I didn't say humanity was the last hope against the CA. I said at the moment, being the one we know are opposing the Ca, they are the one that would result in a break off of these two races if they gain the advantage. Morat and Shas aren't undyingly loyal to the EI. One is a warmonger species actively looking for a sign of weakness because they want to fight and the other is hyper opportunistic. So if Humanity, in the current conflict, were to gain a major advantage, it could destabilize the CA into infighting. Especially considering that in lore, even the Tohaa don't know why the EI is fighting humanity like it is. It doesn't match its usual strategy. According to a section in the RPG book, the EI may view humanity as a threat.
From what we know of the balance of power, the biggest advantage of humanity is the fact the Sphere is far away from the Hegemony territories, and only half of a fleet survive each wormhole travel (before to be greeted by the blockade). Without that, if the IE had the ability to put all its might against humanity, I think we could summary the situation by: By themselves, Morats and Shasvastii are older and seems to be bigger powers than the Human Sphere. The reason is explained in Daedalus Fall (or is it Campaign Paradiso?), and a (tiny) part of Tohaa are totally aware of the reason.
There's the secret item thing planted by the triumvirate, yes, but while the EI wants the thing, its also not going about taking care of humans the same way it did for the other species. It didn't even try to bring them in, it just attacked. I don't have my book with me but the usual strategy is, if the species is a candidate for an Ascension project, they'll be integrated as seemlessly as possible. If they aren't, they are added by force if necessary but also told they have a part to play in the glorious goal and blablabliblablo. FOr humanity, the EI sees them, with their spread and their advanced AI, as a mirror of the Ur Hegemony when they first created their own AI. As such, it views them as both the closest candidate to Ascension and a threat. Basically, the EI is acting strangely.
The problem with the EI suddenly Ascending is that it's a cop-out, storytelling wise. "And the big-bad just mysteriously vanishes into the night." It works if the Ascension was some time ago as a background event (as in the Girls und TAGs story), but not as the answer to what should be the climax of the Infinity game fluff. My guess is that the EI is seeing Aleph as Nemesis.
There is material in the Tohaa background explaining that they are very wary of Humanity in part because ALEPH is something they've never encountered before. The only other superintelligent AI they have ever come across is the EI. If that indicates that ALEPH is highly unusual amongst starfaring species then that might be another reason for the EI to treat humanity differently. Beyond the treachery of the Triumvirate.
Agreed. Just didn't see much better for a sudden shift in the balance of power for Morat and Shasvastii forces. Flip side, I'm not sure how the human sphere can gain an upper hand against the EI/CA without a similar cop-out.
ALEPH, and by extension Arachnae and other AIs, do seem very unusual for the Infinity Universe. Humanity seem to be the only ones beside the EI to have done it. More unusual, so far as we know (and in lore), ALEPH goes against expectations as an altruistic AI that actively works for the better of humanity. And the EI definitely sees ALEPH as a Nemesis of sort. It may have a superiority complex as well and is desperate to prove it is better than ALEPH. Which make sense considering that the two other AIs that the UR and EI created both turned on it, one Ascending and leaving it the UR behind, and the other going full civil war on it. ALEPH is a MAJOR risk because it could Ascend, leave the EI behind, AND since it's altruistic toward humanity, give THEM the secret to ascension. And it could also result in the same war that the EI had with Nemesis, except ALEPH is backed by humanity. So ALEPH is a major threat to the EI and humanity as a whole is apparently an anomaly compared to other species. Which makes me proud :3 A little note on the septization (however you say that word), there is fear that the EI could do it to ALEPH, but this process has never been done on something as major as ALEPH, so there is the question of will it actually work? It could very well backfire greatly.
That's the vault of the shasvastii, and the EI isn't shure if it wouldn't have been better to negotiate with the humans. See Third Offensive.
