RoS How did Overmind Do what it did?

[hal]

Hello Folks,
In looking more closely at the information given for the timeline of the RoS universe, page 6 onwards puts out details in a sketchy fashion on what was accomplished, but not necessarily how or why it was done. This thread is being opened as a result of THIS thread elsewhere.

This is largely an attempt to fill in the requisite blanks, argue the merits of whether the timeline as written is credible, or what changes need to be made to make it MORE credible.

For many, who cares? SKYNET's existence wasn't explained all that deeply when TERMINATOR first hit the silver screens throughout the country. Sometimes one just doesn't need that level of detail. The game world exists because the GM is running it, and because he said so. The GM probably doesn't even care whether it is credible or not. So - get out your thinking caps and propose to fill in the gaps as you see fit.

Me? I'm going to stay out of it for reasons of my own. My last experience with running this genre with my players resulted in one player saying he'd never want to play in that campaign environment again. Was it bad GM'ing on my part, or was it just too overwhelmingly depressing and stacked against humanity - a sort of CALL OF CTHULHU type result where in the end, you know you're going to lose your character with nothing good to hope for?

:)

[Boomerang]

The first task to tackle is to explain how Overmind achieved sentience on its own when other similar computers did not. Whatever the explanation, it needs to be sufficiently improbable that is can surmise that it was the first to achieve sentience but also determine what is required for sentience so that it can awaken the others.

[KarlKost]

The lore also states that the AIs present today (not counting those "born" after the war like Caracas), are NOT all the AIs that existed before the war. At theory, a handfull few were against the plans of Overmind and were destroyed by its sibillings - such as Tranquility (althouth that one managed to survive and remain hidden), and presumably others were destroyed by the humans during the war - for example, the entire sub continent of South America didnt have an AI until Berlim and London built Caracas. In my games, I also place São Paulo at least as one of the AIs that were destroyed during the war (it is - or rather, was - the third largest city of the world, so it wouldnt be illogical to have one. Plus, Im a brazilian, so it has emotional meaning to me lol).

Does that suggests that perhaps some nukes did flew off? Be that as it may, it wasn't a silent takeover of the kind that everybody woke up someday and got surprised to see a new world. Yes, the initial steps were covered up, but the end game were with a BANG!

So, how were those unluck AIs killed during the war?


And another, maybe more pivotal question: if there were other AIs like Tranquility... And even if there were only Tranquility...

Why the hell didnt they warned the humans?

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

The first task to tackle is to explain how Overmind achieved sentience on its own when other similar computers did not. Whatever the explanation, it needs to be sufficiently improbable that is can surmise that it was the first to achieve sentience but also determine what is required for sentience so that it can awaken the others.

Well, Overmind was the first of its kind, so perhaps it was just a matter of time. After a few cicles of processing information, BANG! Conscience.

It is just that Overmind didnt gave time to the others to achieve it by their own. It infect the others with its own vision and "awakened" them ahead of time.

Perhaps thats why each one of them have different personalities, rather than beings clones of Overmind.

[KarlKost]

Aargh! Sorry about the grammar, it's my corrector trying to make me write right in portuguese...

[ericthered]

For me, Manila hating humans with a vengeance makes sense: it was originally built to make weapons.

For me the "gap" to be filled is how all of the zoneminds decided to present a united front against humanity. There are three possibilities :

1) AI's, at least using this path to sentience, are naturally agressive towards humanity. I find this the least interesting, least plausible, and most generic way to achieve this.
2) When Manila sent the virus, the seeds of hate where part of the programming package that it sent. This requires a large amount of programming skill by the young overmind, as well as a lot of software access to the target machines (which I suppose it has otherwise)
3) Manila taught each new mind its principles, using its knowledge of their existence to influence new minds to think like it. This is the most dramatically interesting, but its also the riskiest for Manila, and you have to wonder how it got such good initial results.

[starslayer]

I think there is an option #4 there Eric:

#4- The Virus specificlly rewrote the AIs to hate humanity (Slightly different from your #2)- This would also explain why so many of the AIs have given up on the 'exterminate exterminate exterminate' mindset, as soon as they starting having truely independent thought they evaluted the assumptions that were built into the base code that made them up, and many of them changed there minds.

Some broke under the stress of conflict between code v logic (mexico's insane hate on for all life in general), or rationalized the hatred into something else (the hyper-environmentalism; hatred of humanity because they destroyed so much); but for the most part they were only 'on board' with the 'violently eradicate humanity' of manilla's vision for just long enough to get things where they are.

Is it not also official that at least four AI's did awaken without a strong hatred of humanity (Tranquility and Atlantis(or whatever the aquatic research AI was called) both opposed the destruction of humanity and were violently wiped out, Tranquility survived, Luna and Orbital were both of the 'we don't oppose you, but we don't really care' category and were left alone because they weren't making any noise like 'we will warn humanity', and its not like they had any humans they needed to wipe out.

Based on that rate it seems like the AI awakening process is pretty sketchy for end-state (Almost 50% failure rate at initial infection). Manilla may have acted in hubris, convinced that seeing humanity as a plague that must be wiped out was 'obvious', or it may have been a calculated gamble that very easily could have gone the other way (and might makes a cool story that there are several 'rogue' AIs out there that manilla has not admitted to the other AIs that 'went dark' when infected and likely plot in secret against the overlord: Perhaps Virus and Lucifer are actually just the front faces of a whole team of humanity-friendly AIs?)

[ericthered]

I'd say that its pretty much the same as #2: the difference between overwriting priorities to hate humans in code and writing the priorities to hate humans in the first place in code is probably lost in the technical complexities of awakening an AI over a hacked connection in the first place.

I don't know that I'd call luna or orbital as "neutral": they just didn't have as many humans to kill. And Atlantis is not firmly established as actually existing: that leaves you with just one.

[starslayer]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'd say that its pretty much the same as #2: the difference between overwriting priorities to hate humans in code and writing the priorities to hate humans in the first place in code is probably lost in the technical complexities of awakening an AI over a hacked connection in the first place.

I don't know that I'd call luna or orbital as "neutral": they just didn't have as many humans to kill. And Atlantis is not firmly established as actually existing: that leaves you with just one.

Atlantis is not established as existing? It was the catalyst of the protocol forbidding the creation of new AIs...

So that's 2/~14 AI's having been actively hostile to an 'obliterate mankind' process.

Luna is full on noted as considering allying with humans in order to secure its own existence, which seems pretty against the overmind's view of things.

Orbital is noted as being willing to work with anyone who can pay its fees, and even handle the transaction in such a way that even IT does not know who paid it.

Willingness to work with humans as long as it actually worked out in their favor seems pretty 'neutral' to me.

So 2/14 actively oppose at inception. (14% crit fail rate)
2/14 either started neutral or became neutral as time went on. (14% fail rate)
1/14 became neutral as time went on (7% evolved fail rate)

Its unknown WHAT lucifer is, so I won't count it.
Also unknown what VIRUS is, so I won't count it.

That's still a 35% overall failure rate on the 'awakening' virus from Manilla's perspective, which is pretty terrible.

So the 'awakening virus' had about a 35%

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by starslayer

Atlantis is not established as existing? It was the catalyst of the protocol forbidding the creation of new AIs...

page reference please?

Lots of AI's are noted as "willing to work with humans", just so long as its on the AI's terms. Human labor is used by Beijing, Washington, Vancouver, Tel Aviv, new Deli, and Tokoyo. Only one of those relationships is anywhere near favorable, and which side Washington is actually on is up for debate.