M-Bot and Figments. Is he one?

[Lightspine]

I haven't found a thread about this yet but I've seen several comments about a connection between AI and figments, so I'm probably not singular in thinking this.
M-Bot certainly has some connections to figments. Whether or not he IS one... well that might be a stretch, but let's look at the details first. I'm also running through several *other* theories I haven't seen discussed, but I think are relevant so let's go (long post ahead):

M-Bot has some Figment Technology:

Multiple characters, including Cuna and Vapor, have talked about an alliance between humans and figments, and heavily implied that the technology that MBot is equipped with is largely figment in origin. Here's some quotes:
Cuna:

Quote

"Holograms," I said. "A portable one in my bracelet."
"We don't have the technology to create a projector so small! Cuna said. "But it was rumored that... that the humans did, during the first war. During their alliance with the figments." (Page 368 of the hardcover)

Vapor:

Quote

Cuna took it anyway, then fished out the drone and looked it over. "One of our own," they said. "A modified cleaning drone? These are impressive security devices attached to it. I didn't know your people had access to this kind of technology."

Cuna looked toward the place where Vapor hung.

"That looks like figment technology," Vapor said softly. "The kind that was forbidden us after the war. I've... seen old ships with those markings on them." (Page 357 of the hardcover)

Now, the connecting thread between these two things is obviously the holograms that M-Bot has access to. This specific technology was almost definitely invented from figments—I don't think anybody can argue that the evidence doesn't point towards it—but what about the other stuff on M-Bot? How much of MBot's tech is figment in origin? All of it? We know that M-Bot's performance is greater than the interceptors provided by the Superiority (Spensa comments on this). Are the better GravCaps on M-Bot also a figment invention? Or the atmospheric scoops that allow Spensa to ignore a lot of wind resistance issues? 

M-Bot Uses Cytonic Computing?

Most importantly, what about M-Bot himself? Are incredibly advanced AI's a creation of the figments? And M-Bot isn't just self-aware, he has amazing decryption abilities, and (I'm no computer scientist so I can't really say this for sure) but he might be exceeding the limits of classical computing? Modern encryption keys aren't even breakable by supercomputers in any reasonable amount of time and I don't think that the encryption used throughout the galaxy in Starsight is supposed to somehow be weaker than ours. Is M-Bot some type of quantum computer?

For this bit, I don't think it's a stretch to suspect that M-Bot's processing speed comes from some sort of cytonic technology. He said the hologram bracelet that Spensa wears would normally have incorporated FTL communication in it, and at the end of the book his thinking is incredibly sluggish until they near the door to the... other place (is there a name we have in this community for it?). If his processing is cytonic, it could mean that his calculations per second are literally infinite, no longer constrained by the rate of flow of electrons. Please correct me if you have actual computer expertise, but I think that this would easily explain his ability to break through encryptions so easily: as long as it is possible to decrypt, even if it would take a classical supercomputer millions of years, M-Bot can do it in (literally) zero time.

Why Figments?

First of all, I had to wonder why the figment's technology is the most advanced. Are they the most intelligent species in the galaxy? Or perhaps their capability to inhabit and manipulate electrical devices allows them to have a more intimate understanding of them, or even the ability to assemble them with precision: making them more compact, efficient, and sleek. After all, the holograms, gravcaps, and atmospheric scoops on M-Bot aren't altogether new devices, just smaller and/or more effective versions of technology that other people in the galaxy have access to. Perhaps there's nothing fundamentally new about them, and their improvements arise from the unique assembly process that a figment is able to perform. This, however, explains nothing about the AI on M-Bot. He is clearly more than a more efficient version of other computers.

Some Weird Details

Okay, one final thing before I put everything together: How do figments die?? M-Bot mentions that "many died in the human wars" (Pg 203), but we see Vapor survive, like, a lot. M-Bot clearly states they can survive in the vacuum of space, and Vapor clearly does so. More impressively, Vapor survived after the drone who she was inhabiting was destroyed by Brade—so her particulates were not damaged by the destructor fire. Vapor also seems to be very, very old (which would also make sense because M-Bot mentions on Pg 203 that they reproduce rarely: slower reproduction are very closely correlated to longer lifespan. Just look at the greenland shark.) and has memories of previous delver attacks (please correct me if I'm wrong, I can't remember where she said this and didn't want to look through the whole book searching for it.) So, if figments are functionally immortal, what gives? How did so many of them die?

