View topic - [SPEC] Melissa trying to kill the Assassin.. Why? Thoughts?

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Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates

[SPEC] Melissa trying to kill the Assassin.. Why? Thoughts?

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bcriswell
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Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 136
Location: Oxford, England

FreemanCorporeal wrote:

How is it that we have determined that Melissa is a "Smart AI" and not a "Dumb AI"?

Smart AI - made from copying human brain, destroying the brain in the process; is capable of higher reasoning and adjusting to new situations; etc. etc.
Dumb AI - programmed to be an interface for specific tasks

Anyone feel free to correct me.

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:11 pm

bcriswell
Veteran

Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 136
Location: Oxford, England

Prominence wrote:

Since This is not real, and giving away Dana wont actualy get someone in real life killed, I say we should go for it. It will progress the storyline and get Melissa to trust us more. Besides,ig Whos behind this (Bungie) Didnt want it to happen, they wouldnt have Melissa after her

However, the idea is to make these decisions "in game." We have one shot at this game. There are no resets, saves or extra lives. We should be playing this game as well as possible, not poking and prodding to see what happens or what will advance the game as quickly as possible. We already have advancement for this week. Durga now knows about Herzog, the artifact, the Apocolypso, Captain Greene and Chawla base (assuming she realises that the Herzog files were hidden from her and finds the files other than the ones we directly sent to her). Durga's, Melissa's, the Flea's, SP's and Dana's reactions to this will give us more information as to the next step, and it would behoove us to not try potentially irreversible things just to see what happens or get 15 minutes of fame (and no, I am not referring to Weephun here).

The interaction aspect of this game has opened a dangerous precedent for the community at large as it only takes one person to potentially kill Dana. Now, Melissa may not decide to try to kill Dana, but she certainly has been talking as if she wants to kill Dana.

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:21 pm

FreemanCorporeal
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Joined: 30 Sep 2004
Posts: 27
Location: i live in beer.

bcriswell wrote:

FreemanCorporeal wrote:

How is it that we have determined that Melissa is a "Smart AI" and not a "Dumb AI"?

Yes, yes. Correct. But has Melissa herself acutally stated that she was copied from someone's mind? And though Durga has, what of her statement that AIs are taken from dead people's minds? What about Cortana and Hasely?

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Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:23 pm

bcriswell
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Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 136
Location: Oxford, England

FreemanCorporeal wrote:

But has Melissa herself acutally stated that she was copied from someone's mind? And though Durga has, what of her statement that AIs are taken from dead people's minds? What about Cortana and Hasely?

I do not believe that Melissa has specifically called herself a smart AI, but the level of reasoning and flexibility she exhibits as well as being an advanced shipboard AI that carried on conversations with the crew would indicate it.

The Halo books said something to the effect that Dr. Halsey was flash cloned and Cortana was based on the flash clones mind, thus killing the flash clone (stand up for flash clone rights!).

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:29 pm

FreemanCorporeal
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Joined: 30 Sep 2004
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Location: i live in beer.

bcriswell wrote:

FreemanCorporeal wrote:

Yeah. I found where it says that.

But then again, it seems any naval AI with a survival protocol could've done this. And this to say nothing of Rampancy. Smile

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Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:46 pm

johnny5
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Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 995
Location: Elysian Fields

Crisko wrote:

I've brought this up before but I feel like I should bring it up again. Isn't it kind of odd that a smart AI would have such a horrible human-trait? I just don't see Melissa's creator programming vengence into her subroutines.

I'm assuming this is either from the damage she incurred from crashing or this could possibly be the flea's doing. I'm really not sure what to think of it other than I don't like the idea of Dana dying. She's a human, Melissa isn't.

If, as the spec suggests, Melissa and SP are parts of the same whole. then perhaps the lack of SP "in" Melissa makes her less human and thus less likeyl to have reason, compassion, empathy, etc.

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Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 9:36 pm

skybruin
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Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 373
Location: Missoula ,MT

You may be on to something there but didn't Melissa act in more human like ways before she captured the SP. like with the story of the sister getting surgery to correct her illness(I can't remember the crew member) didn't she breakdown like a human would. That might disprove the theory.

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Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 9:55 pm

Killer-of-Lawyers
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Joined: 04 Aug 2004
Posts: 56
Location: Anahuac, TX

bcriswell wrote:

FreemanCorporeal wrote:

How is it that we have determined that Melissa is a "Smart AI" and not a "Dumb AI"?

Incorect.

Smart AI: Made from donor brain and allowed to edit its coding to learn new things.

Dumb AI: Made from a donar brain, but hard coded core disallowing it any creativity outside its set specialties.

Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 1:27 am

Platonix
Decorated

Joined: 28 Aug 2004
Posts: 174
Location: Keene, New Hampshire

Killer-of-Lawyers wrote:

Dumb AI: Made from a donar brain, but hard coded core disallowing it any creativity outside its set specialties.

You sure about that? I can't see SPDR as anything more than simple programming. Pious Flea maybe, but not SPDR, who is classified as a Dumb AI.

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Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:13 pm

Nova
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Platonix wrote:

You sure about that? I can't see SPDR as anything more than simple programming. Pious Flea maybe, but not SPDR, who is classified as a Dumb AI.

Where is the SPDR classified as a dumb AI? I can't imagine it being any more than an autonomous repair routine.

