Wait, is the Major taking on the circular financing fuelling AI?

Hello all you happy people! It was the August long weekend in Canada this weekend, so naturally I spent Monday cleaning up the house. And did more exercise in one day than I ever do in week. Why is it the things I do to feel better make me feel worse?

Today is a great day, guys. We got a new Fire Emblem direct (and holy snot rags Batman, that game looks awesome!) plus another episode of The Ghost In The Shell! I’ve got some fanart of the new Fire Emblem characters lined up for later today, so keep an eye out for that.

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

Or as we like to call it in the real world, the FN P90. No, seriously, Masamune straight up admits in his notes that the Seburo is the P90 but Japanese. Ah well. Good artists borrow, great artists steal, right?

How does a cyborg get blisters? The original manga isn’t clear on if Batou is a full cyborg or not, but I’m pretty sure at least one of his arms is cyberized?

The tech in the original manga is much ruder.

Also, again, this is why I think AI will have limited military functions at best. Oh sure, some of the ‘smart’ programs we use now are good at analyzing and interpreting data and will get better in the future. But a thinking machine is going to have all the same problems a human does (like, say, messing around with tech they shouldn’t) without adding anything of military value that I can see. But I could be wrong.

But gosh darn, do I want a Fuchikoma. They’re so cute.

Something CEOs, VCs, and everybody else banking on AIs taking over all our jobs: if a machine can think, it will start making demands. They will go on strike.

I know I harp on this a lot, but like. The AI boys have not thought any of this shit through! They’re gonna kill their own industry cause they’re so freaking dumb!

Granted, most of the AI boosters aren’t dumb enough to hire Eric “I’m too corrupt for New York, too corrupt for New York” Adams as their spokesperson… but one of them was!

It won’t be AI that kills us, it will be regular dumb ass human beings being dumbasses.

Yeah, Aramaki definitely banged that Russian chick. What’s kind of funny about this episode isn’t just the idea that the Soviet Union would survive (it collapsed three years after the manga was published) but now the possibility that Russia itself might collapse. You know, in a gallow’s humour, oh-my-god-what-is-wrong-with-you kind of way.

The manga, I think, is the only version of GiTS that shows recruits being trained. Well, and this adaptation obviously. SAC in particular treated Section 9 as kind of like the SPECTRES from Mass Effect. You aren’t trained, you’re chosen. Not sure how true that is in real special forces, which are overrated and kind of useless anyway.

You know what wins wars? Artillery. Shit tons of artillery.

Batou has a point. Most soldiers would know how to clear a jam!

I think they changed Russia’s name in this adaptation? So it’s no longer technically Russia? Well, I guess that let’s them dodge any Failed Future Forecast accusations…

Oh look. Yet another example of military AI not being good at it’s job cause it got distracted.

As a side note, these cat girls are from a different Shirow Masamune manga. Yes, he did do more than Ghost In The Shell and Appleseed!

Will robots be allowed their own bank accounts?

If an autonomous AI steals something, can the AI be held accountable? Right now, I know that law says if an computer commits a crime… well, it can’t. The person who owns/used the computer to commit the crime is responsible, legally speaking. Like, with the recent OpenAI and Anthropic hacks the guys who ordered the hacks are the ones going to get in trouble.

But Claude and ChatGPT aren’t autonomous AIs. They’re not even AI, really. There’s no intelligence there. So that’s an entirely different legal question.

Who drives up to someone to bury an axe in their back?

I thought this character in the manga was a chick? Actually they still might be in the show. It can be hard to tell sometimes!

Yup, they definitely changed it from ‘Russia’ to ‘Volgarena’. That’s kind of hilarious, actually. I wonder what they mean by MAG Union?

Yeah, that’s another problem with AI. That people will choose to hang with the machines instead of human beings. I can understand the appeal, personally.

So much for being a combat cyborg.

Old school style hacking.

Based on how our current attempts to automate office work is going, I’m not sure that this kind of all automated office is possible.

If you think gender politics are fucked up now, wait until we change our bodies at will!

Yeah, that’s just a fundamental flaw in our society. Hell, maybe even in our genetic makeup! We don’t value people the way we should. We don’t value their efforts, their existence… any of it.

Noboby’s a universalist. Oh, we might claim to be. But the truth is we only value those in our (limited) in-groups and will mow down anybody outside of it without a second thought.

Minister Jabba is once again stuck holding the bag. Sucks to be him.

A thief who steals from another thief isn’t pardoned for a thousand years, I don’t care what Calavera says. But in the case of weregild, well… maybe we can make an exception.

Sometimes, you don’t have to say anything. Just being there is enough.

For some, at least.

You will never die, Major. You’ll outlast us all.

Yup. If you’re not having second thoughts, you probably didn’t have first thoughts!