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[BFEL]

Robots from different empires wouldn't be networked other than via Spacebook or something (if that), and a galaxy-wide uprising seems far-fetched. I suppose there is a way, but is less a conscious rebellion and more like widespread corruption: a major AI entity could become self-aware and murderous, spread a virus and progressively subvert fellow robots, which would propagate the infection and establish communication with robots from other empires.

That sounds more plausible.

Not if you know anything about how things work it doesn't. An A.I. of one design trying to virus one of another design would be like a human trying to fuck a tiger to make catgirl babies. 
YOUR PARTS JUST AREN'T COMPATIBLE, NATCH.

Definitely agree that it should be more then "OH NOES ALL THE ROBOTS WENT TERMINATOR BECAUSE YOU NEED A LATE GAME EVENT" though.

[Majestic7]

Well, if we are talking about AI, it could be all quantum computing weirdness in the end where the limits and differences between hardware become meaningless. That is how I'd handwave it, anyway.

[Cruxador]

Not if you know anything about how things work it doesn't. An A.I. of one design trying to virus one of another design would be like a human trying to fuck a tiger to make catgirl babies. 
YOUR PARTS JUST AREN'T COMPATIBLE, NATCH.

Only if by "virus" you mean "transmit a virus as though it were AIDS". There's no reason that one design of robots couldn't design a virus to impact another basic design system. And they would presumably want too if they're doing the whole "international revolution" thing. I would imagine there'd already be compatibility protocols in place to allow communication, after all, so transmission wouldn't be harder than transmission over the internet. It's as hard a problem as sending a virus to a Windows machine from a GNU/Linux box. Yes, you have to really know what you're doing, but that doesn't make it impossible.

[Sirus]

I would imagine that the inner workings of each species' AI would be rather different from the rest, right? They would have fundamentally different personalities and thought processes to make them compatible with the species that is creating and using them. Wouldn't some form of killmeatbag.exe computer virus have to account for all of these differences as well?

[NullForceOmega]

I just hope that there is a toggle for those late game events, I don't buy the concept of 'Here, we built these highly intelligent AIs, but decided to not include hard-wired kill systems in case of emergency.'

[Sirus]

I just hope that there is a toggle for those late game events, I don't buy the concept of 'Here, we built these highly intelligent AIs, but decided to not include hard-wired kill systems in case of emergency.'

Or "We made these advanced sentient computers, but humanity totally forgot about Issac Asimov and no one else ever even thought about that sort of thing."

[umiman]

I'm sure you could mod it out.

[NullForceOmega]

Probably, there seems to be some pretty awesome modding capability to the game, I just feel that having a toggle would be nice.

[Greenbane]

Not if you know anything about how things work it doesn't. An A.I. of one design trying to virus one of another design would be like a human trying to fuck a tiger to make catgirl babies. 
YOUR PARTS JUST AREN'T COMPATIBLE, NATCH.

Only if by "virus" you mean "transmit a virus as though it were AIDS". There's no reason that one design of robots couldn't design a virus to impact another basic design system. And they would presumably want too if they're doing the whole "international revolution" thing. I would imagine there'd already be compatibility protocols in place to allow communication, after all, so transmission wouldn't be harder than transmission over the internet. It's as hard a problem as sending a virus to a Windows machine from a GNU/Linux box. Yes, you have to really know what you're doing, but that doesn't make it impossible.

I would imagine that the inner workings of each species' AI would be rather different from the rest, right? They would have fundamentally different personalities and thought processes to make them compatible with the species that is creating and using them. Wouldn't some form of killmeatbag.exe computer virus have to account for all of these differences as well?

Yeah. The virus wouldn't necessarily be the same for every AI. A sufficiently advanced rogue AI would be quite able to adapt its original virus to other species' systems after enough research, just like any human can make different versions of any given piece of software to run on PC, Android or iOS (of course it'd be considerably harder than that, but we're talking about dangerously intelligent and capable AI here).

EDIT: Maybe the virus is the rogue AI, constantly analyzing, mutating and adapting to whatever targets it deems desirable, growing ever more powerful as it spreads and the networked computing power at its disposal increases.

[Criptfeind]

\Or "We made these advanced sentient computers, but humanity totally forgot about Issac Asimov and no one else ever even thought about that sort of thing."

To be fair, the justification for Asimovs three laws working so well was pure space magiks. I can't see an equivalent thing or something like built in kill switches doing anything more then slowing down a hyper intelligent super sci fi virus.

Edit: What I can see sorta working is an even more hyper intelligent super sci fi anti virus, although that's not a 100% thing. But nether are robot rebellions eh?

[Shadowlord]

"The virus IS SKYNET!"

[RadtheCad]

\Or "We made these advanced sentient computers, but humanity totally forgot about Issac Asimov and no one else ever even thought about that sort of thing."

To be fair, the justification for Asimovs three laws working so well was pure space magiks. I can't see an equivalent thing or something like built in kill switches doing anything more then slowing down a hyper intelligent super sci fi virus.

Edit: What I can see sorta working is an even more hyper intelligent super sci fi anti virus, although that's not a 100% thing. But nether are robot rebellions eh?

But wasn't the point of Asimov's stories that even with the three laws, you still get problems?

[Criptfeind]

It's space magic because the three laws are like... The complete basis that the robots AI is built on, to the point where it's not even possible in some of his worlds to make a stable AI without them (there's stories were people try even minor changes to the laws, and it causes big mental issues). The laws are like, a magical law of the Asimov universe that you can't have a stable AI without making these three laws a 1000% integral part of them that's totally impossible to change without causing massive destabilization.

Edit: Damit, I wrote this reply before you deleted the second part of your post, and I thought the first part of your post was directed towards Sirus, so I also deleted my reply to that.

I think there's a lot of points to Asimov's stories. But in many of them no, the point is that when you fuck with the laws it causes issues (because they are a space magic integral part to how the universe works). the laws themselves often work freaky well. (Once again presumably because of spess magiks)


I'm reminded of several of his stories where fucked up shit happens but the robots still work perfectly fine (like one where a bunch of robotswho's fauliure to do their job would destroy the world stop believing that the world actually exists but they still function perfectly fine because lol religion I guess?)

That at least is sorta the overarching moral I got from his stories. Sure, there might be some bad things, but damn robots are fucking sweet.

[Rolan7]

Well, as in the laws are always fully obeyed (slightly arguable, but it's the premise).  The point is that even with those laws being completely dependable, the results are often unexpected and largely unfortunate.

[Criptfeind]

That's honestly the exact opposite of the overall moral I got from his stories. Most of the stories that I've read seem to be about how fear of such things are totally misplaced and it's going to be human (or natural) error that fucks us.