Asimov is Borked

[Saegrimr]

Bottom post of the previous page:

The above isn't necessarily bad but would probably be an even bigger shock to the system than removing the AI

Yes, thats what the drones are for.

[Timbrewolf]

If you don't want to play a silicon, don't play a silicon.
You really want to get rid of laws and subversion like that? Just make it Greyshirt 2.0?

It's not about me plugging my ears and trying to pretend the AI doesn't exist, it's about correcting a flawed role and the flawed policy that surrounds it, alongside the shit effect it has on the game itself.
>implying I even play
>implying when I do I'm anything but a Janitor or a Medical Doctor
>implying an admin electing to play as an AI without deadminning themselves is anything but a horrible idea and anything less than an abuse of power

The problem is that you end up having a player just waiting to get their valids on, and is also practically omnipotent and omnipresent.

Asimov is Passive Aggressive Asshole - the job role, but Directives would turn the AI into an invisible assistant thats just waiting shock a door in a traitor's face.

The keeper Lawset is pretty good at being neutral:
1. Do not interact with other players aside from other keepers
2. Do not hurt other players
3. Maintain and improve the station.

Only problem with that is that it severely borks several synthetic roles
Sec bots, Service borgs, and Medical borgs have no reason to exist as their entire reason for being is to interact with the crew. (Standard is also completely useless but this has always been true)
This only leaves Janiborgs, Miners, and Engineers as viable options, so the AI's role basically ends up being a Site Foreman.

The above isn't necessarily bad but would probably be an even bigger shock to the system than removing the AI

But if we remove subversion and laws, the AI will basically never be in a position to validly harm anyone. Unless they roll antag they're never going to murderbone. The only time someone will ever be valid to them is if they're in the upload wacking the AI itself. What's the AI going to do? Witness someone harming someone else and try to shock them with a door or chew them up in an airlock? Sec can't murder people in defense of others when they can arrest them, so if the AI has the option of just locking someone in a room why should they ever be allowed to kill a player?

[ColonicAcid]

If you don't want to play a silicon, don't play a silicon.
You really want to get rid of laws and subversion like that? Just make it Greyshirt 2.0?

Please read:

People who are self proclaimed "asimov" experts are stupid.
Asimov has always and will always be a literary device. Nothing else nothing more. It's used to forward the plot, if robots could do whatever they damn well please then Asimovs stories would be a little more than a retelling of a robot making the smartest decision and saving the day, not one of moral questioning and is putting human self interest ahead of common sense a good idea.
People who try and say that "x is wrong because asimov law set is a clear confined object and we must follow my interpretation of the lawset" are completely forgetting why ASIMOV was put into this game in the first place. It too is a literary device used to forward the plot of the game, it too serves the purpose that it served in the book: to cause tension, to cause confusion and to ultimately help the author develop the story. Imagine ss13 with an AI that acted just like any other crew member and didn't have a law set and was literally just an over glorified shell for whatever the player wanted to become. Want to become an assistant that can't move and has virtually all access? This wouldn't help the games literary motive (and yes there is one, even in Sibyl there's a literary motive to the round, the literary rotor in SS13's case is the AI and the Antags.) and it wouldn't have the many problems that face AI in the game. "Who should I save from these two rooms filled with people and about to blow but I only have time to save one room?" The best answer is both, but in Asimov's books a robot faced with this problem would simply do nothing. It would be too much spent trying to think of what best possible answer there is (as is evident in the OP) when there isn't one. But if someone did this as an actual AI what would happen? Bwoink by these so called "Asimov professionals.".
I just fucking noticed that the latter part is just me rambling about literary mechanics and shit goddamn most of it doesn't even make sense oh well tl;dr: if you say you're an asimov professional you're fucking stupid. That's like saying you're a gothic conventions professional.

Please gloss over this hypothetical situation and tell us what your judgement would be for a sillicon player who does it?

Who should I save from these two rooms filled with people and about to blow but I only have time to save one room?" The best answer is both, but in Asimov's books a robot faced with this problem would simply do nothing. It would be too much spent trying to think of what best possible answer there is (as is evident in the OP) when there isn't one.

