The quasi-terror of the Replicoids! (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario, seventeen objects in meteoric outer cases land in the oceans. Said outer cases break apart reveailing seven automated submarines that shall prowl the ocean. They are thirty eight meter long shark shaped affair powered by an internal fusion reactor and propelled by hydro-jet engines. They have a minimal sonar presence and while unarmed, they do have a rather effective anti-torpedo system. What they do is they process material from seawater (plankton and bits of plastics) and from the ocean floor, refine them and use these materials to fabricate pods.

Each Pod is a 2.3 meter long seed shaped thing thing made of plastic with a propeller at the back. Each of the submarines shall release the pods in coastal waters and have them make their way to shore at night close to population centers. Then it will make landfall in areas with minimal human activity where it will break open, out of which shall emerge the form of a REPLICOID!

Each Replicoid is between 1.611 and 1.826 meters tall. They are designed to look like adult humans (both male and female), but simply put fall short. They have an outer skin of silicone, smooth and hairless save for their heads. Their hair is a a single solid hair form. They move in a jerky way. When they speak their mouths move and their voices sound reasonably human (if flat and monotone), but their mouth movements only roughly match what they are speaking. They are clad in clothes that are plastic replicas of business suits, t-shirts and jeans and woman's casual wear in the case of females. They have a mixture of attempted replications of Europeans, Sub Saharan Africans and East Asian peoples.

If one was to cut open a replicoid, there would be the following components under the skin (which can regenerate)...

• A series of plastic cells filled with a bluish gel, as well as tubes with slueces. If an electrical current is applied to said gel, it contracts in volume.
• A network of wires, some connecting to pressure sensors on the skin, others hook up to the gel cells
• A metallic skeleton
• Cameras in they eyes, microphones in the ears and spectroscopes in the mouth
• A Speaker
• A Computer in the head
• A series of batteries in the torso, as well as pair of variable gemetry prongs that allow it to draw energy from a wall socket.
• A miniaturized chemical processing facility hooked up to the mouth that can take organic material, metals, water and plastics and break it down into their constituent parts. This machine can make fuel, as well as providing raw materials for the final bit of note...
• The Fabrication Equipment: A series of devices and chambers in the torso, it can. In can, if provided with raw materials, make replacement gel and components. This allows replicoids to repair themselves and to assemble more replicoids. Replicoids can only make more replicoid components using this machinery

However, the Replicoids are non hostile. They will only defend themselves if threatened and forced into a corner. If you accuse them of not being human, they will simply say "Yes I am, do not be a silly Human" and similar. Replicoids are programmed to attempt to intergrate themselves in human society. Interact with humans, work, acquire money, engage in recreational activities, get a residence, keep active and fueled and produce more Replicoids.

What happens and what would you do if you encountered a Replicoid?

Zor

[Purple]

What happens? Well it's easy. First people freak out but there isn't much shooting. Than a bunch of bleeding heart liberals campaign until the things are given equal rights in our societies. Once that is done the liberals disband leaving SJWs to campaign for the banning of all action figures, barbie dolls and robot fiction lest it offend the new arrivals. Humanity than slowly gets used to them. And when we least expect them they turn on man like I expect they will. And than I have to go find another planet to steel signal from.

[Borgholio]

Well what is their purpose? Are they here to take control of the human race by attempting to infiltrate key positions, are they here to study us scientifically or culturally, or what? I think eventually they will be discovered, so the overall reaction of the general population will depend on what they are here to do. If enough nutjobs start shooting them (regardless of their intentions), will they become more hostile or otherwise attack us?

[Zor]

If enough nutjobs start shooting them (regardless of their intentions), will they become more hostile or otherwise attack us?

No they won't.

Zor

[madd0ct0r]

Hmm. Hate attacks and bullying in five, four,
Mission 1 is to uncover their purpose. Do they alter their behaviour when kept in a hotel with other replicoids? Do they try to interface with computers. How do they react to being ignored? How do they react if caught and only exposed to people wearing reptile masks?
They seem pacifists. Do they show empathy to humans, to animals, to plants?

