: Something I've noticed is that the AI in Marathon never exist in more than
: one place. They often refer to themselves as a physical thing (such as
: when Leela was being shipped to the Phor homeworld, or the way Durandal
: keeps flying about the universe).
[snip]
: The AI in Marathon are basically disembodied personalities. It is strange
: that if Durandal can download his personality he couldn't have copied it
: and made two of him running around... *shudder*
What about the Tycho-clones the Pfhor made? I'm guessing there was some inherent error introduced by the Pfhor's 'AI Photocopier' (as the duplicates are referred to "crippled clones" in the M2 end screen) but is that close enough for the 'more than one copy at once' question?
Also, the M2 final screen talks about how Leela was deactivated and dismantled when the Pfhor returned in force for the Marathon, and how she was "reactivated" by the Vylae. This would seem to suggest that all the data that makes and AI an AI can be moved into some form of non-volatile storage (for transport, for example, or maybe just hibernation - see Thoth and his (its?) reactivation by the cyborg) and the actual hardware switched off.
Unfortunately its not explicitly stated as to what hardware exactly the Pfhor ripped out of the Marathon, besides the fact it was Leela's - this leaves the hanging question of whether it was generic human computer hardware that Leela was running on, or weather it was some specialized AI systems, or maybe even some specialized electronics (photonics?) for Leela alone.
: For some reason, AI's can't be in two places at once. They cannot be simply
: programs. There is something else going on as far as hardware, I agree.
: But if Durandal can just shoomp from one network to the next, how can it
: be tied to any specific hardware?
Maybe personality conflicts?
Or maybe there were two copies of Durandal in the time between finishing his exodus from the Marathon and deleting.
If we assume that AI's can go into 'hibernation mode' like I stated above, I think Durandal copying himself would make perfect sense. If a simple file transfer utility or script file for the purpose didn't already exist, I'm sure Durandal could whip one up real fast, run it, and drop into hibernation mode and let himself be copied off the Marathon.
Maybe he even got the Compilers in on the act in some way.
: The global network part of rampancy is also interesting.
: Theoretically, testing Rampancy should be easily accomplished
: in the laboratory, but in fact it has never successfully been
: attempted. The confinement of the laboratory makes it
: impossible for the developing Rampant AI to survive. As the
: growing recursive programs expand with exponential vivacity,
: any limitation negatively hampers growth. Since Rampant AIs
: need a planetary sized network of computers in order to grow,
: it is not feasible to expect anyone to sacrifice a world-web
: just to test a theory.
: Why would it need a planet? If it needs an entire grid like that to grow, how
: can Durandal keep limiting himself by transferring from ship to ship? The
: Marathon is big, but not big enough. This is noted by Leela and that's way
: she wants Durandal off.
: How could Durandal have transferred himself somewhere larger than the
: Marathon?
If I remeber correctly, the Pfhor ship Durandal captured had more than enough space to allow his rampancy to continue, but I'm not entirly sure on that fact.
: Even still, they said that rampancy began in the latter part of the
: twenty first century . I doubt that all computers on Earth suddenly became
: neural network nodes between now and then. Even if you want to say Traxus
: IV just turned Earth into a huge parallel computer, it wouldn't explain
: how the AI's (more specifically rampant ones) can move.
: The only hint given about Traxus' hardware was this: He was finally dealt
: with by a
: complete shutdown of his host net.
: Which is strange because that's the first I think of when I imagine an AI
: taking over the world... shut it down. Is there something that governs
: these AI so they can't be rebooted? Is taking out Traxus' host net akin to
: shutting down the brain of a biological sentient?
Maybe the neural net is stored in volatile memory (RAM) - it would make sense, I would assume an AI would need to fast access to it.
And if Traxus was a massive distributed computing network on the planet, physically turning off the network and rebooting the 'infected' machines would clear out the rampant computer - unless of course there is code that is run when the computer is booted. I think I read somewhere that it took a decade or two for all the damaged done by Traxus to be rooted out - maybe that was a massive 'rouge code' clean up prerogative.
[snip]
