MELON

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Unanimous D

Knowing Melon... it's almost certainly GOT to be fully caffeinated, right? She's just too perky (see what I did there) for it to be otherwise!

Kerin Schiesser

Caf, or decaf?

Holly Nelson

We've replaced this AI-in-training's reward function with a high-quality random number generator! Let's see if anybody notices! (They also replaced her quartz oscillator crystals with Folger's crystals.)

Clifton Royston

That's the great thing about AIs, there ISN'T any such engineer. She's the result of polymorphic software optimising itself for the data to which she was exposed during her earliest functioning cycles. I suspect that, at some point, her learning algorithm glitched, turned left instead of right and just ran with it, even when serious discrepancies started to come up almost immediately.

Ben Russell-Gough

I'm thinking it was Friday afternoon and he was already having pre-drinking drinks.

Ack

Well, technically he HAD his break a while back, and went through his backlog of prepared pages. So what he's been doing this week is creating new strips to give himself a buffer. (He posted about that a while back.) So he's been working. Poor man. MORE MELON! MORE ROKO! ROKON!

I would dearly love to read about the engineer that setup Melon's initial programing/configuration

I would expect that AIs, being fundamentally differently kinds of minds, would in turn experience totally different kinds of mental problems and disorders. The existence of support groups does suggest that at least some of the same treatment methodologies are used.

Jonathan Wallace

I do too. There is something about green hair that I find tremendously appealing.

Philip D Jones

But here's the thing: how do we *know* it's a tongue? There is no visual distinction between Pintsize's facial features—or Punchbot's, or O'Mally's—and Arthur's "tongue". I find this fascinating because it speaks to the amount of visual shorthand we comics readers have internalized. We extrude all sorts of content from four visually sparse panels. We "see" stuff that's represented in the panel, and stuff that happens between panels. Sometimes I step back and realize that people who haven't been steeped in this sort of visual semiotics for decades don't see what I see when I read this stuff. So I imagine they must scratch their heads and wonder what the hell I'm smoking when I post QC strips on Facebook and gush about how amazing they are.

Ol' Firebones

Psst, they're both real Melons.

Dean Reilly

I wonder, do AIs have same mental disorders as humans do, or they have something absolutely original? Do they get stigmatized for that by other AIs? There are support groups, but are there some kind of AI therapy, AI psychiatry? ...software castration for AI sex offenders?

Evgeniy Semyonov

There is so much concerning in this strip regarding Melon. Of course, she's sweet and weird but you do have to wonder at her ability to interpret sensory input sometimes!

Ben Russell-Gough

Thanks for all the wonderful smiles! I hope you had a good break!

Chong Go

Will the real Melon stand up, please

Bagge

The stuff drawn on the walls trope w/Melon &amp; Arthur cracks me up every time.

Gary Walker

Different model bodies so there's no comparison between one AI's body and the next (unless they're both the same model with colour differences, see Winslow's body shopping trip) In this instance I'm pretty sure that's a tongue - I would have preferred him to not have one and draw it on then wipe it off in the last panel, would fit with their previous behaviour like the "art" on the wall.

ART is short for Arthur

darklion

That has to be a tongue. But the only sure way to find out would be to ask Faye about what kissing Bubbles was like. And THAT could be dangerous... But I believe it is a tongue, and that makes it cannon.

I had forgotten how much I liked that art on the wall!

BobC

OK, now I have to know: does Arthur have a tongue, or is that part of the mouth indentation?

Ol' Firebones

This is one of my favorite Melon strips. Such a sweet lunatic... With a pasteboard fetish. She needs a doggy, a collie. She could name it BABY!

I love Melon so much