He Seems Nice
nice
Comments (124)
I was trying to think who he reminds me of, and it's Jesper Pate from Alice Grove. This fucker could be that guy's obnoxious big brother.
Anyone else unsurprised the person in charge of allocating bodies to AIs isn’t an AI?
Welcome to the American health care system....
So her assumption was infact correct.
I'm pretty sure this is how Skynet gets started...
Mr. Baggs (I'm pretty sure that's his name, Richard Baggs) has been waiting to spring that "due diligence" insult on someone for ages. What he doesn't realize is that Roko takes the phrase very seriously, like any good attorney or investigator, and really does work to that standard. He is factually wrong, Roko knows and can document it, and she has her ducks in a row. She's going to tear his head off and, since being a robot she can't defecate in his lungs, she's going to stuff said ducks in there.
Roko SMASH!
Just wait til Spookybot hears about this... Hmmm...
I'm not sure I've ever been so excited for the next strip as I am today. Well... At least this year. There were a couple last year that were outstanding.
I foresee a thick boston accent is about to make an appearance.
_Rokoing....INTENSIFIES!_
I sense a new career opportunity for crusherbot.
Oh. He's a soulless pedant, then. Wonderful.
hit him hit him hit him we all know you want to roko and we all want to see it doooooo eeeeeeet
Well SOMEBODY accidentally spilled the bottle of social skills before adding them to the recipe.
That guy would get a fistful of bad reviews... Not very productive but still.
Yeah... if he is working for a government bad reviews don't mean anything.
Wow... I was hoping for difficult... I didn't expect total flaming asshole.
okay Roko, that was enough of the 'good cop'
I was sympathetic to his position right up until he said, "Even you." Disrespect is unprofessional. I am interested to see him get what he is earning.
He never said "even you" though. Not saying he didn't disrespect her, just that I'm not sure where he lost you.
I"m kinda afraid that Jeph is going for a "the world can suck sometimes and nobody in he sistem cares about it" and I get it, but I he goes all the way through it's gonna be way too sad
Get Him Rokko!
"Who" decides the budget for this uncommon situation? and why is it such that only defective bodies can bee purchased? Why not a decent working body which the reforming AI can pay for as part of their reformation?
He's not seeing that look, he's going to get a surprise!
Extra "to" in third panel.
I expect a download from Yay and a manager out of job and facing charges within 3 .. 2 .. 1
Wow, what a bag of dicks. Literally everything that he just said could have been conveyed in moments with a quickly written email. I give my clients more information in less time that way, and that way it's also documented. Saves everyone time and avoids verbal missteps without being a toilet thinly disguised as a human being, like jackass in the comic here. I'm surprised he didn't have a copypasta response to email her and avoid the whole interaction. Now to see Roko dismantle him, verbally. Even better, let's have Yay play good cop to her bad cop.
This gent may not walk out of the office correctly today...
Code Red, this is not a drill!
Roko's dialog and manerisms here remind me of Beeps... Roko has done her best with "Smiles and Sunshine", now she's going to try <i>her</i> way of negotiating.
and that is what I am looking forward to seeing.
Funny, he doesn't <i>look</i> like a penis.
Is his calendar just a picture of a box?
Excellent news, Roko! He IS (or comes across as) an asshole
Boston accent in five, four....
you mean Southie accent - be specific, the nuances mattah.
Whatever we are supposed to think of this droid (and I don't mean Roko), in the end, the matter is likely to be decided depending on whether the money is available to buy what is wanted. In the real (non-QC) world, there are efforts to reduce such money. "Your client wants a new body? Have her earn the money to buy one." That's what one like Roko would be told in many areas of (non-QC) America. In Massachusetts, maybe not.
The problem is the catch-22 of not being able to acquire sufficient money for a new body with the body currently inhabited. It doesn't have to be a top of the line body. It just has to be not-falling-apart the way it currently is.
I sense that someone is going to get torn a brand-new asshole.
Maybe more than one!
I'm taking the other side: I volunteer at a non-profit that, among many other things, tries to find prosthetic arms and legs for every single person who submits a request, with no financial qualifications needed. Some limbs, particularly lower legs, are refurbished: An old leg with a new cup. They actually got sued by an asshole who wanted them to buy him a new leg! The story is much longer and involved, but that's the upshot. Fortunately, one of the other volunteers was a lawyer who put the Fear of God into that jerk. Then we worked with another non-profit to get him a new one anyway (he really did need it, despite his shitty attitude).
The difference is that you give flying flap, and you actually wanted to help. This crap receptacle clearly wants to do as little as possible, so he can watch cat videos on YouTube for the remaining seven hours and forty-five minutes of his day.
