: Well, interestingly, the team didn't mention Charlie at all. Or
: Whathisname, the AI on board the Chimera. He was a wetware
: AI, and probably not a TDM, as he was a little different from the rest.
: Or maybe they were based on other technology? After all, fifty years
: with FTL drives is enough time to find other Jjaro planets, with other
: AIs, working or not.
These are really excellent thoughts, Scifiteki. In Rubicon we encounter 3 new AIs, Haller, Charlie and Lysander. These clearly were developed in the post-Strauss era and, with the possible exception of Charlie, about whom we know nothing, they all involved completely new hardware designs. Now if Bernhard Strauss was truly interested in the hardware aspects of AI, as noted in the first post in this thread, this says some very interesting things about the advancement in AI technology since Strauss’ death on the Marathon. Two very important facts factor in here. First of all, I think that we can safely assume that AI research didn’t come to a halt during the 300 years that Strauss was in stasis on the Marathon. Undoubtedly there were many others who studied AI theory and developed new models and designs during this time period. Secondly, as you pointed out, humanity had the opportunity to come into contact with many other examples of AI technology once they had FTL. Durandal himself talked about his discovery of the remains of wetware AIs amongst the ruins of ancient Jjaro worlds in the Frog Levels. It is likely that human AI research benefited from such discoveries as well, resulting in the design of Haller. Still, I think that Tycho may have had a lot to do with the design of Lysander – he just looks too much by Thoth.