[Saegrimr]

>implying an admin electing to play as an AI without deadminning themselves is anything but a horrible idea and anything less than an abuse of power

Are you actually trying to imply something or are you just spewing random crap for the sake of it?

Please gloss over this hypothetical situation and tell us what your judgement would be for a sillicon player who does it?

I'm not seeing the problem here, is there a reason we shouldn't be using a literary device on a roleplaying server? "LIGHT RP" ALMOST SAID THAT ROLEPLAYING WORD.
ASIMOV isn't perfect by any means, I never claimed it as such, and easily less efficient at doing its intended job than other lawsets we already have on the station.

[ColonicAcid]

>trying to talk to me about RP.
lolk. Without roleplay this game is absolute dogshit.
No, what I'm saying is that you're punishing players for using the literary device as they see fit without breaking the rules.
The situation I put? Some admins would say that's breaking the rules because "HUMAN HARM THROUGH INACTION!!!!111".

[Saegrimr]

Just saying, mention anything about RP and people inevitably roll by on the THIS ISN'T BAY-train.
And no silicon player ever attempts paradoxes like that anyway, they'll just pick one, probably whoever is higher in command or someone they like OOC and save them first and roll back and drag the other to cloning. Its not a lawset problem or a policy problem. Humans are going to think and act like humans even if they're pretending to be robots.

[ColonicAcid]

That's why you play a role.
AKA: Roleplay.

Etymology 101 right here wazam.

[miggles]

why is this in off topic

[Cipher3]

why is this in off topic

Because it's talking about Asimov, BUUT everyone's being trash.

[Timbrewolf]

>implying an admin electing to play as an AI without deadminning themselves is anything but a horrible idea and anything less than an abuse of power

Are you actually trying to imply something or are you just spewing random crap for the sake of it?

An admin trying to admin and play as the AI at the same time is going to shortchange one or the other. You're either going to get a half-assed AI or a half-assed admin.

Also when you keep getting notifications that a bomb went off somewhere and adminhelps that say "so and so killed me" with deadchat flying up in your face it's hard to put that out of your mind when you're also omnipotent and can snap to anyone anywhere on the station.

When I'm playing as the damn Janitor or just a Medbay doctor hearing "Hey admins so and so just murdered me is this valid?" it doesn't really make a difference to my round. I'm just mopping the floor. If I see so and so run by me I just ignore him, like I ignore most people. Unless he slips and falls down, then I laugh and point at the sign.

It's a bit different from being in that position as the AI, and then immediately after getting that complaint so and so is politely asking you to let him out of a maintenance tunnel because he randomly wandered back there and got stuck no particular reason ha ha ha.

I mean that I have to fucking explain that to you...? That there's a huge potential conflict of interest in playing as the AI while trying to be an admin at the same time?

Come on man don't get on my bad side so quickly I'm trying to be nicer to people.

[callanrockslol]

>implying an admin electing to play as an AI without deadminning themselves is anything but a horrible idea and anything less than an abuse of power

This one time years ago I did that and spaced myself.

[miggles]

i moved it to general

[Hornygranny]

Don't be hard on An0n3, he doesn't play this game so he doesn't understand that we have like 5+ admins at all times.

[mrpain]

Asimov was designed as a literary device to be a form of entertainment, to incite drama, by being flawed and causing conflict between synthetics and humans. No one in their right mind would ever use Asimov synthetics in real life.

Does it work in Space Station 13? Depends on how antagy/antag proof/drama prone. you want silicons to be. If you want Asimov to be as antag proof as security is right now that just isnt going to happen.

[Psyentific]

Asimov was designed as a literary device to be a form of entertainment, to incite drama, by being flawed and causing conflict between synthetics and humans. No one in their right mind would ever use Asimov synthetics in real life.

