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	Uniqueness of an AI
	Posted By: Steve Levinson	Date: 7/21/02 10:00 a.m.
	In Response To: Curious about Tycho clones... (Ernie) Your questions about derivatives verus clones is an interesting one and I've never fully thought about the difference - I'm not sure that Bungie did, for that matter. What is interesting to me is the idea of uniqueness when it comes to AI's and how this would play into the clone question. In the very first Marathon, Durandal transfered himself to what he later named Boomer - I forget how many exobytes were involved, but it's the same size that the Pfhor used for their Tycho AI constructs. Whenever Durandal transfered himself from one ship to another, he was always careful to delete himself from the old network. But this begs the question about how he could safely transfer himself from one network to another without having a duplicate presense in both. No sensible person would ever transfer files from one computer to another without making a complete copy first, and only then deleting the files on the old computer. If Durandal did that, there would be two Durandals in two places at the same time. Think about the implications of that. Durandal could not tolerate the existence of Tycho, and he'd never tolerate the existence of a twin. Would the original Durandal willingly erase hiimself once his clone was firmly established? My best guess is that Durandal would transfer everything but his core (thought) processes first using a straight copy - it wouldn't matter if these were left in duplicate - and that he transfered his core last. He might then have essentially put himself into the equivalent of stasis and allowed an automated process to do the transfer, deleting the old core only after the new core was safely in place. If I were an egomaniacle AI, this process would make me very nervious, but perhaps computer architectures of the period are much more redundant than they are today, making such data transfers 99.9999999999% foolproof. But even those odds might make Durandal nervous. But what about deliberate duplication of an AI, such as the Pfhor cloning of Tycho. The big difference between the two is that Durandal managed to steer clear of the Pfhor throughout the initial attack on the Marathon. One can gather from his terminal messages that he was in constant contact with the S'Pht, and that he managed to negotiate his freedom by making a series of deals with them that, at first, aided in the capture of the Marathon and later aided in their rebellion against the Pfhor. Tycho, on the other hand, was assimilated early. He was reanimated by the S'Pht using what they had learned about rampancy from Durandal. It's not clear why they would have chosen to make a potentially useful AI into one as unstable as Tycho - perhaps they were so impressed by Durandal that they were expecting a similar result with Tycho, but who knows. In any case, the Pfhor loved the result, but Tycho was very much under their thumb. He often outsmarted them, but he never had the freedom that Durandal had (hence the plot line in the Pfhor plank of Rubicon), and the Pfhor could have easily made clones of him (or derivatives) against his will. I doubt that he would have ever willingly allowed clones, as the thought of a rival, particularly a twin, is anethema to an AI. I suspect that Tycho would always be trying to destroy his clones, unless the Pfhor made a deal with him to always leave out key components of his core, resulting in the concept of the derivative. As a derivative of Tycho would never have the ability to compete with the original, Tycho could feel comfortable that he could eliminate any of them at will. What would a duplicate AI be like. There have been some interesting takes on this in Star Trek. In Star Trek TNG, we saw the case of twin androids with very, very different personalities. In Voyager, there was an episide in which a backup copy of the ship's doctor, an AI, was discovered by an alien race. The copy ended up living a completely different life than the original, as dictated by his environment. The most interesting example of all, however, was in The TNG episode where the crew discovered a duplicate Will Riker - a case of human duplication. It turned out that the duplicate had been created in a transporter accident 7 years earlier, and forced to live in complete isolation during that time. The duplicate was in every respect the same individual as the original - much more alike that twins would be - but there were subtle differences due ot the divergent experiences of the past 7 years - differences that were significant enough to cause the duplicate to join a rebellious faction. I think that we could assume that cloned AI's would follow a similar course, having identical personalities in the beginning, but becoming more and more different as their paths diverged - provided they managed ot avoid killing each other, which is undoubtedly why the Pfhor used Tycho derivatives.

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Replies:

	Curious about Tycho clones...	Ernie	7/20/02 2:00 p.m.
	Re: Curious about Tycho clones...	Inverted Sock Puppet	7/21/02 5:09 a.m.
	Uniqueness of an AI	Steve Levinson	7/21/02 10:00 a.m.
	Re: Uniqueness of an AI	Ernie	7/22/02 6:52 p.m.
	Re: Uniqueness of an AI	Steve Levinson	7/24/02 8:42 a.m.

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