Second weird detail: Cuna mentions that the figments and humans had an alliance during the "first war." I think she means the first out of the three human conquests. But what about after? Were they no longer allies during the second and third conflicts, and why?

Tying it Together

Perhaps M-Bot is a figment, one that has been captured by humans and had its memories wiped. But why would they do this? I think there's a compelling case to be made for the many advantages this provides. First of all, there's some parallelism to be drawn between M-Bot and figments both being extremely good at stealth and espionage, but that's mostly fluff and not a real argument. The most obvious reason to want a figment running your computer is its sapience. Although M-Bot begins the first book claiming his "personality" is really just a front put up by his "subroutines," he shows in Starsight that he certainly has one, while also making a case in Skyward that appearing to have a personality has several benefits, such as making the user experience more natural and comfortable.

However, the humans who made M-Bot clearly wanted to keep his sapience in check. They wanted him to believe that he wasn't a true sentient being, and limited his autonomy. Why? To me, this strengthens the idea that his artificial intelligence isn't artificial at all, but rather it is true intelligence that has been forced to serve as a computer. And it points to a different reason for using figments than simply having a computer that talks: cytonics.

Now, we haven't met a figment with cytonic capabilities, but it's not a stretch to believe that they either exist or existed, so let's focus for now on M-Bot. A previous post by "The traveller" (link here: 

) has pointed out that M-Bot seems to have the "buzz" that cytonics are able to feel when they are near each other, although it is slight. In addition, as I pointed out above, M-Bot's incredible ability to crack encryption does not seem to fall in the realm of classical computing. I suggested that he uses cytonic communication, rather than electronic signals, to run calculations; but cytonic communication requires a living being. In Defending Elysium, we see that a single cytonic human can have their abilities amplified by electric devices, which handle all the routing and complex calculations needed to host thousands of FTL transmissions. What if M-Bot were a version of this, where electricity is merely used to boost the abilities of a single cytonic to run insane numbers of calculations? And at the core of this system is a cytonic figment who has been integrated into the CPU.

There are two issues to sort out here: First of all, if M-Bot himself is cytonic, why even need a Doomslug hyperdrive? I believe there are two possible reasons. The first is the same reason as the Superiority: to avoid the delvers. Another potential reason, however, is that a cytonic may not be able to perform multiple cytonic abilities at once. In Defending Elysium, we see that Jason can't teleport and use his mindblades at the same time: it's either one or the other. And he is a very, very highly trained cytonic. This may be because of the shear number of mindblades that he had to create and the concentration that demanded, but I can argue that M-Bot's millions of calculations at a time amount to an equally demanding task.

The second issue is much larger: how???? How did humans stick figments into computers, and wipe there memories, and prevent them from escaping? I think we can answer all three very elegantly by looking again at Defending Elysium (I know I'm referencing it a lot all of a sudden in the last part but I need to!). One of the central mysteries of the short story is Denise, who Jason eventually deduces has had her consciousness replaced by that of a varvax. But how? Out of all the alien species we've met, the varvax seem like the least viable ones to undergo this process. There are several biological reasons. Out of all the species that Spensa meets, the varvax in particular are the only ones that don't seem to fair well in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, and instead need to be constantly surrounded by some unknown liquid. This suggests that their body chemistry is markedly different from humans: at the very least, their cells are adapted to a totally different concentration of water and likely have a different osmotic pressure from that of humans. Sticking their brain into a human head could be like dropping a saltwater fish into a freshwater pool. Probably not that good. Speaking of brain transplants, we don't even know if they have those: invertibrate and vertibrate nervous systems are vastly different (crabs have two different large nervous centers, so basically two brains?), so even if all life in the Starsight galaxy has the same evolutionary origin, and sci-fi bioengineering can pull off all of the stuff necessary to block an immune attack of (literally) alien proteins, varvax seem so divergent from humans that their nervous systems should by vastly incompatible.

That's why I think the body switcheroo in Defending Elysium is some sort of cytonic phenomenon. Rather than having their brains swapped, Denise and Vahnn kept their brains but had their consciousnesses swapped. Sentience was moved from one set of atoms to a set with completely different chemistry and mechanics. And in the process, Vahnn experienced complete amnesia.

