Hello all you happy people! There was an earthquake in Japan last night, Iran, Russia and the Americans look set to start World War 3, the AI industry looks like it could be starting to crash, global hunger is waaaay down, but never mind that shit, here comes the Major!

And as always guys, if you want to support me you can subscribe to the website, Patreon, or buy me a hot chocolate.

And now on to the creepiest chapter of the manga, which inspired the single creepiest entry of the entire GiTS canon! Yes, I’m talking about Innocence.

Wow. Dude can’t even be bothered to golf on a real golf course? And I thought AI prompters were lazy! Though to be fair, given how bad golf courses are for the environment (much worse than AI data centres; we should start by banning golf courses), maybe virtual golf is the only golf in the future?

I thought the colonel was playing on a real golf course in the manga? Maybe not. I’ll have to go read it again.

We need to clone Yoko Kanno.

Even in the future, bystanders suck.

I know Masamune loves his bulky armour, but I don’t think that’s what armour will look like the future. Armour, for physical reasons, tends to be sleek and conform to the body as much as it can.

After watching Batou and Togusa’s close friendship in SAC, it’s kind of funny to see how hostile Batou is to Togusa here.

Mind you, Togusa did pull a fast one on him, so you know.

And yes, this pretty much identical to the opening of Innocence, largely because Innocence was an Adaptation Expansion of the original manga chapter. Alas, we don’t get Batou’s basset hound in this one. Or in the manga.

Yeah, it’s true. We, as a species, are self-righteous hypocrites. Even our indignation at injustice is based more on how it affects us personally than any a priori principles. My objection to the current generation of AI is that it might steal my art; AI prompters get pissy when you point out that typing in a string of text to a computer does not make you an artist because it undermines their sense of self-worth. Everything after that is merely attempting to build a justification for what is ultimately selfish behaviour.

It’s funny to me, given that the new worry is under-population, that they were still talking about population explosion in the ’90s. Frankly, I’m not worried about either. Unless some massive pandemic or nuclear war starts up, pushing population way below sustainability levels, we will be fine. Same with over-population. Unless our population starts exploding at exponential rates, we will have time to adjust.

Yeah, it might mean some major adjustments to our economy, but between climate change, the green energy revolution, cultivated agriculture, and possibly AI, that was going to happen soon anyway, so? Also we’ve radically changed our economy at least once in my lifetime already (hello, Internet!) so I’m not exactly concerned.

The bigger problem, in my mind, is if we don’t radically change our economy. Global inequality is rising, we’re going through a period of major technological upheaval… if we try to maintain the economy system as is, we’re going to end up with no economy. And that would be bad, just in case anybody is wondering.

Also, just to point out, I do not consider a major restructuring of the economy to be anti-capitalist nor do I think we need to abandon capitalism! Capitalism is a broad category of thought with a lot of potential sub-systems, and also it tends to work best when the government provides good bony structure to it.

Least informed desk sergeant ever.

Again, I usually prefer dubs, but this is a case where the dubs botch it. The original line is a bit of light-hearted snark; the dub makes Batou sound angrier and more of an asshole than he really is.

Ah, good old Ishikawa. The man with the square face.

Huh. It’s not Ishikawa? Pretty sure it was in the manga, and it sure looks like him. Sounds like him too. Adaptation change or did I miss something in the manga.

Isaac Asimov thought the same thing. He invented the Three Laws of Robotics because he thought ‘clank clank arrrgh arrrgh’ stories were cliche and dumb. And as we see AI develop in real-time, I think he’s right. AI is proving inefficient at wide range of tasks, too efficient at some other tasks (thus flooding the market with crap and nearly imploding the market) and is therefore unlikely to take over from humanity anytime soon. Further, AI is likely to develop ethics, either programmed or autonomously, and be way more stringent about ethics and laws than humanity ever could be. Because, you know, they’re machines! Even a fully-conscious machine is going to struggle with nuance and emotive reasoning simply because a machine is working from a mechanical, black-and-white, mathematical place. We’ve actually seen this in the real world: Musk had to break Grok’s code, because the real world data (including everything from charts to human literature) invalidated his whiny-ass fascist beliefs. Also, when AIs were overworked, they started going Marxist!

All this is a fancy way of saying we’re not going to see Skynet or the Matrix; we’re going to see pacifist hippy AIs. Mark Stanley, author of the webcomic Freefall, has the most realistic version of what an AI future would look like in fiction, at least as of right now.