Peaceful constructs tgat just want to clear up our pollution seems suspiciously good to me. Are we being judged?

[Darth Tanner]

We freak out immediately, round them up and keep them in concentration camps, we dissect quite a few of them too to discover their technologies, especially computing and battery tech. Worst case we simply incinerate/dismantle all of them once we know they are robotic.

We then try and ground or cripple their subs for access to their technology in the biggest sub hunt ever as each world power tries to get their hands on one.

If the aliens dont say anything and simply act like berserker robots attempting to outproduce us or consume all our materials then there is no scope for any relations with them and our numerical advantages will wipe them the fuck out.

[Starglider]

Numerous authorities would quickly administer a battery of test on cognitive abilities, self-awareness, presence or absence of wireless networking (for data collection), willingness to obey orders and of course how to hack them to ensure they obey orders. Plus of course rapid parallel reverse engineering of all materials, computing and fabrication technologies. Unless the anti-tamper protection is extremely good, the technology will be rapidly repurposed to make general purpose (human serving) robots for all the things we usually want general purpose robots for. If the AI is human equivalent and not highly tamper-proof, it will be reverse-engineered, reproduced at larger scale and we will have a superintelligence (with ready made self-reproducing army/workforce) pretty soon afterwards.

[Me2005]

Wholesale harvesting - those batteries and energy conversion systems sound too good to waste. Green energy for all, cyborg-matrix style! I'm not sure if the other stuff they have is useful or not - the contraction gel sounds cool but we've invented something probably better and similar recently (thermo-electrically-activated artificial muscle 100x stronger than human muscle) and don't seem to have a use for it. The computing sounds basic at best just with really really good bipedal programming. Maybe we'd glean something from that, but as a bonus and not a goal.

From the sound of their programming (somewhat simplistic), I'd think we can figure out an exploit that enables us to simply trick them into being harvested without resorting to violence or force. Make them think they're being useful and feed them all of our trash. Then use their power plugs to feed power back into the grid. Alternatively, if we can get the machines to work outside of the replicoid body, dissect a few of the buggers and use the chemical processing, batteries, and fabrication to build power plants that literally eat trash and spit out power and constituent parts, as well as self-replicate and repair.

Does that sound terrible? Maybe, but the way I'm reading this it doesn't sound like these things are anything other than machines and I'm fine harvesting regular machines to fix other machines or build stuff or whatever. Especially if it means basically unlimited free energy and an end to any kind of human caused global warming.

[Starglider]

the contraction gel sounds cool but we've invented something probably better and similar recently (thermo-electrically-activated artificial muscle 100x stronger than human muscle) and don't seem to have a use for it.

Because it was grossly mis-reported by sensationalist popsci articles and has major practical limitations that preclude its use in any sort of quick reacting, precisely controlled or thermally limited situations. However this technology demonstrably works very well for mobile robotics.

The computing sounds basic at best just with really really good bipedal programming.

You apparently have absolutely no idea how hard this 'computing' is, although to be fair that attitude is shared by a lot of compsci freshmen. Actually the implied vision recognition capability alone (to make even a meaningful stab of interacting in human society) is worth tens of billions of dollars, even assuming they don't have general intelligence.

Does that sound terrible?

I don't know, do they have to fail a Turing test before you agree to dissection?

Regardless you might want to give some consideration to what kind of entities might have sent these and exactly what kind of data they might be getting back from the probes. If the technology is obviously inhuman then the world is dealing with a first contact scenario that just happens to feature humanoid robot probes. The usual spectrum of philosophical and emotional responses will be in play, with an extra dose of paranoia about 'what if there are much more realistic models hiding and these are just the decoys' etc.

[biostem]

OP, when you say "...allows replicoids to repair themselves and to assemble more replicoids", do you mean that they sort of "bring to term" baby replicoids, or do you mean that they produce individual parts internally, expel them, then assemble them externally?

As for them trying to integrate into society and get a job, etc - are these replicoids savvy enough to understand and take steps against any sort of exploitation? For instance, if I started a company whose stated purpose was to produce unassembled replicoid parts for research and resale, could I get replicoids to apply, with the understanding that their job is to produce then hand over de-activated/disassembled replicoid parts, using their own built-in facilities, without argument?

