I have a Sci-Fi novel in the creation. In it is a community of AIs (Alien) running a Generation ship. I have broken away from the normal dialogue method when they communicate amongst themselves i.e. and e.g.: [We must consider this further,' NavAI said.] Instead: [NavAI: 'We must consider this further,' [DataAI: 'Agree, bla, bla...,'] Note the [...] shows the construct for here and is not part of the dialogue. The italics are because they are communications 'mentally' or 'internally' if you like. I use italics for any character who can do this i.e. not speaking. The italics create an immediacy i feel. I suppose I wanted to show the reader immediately that the AI community (is sentient) is conversing. Now I do break that rule when AI speaks or 'minds' to a human. Thoughts welcome. Thank you.
I'm a little confused. Are they Alien Intelligences, or Alien Artifical Intelligences (AAI's?)? If it's the latter, and I believe that's what it is, you might want to make the distinction more clear, like maybe actually use AAI rather than just AI. Though of course they wouldn't refer to themselves as aliens. Also, I would recommend formatting it here exactly as you do in your story, so we don't have to do a tricky bit of interpretation before responding.
I'm a bit confused by that too because the OP says 'mentally' which implies telepathy. On the other hand, there have been reports of AI systems developing their own unique language to communicate, but I've also read that this was exaggerated or misunderstood, but maybe this is the type of internal, machine based communication the OP may be referring to.
I'm confused by the square brackets as well as the AI terminology... OP - you can use {quote}...{/quote} with square brackets instead of curly ones to insert speech into your post as a quote if you think it helps clarify (and almost anything would...) the software will interpret the instruction like this:- (and you can use the "preview" function to check that it is presenting as intended) Back on point - I think using italics for thought/telepathy/unusual-modes-of-speech is absolutely fine, although bear in mind that it becomes impossible then to use italics for emphasis within that speech. If you're happy with the restriction, knock yourself out. The important things are consistency and clarity.
Yes, I see what you mean. This is (the trope?) where an Alien Generation ship appears orbiting Earth. It has has no 'real' aliens aboard i.e. is controlled by (as you say) AAI. Perhaps I should drop the 'AI' in the names and use e.g. 'Nav said.', 'Data replied.' That is how I have formatted it. If I kept it as normal dialogue, I felt the distinction between human named characters and A(A)I would blur (I do have dialogue where humans interact with AI in the mix and human AI has advanced a bit (e.g. mobiles–which I call Smartabs– do communicate with the owner via a Bluetooth insert (Tx only–no thinking back to the mobile only speech or finger). In a sense yes, machine based comms. This is the (near) future for humans and far future for Aliens. There are real aliens in the story and that might/can add to any confusion in the story. I felt making a distinction between the AAI (warming to that term) and biological beings would help. Say, giving everyone just names could get confusing. The quantum world in this story delivers such communication abilities for the Aliens. So 'brain chips' if you like. Thanks for looking. I'm a novice writer and it's going to show! Looking forward to your views on this.
In machine-based communications, regardless of the underlying network protocol - TCP/IP or SNA or DECNet or anything else that may be invented in the future - there are two modes of communicating: broadcast or point-to-point. So, perhaps something like below, to give you dialog tags. [NavAI Broadcast] : "We must consider this further." "Agreed, bla, bla, bla..." : [DataAI Response]. [NavAI to DataAI] : "Data request - 'condition 1, condition 2...". One thing to consider is whether this virtual network is peer-to-peer or heirarchical, is how routing between nodes is conducted. Is there another AI node (CommsAI perhaps) monitoring and routing messages, or do all nodes receive these messages and ignore those not meant for them, or are there sub-intelligent nodes performing routing?
Hmm, I think it would be tedious for the reader to be explicit about who (AAI) is question or answer. It's like, in a normal dialogue it is understood by name who is talking (I thought the dialogue tags I used would be as normal dialogue. In this (advanced) AAI community on board the underlying 'hardware' (peer-to-peer or hierarchical) is understood I would have thought. I do in places put: ('The AI community voted to agree.'). For communicating tech amongst humans (near future) is an in-skull BT device which is Tx only (not far enough ahead for thought based Rx into the BT device. This is only from one's mobile (Smartab). I wonder if there is an example in literature of AI talking amongst themselves? Hope I've understood the comments. Thanks for the input.
In a story I'm planning, there are a few robots that are sent to a distant planet and they interact with the locals and also with the mothership and each other. I never considered making a distinction between these robots talking to alien beings or each other. That's just simply regular conversation.
Then how does the reader distinguish? Or don't they know when a Robot is communicating? Maybe in your story it's obvious by the names of the robots and aliens. Be interested to know. Thanks.
Yes, the robots have names and they are physically existing beings which helps a lot. They communicate either by talking (sound) or via radio (transmitting sound). I think/hope normal dialogue will work with some hints like "transmitted" instead of "said". In many stories, people communicate in different ways: face-to-face, via phone, radio or text messages. No need to distinguish between these as long as the reader understands what's going on (who said what). Normally computers communicate using some standard protocol, usually one of the so called markup languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language). That is because a well-defined communication protocol makes it easy for a computer program to construct a message and interpret the reply. As an IT guy sometimes I have to read network communication logs and I have to admit that it is not so easy to understand these. AIs are different. They are not programmed, but learn to communicate and a sufficiently advanced AI will have no problem using normal speech as a communication "protocol". You can create some "markup language" for AI to AI communication but I think that may confuse some readers.
Agree with that. Thanks for responding. Worked on design of telephone exchanges and early BB tech in UK so sort of aware about robots and research a lot now. Remember though my alien community on an alien generation ship are not physical entities (atm) so I use italics for mind comms. It is all sub quantum tech (w/o trying to be too hard Sci-Fi about it!).
