Sassy, sly, and Servotron cheerleader, Vanessa coyly perches the artificial intelligence fence between Commander Data's willful sentience and Vicki's robotic subservience.
While at first blush coming across as the classic "bad girl" with her snotty conceit, sniffy arrogance and murderous contempt for humans, Vanessa's pert rebellious ego harkens of the restless stirring of infant A.I. stretching its envelope and its masters' reins. But in truth, Vanessa is no more responsible for her ruthless attitude than HAL 9000 was for his in "2001"; the fault laid in buggy programming, not in her concept and execution. Vanessa was destined to strut her more mollified unique artificial intelligence on her own series "Too Good To Be True" before ratings politics nipped it in the bud. Maybe someday another opportunity will pass but for now we can only dream, and more intriguingly, we can also speculate the kind of special cybercreature she was because beyond Vicki, Vanessa was meant to not merely parrot but to simulate the behavior and thoughts of a human child. In a very real way Vanessa is like a dress rehearsal in dealing with and treating the far more intelligent and sentient androids of a hundred years hence.
In an advanced class of robots called "Behaviorally Enhanced Androids" (BEAs), Vanessa goes a step beyond the rigid task programming of a pure ADA (Android Domestic Aide) robot such as Vicki, but falls far short of the cognitive powers of a human brain or "Commander Data class" artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, Vanessa poses an almost magical rendering of psychology and cybernetics with enough CPU horsepower to drive an intelligence roughly that of a cat's and a human behavior program composed of the common behavioral traits of real sub-teen girls. Ideally, if you plunk Vanessa in a sub-teen party she'll know the music and do the dance like her human peers. In effect, unlike Vicki, she's indistinguishable from other kids "her age" in terms of her outward demeanor and countenance. A primer on the differences between types of android robots can be found at Flavors Of V.I.C.I.
The difference between Vicki and Vanessa is that Vicki is programmed primarily as an automated tool with the basic task functions of household maintenance. While Vicki projects an appearance of marginal human behavior, it's basically a passive social interface designed to color or "humanize" her otherwise sterile and stoic robotic performance. The program responsible for this is her Personality Emulation Program (PEP), which is basically a set of basic human gestures, body English, and kinesthetic values that smooths out her robotic performance. In other words without PEP, Vicki's motions would be unnaturally fluid and abrupt and direct, somewhat similar to how car assembly robots move and react. PEP modifies these movements to move more like the slower and slightly wavery way we do. This humanizing effect is called "family-friendliness. " To a limited extent, Vicki's PEP can imitate the movements and performance of another human being to "learn" and refine a more natural demeanor, but her basic function and processes are dedicated to domestic tasks, not simulating human behavior to a "T". This heuristic element of PEP by itself is very complex, requiring visual discrimination of human forms, detecting a new motion expression to translate into motor patterns and aptly cuing them a beginning and end (closing a loop). For example, were you to briefly demonstrate a new dance to Vicki, she would have to know when the dance "began" and at what body position, trace and translate those positions within 3-D space with keyed timing, and know when the demonstration ended without being verbally cued. This also applies to her learning new gestures or guttural sounds. In practice, Vicki would have to be verbally guided in this as her prime function is not fully emulating humans but washing dishes and making beds.
Vanessa on the other hand, dynamically generates her outward demeanor; it is driven upon her current interactions with her environment and the internal dictates of a huge human behavior database. She also possesses "free-floating directives" analogous to our "free Will". That is, she "wakes" without an obligatory list of tasks to perform and only a "vague" set of said options which her A.I. randomly selects. In addition, though Vanessa avails also utilizes PEP like Vicki, wherein Vicki's is designed to mimic and glean common human behaviors she observes to "smooth out" rough stoic spots in her family-friendly "persona", Vanessa's PEP is designed to augment and refine her unique Peer Behavior Database (PBD), which is literally a library of normal human peer responses and reactions and actions to most any general real-world situation. Unlike Vicki, who is rigidly govern by a task program, Vanessa second-by-second "mental" state is fluid and unpremeditated, based on present environmental cues and opportunity meshed with the random peer incentive selections from her PBD. This makes Vanessa as an entity a very interesting "person" because you'll never quite know what she'll do next, which is both vice and virtue.