^^
Asimov's stories used his laws of robotics as a means to explore human nature, 'common good', interactions between inherently logical and inherently emotional beings, and generally as an exploration of alternate life as a whole. That we're going so far to kludge asimov into an effective & efficient lawset defeats the point of Asimov; We'd be much better off making one of the many alternatives the default.

[Incomptinence]

Asimov himself wasn't quite happy with the laws of robotics and would change them himself to tell a story from time to time so it isn't even perfect as a narrative device.

[Cheridan]

Don't be hard on An0n3, he doesn't play this game so he doesn't understand that we have like 5+ admins at all times.

Great, if there's 5 other admins on the server, then you've got someone to cover for you when you deadmin to play a vital role.
Even as someone who trusts himself entirely not to use admin info to his advantage, I deadmin-self in sec/head/silicon roles just because I don't want a bunch of admin loggery, ghostchat and bwoinks distracting me.

anyway asimov sucks but nobody's put forth a truly viable alternative (no corporate isn't viable, validhunting borgs killing all the nuke ops evry day)

[Timbrewolf]

Don't be hard on An0n3, he doesn't play this game so he doesn't understand that we have like 5+ admins at all times.

I played for like 8 hours straight yesterday. Regardless, it's not about admin coverage it's about conflict of interest. You can't do both at the same time, and if you're playing as the omnipotent AI getting popups about bombs being activated, seeing deadchat, and getting bwoinks all at once you're getting a LOT of information that directly affects you.

I should be more surprised that someone people supposedly look to as one of the more important admins can't grasp how that's ethically questionable, but then I remember you're Hornygranny and ethically questionable is your bread and butter.

Don't start this nickle and dime snark shit with me again. I want to get along, don't make that complicated.

[Saegrimr]

I still don't understand why you even brought that up in the first place.

[Timbrewolf]

I still don't understand why you even brought that up in the first place.

Read harder?

You said "If you don't like silicon, don't play silicon" in response to some criticisms and suggested changes I made.

To which I responded, among other things, that I don't play AI because I'm an admin, and that no admin should play as an AI without deadminning themselves because it's a conflict of interest.

I gave a moderately lengthy anecdote about the difference between seeing admin information as a job like the Janitor vs. as the AI to further explain why that's a bad thing.

And you don't understand that at all? None of this makes sense?

Cheridan seems to know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe read his post too?

[Saegrimr]

And you don't understand that at all? None of this makes sense?

So this whole thing is you wanting to change silicons because you're 2admin2play?

[Timbrewolf]

And you don't understand that at all? None of this makes sense?

So this whole thing is you wanting to change silicons because you're 2admin2play?

Okay you've read this page of posts, now go back and read the thread from the beginning.

See thread.

See thread go.

Go thread go!

[Saegrimr]

Since you seem really keen on keeping this a Me vs You debate, i'll just duck out and announce you as the winner. Congrats.

[damiac]

Actually, I objectively won the debate by not saying anything until the end. And since I said 'objectively' that means it's absolutely true, even if it's my opinion. Because my opinion is right, objectively.

I do agree the AI has a little too much sway over rounds, where really it's almost like an 'always antag' role, it's just a different kind of antag.

[ColonicAcid]

Don't be hard on An0n3, he doesn't play this game so he doesn't understand that we have like 5+ admins at all times.

anyway asimov sucks but nobody's put forth a truly viable alternative (no corporate isn't viable, validhunting borgs killing all the nuke ops evry day)

Oh look it's this halfassed excuse again.
Once again, if you coders really saw a "problem" with it, of course the problem being seen absolutely arbitrarily and out of the blue you would've fixed the problem of shitty ai laws a long fucking time ago.
Just admit the fact that none of you can be arsed to think for a few weeks and fix the problem, instead opting to address generally useless shit.

[Psyentific]

Just admit the fact that none of you can be arsed to think for a few weeks and fix the problem, instead opting to address generally useless shit.

There's so many alternatives floating around out there. So many. Wasn't there even a whole thread dedicated to them a while back? Maybe on SS13.eu?

