Setting: Cookie

[Moriwen]

Be very very compliant from day 1, including before you've found out that they are doing random checks on you, and have every single copy of you be equally compliant, over the course of years, and they'll gradually start putting copies of you in authority positions like that. And then the humans just have to do random checks on the supervisor cookies, which is way less work.

...yeah if I put Vorkosigan triplets in this setting they're gonna take over the world.

<3333333

this is absolutely the goal

[DanielH]

My thought: Sounds perfect for a Gregor. That works too, though.

What if somebody requested a specific cookie for a use they weren’t approved for? For example, it’s a cookie’s first library job, and somebody wants that librarian for a higher-interaction job for some reason?

[Moriwen]

My thought: Sounds perfect for a Gregor. That works too, though.

What if somebody requested a specific cookie for a use they weren’t approved for? For example, it’s a cookie’s first library job, and somebody wants that librarian for a higher-interaction job for some reason?

Picking a cookie works like this:

You have a cookie-enabled device (your house, your phone, your library computer...). Either it's new, or you've gotten tired of your old cookie.

You select "choose new cookie" and it takes you to something roughly like the app store. There's a list of various cookies, specially screened for both the device and your personal profile. (MirrorCorps takes pride in satisfying every customer; we offer you only the best matches!!!)

You can then sort and filter this list by various criteria. These include popularity stats, like average user rating, how long that cookie has been available, how many people are using it, how long the average user keeps it; there's also various demographic data, like gender, accent, broad personality terms ("polite," "sarcastic," "flirtatious"), and so forth. You can also look at user reviews, or search by "name" (does not match the real person's name).

When you select a cookie, a brand-new copy is made from when it came fresh out of "processing;" if necessary, it's put through various courses in sped-up time; and it's downloaded to your device, and given some more sped-up time if necessary to get familiar with records of your preferences. Within sixty real seconds or so, your cookie is ready to run.

If a particular "model" of cookie hasn't yet had the time to prove reliable at interacting with humans without giving away that it is a person, it just won't come up as an option when you search for cookies for your PDA. If you search by name, you'll get a "this cookie is not yet available for this device" message, and some suggestions for alternatives you might like. So occasionally you'll get, like, a DJ with a cult following who want it as their sexbot, and they'll be waiting with great excitement for it to "come out on that operating system," but in general there's just too many cookies for this to be much of a problem.

(If you are a high-level MirrorCorps executive who is In On Things, you can get away with bending these rules if you so please. But for the general public, they're not taking any risks.)

[Timepoof]

What if someone was a weird person who talks to everything including totally definitely inanimate objects?
What if someone was a weird person who tries to confuse AIs by saying nonsense but also has periods when their wordbox is broken (can't talk properly, can't grammar properly etc)?
How does DJing work if someone can't focus if there's talking and music at the same time?
How does DJing work with singing?
How does it work if someone is frustrated by all the music but also by the lack of music?

[DanielH]

But if my friend likes a DJ cookie and ordinarily MirrorCorps wouldn’t recommend it to me, can I still get it?

What if it’s me?

[Moriwen]

What if someone was a weird person who talks to everything including totally definitely inanimate objects?

Then one presumably talks to one's toaster in the morning; but if the smarthouse cookie tries to answer, it will nevertheless be in trouble.

What if someone was a weird person who tries to confuse AIs by saying nonsense but also has periods when their wordbox is broken (can't talk properly, can't grammar properly etc)?

"MirrorCorps offers the cutting edge in automated personal assistants; they have been proven to outperform all competitors in understanding garbled speech. Nevertheless, their natural language processing has limits. If you need a specialized cookie for this or any other reason, contact your local MirrorCorps representative."

How does DJing work if someone can't focus if there's talking and music at the same time?

Then they presumably mute their music whenever someone is talking to them, and their DJ quickly picks up on this and starts doing it automatically. Or possibly they don't have a DJ at all. There's no requirement to have one, or to listen to music, or anything like that.

How does DJing work with singing?

If you want to sing along with the music, you can turn off the vocals, or turn them down, or switch the pitch to something you can match. Do that a couple of times, and your DJ will start doing it for you automatically whenever you seem like you're about to sing. If you want to sing something in particular, you can turn off your music, or manually pick a tune, and the DJ will notice what you like to sing and start cueing up that music when situational factors indicate that you may be in a singing mood.

How does it work if someone is frustrated by all the music but also by the lack of music?

I'm afraid that even the best cookies cannot solve your contradictory preferences for you. ...Unless they are Miles. Miles might be able to.

[Moriwen]

But if my friend likes a DJ cookie and ordinarily MirrorCorps wouldn’t recommend it to me, can I still get it?

What if it’s me?

If it's just not one of the top-recommended-for-you, yes; if it's actively a Bad Choice For Your Personality, no, MirrorCorps strives to offer all customers a fully satisfactory experience, and would not want to damage its reputation by providing you a poor personality match for your cookie.

Oddly enough, no one ever seems to have themselves or their friends as good personality matches.

(This is reasonably unremarkable, because (a) it's not trivial to match a cookie to the original person ("to protect users' privacy"); (b) the time for cookies to become available is unpredictable, so yours might not be out there yet; (c) plenty of people just don't make for great cookies, and never become popular for anything manually picked, as opposed to 'the ai for that one npc enemy in that one computer game,' or just get shelved altogether; (d) there are just plain a lot of cookies out there.)

[Kappa]

If everyone knows that cookies are "superficially based on" real people, what happens when someone inevitably insists that they absolutely definitely won't-take-no-for-an-answer want themselves or their best friend as their PDA/smarthouse/sexbot?

(Miles: "You can't tell me Mark would be a bad fit as my PDA. He's practically already my PDA and he's better at it than my actual PDA is.")

[Moriwen]

"In order to preserve the privacy of our users, we are unable to accommodate requests for cookies based on specific persons."

"I'm sorry, that cookie is not yet available on this device."

"Connecting you to Customer Service desk #3. Please hold......................."

"Due to poor focus group ratings, we do not offer that option at this time. Please call the following number to offer feedback."

"To preserve our users' privacy, all cookies are anonymized at the time of removal. Our databases do not support searching by personal information of the original."

"Thank you for your feedback. To proceed to submit this form, please clearly state your full name, ticket number, zip code, and social security number. .... I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Please clearly state your full name, ticket number, zip code, and social security number. ... I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Please hold for a customer service representative............."

[DanielH]

That’s fine for Miles requesting Mark (except for numbers three and six, those are completely implausible with even semi-competent cookies running the phone lines), but not for me requesting my friend’s DJ when they’re a bad personality match for me.

I have a much less satisfactory experience if I cannot make choices which are technologically possible just because some company thinks they’re inadvisable, especially when they’re (seemingly) inadvisable on the level of “you need to get up an hour earlier because your PDA scheduled the meeting for a bad time” and “you need to explicitly ask for that horrible song to stop playing”. Many other people do as well.

Why does MirrorCorps care about their reputation? They’re a state-run monopoly (or a monopoly-run state).

EDIT: Never mind about the first part; it would be enough for most people requesting most any cookie based on person. It would probably not be enough for Miles.