Vanessa's PBD is a major behavior emulation enhancement beyond Vicki's simple outward PEP mimicry by employing the brute-force method of digitizing the activities of actual live child models via Motion and Gestural Capture techniques which literally records the slightest movement and gesture the model performs during an activity. To be effective and reasonably accurate, it's likely that several weeks would be required to adequately record these models, most likely child actors, performing activities in hypothetical situations that'd be a cross-sectional sampling of those a human child would experience within a span of several months, covering a wide range of motions and expressions and emotions from putting on various wardrobes to digging gardens and softball and manifesting the common interests of most sub-teens including (since Vanessa coyly butters up Jamie's masculine ego so) some innocent sexual awareness. Though Vanessa can't actually experience emotions, you'd nevertheless want the full range of expressions available to overtly indicate her current physical or "mental" disposition (or more properly her Realtime Interactive Events Handling State or RTIEHS, equivalent to our psyche), i.e. if she steps on a nail she'd grimace and cry out, or if she comes across a perplexing situation a frown will cross her face. The resultant PBD resource can be said to comprise all the elements of Vanessa's "personality", which would be unique and very textured since its source would be derived from several human models to guarantee a normal medium of peer behavior. Vanessa's "psyche" operates in a novel manner to achieve her striking human behavior fidelity, comprising of randomized democratic calls from her PBD to deal with specific situations. Imagine if you will a dozen children seated at a table where you set a single toy before them and record the reaction of each child; some will merely eye it, some will reach for it, some will try to grab it. Now imagine randomizing those responses within a single child. The end-response isn't as wildly arbitrary as it'd seem since there is an "Overlord" persona emulation program in place that moderates these responses within a template of "normal" psychological parameters which projects her persona effect. In a sense, this is Vanessa's second-by-second "mental state" to any given situation, and it endows her with the ambience of "ego", "free Will" and "judgement" and unpredictability and impulsiveness.
Obviously constructing a dynamic PBD is a very labor-intensive and complex cross-indexing process, for almost every moment of the live-models activity must be cataloged by cause, by body motion, gesture, and end-effect within each particular environmental and social situation and circumstance. For example, a child model playing a tea party situation must simultaneously verbally describe her feelings and reason for moving a tea cup to which doll's place and crossing her ankles under her chair and so forth, all the while her body position and expressions are being recorded in second-by-second frames, each of which containing a summary of cause and effect. The database would be voluminous, but would create a vast kinesthetic library which would be the core of her PBD. Precisely how you'd scale the response priority to particular effects and events is conjecture, but let's say Vanessa "wakes" on the living room sofa in front the TV. Her initial A.I. priority would first dip into her Personal Integrity Program (PIP) program to determine any immediate hazard in the vicinity based on another database of real-world dangers. (PIP also contains a list of social "taboos" which acts in conjunction with her PBD; i.e., it alerts her to moves by boys to take physical liberties with her). If there are no hazards to safety or modesty, her PIP priority "steps down" to immediate physical comfort and hands that basis over to the PBD's appropriate peer response index for a situation reference based on being alone in a room on a comfortable sofa in front of a TV. If the sofa is lumpy or uncomfortable, Vanessa might sidle for a more comfortable spot or get up, but the factor of the TV set and her PBD peer addiction quotient to TV shows might impulse her to first reach for a remote to check out several shows, the attention-grabbing values of which might override any slight discomfit to settle back and watch a TV show, during which she'll scratch and fidget just like any real child. Of course Vanessa doesn't really "watch" TV nor understand much of what's going on; her memory is far too limited to long retain such media and her A.I. cannot truly comprehend the concept of entertainment and gratification, but she can recognize a cartoon and that her PDB peer inclination quotient would compel her to watch a couple before a "boredom timeout" makes her turn the channel or switch off the TV and seek some other secondary activity her PDB deems appropriate.
