Has someone fiddled with the temple AI?

ZVar wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:No PICA under the temple. We have authorial fiat that the only PICAs on Safehold are Merlin and Nimue. We need another explanation. Although David is the master of misdirection (think of the fatal would to Hector, in the snippets for LAMA), he has never been caught in a direct lie - and he has said no other PICAs on Safehold.

So that just means there is one floating above the planet in one of the OBS platforms. Or on one of the moons, or whatever. Like you said, he's good at misdirection. He didn't say there wasn't one. Just that there isn't one on Safehold.

I believe that the ability to build a PICA (and upload a stored download) would also count as not a PICA on Safehold (perhaps that is what activating the Key would have done - might also explain why that would only work once).

Question - Just assume for giggles that the ability to build one is there - how long would it take the Temple to build a PICA? If we are dealing with an outside threat, I would assume you would want it ASAP.


In another direction, which may be completely wrong - could it be another ship/planetary AI that would take over once installed? That would be why it couldn't be done more than once. The temple is apparently a Planetary Command Center/Bunker - would installing the Key slot in an AI that by definition not want to turn back off and would do things like raise planetary defense shields, etc?

It's been awhile since I have reviewed the books, so I apologize if I am off on a snipe hunt here. But also trying to open other avenues of discussion.

Magistos wrote:Question - Just assume for giggles that the ability to build one is there - how long would it take the Temple to build a PICA? If we are dealing with an outside threat, I would assume you would want it ASAP.

It didn't take long for Owl to build Nimue Chwaeriau's PICA. I think it was about a week or so, but that's going off memory.

Some written in the books assumptions.
1. The only PICA known, Merlin, was never listed on the manifest. It was listed as personal property of Nimue who never arrived.
2. The new leadership was very much anti-science. That is Langhorne and Bedard. The remaining leadership didn't have the tech base and support people that Shan Wei had.
3. Shan Wei and her husband tried to keep tabs on what was happening up until the time the pocket nuke went off. They knew what was available onboard the ships, even as they were 'scuttled'.
4. The only person with the knowledge to revise programing of a PICA was on Shan Wei's team.

Most likely there is no PICA in the temple. For an AI, it took years of interaction for OWL to become self aware. Before that point it was to simply do the task asked for, not to question why.

It is unlikely there has been any human interaction since whatever 'computer' was placed with the temple. When awakened, it may even seem insane. A PICA is unlikely in my opinion based on the books.

Also to 'fiddle' with the AI some basic knowledge would be assumed, otherwise the AI would be likely programmed to ignore input.

I don't recall that it was ever explicitly said that the Wylson key could only be used once. Just that it should only be used in the Church's hour of direst need. The 'one use' idea seems to be a deduction from that. But it may just be the equivalent of 'Don't wake Daddy for every little hiccough, kids.' Of course it's a long time since I read that part of the story and I may be misremembering. Does anyone have textev either way?

Randomiser wrote:I don't recall that it was ever explicitly said that the Wylson key could only be used once. Just that it should only be used in the Church's hour of direst need. The 'one use' idea seems to be a deduction from that. But it may just be the equivalent of 'Don't wake Daddy for every little hiccough, kids.' Of course it's a long time since I read that part of the story and I may be misremembering. Does anyone have textev either way?

From chapter III, May 895 YOG of _How Firm a Foundation_:

“According to ‘the Vision,’ it may be done only once, and only in the hour of Mother Church’s true need,” Wylsynn continued.”

Also (found this later, thus the edit) from chapter III, September, 893 YOG of _By Heresies Distressed_:

“The key was never meant for use against those within the Church,” Samyl replied. “Not only that, but it’s a weapon of last resort, and it can only be used once. Schueler made that crystal clear. And do you truly think Cayleb and Charis have crossed the threshold he set yet?”

schoeffelk wrote:Most likely there is no PICA in the temple. For an AI, it took years of interaction for OWL to become self aware. Before that point it was to simply do the task asked for, not to question why.

RFC has already stated there are no other PICAs on Safehold.

This is not a surprise. Hamilcar would have had the capability to manufacture one, but first, plans would have to exist. I don't see plans for manufacturing a last generation PICA included in what was sent along to Safehold with Operation Ark. Why would they be? What possible need would the Safehold colony have for one?