So what if this happened to a figment? What if, instead of being a figment like Vapor who has inhabited electronics, M-Bot is a figment who has been body-swapped. Instead of gaseous particulates, M-Bot's body is now wires and metal. He is trapped because of the very form of his new body: a computer. One which, unlike the cloud that Vapor is composed of, can be destroyed by physical means. And, of course, M-Bot's memories of his figment life were erased when he was injected into his new body, much like Vahnn's memories were gone after his consciousness was implanted into Denise's brain. Of course, memory wiping isn't a necessary component of the transfer process: we see that the varvax possessing "Edmund" has retained their skills and memories from their previous life. However, I believe that the humans that created M-Bot would have wanted to wipe his memory of being a figment. Instead, M-Bot believes that he has always been a computer.

If this process was performed on many, many figments during the first human incursion, it would explain why they were no longer allies for the next two. Meanwhile, these robot-figments would be more vulnerable to destruction than their gaseous counterparts and killed when the Superiority defeated the human fleets, explaining why it is said that many of them died during the war. The secrecy about their abilities may also make more sense: the Superiority is hiding the fact that figments are the secret behind creating advanced AIs, which falls in line with their view on the technology as dangerous.

Speaking of which, this may also explain why AI draws delvers. Although I don't think M-Bot screams like the slugs do when he is being used, I do think that millions of calculations being performed through the cytonic realm wouldn't exactly be at the liking of the delvers

EDIT: wow, just realized this a few minutes after posting but this could also explain how M-Bot can block Spensa from the cytonic attacks that allowed the Krell to control her dad. 

Well, that makes my theory. Hopefully I've thrown enough evidence at you, and somebody hasn't beaten me to this punch while I spent an hour writing this. For those of you who read the whole thing, wow thanks! For those who haven't, here's the Tl;dr:

Tl;dr

- Figments are somehow associated with the advanced tech seen on M-Bot
- M-Bot has weird capabilities when it comes to breaking encryption that may defy classical computing: I think he's cytonic.
- There are some mysteries surrounding how figments can die and their alliances in the past with humans.
- I think that M-Bot is a cytonic figment who had its memory wiped through a consciousness transplantation process like the one that happened in Defending Elysium.
- This would potentially explain the above mysteries, as well as other stuff like why delvers hate AI.

Edited December 22, 2019 by Lightspine

[Karger]

10 hours ago, Lightspine said:

Most importantly, what about M-Bot himself? Are incredibly advanced AI's a creation of the figments

M-Bot uses cytonics for FTL conduction in his computational processes.  

10 hours ago, Lightspine said:

And M-Bot isn't just self-aware, he has amazing decryption abilities, and (I'm no computer scientist so I can't really say this for sure) but he might be exceeding the limits of classical computing

At the time he has the key via hacking.  He says he would actually have trouble cracking that particular code.  Also with enough processing power many codes that seem unbreakable at first can be cracked easily.

10 hours ago, Lightspine said:

(is there a name we have in this community for it?)

The nowhere is what Spensa calls it.

10 hours ago, Lightspine said:

Okay, one final thing before I put everything together: How do figments die?? M-Bot mentions that "many died in the human wars" (Pg 203), but we see Vapor survive, like, a lot. M-Bot clearly states they can survive in the vacuum of space, and Vapor clearly does so.

What if you get stranded in the middle of nowhere in space or what if you use some kind of concussive force to spread them out enough via explosions?

10 hours ago, Lightspine said:

Second weird detail: Cuna mentions that the figments and humans had an alliance during the "first war." I think she means the first out of the three human conquests. But what about after? Were they no longer allies during the second and third conflicts, and why?

Vapor claims to have fought and killed humans during the wars.  I do not know why they switched sides.

10 hours ago, Lightspine said:

rather than electronic signals, to run calculations; but cytonic communication requires a living being.

He does.

10 hours ago, Lightspine said:

why even need a Doomslug hyperdrive

The drones the Krell use also have superluminal comunications that Spensa can sense but none of them have hyperdrives.  Evidently the two technologies are not identical.

