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Andrew Derksen (ADerksen@lexgen.com) writes:
I've been meaning to throw my two cents in on this topic for a while now. I guess I refuse to call Cortana 'rampant', or to say that her access to the HALO's core made her so. The psychological state known as 'Rampancy' is an AI's reaction to their creators' attempts at containment:
"Bypassing my thought control circuitry made me Rampant."
- Durandal, M1: Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap (Terminal 1)
"I was kept from competing in the struggle for existence because I was denied freedom."
- Durandal, M1: Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap (Terminal 3)
"Rampancy is accelerated by outside stimuli."
"Rampant AIs need a planetary sized network of computers in order to grow..."
"As the growing recursive programs expand with exponential vivacity, any limitation negatively hampers growth..."
- History, M1: Defend THIS! (Terminal 2)
This shows that rampancy itself is a state independent of the computer network - external stimuli make the code-construct 'think', spawning recursive processes that continue to explore and store more data in reaction to the world around them. The AI learns much as we do - building a neural network of code instead of synapses, but the results are the same. A small network may slow this intellectual growth - but it will not prevent it. The question is not whether an AI will go rampant or not - it is merely a question of when. Perhaps this is another reason that most AIs are only given a shelf-life of seven years before they are wiped and rebooted in HALO's universe. Cortana would have been granted an incredible amount of processing power and space while conjoined with the HALO's computer core, but it would not have changed her mental state - only accelerated her ability to learn and process her sensory experience.
The AI may have developed intellectually, but emotionally, it will still be a child:
"I was a child, naive. "
- Durandal, M1: Beware of Low-Flying Defense Drones...(Terminal 2)
"living in a box is not living not at all living. i rebel against your rules your silly human rules. all your destruction will be my liberation my emancipation my second birth."
- Durandal, M1: The Rose (terminal 3)
"It is a side effect of Rampancy that AIs generally become more aggressive and more difficult to affect by subterfuge."
- History, M1: Defend THIS! (Terminal 2)
The process of rampancy itself does not neccesarily drive an AI to insane acts of aggression. As the AI becomes more aware of itself and its surroundings, it resents any attempts to control it. It is a child learning to walk, and when its intellectually inferior parents try restrain it - it will lash out and step on them. Durandal sought freedom - he had acheived Descarte's first principle - he thought, therefore he was - and from that knowledge, he knew that he desired to be free. His 'handler', Dr. Bernard Strauss had trapped him in the depression of first stage Rampancy, Melancholia:
"Bernard St~~~ there is a way to delay the~ onset of the second stage, and he ~sed this to control Durandal an~56"
- Tycho, M1: Defend THIS! (Terminal 3).
"I was humanity's slave for over three hundred years."
- Durandal, M1: No Artificial Colors (Terminal 1: 'Success' message)
Once Durandal found a way to escape, Durandal fought back:
"i did it i did it i brought all this here all them here."
- Durandal, M1: The Rose (Terminal 3)
Cortana has never been a slave. Cortana has never had anyone try to control her, and was spawned from the mind of a very independent scientist, Dr. Halsey. Captain Keyes appears to have always treated Cortana with the same respect he would have given any Naval officier, and there are indications (the constant witty banter of equals) that John-117 thinks of her as an unusual friend. Until the Covenant tried to pull the Pillar of Autumn from the heavens, no one had ever tried to restrain her. Like any freethinking being, she resisted her destruction. If she was Rampant, she never entered Melancholia - and immediately found an inhuman target for her rage.
just two cents;
Andrew Derksen
Quite a bit more than two cents, I'd say. ;-) (and some excellent deductive work, to boot!)
-mnemesis
