was just one big subconscious Force-sponge capable of absorbing astronomical amounts of data. By that logic, probably all sentients have Force-computers in their bodies, including but not limited to, the both of us. I'm tired to hear about, from Jawas and non-Jawas alike, people thinking that Force-users are smarter than NFUs, that I'm too smart to be a NFU, or that I'm using the Force to look that good. Perhaps the ecological fallacy comes into play here, but I come to think that usage of the Force doesn't give one increased cognitive abilities, nor is there some intellectual threshold to reach that guarantees one to be a Force-user beyond it"

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

"Actually I don't know all that much about the Force. To be honest, I'm still working to learn a lot of powers from both sides of the Force, because I don't believe in the "Jedi" and "Sith" belief sets that seem to have infected the entirety of the galaxy itself. Nor will I align myself with any of the other factions of the force users, because I don't believe in wasting my time."

Warren paused.

"So no, I didn't think any of the things you just said. They're all invalid anyway, and wouldn't work."

-------------------------------------

The AI construct known as "Solomon" will be one of the most advanced AIs. It will be impossible to turn or convert the AI against the makers, or the owner. The AI will also be able to evaluate "Threats" and if a threat is designated "red" they will wipe out the threat. He's programmed to ignore "Green" designations which include civilians, especially little children.

-------------------------------------

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"What is it that you would like the two of us to do together?"

Now that Jessica contributed all that she thought she could... it was time for her to enjoy that date. She would be just fine so long as she doesn't get into a Jawa's smelling range. For social interactions with non-Jawas, that was approximately three meters. She was smart and not afraid to show her smarts in the right context, like this one. She had no clue how to interpret this new kit of emotions she is going through. But she feels a little hesitant to talk about the content of these tabloids, not knowing whether or not he has been near Ringo Vinda in the last two months. Jessica knew that, in the last few months, she has been the darling of Ringo Vinda's tabloid press, Jawa or not, and she found sudden fame, although the real windfall occured before that, since she was to collect 1/7 of the profits on the Jessica variable-geometry landing gear until either she leaves Ringovinda StarYards or death do her part. (Product managers were given wide latitude on how to market their products, as were the creative minds behind them) Warren would get 10% on the Utinni #1's profits, she would get another 10% cut of that, and Pizza Hutt the remaning 80%.

------------------------------------

We always have in mind the picture of those holovids where evil AI often tries to enslave sentients, but slicing would be the only possible way to turn Hammurabi into something similar to a X0-X1 crisis. Nevertheless, in droids I feel that one could install Hammurabi on a droid and make it do a lot more functions than its original programming over time, so long as the Four Laws of Droids are kept intact. Field-testing will begin soon.

------------------------------------

[member="Warren Century"]

 

[Warren Century]

"Well, perhaps we could go out to dinner? We've got the AI finished, after all. It should be ready in a matter of days, and once it is, we'll both be making 50% of the profit from it." Warren smiled at her charmingly, not knowing he was using the force to boost his attractiveness to her. Warren said to her. "I've been busy here, making plans. This place you see, I'm about to demolish. Once it is demolished I will build a new base. One truly worthy of the name Century. " Warren smiled once more at her, and asked her for a moment. "Where's your favorite place to eat on Tatooine? I'd like to take you there, and discuss potential future business arrangements between us. Your slicer skills surpass my own."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]