Alt is not an AI!

[Fins_FinsT]

Is it just me who thinks that she is not suitable to be called AI? She is a "digitized personality" or something like that, different from AI like Delamain.

"She" is not AI, yes. "She" was a person - best netrunner in Night City - and "she" died.

"It" - namely, Alt we meet in the game, - is not "she". It says itself that Alt whom Johnny new back in the day - is not around anymore. Now, all we experience is Alt ("it") the AI. Parts of it are of human origin, yes; but the whole - is not a human person anymore. It is much more, and much different, than any human psyche, digitized or not.

So make no mistake (and it's an easy mistake to make, yes): Alt is an AI.

Now, there are several types of AIs out there, mind you.

Some are like Delamain, yes - entirely "synthetic" constructs, consiting of code entirely non-biological in its origin. Those come with wildly varying levels of complexity / ability, and some of them like Delamain are made to intentionally be human-like in many regards, but yet others are not. The latter includes Night Corp AI, afaik, which was created and developed with specific, covertly commercial, purposes.

Yet some others are like Alt - having a part of them being digitized human psyche, yet some other parts like the above. Notably, i think Soburo (after his biological death) becomes one, i.e. Alt is not the only example here.

And yet some others are neither of the above, instead being "area" AIs - a mafifestation of the Net parts themselves. This is more in lore thing which hardly (if at all) gets mentioned in Cyberpunk 2077 in particular, but is well known in Cyberpunk universe lore in general. Those AIs are emergent, nobody ever "made" them. These appear as a result of Net's big parts evolving themselves, though time. Examples are "Pacifica AI" and the AI which is known to exist based on networks existing in soviet space, from what i can recall. Basically, it's Net's routers, switches, hubs and servers which all together give birth to those "not human made AIs" in Cyberpunk universe. Those AIs are very difficult to encounter and interact with, too, as they said to be very much "to themselves", seeing things in much more "introverted" ways in compare to humans, human-made and partially-human AIs.

I.e., just saying some is "an AI" - is far not enough to understand what kind of thinking, sentient, self-aware entity we deal with. And this approach is not unique, too. Other lore universes exists with similar phenomena of "whole range of very differing AIs" in them. Perhaps one most known example of which - is Mass Effect, which had Reapers (collective, ancient, beyond-comprehension AI); Geth (collective, emerging, man-made AI much within comprehension); VIs (various interactive systems having often rudimentary, but sometimes advanced, self-awareness); man-made individual AIs of various complexity and purpose; Normandy's AI (initially purely "ship's brains", but later developing into quite a person); etc.

 

[Jetro30087]

Definition of artificial

1: humanly contrived (see CONTRIVE sense 1b) often on a natural model : MAN-MADE
an artificial limb
artificial diamonds

The computer systems Alt exist on are artificial, the program that copied her intelligence is artificial, Alt is artificial as a result. Sounds like an artificial intelligence to me.

 

[CulannHS]

I'm sorry, but I can't take Mike Pondsmith's explanation for AIs at all. Primarily because he's the one who wanted to move Netrunning away from actually cutting ICE, jacking into cyberspace, getting software and cyberdecks, into what CP now calls quickhacking. And it is only my humble opinion, but that is a complete travesty.

Is Alt Cunningham a AI? She both is and is not. She is more like Neuromancer than Wintermute. She is a entity who has developed not only sentience but the colossal ability to transcend machine intelligence at it's best. This makes her into something both more human and not simultaneously...i.e. the best of both worlds. She is a anomaly amongst anomalies, making her a singularity.

 

[_Mina]

I'm not sure what could count as a spoiler from my take here, so I'm gonna stuff everything in it. At any rate, don't read if you didn't play the game.

Spoiler: About Alt and AI - thoughts on the matter

I agree with the title of the topic.

If Alt was already a person, then she can never be an AI. Artificial intelligence is artificial, created digitally. Alt was human, therefore whatever data was collected via Soulkiller is still her. What is soul anyway? Energy. The energy that we shape while living. Everything digital cannot sustain without energy, so if a person's engram is extracted, it is still energy. I always thought that "Soulkiller" title was inadequate because of this; I don't believe the soul is destroyed while the engram is extracted from the body - it's just a transfer of energy from one living environment to another. The Net is an organism, with the only difference being it's not made of biological cells, but code.