[Use the Falchion]

On 12/21/2019 at 10:24 PM, Lightspine said:

I haven't found a thread about this yet but I've seen several comments about a connection between AI and figments, so I'm probably not singular in thinking this.
M-Bot certainly has some connections to figments. Whether or not he IS one... well that might be a stretch, but let's look at the details first. I'm also running through several *other* theories I haven't seen discussed, but I think are relevant so let's go (long post ahead):

M-Bot has some Figment Technology:

Multiple characters, including Cuna and Vapor, have talked about an alliance between humans and figments, and heavily implied that the technology that MBot is equipped with is largely figment in origin. Here's some quotes:
Cuna:

Vapor:

Now, the connecting thread between these two things is obviously the holograms that M-Bot has access to. This specific technology was almost definitely invented from figments—I don't think anybody can argue that the evidence doesn't point towards it—but what about the other stuff on M-Bot? How much of MBot's tech is figment in origin? All of it? We know that M-Bot's performance is greater than the interceptors provided by the Superiority (Spensa comments on this). Are the better GravCaps on M-Bot also a figment invention? Or the atmospheric scoops that allow Spensa to ignore a lot of wind resistance issues? 

M-Bot Uses Cytonic Computing?

Most importantly, what about M-Bot himself? Are incredibly advanced AI's a creation of the figments? And M-Bot isn't just self-aware, he has amazing decryption abilities, and (I'm no computer scientist so I can't really say this for sure) but he might be exceeding the limits of classical computing? Modern encryption keys aren't even breakable by supercomputers in any reasonable amount of time and I don't think that the encryption used throughout the galaxy in Starsight is supposed to somehow be weaker than ours. Is M-Bot some type of quantum computer?

For this bit, I don't think it's a stretch to suspect that M-Bot's processing speed comes from some sort of cytonic technology. He said the hologram bracelet that Spensa wears would normally have incorporated FTL communication in it, and at the end of the book his thinking is incredibly sluggish until they near the door to the... other place (is there a name we have in this community for it?). If his processing is cytonic, it could mean that his calculations per second are literally infinite, no longer constrained by the rate of flow of electrons. Please correct me if you have actual computer expertise, but I think that this would easily explain his ability to break through encryptions so easily: as long as it is possible to decrypt, even if it would take a classical supercomputer millions of years, M-Bot can do it in (literally) zero time.

Why Figments?

First of all, I had to wonder why the figment's technology is the most advanced. Are they the most intelligent species in the galaxy? Or perhaps their capability to inhabit and manipulate electrical devices allows them to have a more intimate understanding of them, or even the ability to assemble them with precision: making them more compact, efficient, and sleek. After all, the holograms, gravcaps, and atmospheric scoops on M-Bot aren't altogether new devices, just smaller and/or more effective versions of technology that other people in the galaxy have access to. Perhaps there's nothing fundamentally new about them, and their improvements arise from the unique assembly process that a figment is able to perform. This, however, explains nothing about the AI on M-Bot. He is clearly more than a more efficient version of other computers.

Some Weird Details

Okay, one final thing before I put everything together: How do figments die?? M-Bot mentions that "many died in the human wars" (Pg 203), but we see Vapor survive, like, a lot. M-Bot clearly states they can survive in the vacuum of space, and Vapor clearly does so. More impressively, Vapor survived after the drone who she was inhabiting was destroyed by Brade—so her particulates were not damaged by the destructor fire. Vapor also seems to be very, very old (which would also make sense because M-Bot mentions on Pg 203 that they reproduce rarely: slower reproduction are very closely correlated to longer lifespan. Just look at the greenland shark.) and has memories of previous delver attacks (please correct me if I'm wrong, I can't remember where she said this and didn't want to look through the whole book searching for it.) So, if figments are functionally immortal, what gives? How did so many of them die?

Second weird detail: Cuna mentions that the figments and humans had an alliance during the "first war." I think she means the first out of the three human conquests. But what about after? Were they no longer allies during the second and third conflicts, and why?

Tying it Together

Perhaps M-Bot is a figment, one that has been captured by humans and had its memories wiped. But why would they do this? I think there's a compelling case to be made for the many advantages this provides. First of all, there's some parallelism to be drawn between M-Bot and figments both being extremely good at stealth and espionage, but that's mostly fluff and not a real argument. The most obvious reason to want a figment running your computer is its sapience. Although M-Bot begins the first book claiming his "personality" is really just a front put up by his "subroutines," he shows in Starsight that he certainly has one, while also making a case in Skyward that appearing to have a personality has several benefits, such as making the user experience more natural and comfortable.