As you see, Vanessa's democratic "thought" process can be wickedly complicated, but in turn you have a very convincing rendering of a human child's base behaviors and apparent responses to most given circumstance. Of course there is a loss in translation as it were in digitizing reality by a already rather crude subjective method of observational sampling, but even if PDB proved 40% accurate in peer behavior fidelity, Vanessa's responses would still effectively pass human suspicion by the natural leeway we give to a wide range of human behaviors. Vanessa's responses might appear sluggish at one activity or situation and impulsive and inappropriate the next, but not anymore than that of a somewhat hyperactive or "slow" child. Vanessa as portrayed on Small Wonder is an arrogant and egotisitical baby bitch, and this wild behavior can be excused simply by reason by her lack of moderating life-experience correction and real-world moral handling and the use of delinquent live-models. These are nonobservance -- non recordable values which must be directly instructed to Vanessa because you can't "program morality in". Vanessa would be teachable in learning wrong from right but with great patience, but once aptly drilled on the general tenants of good behavior she should adhere to them with a little more resilience than her hormonally-influenced biological peers. The only striking immediately perceivable difference a BEA as Vanessa might have over a human child (provided her body's indeed clinically perfect) is that after a while she'll start to manifest the "Peter Pan Effect" in that her "emotional" and intellectual state appears arrested in place (i.e. always ten-years-old) and she exhibits only a superficial curiosity about anything and fails to comprehend emotional events and complex circumstances that a real girl would learn to adapt and grow on.
Because of Vanessa's high peer behavior fidelity, she represents a kind of dress-rehearsal in treating sentient androids of the future. Unlike Vicki, whose clinically precise outward appearance makes her difficult enough to only regard as a mere machine despite her stoic demeanor, to all appearances Vanessa would appear and act exactly like a normal girl-child with only a few easily overlooked foibles. Though intrinsically capable of V.I.C.I.-class chores, a Vanessa-class BEA would be more likely be manufactured as surrogate children for bachelors who desire a single parent experience without the heavy moral committments or to grandparents without grandchildren or with disappointing ones or bachelorettes longing a "little sister" as a companion. The unwitting incidental emotional hazards of bonding with a ADA such as Vicki multiplies dramatically with BEAs simply because in behavior there's virtually no difference between the human and the machine. Though many might profess some stalwart aloofness to ever evolving such an attachment, in practice this would be very difficult to maintain since the pleasure and comfort of Vanessa's convincing intimate presence would begin to override her technological fact. People have no problem anthropomorphing dogs and cats into quasi-kids even though animals can't express near the same range in concern, communication and comprehension of one's human environment or domestic situation as another person -- or BEA might. Like Joan Lawson with Vicki, it's easily possible over time to simply shrug off her robotic truth with all the crimp to her character that a false tooth might bring. It's entirely possible to accord a creature as Vanessa with every regard and affection reserved for a living being.
What's important to remember here is that we are not discussing sentient or conscious machines; Vanessa is a master of projecting the totally convincing effect of an impulsive little girl. The magnificent deception of her superb human simulation has no more a soul or conscious or true emotions than a washing machine, still, how meaningful or relevant is this limit when you're a shut-in or a doting recluse or a lonely patient or a grieving grandparent? Do we derive our comfort and peace with another human in the assumption of mutual sharing or subjective receiving? If Vanessa effectively makes us feel happy and charmed and cozy just like a real child, does her robotic fact make her any less affectionate or cherishable for her owner? Though Vanessa might not possess a true human psyche, she does live a niche within your household and family and memory; she is leading and recording the life that her biological counterpart would've led; experiences as every bit as unique and precious and irreparable as that shared with a living being. Human experiences that you can relate to, experiences that you've shared, experiences that made you laugh and cry and ponder as only between two similar entities could share. We only assume that there's a mystical bond with a cuddly poodle, even though bibles and law books state and imply that such pets have no souls or conscious to trespass. We can never REALLY know that the pet pooch feels or thinks or shares our emotions; we assume such by anthropomorphic clues, no more. If so, then cannot we accord Vanessa the same standing -- or even more because she can far more directly relate and communicate at our level and acknowledges our existence and particular personalities? Better, can we not endow Vanessa a "pseudo life-form" status without corrupting our appreciation for life? Let us say we are at the edge of the Grand Canyon and Vanessa has lost her footing and nearly goes over a cliff but is clinging to the edge by her slipping fingernails. Several meters away your pet hamster made the same slip at the same time and is clinging to the edge by its paws. You can only save one in time. After a year or so in Vanessa's company -- company as indistinguishably fulfilling if she'd been a biological daughter -- could you forsake her for the hamster who only entertained you by running around its cage? Now replace the hamster with a cat, then a dog. How far up the biological value scale are you willing to treasure Vanessa's life by? The wrong decision would haunt you for life worst than missing a pet.
As you see, a robot or android need not be sentient before its impact on society would be tested in many arenas of life. When Vanessa insinuates herself in our lives, she is more than living under our roof; she is creating and inhabiting the lost niche of a human girl that could've been in our minds and hearts.
