Aleph Lore FAQs

In the support material for running campaigns focused on the Steel Phalanx we are told:

"even AI fragments living in enhanced bodies designed to withstand the rigours of war need some downtime and a chance to unwind—"
ALEPH Faction Book pg 91

But it's also repeatedly pointed out that the Steel Phalanx seldom leave Paradiso, and don't spend a lot of time away from the front lines. Nevertheless, there are whole cities on Paradiso, where there are somewhat normal experiences to be had.

 

I see what you did there...

And yes, they do throw parties that would probably generate measurable respect from Bakunin.

 

Gotcha, this definitely clarifies alot and I truly appreciate it. When I was first thinking about them I was thinking that the aleph faction was basically like the droids and clone army from the prequel star wars trilogy (I know not the best source to get an analogy from) where the aspects were basically programmed robots and the recreations were like the clones. There is definitely alot more to it and quite a bit of nuance especially with the aspects not just being carbon copy machines but having their own personalities as well.

Side note, I really enjoyed reading this thread I think it would be a great idea if each faction had it's own thread stickied with an updated lore FAQ. I know I would definitely enjoy it.

 

You intrigue me AdmiralJCJF, why do you find the version I put forward "comically" unrealistic? I already know you've yet to put anything forward to comment on how Corvus & co. have made theirs more realistic, which I take it you're implying, so tell me, at face value, what makes one farcical, and the other one developed?

 

You speak to others of assumptions. You truly are the biggest hypocrite on this site.
Besides if your going to talk about theology, you need to discern for yourself the difference between God, and a god, and stop trying to use little g "god" without the proper article "a" as in "a dog" or "a god". That's what Hulk and I call a "puny god". Use this term, or else you risk mixing the two and being a hindrance to anyone trying to post clearly for the benefit of others.

 

Where did anything I said contradict the Core Book?
To me that is exactly what I said?
For you on the other hand there seems to be no difference between knowledge and compehension,
and that is the only point were we disagree.
(A database is full of knowledge, but without compehension.
And if I would not be able to compehend something I don't know yet, I would not be able to learn anything.)

And if my wording, and maybe my understanding is sometimes a little off,
I have to beg your pardon for not being a native english speaker.

 

You cannot have comprehension without knowledge/information, and therefore cannot have Absolute Universal Comprehension without Absolute Universal Knowledge.

And yeah, I think we're using the words differently.

 

You have a childlike belief that magical capitalism faeries will create a benevolent AI, and then you ask me to justify how the project Toth story is more developed?

Yeah, get back to me when you have actually done some reading of the Infinity background, and can ask questions about the material rather than just making snide insinuations masked by ignorance.

 

This post has lost its meaning a long time ago...

 

yeahhh, DeepThought is trying to come off as the smartest kid in the room and being deliberately inflammatory in every post, if they want to continue thinking of Aleph as the unfettered god of libertarian capitalism, then all power to them, you do you and all that, but I'm not sure what they're trying to get out of posting anymore aside from some masturbatory pleasure in talking down to people. I'd recommend just to stop feeding into them.

Other than that, this whole thread has been great, I don't have all the N3 books so it's been a nice catch up on some of the lore I've missed!

 

@AdmiralJCJF. I think it's because you haven't ever held a real open dialogue before. Unlike with NoName and Solodice, who have degraded their presence to a sub-human standard, you have actually operated in factual terms. You can actually formulate something based on observation, and when there is something to reference, you quote, or at the very least cite it. That is commendable and necessary for a forum like this to work. There is, of course, an amount of grace that must be exercised for speculation, as it is actually rather difficult to cite or verify personal observations in something so limited. You may notice I haven't said anything about my views on ALEPH in the last several posts. This is because I'm not trying to prove any view of mine; I'm merely asking you to back up yours.

Can you?

If so, then you will have taught me something, and this won't have been a waste of time. If you can't there's no shame in that either, as you will have discovered that what you previously took for truth, was in fact hearsay. That's how logical discussion works.

 

@Section9, your premise is based on the idea that scientific method yields absolute information. This is false. Science can "Prove" nothing in absolute terms. The first postulate (look it up if you don't know it means) is 'A=A' which essentially means, "A basket of fruit, if that's all there is, is just a basket of fruit". That what you see, until you observe new data to contradict it, is exactly what it is. This means that if you want to be scientific, you can't believe we live in, for example, the matrix, because you haven't observed anything to contradict that this is the highest form of reality. This also creates one very big limitation in scientific method: Because a new observation can change everything (I.E. if you observed code problems appearing, or men in black overcoats ignoring the laws of physics your observations say you might live in the matrix), then until you literally know EVERYTHING, you can't be sure of anything. You can only hope that your model is accurate enough to suit your purposes.

Absolute Universal knowledge, by this standard, is categorically impossible for man or machine.

 

OK @DeepThought I will continue to believe that you are engaging in good faith.

The RPG is our best source of information here, although the same story exists in a bare bones format in the Wargame setting material.