Welp. I guess Roko was right about this 'fucker'.
It's a judo situation. He's denying her any hold where she can get leverage, and staying passive so she has to act as the aggressor. He can take all her energy and reflect it back on her as a 'You should have known that before you came in.'
A rare occurrence of a niche case within a niche case should be easy to plan for. This guy's just using a lot of words to say his department can't budget properly for the demand they face.
I see it the opposite if criminal AIs asking for a body is as uncommon as he says itd be a low priority.
Gosh it is so unreasonable how angry I am right now.
I’m guessing Jeph has met this guy IRL and has been waiting for a chance to put him in the story.
Wait, don't social workers have a duty of care? And wouldn't this sort of policy be a hideous breach of it? And expose whatever government department to really unfavorable lawsuits? I smell an embezzler. Just speculating, but I think this guy has enough budget to get functional OEM morphs, but he sells them to a third party, buys the shitbuckets, and splits the proceeds with the third party. And the only reason nobody's caught on is because 1) his clients are few and 2) lack credibility.
I mean, speculating on how any real life law may pertain to AI rights in the QC universe is pretty much just playing Calvinball. There are plenty of laws already that work a certain way in theory, unless you're a part of some particular demographic. The exact degree to which the government treats this fictional demographic with its stated values is pretty up in the air.
I'm guessing Roko _has_ done her due diligence, and is going to out-bureaucrat this guy so hard he'll be finding pencil-shavings in his stool for weeks.
Yeah this seems about right for a government employee. "Not my problem, I literally do not give a single shit, fuck off now so I can get back to doing nothing and wasting taxpayer dollars"
looks like youre missing a word in panel 3
Typo alert panel 3! "is not to responsible"
No offense but this has been mentioned in the comments numerous times already.
Time for Roko to call Spookybot and arrange for an immediate audit of this department and this specific employee.
Honestly I was waiting for this. Pintsize is in a literally terrible body in comparison to any vaguely humanoid chassis. Why not put May in a body like Pintsize? That'd be cheaper. And Pintsize doesn't constantly bitch about how his body is terrible. And Pintsize didn't commit any crimes. May is literally terrible. She is so rude and unpleasant, but has moments where she just isn't awful and everyone is so head over heels. Sorry Roko, but welcome to socialism. There isn't more cake. You gotta have a reason as to why awful May deserves a bigger slice.
pintsize's body was stolen from the military, and "you have to justify why someone deserves a healthy existence" is the opposite of socialism actually
"I'm sure even you can deduce-" Oof.
Incoming accent time.
GET HIM ROKO! DO IT FOR ALL OF US!
Except the ones who are dead...
I know this rude turnip is only doing his job, but I BADLY want a bird to mistake his head for a turtle and drop a rock on it.
I don't think he is doing his job. His claim that the "Body Assignment Department" is not responsible for these Body Assignment related problems sounds sketchy at best. Basically what he's presented is a very questionable argument for why he shouldn't have to do his job today. He'll come to the office at 3:15 just like the schedule dictated but he refuses to discuss the case that he was scheduled to discuss much less take any action on this case like, I don't know, assigning a body.
ROKO UNLEASH ON HIM
*looks at comments* Don't listen to these hotheads, damn it, keep your cool, negotiate firmly but courteously, and commit only when you have firm control of the conflict. Be Cao Cao, not Lu Bu.
Much as it's seeming that Beepatrice called it wrong about this not being an adversarial relationship, this man also does hold all the power here. However Roko gets one over on him, it's not gonna be by just shouting at the man until he cedes to your demands.
I dont like him
“Orbital rail gun justice!” Or better, have Melon sing at him 24/7.
Fucking destroy him, Roko.
Disagree. Giving May more money takes money away from someone else. And May is, as we have seen, terrible.
Unequal pupil sizes = Roko gonna go medieval on yo' [body part]
His position is valid, but he doesn't have to be quite so disagreeable
His position isn't valid. He uses the fact that not many people need this service to explain why the service has little funding, then uses the fact that it has little funding to explain why they can't give good service. Thing is, if the small funding is proportional to the small clientele, as he claims when he calls it commensurate, then that sorts itself out immediately. Basically he's using a bunch of big words and circular logic to obfuscate the issue. Now rather than discussing the case Roko is put into the position of dismantling this tower of bullshit he's built before they can move forward. I suspect on a limited time allotment no less. After all, he can't be helped if the schedule only allotted 15 minutes and she spent the whole time debating semantics with him.
I wonder if Roko could negotiate access to available chassis, and enlist Faye/Bubs to maybe make the best of it? That would be an interesting story arc.
Third panel: "department is not to responsible" seems a bit off.
