7 réponses à ce sujet

[Gervaise]

I am asking this purely based on in game evidence, whether or not this is backed up by real life or even makes scientific sense.
If you choose Destroy, then apparently EDI, the Geth and any other AI intelligence (particularly if it has Reaper tech) will be fried at the same time as the Reapers.   Many have argued that surely there will be back-up programs so that EDI and the Geth could be restored, whilst others have said that whilst the basic programming could be reinstated, the individual personality of EDI (and more advance Geth) could not be recovered and thus EDI would be effectively "dead".
However, in ME2 Shepard was brain dead.    This is confirmed in the Cereberus base in ME3.   So effectively his/her "hard drive" had failed and therefore effectively the data that formed the individual personality of Shepard should have been lost in exactly the same way as if the hard drive of an AI was destroyed.   Yet we are led to believe that Shepard was completely restored simply by restoring the dead brain tissue.    So how was Shepard different?   Did some imprint of the personality of Shepard continue to be attached to their body/brain and so if simply the hardware was restored without interfering with the "programming", which apparently TIM insisted upon, then the real Shepherd could be brought back.  Mordin comments that the Collectors are no longer Prothean because their "soul" has been replaced by tech.    The Collectors have never "died" in the conventional sense so in theory they still have all their memories in tact, yet because they have been indoctrinated, they have effectively been reprogrammed, and so no longer function as organics.
At the end if you choose Synthesis, then the Reapers can pass on the knowledge of previous cycles but this is surely no more than passing on data that has been kept on file.   It is like saying we understand what it was like being an ancient Egyptian based on what we have discovered through archaeology.  People think they know what the culture of the ancient Celts was like but this is based on the archaeological record and the writings of their enemies.   Since their history and culture was based on an oral tradition, much of this has been lost and without a living representative, we cannot know exactly what this was.    Which is why meeting Javik, a real Prothean, is so illuminating and comes as such a shock to Liara.
Which brings me on to my final query, which is what happens if you choose Control?   The Catalyst says that it will be reprogrammed with the thoughts and memories of Shepard.   This will be sufficient to stop the harvests and how the Reapers are controlled in the future will largely depend on the character of Shepard at the time this was uploaded.    However, it will still be an AI, limited to its mind set at a particular point in time.    If Shepard was ruthless, it will always be ruthless.   If Shepard was compassionate and caring, it will react to situations accordingly.   There is no reason to believe it will be able to reason as an organic Shepard did, there will be no adaptability to respond as each individual situation determines.   Or will it?    Immediately prior to being deposed by the Geth, the Quarians were working on the idea of developing AIs so that their ancestors memories could be transferred and continue to function as a living personality when the body was worn out, which was probably the real reason for the revolt as the Geth did not want to be rewritten and in fact their first act was to destroy the ancestor databank.     Was the reason that Shepard's body needed to be destroyed in the process, was in order to ensure a complete transfer of everything, including the individual personality of Shepherd to the new vessel?   

[Sion1138]

If the AI are software constructs residing on universal architecture hardware memory, then indeed they can not be reconstructed once they have been purged. You could salvage and re-initialize the hardware but then they would only be back to square one, unless there were a backup somewhere left undamaged.

And it's the same for a human brain. The characteristics of a person reside in patterns of signal transfer through the neural network. These need to be periodically repeated in order to be preserved.

Unused neural connections will degenerate over time and hence Shepard could not have been brought back unless his body had been recovered immediately or he had not been dead to begin with.

As to destroying Shepard upon uploading his mind to the Citadel, I don't see why it should be necessary. Perhaps the only method of scanning a brain is destructive, involving sending twenty thousand volts through the body, but that doesn't make sense. Such a surge would only fry the brain.

Modifié par Sion1138, 12 janvier 2014 - 03:01 .

[In Exile]

It's plot magic, and Bioware being bad at science as is par for the course in ME. Based on actual real world science, there are very few reasons why anything that we would recognize as "intelligence" would be different from how we work, especially if it was something self-aware in a way that we would recognize.

[Gervaise]

I realise it is plot magic which is why I was asking if based on plot magic mechanics there is any difference between the two. If Shepard could be restored after being brain dead then why couldn't EDI? In Control ending what was being transferred? Was there any element of personality or simply data that affected programming of the controlling AI. If the latter, there really seems no reason why Shepard had to die in order to achieve this. In fact, as pointed out above, the way it is presented would fry the neural pathways, not effect a transfer, leading to the conclusion that it is really a trick of some sort. Of course if Shepard was not really human anymore but an elaborate AI in a human body, then an instant download to the central AI simultaneously upon destruction of his/her body would make more sense. Strangely enough Shepard does query what they are on hearing that they were brain dead so clearly this means the same in the ME universe as it does in our own but this was never followed up in the storyline.

[David7204]

In Exile wrote...

It's plot magic, and Bioware being bad at science as is par for the course in ME. Based on actual real world science, there are very few reasons why anything that we would recognize as "intelligence" would be different from how we work, especially if it was something self-aware in a way that we would recognize.

That is just silly nonsense. And laughable 'science.'

There's plenty of reasons to think AI would be very different. Most of all the way computers are able to process information very differently from us.

Modifié par David7204, 12 janvier 2014 - 08:36 .

[Ruadh]

What the hell man? I would normally read that but . . . needs paragraphs.

****ING PARAGRAPHS

SERIOUSLY

[Obadiah]

I think it matters what hardware the program is run on, and since in the case of Control Shep the hardware is different, then the Shepard AI will be changed. It will at least lack emotion, and probably sympathy. Maybe it will be able to simulate those.

I don't think it will turn into a tyrannical or insane machine unless that was Shepard's original personality.