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Scotty

Story, Wednesday May 30, 2018

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Ok. So Ashley is NOT awakened yet.

And Dan realized that he needs some excuse for DGB to not confiscate Kevin and lock him back in PTTAOLUTASF. I was thinking about how Kevin might manage to avoid them ... but Dan's idea is much funnier. I guess Arthur's personality changed a lot since creating Kevin ...

Also, IF Kevin would be hiding, Ashley would just make it harder for him by asking ... she is really too naive to be evil.

(Also, yes ... the list of people who might created Kevin AND WE KNOW THEM is pretty short.)

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4 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
6 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I guess Arthur's personality changed a lot since creating Kevin ...

I can testify that the passage of a mere four decades has enacted certain changes in my personality, too.

... it's not exactly exceptional, true.

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Let's be glad that Kevin does not talk in 1950s-70s slang, then. :D Perhaps instead he will have a few quirks reminiscent of the younger Arthur who created him?

Also, Arthur's creation of Kevin seems to imply that it is common for Seers to dabble in creating novel types of wand once they get the hang of it (as with Tedd and the watches/gauntlet).

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9 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Also, Arthur's creation of Kevin seems to imply that it is common for Seers to dabble in creating novel types of wand once they get the hang of it (as with Tedd and the watches/gauntlet).

More like "try to". Arthur's novel wand didn't worked, and he doesn't seem to continue researching.

Pandora praised Tedd for his new ideas, and those ideas probably were not possible before computers ... although it's also possible Pandora wasn't exactly up-to-date in latest research and one of those seers who overdid the research and made himself illegible also created something similar ...

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Singer Bobby Darin's first hit in 1958 was "Splish Splash".
Less than a decade later, it embarrassed him when someone requested it when he was performing "If I Were A Carpenter".
His style had just matured.

Is Kevin the Wand now Arthur's "Splish Splash"?

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5 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Singer Bobby Darin's first hit in 1958 was "Splish Splash".
Less than a decade later, it embarrassed him when someone requested it when he was performing "If I Were A Carpenter".
His style had just matured.

Is Kevin the Wand now Arthur's "Splish Splash"?

Maybe Kevin's personality is supposed to be that of Arthur's when he was younger, and probably more presumptuous. Maybe the failure to get Kevin to work humbled him some?

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That's interesting if Arthur intended on Ashley having Kevin after Arthur found out Kevin works, though I guess the question is, was it Arthur's decision alone, or did Kevin request/insist on training her?

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Arthur's face muscles may have gotten more exercise in this comic than in all his previous life. Who knew?

And once again Ashley proves to be as good as Pandora thought she was back in Marker: She's concerned if Kevin is all right. She thinks of Kevin as a person.

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3 hours ago, Scotty said:

Maybe Kevin's personality is supposed to be that of Arthur's when he was younger, and probably more presumptuous. Maybe the failure to get Kevin to work humbled him some?

It would be highly amusing if that was the case--if Kevin is much like Arthur was back when he was a young go-getter who was possibly more idealistic.

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

For some reason, knowing that Kevin is Arthur's early work and that he seems to be leaning towards letting Ashley use Kevin for training fills me with joy.

If Kevin's personality is anything like what Arthur intended for it to be, then Arthur would thus get most of the advantage he would have gotten from training Ashley himself without having to take the time off from work to do so.

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Well that was mildly unexpected. Makes sense for Arthur to be Kevin's creator/father.

There also appears to be a mirror behind Arthur in panel 4. Seems they're in an interrogation room instead of some random office or conference room. Which is an obvious place to have a discussion like this, but didn't occur to me earlier.

 

5 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

And once again Ashley proves to be as good as Pandora thought she was back in Marker: She's concerned if Kevin is all right. She thinks of Kevin as a person.

Kevin is a seemingly sapient entity, though one that was artificially created. It's only polite to treat him as a person.

 

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1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

Kevin is a seemingly sapient entity, though one that was artificially created. It's only polite to treat him as a person.

I wonder if Kevin has always been sapeint, or if he absorbed some of the Dewitchery energy too and that "brought him to life"?

If he was sapient all along, it seems a bit cruel to have stuffed him in a crate for decades just because he's not a very good teacher.

Also, when creating a magical AI, does magic do all the work, or is there any programming involved? If Kevin is not unique as a sapient artifact, then maybe magical AI creators ought to be giving electronic AI creators some tips...

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2 hours ago, Drasvin said:

There also appears to be a mirror behind Arthur in panel 4. Seems they're in an interrogation room instead of some random office or conference room. Which is an obvious place to have a discussion like this, but didn't occur to me earlier.

Arthur apologized for talking to the meddling kids in an interrogation room in www.egscomics.com/comic/2018-05-23

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1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:

If he was sapient all along, it seems a bit cruel to have stuffed him in a crate for decades just because he's not a very good teacher.

He couldn't talk before, and outright "didn't work". He was stuffed in a crate because he was just a slightly fancy stick with a magical aura that did nothing functional. He might have been able to see, hear, and think - he knew his purpose and creator somehow - but there were no external indications of it.

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1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:
3 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Kevin is a seemingly sapient entity, though one that was artificially created. It's only polite to treat him as a person.

I wonder if Kevin has always been sapeint, or if he absorbed some of the Dewitchery energy too and that "brought him to life"?

If he was sapient all along, it seems a bit cruel to have stuffed him in a crate for decades just because he's not a very good teacher.

Also, when creating a magical AI, does magic do all the work, or is there any programming involved? If Kevin is not unique as a sapient artifact, then maybe magical AI creators ought to be giving electronic AI creators some tips...

Based on this page, it appears that Kevin was completely non-functional before the Diamond was shattered. "I should even be able to talk to you."

So likely he absorbed some energy from the Diamond, which fixed whatever was preventing him from functioning, assuming that his lack of function wasn't from a feature of magic being suppressed to lock away a previous system of magic and the Diamond just powered him up after the soft 'reset' released all the locks.

As for creating a magical AI, I imagine magic does most of the work. Designing AI is hard, not just from a hardware stand point, but because the software is difficult and complex to put together. Modern AI development is largely centered around machine learning procedures, which can make a program that is really good at the thing it is being designed for, but the code is too tangled and complex to be understood by even the people who ostensibly designed it. Similar to a brain:  the functions individual nodes/neurons are understood, and clusters are vaguely grasped, but the whole is beyond.

51 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
3 hours ago, Drasvin said:

There also appears to be a mirror behind Arthur in panel 4. Seems they're in an interrogation room instead of some random office or conference room. Which is an obvious place to have a discussion like this, but didn't occur to me earlier.

Arthur apologized for talking to the meddling kids in an interrogation room in www.egscomics.com/comic/2018-05-23

I missed that line. Makes sense though. From my understanding interrogation rooms can feel rather uncomfortable or even oppressive.

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Speculation: What if Arthur made it so the training wand was supposed to attune itself to the fledgling wizard it was supposed to train, which would allow it to track progress and adjust to the wizard's ability so that they would be able to get the most efficient training. If Kevin had attuned himself to Ashley (because Ashley would have been the first human he encountered) then it would make sense that Arthur would feel it necessary that Ashley continue to have Kevin.

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