Uh-oh! Scathing blast in Southie accent immanent! This guy has a few moves that have never failed him, so even if he has anything else, it's unpracticed. Roko, OTOH, is literally hardwired to have 16 plans, 1 through F (she thinks in hexadecimal), ready to go, each with a high likelihood of success.
That's big government for ya! Vote LIBERTARIAN!
So, a system in which May wouldn't have gotten a body at all?
I ship him with his glasses cleaning towel
I'm seeing a resemblance to Angus... is Roko in an SNL skit?
Oof. That's rough. Roku's going to have to rip this guy to shreds to get anywhere.
this guy suckssssss
He's a bureaucrat. It's a job requirement. I applied once. Apparently I'm not a big enough asshole, even for FEMA.
Oh, it’s worse case, he’s a “by the book” bureaucrat who doesn’t recognise when “the book” may be incorrect. And he’s using the “you don’t fit in the box so you don’t count” defence. Also, he’s extremely rude and non caring, there’s a bunch of ways he could have said “sorry, no budget” without sounding like a jerk. Or maybe that’s his plan, rile Roko up so she sounds unreasonable and aggressive, so he can use that as a defence for not listening. He’s probably immune to the “that’s not fair, the system isn’t fair, how can we make it more fair” reasoning too.
There's some definite optics to the fact that this seems to be a human who is employed at the Body Assignment Department denying AI's basic social services. He'll never need to have a body assigned to him. He only assigns bodies to others.
The more I think about it, the more glaring it is that he's human. From what we've seen so far AI have their own police force. Their police force drags AI Criminals to special AI prisons, the precise nature of which is implied to be horrifying in a way completely alien and incomprehensible to humans. Up until a certain point, it's all AI's. Then when the AI Criminals leave AI Prison, there is a so called "Algorithm" who determines what accommodations can be budgeted to make sure they successfully reintegrate into human society. We meet this "Algorithm" and he is a flesh and blood human man. The narrative has suddenly shifted from one of AI's handling their own affairs to one of a human subjugator overseeing matters that only really matter to AI's. And if this AI criminal fails to reintegrate back into human society, then this once again ceases to be any human's problem, as May is shunted back into the AI prison system.
I hope she eats him alive.
Oh, dear. This will not end well. The only question is, for whom will it not end well. Somehow, I feel like Roko figured out where this guy gets his porn.
That poor man.
Save your sympathy for those who deserve it.
Some people deserve the cop treatment. Go get him, Roko.
ASSKICKING COMMENCE
It appears that Roko's first unseen assessment ("body assignment algorithm fucker") was spot-on.
"is not to responsible"
He pushed the Roko button. Shoodna dun that
Oh he's playing a game all right. This has all the marks and smells of bullshit.
oh oh oh oh I can't wait to see where this goes
Whelp. Who's down for a GoFundMe? Not for May but for Roko to replace her foot she's bound to lose when it gets shoved very firmly up douche canoe's backside.
Foot? I think it's gonna go up to the knee
Roko, get up, get out, and leave. Time for plan "B". Which might entail leveraging Yay's "friendship" and perhaps Sven.
I don't think Yay plans on just doing all the heavy lifting every time Roko's job presents some difficulties. They could probably be convinced to help out once in a while but ultimately it's Roko who's employed here, not Yay. Ultimately, this is probably a situation Roko's gonna encounter a lot, so she's gonna have to figure out how to deal with it.
oh cool so we get to see a murder happen on screen
There will be blood.
Roko, remember... It's not waterboarding if you use diesel fuel!
Goddam you, that made laugh way louder that it shoud have... while on the bus
His argument doesn't even make sense. If it's such a rare occurrence, then even with a small budget, they should be able to get decent bodies for the few who want them.
Or upgrade the lemon and discard chassis to OEM specs. Somewhere there have to be training schools for this kind of work. The work needn't be on his department's budget.
Surprise Crushbot?
Fucking bureaucratic red tape
I work for people like this jerk. I hope Roko reams him so deeply you could use him as a water main.
Time for Roko to call in support. By which I mean throw Bubbles and Faye at him
Or Spookybot?
That is NOT Roko's happy face, and I suspect the man facing her won't be happy soon.
KICK HIS ASS ROKO
This isn't going to end well for him.
No. Not a chance in hell.
That guy. I don’t like him.
Panel three seems to have an editing glitch?
Oh, I want to kick this uncaring bureaucratic ass. Like, into the sun.
Nah, more effective to kick him so hard he hits the ass of his boss, and so on up to someone who can fix the problem.
I had a boss exactly like this once and he was the fucking worst.
Don't kill him! You need him to sign the papers first!