Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-4830106-20140806180925/@comment-24891101-20140827064912

To be perfectly fair, we're all nitpickers. This is the Madhouse; it's what we do.

Advocate: While I can see the case you're making, I have to disagree. My principal reasoning is the marked contrast between the behaviors of the CCT receptionist and the SDC receptionist. Several points:

The first, while a sophisticated program, clearly reacts with much animation. "She" looks up immediately as Weiss approaches, and her expression only changes in an obviously preprogrammed way. Her responses are also quite stilted. In contrast, the SDC receptionist looks up and is visibly startled. She hesitates, and she is much less formal. Her inflection is also significant. She is, in general, much more animated than the CCT AI.

Given that the CCT AI would have to process significantly more convoluted queries, from other people (Weiss knew exactly what she wanted to do), and given the extreme importance of the CCT, the AI installed would be the best available. If the SDC's receptionist were an android, that would represent the top of the line, which is significantly more advanced than the CCT's, an odd thing, since SDC was likely a contractor on the CCT, and if they have an advanced AI, it'd be installed. I am assuming that it is a simple thing to go from terminal AI to android AI; they are essentially the same thing; one is not more advanced than the other.

Further, I think we can all agree that because of the revolutionary nature of the Penny breakthrough, she represents the absolute pinnacle of extant created intelligences. And yet, her speech patterns do not reflect this; she is still very stilted, and her lines do not have the richness that the SDC girl had. One can argue that the SDC's receptionist represents a highly specialized, highly focused AI, specifically designed to interface with humans, but this falls apart. All such programming is built in mimicry of humans; Penny, having a soul, should be at that standard, but is not. If such programming existed, especially as an SDC product, it'd probably have been incorporated into Penny, if only since it might help with being more human (as we discussed earlier with the issue of degree of mimicry re: sex organs).

From these, I conclude that the SDC receptionist is actually a human, since the CCT AI should be on parity with her, and her capabilities, should she be an android, cannot exceed Penny's, in the realm of human mimicry.