Useless Ponko - Vol. 4 Ch. 30 - Ponko Playing Live

[VF89]

@manabi Probably had something to do with low population thing. As you know, even now 'some' people would rather marry a hug pillow or virtual/digital anime girls rather than a real one, so a robot would make the situation be even more serious. Just a thought.

 

[manabi]

@VF89 I don't think it'll be that simple in this setting. There's a clear darkness running underneath the cute and funny stuff, along with really weird discrepancies like Ponko having an incinerator in her arm, but she can't hold a knife without shaking. I suspect the reason human-style robots were banned will turn out to be something kind of dark.

Not to mention the question of why they'd make housekeeper robots in the form factor of a little girl. That makes no sense at all. They'd have trouble reaching things in kitchens, cleaning the house properly and so on. It might make more sense if they were, as many of us suspect, originally war robots. After all, how many people would suspect a cute little girl is an enemy infiltrator?

 

[JustAMerePleb]

@manabi there was a war so I think Ponko's robot line is use for covert or behind enemy line stuff, since they design her and her sister to look like a cute innocent and clumsy girl. She can do self maintenance so she didn't need to return to the factory for a long time (Ponko sister been on the run for 10 years). Later after the war end their repurpose the Ponko robot into helper robot but maybe their appearance trigger too many PTSD attack or people get freaky with them so the production line stop.

 

[manabi]

@JustAMerePleb I suspect the real problem lies in retrofitting the Three Laws onto them after the war. They couldn't have been Three Laws robots as war robots, they'd have been unable to harm humans. Even spying to help their side could run afoul of the laws because that knowledge would be used to harm humans. That would also explain the weirdness of her shaking whenever holding a knife, her Three Laws implementation was a retrofit and caused unforeseen problems like that.

 

[JustAMerePleb]

@manabi Japanese have their own robot laws btw its 10 law and its from Astro boy:
1) Robots must serve humanity.
2) Robots must not kill or harm humans.
3) A robot must call its human creator “father.”
4) A robot can make anything, except money.
5) Robots may not go abroad without permission.
6) Male and female robots may not change their genders.
7) Robots may not change their face to become a different robot.
8) A robot created as an adult may not become a child.
9) A robot may not reassemble a robot that has been disassembled by a human.
10) Robots shall not destroy human homes or tools.

But I think Ponko robot follow these law from 2015
1) Humanity first — robots may not harm or become people.
2) Obedience to order — they must follow human orders and be subject to control.
3) Secrecy and privacy — robots must be designed to preserve the secrecy of information they gather.
4) Use limitation — robots must be limited to their intended use and may not be used to harm humans.
5) Security safeguards.
6) Openness and transparency — robot design and use must be verifiable.
7) Individual participation — individuals must participate in the creation of rules governing robots, and robots must not govern individuals.
8) Accountability — there must be rules of liability for robot-caused harm.
And chapter 34 already reveal that Ponko bot have a black box that only the company/factory decode and the bot have super hearing, people tend to talk alot in front of children since they think children can't neither understand nor care, when Ponko got back to the factory they just take the information off her black box, so I still stand by the spy usage. Robot maybe not harming people but that law can be override with not harming your master/creator. We haven't see she shaking around other people yet, just her current "master" so the first law may got override by something else.

 

[manabi]

@JustAMerePleb She's an Asmovian Three Laws robot, she mentions the Three Laws of Robotics first in chapter 1, page 13. She's said it a couple of times since then as well.

 

[JustAMerePleb]

@manabi damn must have missed it. Still can be used in spying then, just not full on war machine.

 

[manabi]

@JustAMerePleb Spying could also be a problem for a Three Laws robot, if the result of the spying was action that caused humans to be killed/harmed. (Would also depend on how much the robot knows of what's going on and how sophisticated their Three Laws implementation is.) That's why I personally suspect they retrofitted the Three Laws onto her and her sisters after the war, to try and put them into use as domestic robots. It would really help explain the weirdness of her shaking when holding a knife, but not being remotely concerned about the freaking cannon in her arm. It might also explain the clumsiness, everything got a bit unbalanced in her "mind."

 

[JustAMerePleb]

@manabi they don't need to intentionally doing it, they just have to hear it, so they will pick up everything around them, like a walking and talking recorder. All it left is for the factory/company to extract the black box and decode them. The black box is so complex that when the factory/company closed, nobody was able to decode them (Chapter 34).

 

[shmoonky]

OH SHIT! CALLED OUT!

 

[purplelemondoesstuff]

IT'S TIME FOR A RAP BAAATTLEEEEEEE!!

 

[Zizhou]

Since this is ostensibly set in the nearish future, my headcanon is that Grandma was a total otaku in her youth and the song is God Knows from the Haruhi anime, which might have aired when she was a teen and would be more or less consigned to history books by the time we get to the "present."