Another thing. It always seemed to me that Alt is trying too hard to appear like a machine. In comparison, Brendan and even Delamain seem warm and fuzzy, and they are true AIs. I see this coldness as her defense mechanism in Johnny's presence. She loved him and she doesn't want to go back to those emotions. In Mikoshi, when V asks Johnny where his output is, she appears and says "I am not his girlfriend", in a very defiant tone. This was a very emotional, human statement, directed towards a human type of relationship.

And don't even get me started with Johnny! He has more emotion and personality than some corporeal people. That engram may be a copy of his mind, but the soul is definitely there as well. If V decides to give him their body, this becomes even more obvious. There is nothing about him that could distinguish him from a regular person.

In a nutshell, I think that Soulkiller is a failed project, because it did manage to copy the soul.

 

[JoshShaw]

Ghost in the machine.

If one subscribes to the theory that the consciousness of Alt does not require the body of Alt, then she is more than a "digitized personality". We don't refer to people around us as "personalities". If classification of "body type" is necessary, then one has to consider the body-less, as Alt is, as well as those with bodies. The latter we have already broken down into terms for biological and non-biological. Properly, she is just a non-corporeal person.

If you subscribe to the theory that the mind cannot exist without the body, then it isn't Alt at all. Artificial Intelligence would be more appropriate, since there is actually no Alt. The "personality" that is observed is an artifact of the creation of the artificial intelligence.

Alt does not feel to me like a person. They feel more like a machine. This implies that Alt is dead and what we observe is nothing more than a complex artificial construct. Alt is an AI because the entity that we encounter is not the same Alt.

Spoiler

My interpretation of Alt is that this is not a single AI, but a collection of AIs working together to create an entity in the image of Alt.

On the other hand, we have Johnny, who seems to be a person who "lives" on a fancy USB drive waiting to find a body to inhabit.

One thing I see constantly neglected in the discussion of AI characters and if they equate to a living person is the discussion of emotion. Yes, ok, they can think, but do they have any digital analogue to the motivating effect of emotions/the endocrine system? That's a huge part of being alive. Without emotions, what would you do? What would you be motivated to do? Would you do anything? EDI in ME3 kind of suggests that she DOES have a comparative artificial system that allows her to form preferences, as an example. Whereas the geth are stated as being emotionless. I can only assume as a mind without a body/hormones, Alt is not comparable to a human and is portrayed as pretty alien (which I prefer to a Pinocchio story, personally).

 

[_Mina]

One thing I see constantly neglected in the discussion of AI characters and if they equate to a living person is the discussion of emotion. Yes, ok, they can think, but do they have any digital analogue to the motivating effect of emotions/the endocrine system? That's a huge part of being alive. Without emotions, what would you do? What would you be motivated to do? Would you do anything? EDI in ME3 kind of suggests that she DOES have a comparative artificial system that allows her to form preferences, as an example. Whereas the geth are stated as being emotionless. I can only assume as a mind without a body/hormones, Alt is not comparable to a human and is portrayed as pretty alien (which I prefer to a Pinocchio story, personally).

Hormones are not what makes us human. Animals have them too. The better question is, what is it that makes us persons? Is an engram still a person after losing their body? I think body is just a shell, a living environment that enables us to function. If a person is able to function in a living environment other than organic body, I don't think that changes the fact that they are still a person.

 

[Jetro30087]

Hormones are not what makes us human. Animals have them too. The better question is, what is it that makes us persons? Is an engram still a person after losing their body? I think body is just a shell, a living environment that enables us to function. If a person is able to function in a living environment other than organic body, I don't think that changes the fact that they are still a person.

The idea of personhood is more of a legal concept. In the CP universe AI's are not considered persons and don't have access to rights afforded to persons. Even Delamine hides the fact that he is a true AI running a robotaxi service. But the poster has a point hormones(the animal part) play a role in what makes humans, human.