Artificial Ascension questions regarding the nature of AIs


Rules Questions


Ok so a level 20 psychic can make themselves into an AI, suppose a newly made AI Psychic decides it needs help, can said AI copy-paste themselves and effectively have two different versions of the psychic?

Iron Gods Spoilers Within:
there seems to be a precedent for it since Unity made a low power copy of himself that evolved into Hellion, but what would the result be from somebody who is decidedly less prideful and egotistical? Is it possible to have multiple versions of a person work together? Is it reasonable to share the same goals that the original had before copying? Would they likely have an existential crisis after their original goal is complete?


This is something a GM would probably have to decide for their own game, but here's some thoughts.

Spoiler:
A lot of it depends on the nature of the creation. For example, a Psychic that's been turned into an AI probably still has a soul - and the universe might say "one soul, one person", so the attempted copying would completely fail.

Alternately, the copy could be an inferior duplicate, maybe a number of levels lower. How it would react to things depends a lot on the character. A reasonably good character - as in, less prideful and egotistical, as described - might want to take care of the life they've created... for example, they could tell it "I made you to help me with this, and when we're done, I want to help you find a new purpose in life" so there's no abandonment issues.

Definitely something to be handled game-by-game, though. XD


There's some discussion of related issues over here.

I think an Artificial Ascension is a hybrid mind/warped soul that is uniquely locked into any given physical matrix (i.e. robot) at a time. This is based on the fact you can't be raised by any means (neither your mind in a robot, nor your dead flesh) and you destroy your current robot body every time you jump to a new one. The latter in particular pretty much forecloses copying yourself. You can't even leave a function robot behind, let alone one with an intact mind state.

The Unity/Hellion stuff is GM storytelling fiat, it's not rules applicable to anything a PC should be able to do.

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