- anton1792
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- Noble Legendary Member
"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
Rampancy is a sign of an AIs impending death. It is not the cause, but for simplicity's sake, Rampancy = Death.
Halseys Journal. May 3rd, 2526.
As smart AIs age they make more interconnections within their neural matrix, increasing their cognitive abilities and expediting their demise.
Cross-linkages continue with two possible outcomes: the sheer density of connections causes a cascade of irreversible quantum transfer (a "short circuit" in rustic parlance), eventually halting all functions or the AI takes extreme corrective action, eliminating connections via pre-emptive voltage overload. The latter often leads to aberrant personality manifestations, or "Rampancy".
Halseys Journal. November 10th, 2533
Third-gen AIs pre-emptively sever neural linkages to circumvent their terminal phase.
Accelerated link severing leads to increasingly poor choices of which links to cut - i.e., the AIs become so consumed with self-preservation that they ultimately self-terminate.
I don't know where people are getting the idea that AI can survive past the 7 years. It is not due to the UNSC simply deleting them, they will eventually burn out in a time period that Halsey estimated to be no more than a few years. It is just that in the process of terminating they tend to be harmful, thus why the UNSC pre-emptively deletes them before that happens.
Metastability means falsely stable. An AI that is cutting connections would be able to stave off its death and so would appear to be stable. However, the truth is that it could cut the wrong connections and kill itself at any time, thus it is falsely stable.
Metastability is a general scientific concept which describes states of delicate equilibrium. A system is in a metastable state when it is in equilibrium (not changing with time) but is susceptible to fall into lower-energy states with only slight interaction.
So basically the AIs transition to a "short circuit" is halted (and not changing with time) due to the AIs severing of connections. However, as the wrong connection could be cut at any time, which would cause the AI to plunge right into its death (Final most state), it is metastable. Here, a metastable AI would be in state 1; stable for now but not the most stable state, and any outside interaction (Such as a wrong connection cut) could push it down to state 3. State 3 being most stable and also being the AIs death.
Juliana is probably severing the right connections somehow, maybe by destroying all information not relating to the Rubble and its safety.
Cortana is shafted, unless she is somehow the product of Halseys slipspace matrix. (Which she probably is. It is too much of a co-incidence that this wonder solution to the AI problem emerges this late into the story just as one of the series' main characters enters the final stages of her life.)