unforum

[GunsmithCat]

[question] How old is Princess? Melissa?

[Zedix]

Something doesn't quite make sense in that case. How come the Princess doesn't know how to talk English at all and has to learn the language from scratch, while Melissa is already fluent in English ? If Melissa was somewhat damaged by a virus and made a copy of herself before the Virus, wouldn't it be the other way around ?

[Dorkmaster]

Here's my theory [Wild Spec]: The princess is an old copy, but made of Melissa in her infancy as an AI. Then it was "shut down". It was to replace Melissa after Melissa went past 7 years... So it's a copy, but in AI years, it's still a baby with at least 6+ years ahead of it. Whaddya think?

[Anton P. Nym]

In the Haloverse Human smart AIs think themselves to death in se7en years. There's a notable exception; the Forerunner (? provenance probable but not proven) AI called 343 Guilty Spark, who acts as the Monitor of Halo. He's been aboard for over 100,000 years according to the novels.

We have no indication that the Sleeping Princess is truly a smart AI yet... there are signs, but the difficulties in communicating could be due to a lack of "smartness" instead of unfamiliarity with English.

So, the SP is either a "dumb" AI or is not a human AI.

-- Steve is inclined to the latter, especially with the osmium "vacuum sealed" box just discussed, but the former can't be dismissed.

[GunsmithCat]

[GunsmithCat]

Riffing off the "why can't Princess speak well" question.

If Princess is an early/immature/simpler version of Melissa

Then why is she so much more observant?

[CoffeeJedi]

[clamatius]

Don't get too obsessed by the 7 year angle. The Princess actually says in the killer.jpg txt: "had been changed going back a while though, more than 7 years ago now".

a) There's lots of numbers bigger than 7.

b) That sentence doesn't make a whole lot of sense and it's not clear what she means.

Of course, if the Princess isn't a human AI at all but a Forerunner AI, rampancy after 7 years isn't an issue anyway (as Anton P. Nym points out). The fact that she's actively communicating and even writing haiku tends to rule out the possibility of her being a "dumb" human AI. For me, at least.

[GunsmithCat]

[Astald]

[Killer-of-Lawyers]

Re: [question] How old is Princess? Melissa?

[Anton P. Nym]

I'm starting to turn around on the Princess as Smart AI. Though "dumb" AIs (such as Beowulf and Wellsely in the novels) do communicate at a very sophisticated level, even down to sarcasm or reminiscing, they don't compose poetry or haiku. That requires creativity, which is an attribute of "smart" AIs.

However, that leaves us with the issue that the Princess describes herself as being more than seven years old. The only Halo canonical answer right now is that she isn't a human AI... it's been stated that Human AIs can't create backup copies.

In the novel First Strike, the presence of such a routine in a Covenant AI greatly surprises Cortana, a Human smart AI. She is, however, able to use the copy routine to make an imperfect copy of herself to operate certain systems aboard a captured Covenant vessel.

(Hmm, more evidence for Flea as Trojan there too... interoperability of Human and Covenant software.)

So right now we're looking at the Princess as an alien AI; according to expressed opinions and inclinations she's highly unlikely to be Covenant (affinity for Dana, lack of theological or dogmatic theme in communications). The only other option already written into story canon is Forerunner origin.

-- Steve, of course, is ignoring options not already written in the storylines... and may be missing some. Help!

[Killer-of-Lawyers]

Woudln't giving a "Smart" AI a larger memory core delay the onset of death? Give them a bigger brain, more room to grow, expand, and be creative with?

[GunsmithCat]

Re: [question] How old is Princess? Melissa?

[Killer-of-Lawyers]

Pretty much. To make any AI, you need a fresh brain. The Humans in HAloverse don't understand how it works, but by sending impulses and mapping the signals that come out, they can simulate it. This destroys the brain and gives birth to an AI's cube, its memory core. A dumb AI is limited to its specialty as far as its creativy goes. Smart AI's arnt, so they keep eating up their space untill they use what normaly is their vital functions for thinking.