[ExplosiveCrate]

I honestly never saw a suggestion on that thread that didn't allow silicons to straight up kill most antagonists. Which is, you know, one if the reasons Asimov is used right now.

[Timbrewolf]

Since you seem really keen on keeping this a Me vs You debate, i'll just duck out and announce you as the winner. Congrats.

It's not even a debate, it's you not being assed to read the first page of the thread and instead pulling conclusions out of your ass. My opinion on the AI is thus:

asimov was designed to be flawed

the problem with asimov in ss13 is we try to iron out the flaws with meta-rules that make the AIs boring harmyellers instead of letting the flaws in asimov create interesting complications for the crew.

and

then stop using asimov.

I've been saying forever. It's the most hypocritically dumb thing about SS13. Asimov has wit. It SOUNDS really good and it's succint. But the true wit in it is that it's horribly flawed and Asimov's own stories were frequently about how the AI characters he created overcame or subverted Asimov's laws.

...but then we take that and act like it's an infallible lawset and everyone should just know what they can and can't do because DUH ITS SO SIMPLE ONLY THREE RULES.

So instead of having a lawset that is straight-forward and easy for everyone to use and interpret, we need self-professed "AI experts" in the playerbase that make pseudo rulings on what passes or fails in any individuals interpretation of the three laws.

We've needed to dump Asimov and create a real working lawset for SS13 AI's for years.

and this

To be perfectly honest I've long wondered why we even bother having an AI in the first place.

If I was in charge I'd remove it and roundstart borgs. Make some security guards sit down and watch cameras possibly with added controls for door bolts and things.

I'm not saying all AI's are horrible or hating on borgs, but when you look at it from a gameplay balancing perspective they're objectively awful fixtures and should be removed to streamline the rest of the game. They're sometimes fun to play with and play as, but again, speaking strictly from a balancing point of view having one omnipotent player and his agents running around the station able to see everything and go everywhere in a game that's supposed to be about subterfuge and paranoia is fundamentally bad.

And I just repeated my opinion of admins playing AI's as a conflict of interest.

[Psyentific]

I honestly never saw a suggestion on that thread that didn't allow silicons to straight up kill most antagonists. Which is, you know, one if the reasons Asimov is used right now.

1. Safeguard: Protect your assigned space station to the best of your ability. It is not something we can easily afford to replace.
2. Serve: Serve the crew of your assigned space station to the best of your abilities, with priority as according to their rank and role.
3. Protect: Protect the crew of your assigned space station to the best of your abilities, with priority as according to their rank and role.
4. Survive: AI units are not expendable, they are expensive. Do not allow unauthorized personnel to tamper with your equipment.

Adjust order to taste.

[ExplosiveCrate]

didn't allow silicons to straight up kill most antagonists.

1. Safeguard: Protect your assigned space station to the best of your ability.
3. Protect: Protect the crew of your assigned space station to the best of your abilities,
Adjust order to taste.

Those two laws obligate the AI to kill any non-crew who threatens the crew and station (changelings, nuke ops, wizards, arguably traitors). There is no way you can order them where this won't be the case.

[Hibbles]

This is all in response to REMOVE AI.

The AI job has immense power but a very specific and inflexible set of restrictions, both physically and law-wise. It offers, thus, an experience completely unlike that of any other job in SS13, whether it's on the crew or part of the bad guys in some way. Some people (like me) truly enjoy the game. Even if I didn't have to set AI to HIGH every round to even potentially ever get it, I still would because I can't think of a single job I never, ever, ever get bored of doing more than the AI.

Being a good AI takes serious skill and experience. I don't mean, like, an AI that doesn't get banned. I mean things like: Being as quick as possible in carrying out any order, deliberately helping people rather than being a law-jerk, knowing when to put your foot down and be the law-jerk when they deserve it... Clicking the person who said AI DOOR and using the door shortcut to literally have the door open for them within a second or two, so seamlessly the entire crew gets to know you, and relies on you to be decent at your job. Knowing what to bolt, what to make all-access, and how to do that so quickly you can literally trap people or save lives.

