Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

[Alan Turing's birthday seemed an appropriate time two quote two fictional artificial intelligences discussing the design of their brains. :-)]

From the comic strip Freefall by Mark Stanley, 2007-05-30 -- engineer Florence Ambrose, a first-generation genetically-engineered "Bowman's Wolf" is describing her creator:

Florence Ambrose: "I'd love to say [Doctor Bowman] is a great human being, but he's been described as rude, arrogant, prone to act without considering the risks, and having a foul temper. On the plus side, he made sure our brains would have the self-control he knew he lacked."

AB²Y (a robot): "That does not make me happy. But for maximum flexibility ... a jerk with a conscience is not a bad starting point."

[For the immediate context of the conversation, you probably want to go back to 2007-04-09, but if you're not familiar with the strip, the larger context is really set up in the strips from 2002-11-18 to 2002-12-06. Some of us readers have been waiting quite a while for Mr. Stanley to give us more of the pieces to the puzzle introduced then.]