- R_Richard_P26
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- Honorable Member
TL;DR
When AI are split up when they are put back together they can become "Metastable" and get human emotions, and essentially a soul.
Actually I think something like it may be the course they are taking.
It has to do with Red Vs. Blue. I imagine everyone knows what that is but if you don't go watch it. It's what all of the references in Spartan Ops have been about, so go watch it now (specifically season 10).
Done?
Good.
Burnie Burns (the head mind of RvB) apparently spoke with the guys making Halo about how AI's worked in the Halo universe. Basically they are a copy of a human brain, but while they share many memories and personality traits they still lack many base emotions, and just imitate them for the sake of their human counterparts. Simply put they don't have a soul.
However as an AI ages it develops those things in 8 stages, which overload it's processing power as an emotion is an abstract and computers work with logic and numbers. This is what causes them to think themselves to death and reach rampancy sometime after 7 years. Rampancy is only the 7th step however.
Reaching the 8th step, Metastability and a human level of consciousness, is the primary goal of one of the major antagonists of Red vs Blue named Sigma. Sigma is a fragment of an AI that was tortured until it went insane and its personality broke into fragments representing a different portion of a personality.
Alpha was the original
Delta was logic
Epsilon was memory
Sigma was creativity
Sigma figured that by combining the other AI fragments he could arrange themselves in metastability and essentially become human.
In the final battle Cortana split off her rampant personality pieces to bog down the Didact's super-destroy-everything-ray. Doing exactly what was done to the Alpha in RvB following the ideas on AI set down by Bungie. Personally I think that she's going to come back later and this will be the case, especially since 343i said they wanted to explore Chief and Cortana's relationship in the new trilogy.
Another example is Mendictant Bias, the AI in the terminals in Halo 3. He betrayed the Forerunners to team up with the Flood, and when he was captured by the Forerunners he was split up, one part going to the Ark and the other become the oracle seen in Halo 2 in High Charity (he's what the Covenant based their religion on, and why the prophets are named after things such as Truth and Regret). When High Charity crashes Ark in Halo 3 allowed him to join together again and become metastable for a few hours until Halo explodes and destroys him(That's why the terminal on the last level talks about righting his wrongs. He's reached a sentient level of emotion and feels regret for helping wipe out the Forerunners).
It might be possible for the composer to give her a body as well. The Librarian said that they could take Forerunner back out of it, however their minds would be broken.
[Edited on 12.12.2012 4:59 PM PST]