Mostly agreed. My only concern about his possibly being creepy is non-traditional: That he might find her growth and changes so fascinating that he's willing to test her to destruction, given that there are no laws to protect her. Per the law she's property, and stolen property at that. I simply don't think he sees her as a person. If he wants to see if he can drive her into psychosis or self-destructive behavior, there's nothing legal to prevent him from doing it. (And as a prototype of a product intended for public sale, he can make a pretty good case for doing so.)darrin wrote: ↑Fri Jan 25, 2019 12:29 pmI argued repeatedly from the start that there was no strong evidence for the then current sense of "creepy" (pervert who dates young girls). Above I am arguing his attitude to Ping is (at least potentially) quite callous but not (the current sense(s) of) "creepy" -- any more than Frink's reaction to recognizing the AT-5000 was "creepy".
The Old Man either doesn't know that Ping is self-aware (this "trying to play a real girl" thing might just be a programming quirk), or doesn't care (since one rogue prototype isn't significant to the Project that he does care about). I don't yet consider either of those possibilities strong evidence of "creepy" (as would, e.g., knowing she was self-aware, knowing this was significant, and still wanting her back under his / Sony's thumb, or retired entirely, regardless of consequences).
(Here's a fascinating side note: Given that psychosis is defined as 'a loss of contact with reality', and that virtually everyone in MT is incapable of seeing the non-mundane stuff that surrounds them, then all those people are in fact suffering from some degree of psychosis!)
I find myself wondering if Masamichi could help with Ping's problems with him. Being an inspector with TCPD has to come with some interesting legal authority when necessary; he might be able to make a summary ruling about her legal status, or issue a restraining order against Sony. Or maybe just choose to quietly ignore it when the Sawatari girls dismember him.