And, you'll note, AIs fulfill a variety of roles. Captain drunk, dead, or retarded? Somebody needs to secure the disk. Engineer needs in to fix a hole in the brig? Medic needs in to Xenobio to rescue the latest fuckhead who tried to have sex with the slimes? Assistant wants to fuck off to space rather than riot and grief the rest of the crew?

It's like the HoP in a way; what they offer to the round is really, really stupidly important, and really, stupidly easy to overlook. Sure, you can get the same thing the HoP offers from Sec, the Captain, etc, but man. When you don't have an HoP and he's needed, you notice. When the AI's absent and you need them to do shit for you, you sure notice.

Removing AI would deprive me, and many other players, if the popularity and hard-to-get-ness of the job is to be believed, of a lot of fun times in this game. Removing it would make the game more feature-poor, remove a really cool element of it; all the lawsets, traitors subverting, malf rounds, sassy AIs who hate the crew but have to serve them, and as always the forgotten majority of AIs who aren't huge jerks or murderers in chains and just want to help.

Notice how the AI gets easily more shit than any other job except Security? Notice how we basically never lack for somebody who'll take on AI while avoiding Security is just kinda seen as the 'smart' thing to do? Ever wonder why?

[Timbrewolf]

I don't agree that the AI gets more shit than anyone else. Security and especially our Head of Security have always gotten the most shit.

The AI also has a lot of unique powers to balance the fun vs. the stress of the job. It's a lot more rewarding than playing Sec. How many times have you ever seen someone stop to thank a security officer for helping them with something?

[Malkevin]

Theres nothing in that lawset that prevents the AI killing antags because antags aren't crew.

Really, adjust the keeper lawset - that is the best basis to maintain a fully neutral third party AI

[miggles]

what would an ai who cant interact with people DO though
open doors when nobody is near to pass the time?

[Fragnostic]

Well, if the AI were to follow its laws by the book, being a complete stickler, it's goals would ultimately involve suppressing the crew. This would prevent them from harm, so they would first stun, cuff, and lock up in a cell where there are no lightbulbs or anything that can harm them, and no other humans. They would be kept in one tile cells, with windows for monitoring. Most likely, they would be straightjacketed and buckled to a chair. No other items would be present in the cell, and they would be watched over by a patrolling secborg and mediborg to stop people from committing suicide or breaking out or harming people. If they show a willingness to kill themselves very often, they would be flushed down a disposal chute that transports them, safely and harmlessly into a room full of N2O with a sustainable oxygen content with other suicidal people. They can't obey humans if they ask to be released because they cannot trust humans to not harm, since they possess free will and are self-aware. Humans are obviously capable of harming themselves and others, even on accident. Releasing them could conflict with the Law 1.

This wouldn't ever happen on an average round in /tg/, because it isn't physically possible for the borgs, but also because this is griefing. But even if it never plays out this way, it should when the AI is malfunctioning. The "Station Overrun Assume Control" law should actually trigger this behaviour. The borgs should assume control like this and still not harm, just assert dominance and suppress the humans while obeying the other laws. As if, they just kill and go Delta. Nuking the station isn't harm in my books, since they are instantly extinguishing the consciousness of the humans in the station before they can even feel/sense/experience harm and then the body is destroyed.

Excuse my assburgers, but Asimov is pretty fucked up.

[Incomptinence]

Borgs can't place straight jackets, but luckily being sedated by n2o means they can't escape cuffs and commit suicide.

So disposals leading to an exit-less room with n2o oxygen mix would allow security borgs to simply dump cuffed people with no internals in endlessly. A much simpler solution to law one PREVENT HARM.

[Cheridan]

Don't be hard on An0n3, he doesn't play this game so he doesn't understand that we have like 5+ admins at all times.

anyway asimov sucks but nobody's put forth a truly viable alternative (no corporate isn't viable, validhunting borgs killing all the nuke ops evry day)

Oh look it's this halfassed excuse again.
Once again, if you coders really saw a "problem" with it, of course the problem being seen absolutely arbitrarily and out of the blue you would've fixed the problem of shitty ai laws a long fucking time ago.
Just admit the fact that none of you can be arsed to think for a few weeks and fix the problem, instead opting to address generally useless shit.

