New luddism nonsense for promoting anti technology themes. The conscience is simply a socializing element in pack mentality. This is known fact in domestication going back how many centuries? HAL's goal was not to complete the mission. HAL had a mental breakdown because of two conflicting goals, sharing information and withholding information. Killing the crew was the only way he could find to accomplish both.

He did have a conscience though, as evidenced in 2010.


The Catalyst's job was not to preserve organics. It was to preserve tribute.

Space odyssey 2010 is not canon and Kubrick almost had a stroke after seeing that movie.

By the way, by human logic "preserving organic life" would mean "save as many as possible" but I don't think even Krogans would see it similar.

I'm not even talking about Kubrick, I'm talking Clarke.

Not necessarily, that's what we infer because apparently saving as many as possible is the best outcome. We might as well find a solution to mankinds problem(s) and that's a fixed population ergo saving it in long term by killing a porttion. Anyway, I agree with your view of how the game presented this. One of their mistakes was the space child.

I think people from technical institutes should ask scriptwriters how AIs work, they're clearly very knowledgeable on the subject :-P

Agreed.
Obviously, Western Sci-Fi writers have access to a time machine and can check out how AI development will go in the future. They're only trying to warn us.
And those Japanese writers who dare depict nice, ethical, non-murderous robots? Must be collaborators ;)

And the trillion different things.

Last time I've checked, we were talking about science FICTION here ;-)

There were different takes on AI, like in I, robot or Ghost in the shell, where machines were able to feel compassion or love, but Mass Effect universe is not one of them.

It's just funny to see how you guys talk about AI as if it was a well known and troughoutly explored subject, with everyone having at very least 10 AI friends.

On other note, I actually agree with you on this subject, as much as I dislike modern Bioware stories, but for different reasons entirely: Acting like you know what would an alien AI do is just fairly stupid. ME world was created by a team of scriptwriters who have decided that this particular AI works in this particular manner. Since there is no fixed point of reference on how 'realistic' that manner of acting is, it quite simply is how scriptwriters decided for it to act. It's like saying that The Doctor clearly doesn't have two hearts, because most aliens in the universe don't.

I have. In many, many books.

I am still talking about science fiction, when you are trying to say something about reality in which AI doesn't even exist.
While talking about why AI's logic in Mass Effect isn't stupid, I wasn't leaving ME universe for a single second. Maybe I didn't use the correct wording. If it wasn't coherent with Doctor Who's universe, I would say so.

I am not referring to real life at all, in any place of my post. Again, maybe I used wrong words, but I'm talking only about science fiction, and I'm talking only about ME universe, when I'm talking about ME AI's.

Sorry for the misunderstanding and a mess it created.

I agree that Bioware can make their AI do whatever they want since advanced AI of this kind is at this point completely fictional.

Personally, it was the very existence of this AI that bothered me, for the simple reason that it cheapened the Reaper threat. I mean, for 3 games they've been hyped as those hugely dangerous, almost godlike entities that were bent upon wiping out organic civilizations for their own mysterious reasons.

And then suddenly, without any foreshadowing, we find out that they're actually little more than muscle working for another AI.
Imo, that's a major writing failure right there. That alone, never mind all the other plot holes in the original ending, made the ending suck from a story point of view.

True. But on the other hand, can't we asume that the thing we thought as God for the centuries was "just" another AI created by us? It was poorly written and shown, because of the god damned star child concept but in general it's not as bad for a concept of God.

But didn't Shepard become virtually a god after choosing control ending? Or synthesis ending, Shepard creates new form of life and every creature in the galaxy shares something with him?

I will remember that next time when Czech methanol alcohol scandal shows up :P

Oh that's not a scandal, it's just when a Czech bartender says "choose your poison," he's being far more literal than most. It's a local game, you see: You poison yourself with methanol and then need to outdrink it with actual alcohol. He who's ok wins, he who gets blind has second place and must do dishes for the rest of the month, and he who dies servers dinner. Eh, is served as a dinner I mean. Economic crisis and all that.

I'm not sure how much Bioware said what the space child was but I think the game hints that it's actually Harbinger, the leader of the Reapers (at least the invasion), who uses the child's image.

Now, this may be a cheap story plasted on at the end of the series because they lost their main writer and such but it's still plausible. The idea that Reapers were mysterious with unknown agendas were only intact as long as we didn't know anything about them. Obviously Bioware wanted us to know their agenda at the end, otherwise they would have skipped the space child.

Personally, I enjoyed the original story better about Reapers harvesting us for that dark energy problem that was threatening the entire galaxy (possibly even the universe) and leave at that, preferably not revealing too much. You rescue Tali from a mission in the beginning of Mass Effect 2 where a star is dying because of this very issue.