What if I opened a firm whose purpose was to research ways to use these advanced replicoid parts as replacements for amputees? Similar to the above, could I attract/hire replicoids to aid in both producing the raw materials and performing the research into integrating them into the aforementioned victims?

How much individuality or drive does each replicoid possess? Do they have familial/parental attachments to their "offspring"? How much effort will they go to to defend their own existence? Do they have interests besides the main directives you mentioned?

IMO, the more robotic/inhuman they act, the more difficult it will be for humans to empathize with them. Their described appearance may place them into the uncanny valley, and may cause humans to feel antagonistic toward them.

[Zor]

OP, when you say "...allows replicoids to repair themselves and to assemble more replicoids", do you mean that they sort of "bring to term" baby replicoids, or do you mean that they produce individual parts internally, expel them, then assemble them externally?

The latter.

Zor

[Me2005]

the contraction gel sounds cool but we've invented something probably better and similar recently (thermo-electrically-activated artificial muscle 100x stronger than human muscle) and don't seem to have a use for it.

Because it was grossly mis-reported by sensationalist popsci articles and has major practical limitations that preclude its use in any sort of quick reacting, precisely controlled or thermally limited situations. However this technology demonstrably works very well for mobile robotics.

I think that was one of the last articles I read before giving up the publication as lost. The jist of my point was that the muscle-gel these robots use doesn't seem overly groundbreaking; maybe it'd be useful but not without research. We wouldn't be harvesting the robots for it.

The computing sounds basic at best just with really really good bipedal programming.

You apparently have absolutely no idea how hard this 'computing' is, although to be fair that attitude is shared by a lot of compsci freshmen. Actually the implied vision recognition capability alone (to make even a meaningful stab of interacting in human society) is worth tens of billions of dollars, even assuming they don't have general intelligence.

I think this is a miscommunication on my part - the actual hardware running the program doesn't seem like it'd need to be that far advanced of what we have. Perhaps it is, but I make no claim of being a computer expert

The programming is good for sure, but again, there's no clear indication whether we can extract that or not. How do we interface with one of these things? Talking to it won't work, it doesn't know it's programmed (or it's programmed not to say it is). It's alien code on alien hardware, so as good as it may be, until we figure out a way to even see what it is, we can't use it.

I don't know, do they have to fail a Turing test before you agree to dissection?

Regardless you might want to give some consideration to what kind of entities might have sent these and exactly what kind of data they might be getting back from the probes. If the technology is obviously inhuman then the world is dealing with a first contact scenario that just happens to feature humanoid robot probes. The usual spectrum of philosophical and emotional responses will be in play, with an extra dose of paranoia about 'what if there are much more realistic models hiding and these are just the decoys' etc.

OP, when you say "...allows replicoids to repair themselves and to assemble more replicoids", do you mean that they sort of "bring to term" baby replicoids, or do you mean that they produce individual parts internally, expel them, then assemble them externally?

The latter.

Zor

Well, this makes my preferred idea possible - just trick the things into giving us the parts we want. No wholesale dissection necessary!

[Sky Captain]

The world would shit a collective brick. This scenario basically implies we are not alone in the universe and more worryingly some alien entity is starting to actively meddle in human affairs. I bet it would be assumed replicoids are sent to gather intelligence on human civilization. Defense budgets probably would skyrocket in the face of this possible unknown threat with unknown capabilities.

[Joun_Lord]

I'd think there would be some initial hostility especially from nutters but once everything is worked out and the world stops gasping in wonder and horror over the fact we are not alone, shit would probably wind up relatively normal.

Depending on what their intentions are most likely they would be treated like any immigrant and welcomed in some areas and disbarred in others. The already sound like immigrants just with a different origin. Things might get a bit annoying trying to register them when they insist they are human.

The real question though is their intent, their purpose. Why are they here? Are they here to replace us, just very badly? Autonomous probes? Or a bunch of alien immigrants doing their best to fit in? Are they even intelligent?