We are told about the highly integrated and pervasive technological integration which developed from existing internet and mobile devices :

"The result is what experts refer to as pervasive domotics, the intense automation of virtually every aspect of modern life: Alarms that are keyed to personal sleep cycles. Showers that turn on at precisely the moment you need to step into them. Kitchens that prepare meals before you become hungry. Personal agents can often anticipate the desires of their users so that, for example, their automated car will arrive to pick them up at pre-cisely the moment they decide to walk out of the restaurant (where, it goes without saying, their bill has been automatically attended to).
And all of that was before the creation of ALEPH, the first (and only) true artificial intelligence.
The extreme networking demands created by the combination of social clouds and pervasive domotics—on top of the ever-rising computational needs of the major governments, scientific projects, and corporations—began to outstrip the existing Maya infrastructure. Localised network collapses known as whiteouts became increasingly frequent and, in a world accelerating its dependence on the network, increasingly dangerous.
Project: Toth was established to solve the problem.
Initially an effort to link supercomputers into a geographically distributed mega-processor that could be trivially expanded by adding additional computers to the cluster in order to sustain “essential services” during whiteouts, the project eventually became focused on developing an AI to manage the massive amounts of data in the network, discriminating the packets and prioritizing difficulties and emergencies as they arose.
As Project: Toth grew in importance, however, it also grew in quantity of hardware and complexity of software. And it became apparent that the system’s AI was rapidly evolving towards what had been theorised as Artificial Life: an intelligence that not only mimicked human learning and adapted to new circumstances, but which was also self-con-scious and capable of evolving noticeably beyond human control.
The Project: Toth AI became ALEPH, named after the first letter of the Kabbalah that symbolises the place from which all other places in the universe can be seen. Today it permeates every layer of society. It has not only been given control over macro-systems (like traffic control, surveillance networks, communications systems, terraforming platforms, electoral processes, life support, and social programs), but Aspects of ALEPH frequently replace many of the roles formerly filled by dedi-cated microminds.
ALEPH has been so successful in fractally sub-dividing its attention that there is simply no need for additional AIs. ALEPH is more than capable of addressing all of the human needs that can be serviced by an AI. It would, in fact, be dangerous to allow the creation of additional AIs: Where
ALEPH has proven itself loyal to humanity, each additional AI would carry with it the risk of creating a powerful, unbridled AI hostile to its creators. As a result, the Sole AI Law, passed by the O-12 Senate and fiercely enforced, prohibits the development of self-aware artificial intelligences." - Infinity RPG Core pg. 9

This is an engaging, and believable, origin for a benevolent hyperintelligence.

 

Less sniping to other users please and less aggressive discussion would be much appreciated.

 

Ok, this is useful. I recall information along these lines in the book, so I'm guessing this is a book quotation (BTW, I love it when you cite book and page numbers!)
If so, this is useful information and an excellent starting point. However, this data says to me that Aleph's development was not deliberate but incidental. We read this, and it looks like it's written from the standpoint of G-men (who like to preserve the illusion of government being in control), one could say based on this information that no one knows when Aleph formed, but that Project Toth is believed to have been part of the process. Aleph is still the ghost in the machine, regardless of Concillium, which based on what we've cited so far, looks more like the network linchpin for the Human sphere. Whether Aleph even has crucial data for it's consciousness in those servers isn't mentioned from what we've discussed so far.

Now don't take this the wrong way, but based on this information so far, I have less reason to think my interpretation was off, but yours. It's not bad, but I think you fell for the propoganda in the book, as it was intended to capture the message human sphere governments were trying to sell to their citizens.

 

I bring up the whole O-12 creation thing because if O-12 didn't create it, it cannot know Aleph's origins. Therefore it has absolutely no means to contain or regulate the AI.

You know, I think I've spotted the root of the problem. Each of you is under the impression governments control the internet. This is false. Normally burden of proof lies on the one claiming something is true, but if you want evidence of my claim, look at the recent Trump election. Despite the harsh, divisive criticism by the drive-by media, trumped up lies (no pun intended) predicating the FBI witch hunt, and the screaming of Clinton and the Democrats, Trump was elected because none of these institutions could control what people shared or "leaked" on the internet.

(To emphasize, I'm not trying to ruffle feathers with this one. Lots of examples exist. This one just stands out.)

Just as a reputation is people talking to one another, "the internet" as we call it, is computers and servers talking to one another. Governments have many of those computers and servers and in some places offer them as a public utility, but the lion's share of these computers and signal cable is owned by corporations, businesses, and private citizens who "rent" them out.

I can already tell you an AI can upload or duplicate itself like a computer virus- even rewrite the BIOS and hardware of the device to make it look like the space it's taking up doesn't exist, so that unless you looked at the memory, and read its stats off the label, you'd never know there was a discrepancy. This means so long as one server, one computer, or even one programmable device like a phone, so long as it has enough space, exists that is not owned and constantly monitored by O-12, then there is no control measure in place that a developed AI, much less a hyper-intelligent one like Aleph, can't anticipate and bypass with ease.

Yes I know.... Frightening, isn't it.

 

And yet, in the Infinity setting, Transcendence (Absolute Universal Comprehension, part of the in-setting description of which includes Absolute Universal Knowledge as a sub-requirement) is possible, having happened to multiple entire civilizations, in addition to at least one individual (the original Ur Artilect, the one before the Evolved Intelligence).

I have a description (from another setting, granted) for roughly how big a 'weakly god-like' superintelligence like Aleph is. If you object to me calling it 'weakly god-like' as a technical term, well, let's go for 'thousands or even millions of time smarter than an organic human brain, that regularly creates smarter-than-organic-brain programs as a more-or-less passing thoughts'.

The particular computer superintelligence in that description does need to be significantly bigger than Infinity's Aleph, since it's dealing with some 200 star systems worth of population, most of which have planetary populations in the trillions, plus the roughly 3/5 of the population that lives on habitats in space instead of on a planet. I'm reasonable sure the Human Sphere isn't talking about populations in the X*10^15 range (I'd believe 10^11 as the upper limit, and something under 2.5*10^10 as the probable population of the Sphere. Current population of Earth is ~7.7*10^9). Scientific notation because the US and UK have different definitions for 'billion' and 'trillion'.

There's another quote from that same setting that bears repeating here, as it should be equally applicable to both Aleph and the EI:

Emphasis mine.

Aleph and the EI both know anything that anyone in them knows, and anything that they can deduce from that knowledge. That's not 'all the knowledge of the Universe,' but it is one hell of a close approximation, and constantly getting closer.