However, the humans who made M-Bot clearly wanted to keep his sapience in check. They wanted him to believe that he wasn't a true sentient being, and limited his autonomy. Why? To me, this strengthens the idea that his artificial intelligence isn't artificial at all, but rather it is true intelligence that has been forced to serve as a computer. And it points to a different reason for using figments than simply having a computer that talks: cytonics.

Now, we haven't met a figment with cytonic capabilities, but it's not a stretch to believe that they either exist or existed, so let's focus for now on M-Bot. A previous post by "The traveller" (link here: 

) has pointed out that M-Bot seems to have the "buzz" that cytonics are able to feel when they are near each other, although it is slight. In addition, as I pointed out above, M-Bot's incredible ability to crack encryption does not seem to fall in the realm of classical computing. I suggested that he uses cytonic communication, rather than electronic signals, to run calculations; but cytonic communication requires a living being. In Defending Elysium, we see that a single cytonic human can have their abilities amplified by electric devices, which handle all the routing and complex calculations needed to host thousands of FTL transmissions. What if M-Bot were a version of this, where electricity is merely used to boost the abilities of a single cytonic to run insane numbers of calculations? And at the core of this system is a cytonic figment who has been integrated into the CPU.

There are two issues to sort out here: First of all, if M-Bot himself is cytonic, why even need a Doomslug hyperdrive? I believe there are two possible reasons. The first is the same reason as the Superiority: to avoid the delvers. Another potential reason, however, is that a cytonic may not be able to perform multiple cytonic abilities at once. In Defending Elysium, we see that Jason can't teleport and use his mindblades at the same time: it's either one or the other. And he is a very, very highly trained cytonic. This may be because of the shear number of mindblades that he had to create and the concentration that demanded, but I can argue that M-Bot's millions of calculations at a time amount to an equally demanding task.

The second issue is much larger: how???? How did humans stick figments into computers, and wipe there memories, and prevent them from escaping? I think we can answer all three very elegantly by looking again at Defending Elysium (I know I'm referencing it a lot all of a sudden in the last part but I need to!). One of the central mysteries of the short story is Denise, who Jason eventually deduces has had her consciousness replaced by that of a varvax. But how? Out of all the alien species we've met, the varvax seem like the least viable ones to undergo this process. There are several biological reasons. Out of all the species that Spensa meets, the varvax in particular are the only ones that don't seem to fair well in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, and instead need to be constantly surrounded by some unknown liquid. This suggests that their body chemistry is markedly different from humans: at the very least, their cells are adapted to a totally different concentration of water and likely have a different osmotic pressure from that of humans. Sticking their brain into a human head could be like dropping a saltwater fish into a freshwater pool. Probably not that good. Speaking of brain transplants, we don't even know if they have those: invertibrate and vertibrate nervous systems are vastly different (crabs have two different large nervous centers, so basically two brains?), so even if all life in the Starsight galaxy has the same evolutionary origin, and sci-fi bioengineering can pull off all of the stuff necessary to block an immune attack of (literally) alien proteins, varvax seem so divergent from humans that their nervous systems should by vastly incompatible.

That's why I think the body switcheroo in Defending Elysium is some sort of cytonic phenomenon. Rather than having their brains swapped, Denise and Vahnn kept their brains but had their consciousnesses swapped. Sentience was moved from one set of atoms to a set with completely different chemistry and mechanics. And in the process, Vahnn experienced complete amnesia.

So what if this happened to a figment? What if, instead of being a figment like Vapor who has inhabited electronics, M-Bot is a figment who has been body-swapped. Instead of gaseous particulates, M-Bot's body is now wires and metal. He is trapped because of the very form of his new body: a computer. One which, unlike the cloud that Vapor is composed of, can be destroyed by physical means. And, of course, M-Bot's memories of his figment life were erased when he was injected into his new body, much like Vahnn's memories were gone after his consciousness was implanted into Denise's brain. Of course, memory wiping isn't a necessary component of the transfer process: we see that the varvax possessing "Edmund" has retained their skills and memories from their previous life. However, I believe that the humans that created M-Bot would have wanted to wipe his memory of being a figment. Instead, M-Bot believes that he has always been a computer.