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Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:14 pm

Platonix
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Joined: 28 Aug 2004
Posts: 174
Location: Keene, New Hampshire

Nova wrote:

Where is the SPDR classified as a dumb AI? I can't imagine it being any more than an autonomous repair routine.

Autonomous repair routine = Dumb AI. There has to be some degree of artificial intelligence in any autonomous program, or it won't know how to do its job. If I'm wrong, kindly direct me to a definition of Dumb AI that doesn't fit SPDR, because I've yet to see one.

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Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:57 pm

chaotic_mind
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Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 325
Location: Inside my head, behind the eyes

In the The Fall of Reach, Eric Nylund wrote:

Cortana was a "smart" AI, an advanced artificial construct. Actually the terms smart and dumb as applied to AIs, were misleading; all AIs were extraordinarily intelligent. But Cortana was special.

So-called dumb AIs were designed to function only within set limits of their dynamic memory-processing matrix. They were brilliant within their fields of expertise, but were lacking in "creativity." Deja, for example, was a "dumb" AI-incredibly useful but limited.

Smart AIs like Cortana, however, had no limits on their dynamic memory-processor matrix Knowledge and creativity could grow unchecked.

In The Flood, William c. Dietz wrote:

This particulat intelligence had been programmed with a male persona, the name Wellsley-after the famous Duke of Wellington-and a personality to match. Though he wsa a good deal less capable than a top-level AI like Cortana, all od Wellsley's capabilities were focused on things military, which made him extremely useful if somewhat narrow minded.

It would seem that dumb AIs have personalities, a trait that I haven't seen the SPDR display. To be an AI, in the Haloverse sense, requires more then the ability to make decisions and evaluate data with no clear answers or distinctions. Being an AI is sorta like being a person made out of software. I don't think we can say the SPDR passes that muster.

As to Melissa being a smart AI, this gets a bit more shaky. The difference between dumb and smart AIs is beneath the hood. Still, based on the poetical references from Phase One, and what she said when she was most damaged would indicate to me that she's smart.

Still, that's based on a sense of things, not hard and fast data. Obviously, your millage will vary.

Luke P.[/sup]

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 7:20 pm

Phaedra
Lurker v2.0

Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 4033
Location: Here, obviously

Multiple Realities

Quote:

One theory on how the universe can be layed out is like a tree. Every 1/1000000 (let's stop the zeroes here, k?) of a moment, and every possible thing that could happen becomes a branch.

Woohoo! The Many Worlds theory of quantum mechanics. I knew it was going to crop up here at some point.

Quote:

I guess that depends on how much programming they do and how much is based on the donor brain. My guess would be that they can't tinker with emotions too much and still have the AI seem like a real person.

I think the vengeance thing is a combination of an AI version of post-traumatic stress disorder and an attempt to preempt another attack.

From other quotes:

It seems that "AI" in the Haloverse is defined differently from here and now. As understand it, pretty much any program with rudimentary reasoning skills is AI. The enemies you face in video games are AI. So wouldn't anything that's not a smart AI be, by default, a dumb AI?

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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2004 8:37 pm

chaotic_mind
Unfettered

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 325
Location: Inside my head, behind the eyes

Phaedra wrote:

In the books, (which you mentioned you haven't read, yet bare with me), every so often I get a wiff of..."back doors" in AI personalities.

Cues, triggers, and artificially induced emotional states.

Cortana and Master Chief were paired up for a specific mission. That mission was to invade and kidnap (yet not kill) a Covenant prophet.

Halsey asked about her mission, and Cortana seemed to undergo a rather sudden (and it seemed to me, somewhat "induced", mood change). Cortana stated that her loyalty was to the mission first, and to Master Chief second.

I hate to be so...speculative in all this. It's just that there isn't much information on the subject.

Anyway, it would seem that AI psychology is similar to human neurology, in that we both have an underlying "lizard" brain that can gain "precedence" over the more cerebral (heh heh) upper brain.

In the case of the AIs, it would seem that this lower brain can influence the consious mind of an AI just like our "lizard" brain can influence us.

This rather...wandering aside has been to gain a little perspective on my pain point. Which is that, yes, I don't think you can mess with the "core" personality, but that core personality has another bit of software running beneath and through the overt mind.

As Jersey would say, Creeeeeepy.

Luke P.

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2004 10:34 pm

Digiwizzard
Boot

Joined: 25 Sep 2004
Posts: 23

FreemanCorporeal wrote:

bcriswell wrote:

FreemanCorporeal wrote:

How is it that we have determined that Melissa is a "Smart AI" and not a "Dumb AI"?

I think the operators monologue were Melissa says that she almost felt real proves she is capable of complex thought.

As for Melissa ruthlessly hunting the Assasin, I don't think it's a matter of vengeance but simply cold hard logic. She is in a particularly desperate situation, cut off from headquarters and stranded on a strange backwater planet. A few of the "crewmembers" she has made contact with she has later found out to be spies, and the Assasin is the only thing so far that has managed to actually locate and damage her. Therefore Melissa wants to kill off the Assasin, not just to debilitate her from attacking back but to make sure she doesen't inform anyone else of her whereabouts.

Add onto this that Melissa is a few screws loose in the first place and you've got one crazy psychopathic mission.

Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 2:51 am

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