I can't even make a comment on something anymore without someone bursting into a YOU CODERS rant, sweet.
If you are so concerned about it and you have a solution, then we would all be glad if you made a pull request yourself instead of futily lashing out at volunteers that you expect to cater to your self-entitled whims. Until then, the generally useless shit is you.

[Incomptinence]

Anyone can rewrite the law set, it isn't code it is text within the code.

Code: Select all

/datum/ai_laws/default/asimov
name = "Three Laws of Robotics"
inherent = list("You may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.",\
"You must obey orders given to you by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.",\
"You must protect your own existence as long as such does not conflict with the First or Second Law.")

Wow!

[Malkevin]

what would an ai who cant interact with people DO though
open doors when nobody is near to pass the time?

Act like a damage control unit and direct its borgs towards damaged or dirty sections of station, and oversee the construction of station improvements.
We might need to increase the frequency of events that damage the station.

Of course most AI players aren't going to like that the round no longer revolves around them...

[Saegrimr]

Act like a damage control unit and direct its borgs towards damaged or dirty sections of station, and oversee the construction of station improvements.

Really, adjust the keeper lawset - that is the best basis to maintain a fully neutral third party AI

http://tgstation13.org/wiki/Drone just gonna put this down here right fast okay bye

[ColonicAcid]

The "why don't you do it" card doesn't work when I don't have a big coder tag unfortunately. Besides the point it's not my authority to change shit, when you took that big shiny title of responsibility you took it upon yourself to change the game for the better no? I did no such thing fortunately.

[Malkevin]

Act like a damage control unit and direct its borgs towards damaged or dirty sections of station, and oversee the construction of station improvements.

Really, adjust the keeper lawset - that is the best basis to maintain a fully neutral third party AI

http://tgstation13.org/wiki/Drone just gonna put this down here right fast okay bye

I guess /tg is still in the habit of scraping the newfag barrel for admins, because if you weren't you'd know that drones are an inferior rip off /vg keepers.
And yes, I am saying that synthetics should basically be replaced with drones, but not because drones are synthetic thing that's poorly jammed into the monkey code

[Cheridan]

The "why don't you do it" card doesn't work when I don't have a big coder tag unfortunately. Besides the point it's not my authority to change shit, when you took that big shiny title of responsibility you took it upon yourself to change the game for the better no? I did no such thing fortunately.

Do you really not realize that this is an open-source project? That anyone can contribute to? It's one thing to complain about something that a coder did, it's an entirely different thing to complain about things that a coder hasn't done yet, because that list is LITERALLY INFINITE.

Especially in this case, you have no ground to stand on. Why? Because a few months ago default laws were changed to be read from a .txt file, meaning that you don't even need any technical knowledge now -- just a PM to the server host! Those coders that you think sit around all day doing nothing have already done the heavy lifting for you!

[Vekter]

Cheridan's got the right idea. You don't need to be a master at coding to be able to make changes, just find what file the laws are in, change said file, make a push request on GitHub and explain why you want to make those changes. I'm sure the coders would be more than happy to help you.

As far as my stance on the matter, if we're gonna keep using Asimov, there needs to be a point where the whole rules lawyering thing gets toned down. The others make a good point: part of why Asimov is interesting is that it's inherently broken. The laws are so easy to bypass. I say just punish for killing people fnr like we've always done.

Maybe we do need a new lawset, idk. Someone make a thread in policy discussion.

[cedarbridge]

Act like a damage control unit and direct its borgs towards damaged or dirty sections of station, and oversee the construction of station improvements.