Owl was able to create Nimue's PICA chassis because it had Merlin's to examine and reverse engineer. If you don't have the plans, a working model you can examine and reverse engineer is the next best thing.

If Langhorne and company had the ability to make PICAs, you may assume they would have appeared in the War Against the Fallen. I asked David about that at a con, and said "If I'm Chihiro, I might just have my personality recorded as I approached the end of my life, and uploaded into a PICA. I would have an immortal body and could return and rule Safehold forever!" He replied that if Chihiro could do that he wouldn't have waited! And he even had a built in cover story. His new non-aging body was God's penance for not stopping Shan Wei. Instead of returning to Heaven to be with God like the rest of the Angels and Archangels, He was sentenced to stay on Safehold indefinitely and watch over the people of Safehold.

I have some suspicions about what might be under the Temple, but PICAs aren't one of them.
______
Dennis

DMcCunney wrote:This is not a surprise. Hamilcar would have had the capability to manufacture one, but first, plans would have to exist. I don't see plans for manufacturing a last generation PICA included in what was sent along to Safehold with Operation Ark. Why would they be? What possible need would the Safehold colony have for one?

Disagree--Safehold was supposed to only be a temporary retreat from tech. I would think every bit of Federation tech was sent along.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

DMcCunney wrote:This is not a surprise. Hamilcar would have had the capability to manufacture one, but first, plans would have to exist. I don't see plans for manufacturing a last generation PICA included in what was sent along to Safehold with Operation Ark. Why would they be? What possible need would the Safehold colony have for one?

Disagree--Safehold was supposed to only be a temporary retreat from tech. I would think every bit of Federation tech was sent along.

Disagree all you want, but riddle me this:

We know from TextEv that the War Against the Fallen didn't begin till two years after the kinetic strike on the Alexandria Enclave. We know that the War Against the Fallen went on for 6 years before the Fallen were finally fully defeated. We know things were going badly enough in the beginning that Chihiro's folks were picking Adams, offering them an opportunity to fight, and selectively removing blocks on their memories of what they used to be to help them acquire the needed skills. (Seijin Kohdy, for example, had been a TF Marine unarmed combat instructor and master swordsman, which was a reason he got selected.)

Given those circumstances, and that Hamilcar was still present as a manufacturing base, tell me why Chihiro and Schueler didn't produce and deploy PICAs to fight the Fallen? They certainly had folks whose personalities could be recorded and uploaded to a PICA. (I suspect, for example, that not all of Kau Yung's Navy and Marine personnel who became the core of the Fallen joined that effort. Some likely remained loyal to Chihiro and agreed with his policies.) For that matter, Kohdy was an Adam, and had the TF neural implants. They could have recorded his personality and uploaded it into a PICA. (And along that line, RFC stated at a con that Chihiro would happily have had his personality uploaded to a PICA and become immortal Archangel Chihiro, ruling Safehold for the next best thing to forever. He didn't, because he couldn't. His folks didn't have the ability to make PICAs.)

The only reason I can see that they didn't was that they didn't have the plans.

I think you have an inadequate idea of just how much all of Federation tech was. And even if it could all have been included, the Safehold colonists would be starting from scratch. It would be a very long time before they could create the manufacturing base needed to produce the advanced tech.

(And while the original Operation Ark plans were to abjure advanced technology for 300 years to give the Gbaba time to conclude that had exterminated humanity and could go back to whatever they had been doing before we arrived, I'm pretty sure there was verbiage in the plans about "We'll plant a colony so the human race will continue to exist, but even if that colony attains the capability to leave Safehold and poke around elsewhere, it will stay way the Hell away from Earth and the direction where the Gbaba interstellar polity was. We will not go looking for trouble. We don't even know how large the Gbaba interstellar polity is. All we know is that for every Gbaba ship we destroy, ten more appear to replace it."
______
Dennis

DMcCunney wrote:
Owl was able to create Nimue's PICA chassis because it had Merlin's to examine and reverse engineer. If you don't have the plans, a working model you can examine and reverse engineer is the next best thing.

As I recall, Owl couldn't reverse engineer Merlin's PICA because the process was too likely to take Merlin off-line -- or at the very least, trigger a system reset that would restore the ten day limit. Nahrmahn and Owl did VR research to figure out how to create Nimue's PICA.