If this process was performed on many, many figments during the first human incursion, it would explain why they were no longer allies for the next two. Meanwhile, these robot-figments would be more vulnerable to destruction than their gaseous counterparts and killed when the Superiority defeated the human fleets, explaining why it is said that many of them died during the war. The secrecy about their abilities may also make more sense: the Superiority is hiding the fact that figments are the secret behind creating advanced AIs, which falls in line with their view on the technology as dangerous.

Speaking of which, this may also explain why AI draws delvers. Although I don't think M-Bot screams like the slugs do when he is being used, I do think that millions of calculations being performed through the cytonic realm wouldn't exactly be at the liking of the delvers

EDIT: wow, just realized this a few minutes after posting but this could also explain how M-Bot can block Spensa from the cytonic attacks that allowed the Krell to control her dad. 

Well, that makes my theory. Hopefully I've thrown enough evidence at you, and somebody hasn't beaten me to this punch while I spent an hour writing this. For those of you who read the whole thing, wow thanks! For those who haven't, here's the Tl;dr:

Tl;dr

- Figments are somehow associated with the advanced tech seen on M-Bot
- M-Bot has weird capabilities when it comes to breaking encryption that may defy classical computing: I think he's cytonic.
- There are some mysteries surrounding how figments can die and their alliances in the past with humans.
- I think that M-Bot is a cytonic figment who had its memory wiped through a consciousness transplantation process like the one that happened in Defending Elysium.
- This would potentially explain the above mysteries, as well as other stuff like why delvers hate AI.

Awesome theory!!

[FoxOfFire]

Wow! I LOVE this theory!

I think I'm only not sold on that figments are the consciousnesses in the AI.

Here are some WoB's that could be interpreted as supporting your theory though.

 

1.

Quote

Questioner

Skyward, is M-Bot actually sentient or just really well programmed?

Brandon Sanderson

I would call him sentient.

Questioner

You think so? You do imply a little bit but--

Brandon Sanderson

I do... But I have built into the world an explanation for why that might be.

Skyward Atlanta signing (Nov. 17, 2018)

2.

Quote

 

Questioner

Is M-Bot intelligent and sentient?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. M-Bot is, I would say, above animal intelligence but not quite human level intelligence. Oh no, M-Bot? I thought you were saying Doomslug. I would say M-Bot is above human intelligence and is sapient, is sentient.

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

 

 

Edited January 12, 2020 by FoxOfFire

[Lightspine]

On 1/7/2020 at 4:35 PM, FoxOfFire said:

Wow! I LOVE this theory!

I think I'm only not sold on that figments are the consciousnesses in the AI.

Here are some WoB's that could be interpreted as supporting your theory though.

 

1.

2.

 

Thanks!!
Yeah, I realized after posting this that I didn't discuss AT ALL how M-Bot could have transferred himself to a new computer at the end of Starsight, which puts a pretty big hole into my theory that he is a Figment.
The rest of the stuff I discussed still holds though.

[Cursebreaker]

Hi! I know I'm a bit late to this discussion but I literally just finished Starsight! 

I basically agree with you but came from a different angle. I thought that figments came from AIs, that they started as AIs but grew and developed until they became figments and able to move at will.

So that is what M-Bot is becoming, rather than being a figment that has been trapped and changed, that he is the on the verge of becoming of a figment. That would explain why there are so few figments and they don't reproduce, because advanced AIs aren't allowed. 

AIs that can advance as far as to be like a figment, think and choose for themselves rather than always fighting for the humans and doing what they are told would definitely be something that humans would be afraid of. And they would try to eliminate "rouge AIs" which is why most were lost in the war. Likely before they became capable of existing outside a vessel. 

Edited January 24, 2020 by Cursebreaker

[Draginon]

I thought of this possibility as well. I just finished reading Starsight and there was just something off whenever it came around to M-Bot discussing emotions and whenever his programming shut him down whenever he got too close to doing something only living creatures could do. I mean shutting him down for attempting to copy himself is one thing but shutting him down just for discussing it with his pilot is another.

Then when the Vapor example happened I felt for sure something was up with M-Bot.