N.B.
The Moties are the alien species from Larry Niven's novel "The Mote in
God's Eye." The watchmakers, or mini-moties, are like a sort of comensal
rats, or I'd offer that they are a smaller micro-me version of Mike
Meyer's clever idea of "Mini Me" in the Austin Powers movies. Very
clever. Not sentient. They just know what needs doing from observation
and do it. If we had them, they'd look like little people a foot tall,
or little chimps of that size, but, like rats, they stay out of sight.
I've been skimming all the hype and some of the hysteria about AI. It's clear that we're going to be drowning in it.
What
do you do when enough of the AIs in your environment get wonky and the
working ones aren't working well enough to put things back in order?
I think you have to one of two things that amount to the same solution.
1) The Moties just open all the airlock doors, depressurizing the habitat and killing all the mini-Moties. Then they just a get box of a few mini-Moties from somewhere and turn them loose. It might take a few days before everything is running perfectly, but it works for them.
2) From 1979's Alien film: "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Okay, we won't need nukes, just a favorite fictional invention of mine, the EMP hand grenade.. It's a portable device that emits a loud 💥 and a bad 🦨 smell while transmitting a powerful electromagnetic pulse. Depending upon the severity of your infection, you might need a grenade per room. Apartment-dwellers? Well, I don't know.