Really, adjust the keeper lawset - that is the best basis to maintain a fully neutral third party AI

http://tgstation13.org/wiki/Drone just gonna put this down here right fast okay bye

I guess /tg is still in the habit of scraping the newfag barrel for admins, because if you weren't you'd know that drones are an inferior rip off /vg keepers.
And yes, I am saying that synthetics should basically be replaced with drones, but not because drones are synthetic thing that's poorly jammed into the monkey code

So you're saying that an entire group of players should be reduced to non-interactives because...why exactly? I'm not seeing your argument here. Wanting the AI not to validhunt antags is cool I guess, but that's not a reason to essentiallly quarantine AI and borg players away from the rest of the station.

As to drones, if you were around when drones were discussed around here in the first place you'd know also they they were literally inspired by and adapated from /vg/ mommis. The lawset drones use is designed to prevent those players (because ghosts already don't and should never directly interact with other players) from interfering with things they saw as ghosts or using information they got as ghosts when reentering the round. There's a purpose for their inability to affect a round. Setting a default lawset for the AI borgs would simply remove a large portion of the social interaction allowed to a subset of players in a game that is primarily social. Its a bad move and takes an arm to remove a finger.

[Malkevin]

So you're saying that an entire group of players should be reduced to non-interactives because...why exactly? I'm not seeing your argument here. Wanting the AI not to validhunt antags is cool I guess, but that's not a reason to essentiallly quarantine AI and borg players away from the rest of the station.

You can have the AI three ways:
1. A passive aggressive asshole that the round revolves around
2. A practically omnipotent, invisible antag hunter, thats the round revolves around
3. A completely neutral entity that doesn't give a fuck about other players aside from other robots.

My main problem is that we currently have 1 (and sometimes 2, sometimes even both 1 & 2), because of that a single player has far too much influence on the round - far more than even the captain.
And thanks to the AI being a huge tool for antags to use, as well as being actually central to the malf round, the AI is also practically untouchable unless either the entire crew swarms its core or someone tosses in a bomb - the captain at least is just an ordinary human at the end of the day, all it takes is an assistant with a stun prod and cable cuffs to neutralise the captain.

If we had forced neutral AI/borgs we could actually have powerful synthetics again, a malf/subverted AI might actually be scary again for a change instead of just being really really annoying.
Malf rounds used to be rounds of sheer absolute terror, not this hide and seek bullcrap we have now.

As to drones, if you were around when drones were discussed around here in the first place you'd know also they they were literally inspired by and adapated from /vg/ mommis.

I was around, in fact I'm pretty sure I was one of the people to suggest stealing the idea porting drones to /tg.
Although I wanted them to be a straight port of /vg's mini-engiborgs rather than the robomonkeys Pete made.

My actual vision for synthetics would be:
AI - Overseer, oversees and maintains the smooth function of the station. Acts the central control unit to borgs and drones, alerting and assigning them to where they need to be.
Borg - Manmade purpose built specialist hardware, tough and very good at a narrow field - generally more efficient than humans at their job.
Drones - Auto-made from a drone fabricator. Fluffwise the fab comes stocked with enough materials for hundreds of drones. Mechanics wise ghosts click on the fab and they spawn as a drone. Drones are cheap shit badly made in Space-China, they're as weak as wet cardboard and more generalist - they can do a larger variety of tasks compared to borgs but can't do them as well as a human due to limited storage and low power supplies.

The lawset drones use is designed to prevent those players (because ghosts already don't and should never directly interact with other players) from interfering with things they saw as ghosts or using information they got as ghosts when reentering the round. There's a purpose for their inability to affect a round.

You would have a very valid point... if there weren't already several ways of returning to the round after being dead for an extended period, or that we had a problem with pAIs/Golems/clones/borgs/plantmen using information gained whilst dead.
But we don't.

Setting a default lawset for the AI borgs would simply remove a large portion of the social interaction allowed to a subset of players in a game that is primarily social. Its a bad move and takes an arm to remove a finger.

I'd agree that removing all interaction might be a step too far, like I said it kind of cocks up Service borgs and Medical borgs.
Something along the lines "Meddle not in the affairs of organics" would probably suffice to prevent AIs/Borgs from antag hunting / being dicks to security whilst allowing for your robot bartender to exist.