What expectations? 50 years of science fiction have spent very little time on the friendly AI who helps us all. In fact, the balance veers towards AI not being very nice. :D Also the door is very open as to if Aleph really has our best interests at heart. Assuming we know what those are either. Don't drink the Kool-Aid! It's been awhile, but my understanding is the current EI is the second project. The first Ascended and this one is somehow programmed to not do so without the Ur. Given the war between this one and the er... third(?) one it's probably right to be concerned. Read the Uplift saga by Brinn. The whole Herald and the other term are pretty standard views in the field. Or succeed and humanity doomed. I believe the term is "risk management".
That's... exactly what I'm saying. ALEPH, as far as science fiction goes, is not the usual AI. that eventually starts think humans are bad and must die. Of course we don't know yet if it will stay that way, but going by the lore we have, ALEPH is indeed currently benevolent toward humanity. And yes, the EI is the second AI created by the Ur, which is what I said. And of course the Septicizationing could work and be trouble for humans.
I have to slightly correct a bit this. For Tohaa Aleph seems like what EI uses to infiltrate and assimilate races, for Tohaa humans have either been already infiltrated by a EI subroutine and they have seen that in their war with the EI happening to other races, or Humanity has, somehow, come to create, for some bizarre reason, a society so close to EI and UR that no other civilisation has. All in all Humanity is suspect. Personally I am rooting for the war of the AIs, because Aleph sees humanity as hers and would protect it at any cost, now what humanity would emerge from such an event is anyone's guess.
I declare here and now that ALEPH shall be from this point refered as Mommy Aleph. If Mommy Aleph wins this war, I feel humanity would do quite well. Personally, I hope that the CA ends up splitting with the various species forming a larger intergalactic society, but not necessarily a peaceful one. Mass Effect is the closest I could refer to. On the surface, the major species are working together, but in truth they each have their own goals. Like the Batarian not being at war with everyone, but not exactly being with anyone. This way we would still get the black ops conflict we all love in Infinity, without the problems of a huge alien armies bent on our destruction with humanity somehow unwilling to band together.
Well, this really makes humanity a tremendous potential resource for the EI. After all, it already knows that something like ALEPH can ascend. But ALEPH might actually take humanity with it, and THAT the EI would be VERY interested in watching.
Though I'm sure the EI also wouldn't want Aleph and humanity to ascend without taking the EI and the Ur with it
Actually the background suggests the opposite. There's a strong implication that several of their subject species have ascended and they have gathered data from that process.
Humanity got unspeakably lucky with their "computational theogeny" project. SciFi literature for the last 50 years has been full of the various and sundry ways that big AI can go wrong, and has honestly probably only barely scratched the surface in that regard. "Computational theogeny" means creating (-geny) a lowercase-god (theo-) via computer (computational), a "weakly godlike superintelligence" in the vernacular. Aleph, and any other AIs of this type, has access to pretty much all information that their society creates, for a not-quite-omniscient creation. And with all this information, Aleph has access to any number of levers to convince it's people to do something it wants, as opposed to something that they may want. But the AI does not have the powers that the mythological gods do, at least not yet, which is why it's only 'weakly godlike'. When AIs get to the point of having powers that the mythological gods do, that's 'strongly godlike'.
The presumption there is that we are indeed lucky, as opposed to moving swiftly down the plan that Aleph has in mind. :D As players and readers we know that Aleph is not necessarily "altruistic" or "on our side". Otherwise there wouldn't be an entire Bureau of O12 dedicated to managing it and keeping other AI's from being created. A final point to consider, also from 50 year old science fiction, is if you do indeed have a super intelligence (that's why Aleph was created, right?) and can readily identify the smartest and best course of action... does it have free will?
Lucky in that Aleph didn't go all Skynet on us. Or worse. But then again, what do you expect for deliberately creating slaves? I mean, you want a self-aware artificial intelligence, but you expect it to be your (or your civilization's) on-call worker without rest or renumeration? Don't we call that being a 'slave'? How often were there slave revolts in history, again?
