Chương 415: Book 7 - Chapter 11 - (Artificial) Emotional Intelligence

I watched from the shore as the bears unloaded another set of Shark scooters from the Kodiaks hovering just a few feet above the water. It was a delicate operation; if the Kodiaks hovered too high, then there was a chance the scooters would pick up too much speed and smash into the bottom of the bay, but if they hovered too low, there was a chance the engines could start sucking up water.

I originally had them unload the scooters further out, in the deep water; however, I quickly realized that wouldn't work because while the scooters floated, the bears did not. I had to call a couple beavers down to lasso the first batch of scooters with their built-in winches and drag them back to shore for me. They weren't impressed that they had to take time off from the dozen or other projects I already had them working on, so I made sure to be more careful when deploying the scooters going forward.

This last batch brought us up to fifty deployed scooters, and although I'd already had the others out driving around until this point, I hadn't sent them out hunting yet. The truth was that the water around here was murky enough, and the combat area was wide enough, that even in a group of fifty the bears were going to miss a lot. Chances were they were going to completely miss the smaller Antithesis in the area, unless the waterlogged plants came out and directly engaged them.

The problem was that even though my forces were mobile now, they still weren't optimized for underwater combat. Both their acoustic and olfactory sensors would be completely useless down in the deep. Although their visual sensors were a cut above anything available to terrestrial military units, they weren't optimized for aquatic environments. We hadn't categorized most of the aquatic Antithesis models, so neither the bears nor I would know what we were looking at until it came up and bit something.

Despite all those problems, I wasn't that concerned because what we were looking for wasn't something so small it could camouflage itself as part of the sea floor or try and pass itself off as some of the native sealife. What I was looking for was something the size of a whale, and even though the bears were significantly nerfed underwater, they weren't nerfed enough to overlook something that size.

I sighed as I watched the last group of bears struggle to climb out of the shallow water and mount their sharky mounts. Although their mechanical limbs allowed them to sprint across a battlefield or kick in doors without difficulty, the bears apparently had problems adapting to the water resistance. I let them struggle for a minute, jumping up on the side of the scooters and scrambling about before finally sliding off again, before finally signalling the Badgers standing nearby.

The assault bots scooped their smaller cousins up and plopped them down on their mounts, as they had for the previous groups, before wandering back to shore.

"Alright, you lot," I said, raising my voice for not only the latest group of shark riders but the entire squadron, which I had mentally summoned back to shore.

"Although your primary goal is to search for the Antithesis leviathan carrying the Gene Tender, I do have another task for you. I need you to not only investigate anything suspicious you find but also work on your balance and driving skills while you're out there. We'll be using your data to help optimize the aquatic transversal subroutines for all future patrols, so do your best to get us plenty of data!" The bears all stared at me blankly, so I sighed again and performed a shooing motion.

"I really would have liked a little more enthusiasm, but I realize I was probably asking too much since you're all managed by the network. Off you go, find me that fucking Antithesis." The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The entire group simultaneously turned and slowly sunk into the surf, disappearing from sight.

"I really need to get AI cores installed in more bears," I muttered to myself.

"I'm a little tired of talking to myself." You know, you could have done that at any time over the last week. You've had both the points and the tokens to do it, Nyx said.

"I'm aware; It's just… as much as I want more feedback from the troops, I definitely don't want the entire army running around with strong personalities, like my squad. I'd drive myself crazy and never get anything done," I replied. You realize the only reason they developed like that was because they spent a lot of time with you prior to being boosted to Class III, and picked up many of your personality traits because of it.

"I'm aware of that too. The problem is that I've been subconsciously managing all the squad leaders for the last year or so, and after upgrading the command network last week that control has extended to every single bot in the army. If what you say is true, and I influenced the squad, that same influence should be extended to the entire army now," I said.

"As I'm sure you know." That's true. However, that influence will only affect them if you upgrade your entire army the same way you upgraded your squad--by taking an existing bot with an active lower-level AI core and upgrading it using a nanite serum.

"I'm pretty sure that even if I sunk every single point I made over both the Global Incursion and from the Phobos Fragment event, I wouldn't have enough points for that," I said. You would be correct, Nyx replied. However, that's not the only way to upgrade them. You can purchase fresh Class II or Class III AI cores, with set personalities, and install them into the bears manually.

"I guess that's true, and it's something I can consider… but after we're done here. The last thing I need right now is to distract the beavers while they're in the middle of upgrading the ship," I said, before pausing for a moment.

"Actually, the last thing I need right now is to have an army of bots with strong personalities giving me sass while I try to deal with the Gene Tender." You are aware that you can choose their personalities when you purchase fresh AI cores, right? Nyx asked.

"Oh, I'm aware," I replied.

"However, I'm also aware that a sufficiently advanced AI will change, adapt, and grow, given enough time. And based upon my experience, it wouldn't take long until those AIs are talking back and giving me sass." And I wonder who they'd learn that from? Nyx said"Look, I know I have personality issues, but I do my best not to push people too much and reign it in before I annoy people. Well, most people," I said.

"If there was an entire army of sarcastic smartasses running around? Yeah, I can see people getting pissed off real quick." You can get personalities that are harder to influence or that are straight up hardcoded, you know. You don't need to get cores that'll slowly transform into another version of you.

"Really? Well… that's helpful. I'll have to check into that," I said, "but later. Even if I could get reasonable personalities, it's still a bad time to start upgrading the forces. Like I said, the Beavers are already busy, and I can't afford to have a ton of troops offline while we're in the middle of a plant hunt. Once we're done here, though, we'll talk. Assuming I don't bankrupt myself on some sort of superweapon again." You did that multiple times in the last week alone and recovered each time.

Nyx pointed out.

"I had Antithesis constantly throwing themselves against my static defenses during that time, which made it easy to recover. This is a completely different situation," I said. Are you sure? Nyx asked. If you look hard enough, you'll be able to find Antithesis almost anywhere. I have a feeling you'll recover out here almost as fast as you did in Great Falls. I opened my mouth to ask how they knew that, but before I could, an alert flashed through my head. I frowned and turned back towards the water.

"It looks like you're right, Nyx," I said.

"Because the team already found something."