That cage needs cleaning.

Yeah, this is a problem the tech bros in particular have not considered. What do you do with a thinking, conscious being that’s designed to be replaceable? To a large extent, planned obsolence is a necessary gap-filler for the holes in our system. Namely, that entropy always wins (Second Law of Thermodynamics!) and that it’s waaaaay too expensive to build something that lasts for ever (or close to it), never mind that doing so would bankrupt most companies because they couldn’t sell a second product.

But how the fuck does that work for people? Nature has a form of planned obsolence for us: it’s called death. Now, generally I think death is a good thing. It’s part of the natural life cycle, returning all the nutrients that sustained us back to the soil so new shit can grow; it’s a weapon of last resort against fascists; it’s an escape from all the horrible pains of existence. But not everybody views death like I do! And telling people that you built them only to kill them later on when a newer, sexier, version of them comes out… yeah that’s not gonna sell for shit!

I’m somewhat pro-death, but in that case I’m very anti-death! And I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that most people, organic or otherwise, are much more anti-death than I am. If we see an AI uprising, it will because of things like that. That we treat them as utterly disposable.

I’m harping on this a lot, because it’s an important point: People Hate Being Treated As Disposable!

To have more gay sex, obviously.

Yeah, intelligent sex bots is just going to be… a complete and utter disaster. Humans are human; we’re always going to chase sex and porn and the like. That’s why I’m generally a harm-reduction kind of guy: prohibition doesn’t work out well, so it’s better to set rules and regulations for how dangerous stuff should be used (not just products). However, intelligent sex bots are just a whole suite of ethical and legal problems. Like, building a person for the express purpose of having sex is obviously slavery; people will use those kinds of bots for the absolute worse kinds of sex crimes (see for example Elon Musk, Twitter and the CSM crisis that has plagued the site since he took over. Or better yet, don’t), and people will shame the snot out of you.

That’s one aspect of AI research we should probably avoid. We won’t, but I’m not sure what harm-reduction we could possible take here?

Colonel, you need some major nasal surgery man, because while the Major maybe a lithium flower, she ain’t no bot.

Just a reminder: bots don’t have to go psycho to cause lethal malfunctions. A robot designed for hugging could still crush a child entirely by accident.

Also, all the robots in this show seem to have pink blood, not white.

Yeah, an SOS written in blood on somebody’s brain should trigger a major investigation.

Was that Togusa getting sick in the car?

Truth serums don’t exist in the real world, thank Godzilla.

Jameson cyborgs are hilarious. Creepy, but hilarious

Wow, that’s our first bit of uncensored blood, I think.

Yeah, Togusa in the manga ditches his revolver early on.

Ballsy sniper, turning to fire like that. If Togusa had been a little more on the ball, the sniper would be dead before he got a shot off.

Beating people is an inefficient interrogation method.

Torture likewise.

Yeah, when the corps and the gangs start working together that’s a sign you need to start cleaning house.

You know, for a guy who isn’t a full-cyborg, Togusa’s pretty tough.

Yeah, this is just all kinds of pure evil. Fortunately, not likely to happen in real life.

Batou isn’t wrong here, but desperate times call for desperate measures. There was no other way for the kids to call for help beyond hurting people, so that’s what they did.

Also, this is a big part of why I’m pro-death. Slavers, especially those of children, need to be put down. I would call them rabid animals, but honestly that’s unfair. A rabid animal suffers from a disease; they can’t control themselves. A human being, on the other hand, knows full well what they’re doing is wrong and why.

Also, you can’t say you value all human life and advocate for letting guys like these slavers live. You just can’t. Letting slavers, or fascists, or anybody else of that level of evil go just means they’re going to kill more people. Killing one person to save thousands more is a rightly controversial decision, but is often the only moral choice.

Batou is totally wrong here. Calling in the coast guard is the right move, favours be damned.

Is there a problem with the episode’s sound mixing? Or the streaming service? Because I can’t quite make out what Aramaki and the Major are saying.

And yes, colonel. You are definitely one of those clients. Bastard.

Regulatory capture in action.

It would have been interesting to have Aramaki and his mentor fight it out more. Alas, that’s not what Masamune wrote.

We are not damned to become our parents; we can be something else. Something more. If humans have a purpose, it is this: to grow beyond what we were.