What Would a Shardblade do to an AI?

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

This question is ignoring the obvious problems of a shard blade on Earth. What would happen if a shardblade stabbed through an isolated computer that has the only source of the AI? And the AI is trapped in said computer?

 

 

Very specific question, sorry. 

 

Edited September 23, 2024 by ThatOneWorldhopper

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

5 hours ago, ThatOneWorldhopper said:

This question is ignoring the obvious problems of a shard blade on Earth. What would happen if a shardblade stabbed through an isolated computer that has the only source of the AI? And the AI is trapped in said computer?

 

 

Very specific question, sorry. 

 

This is an interesting one. So, for a realistic-style artificial intelligence, which exists as a massive distributed network entity, a shardblade may simply not be capable of harming them in the sense that no one physically manifested object or computer might contain enough of their soul for said object to count as being in possession of a living and severable piece of a creature; IE: all pieces, once assembled, are temporary, removable, redundant, and in some sense interchangeable by nature.

What I suspect we'll see on page eventually in the cosmere is more like star wars and classic sci-fi type, IE: self-contained sapient little rascal droids with personalities that are loaded onto and containered within a single dedicated metal body. If this ends up being the case, then I would expect that cutting them between any segment where information is processed, sensory data is aggregated and streamed, or actuator commands are issued, will function exactly like cutting through a person's brain or spine.

What's going to be really interesting, is that this would mean that the sapient robot's casing, and indeed, most of their body, might be treated by a shardblade as non-living tissue, shearing through it physically, but only cut wires, actuators, circuitboards, and silicon bits cognitively, treating them as full-blown living flesh for all intents and purposes. What is the cause of death for sapient computer hardware severed by a shardblade? That's...difficult to say. It might depend, but I'm gonna guess electrical overload, because it makes the acronym funny, which I absolutely hate: EOL (end of life) caused by EOL (electrical overload).

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, ThatOneWorldhopper said:

This question is ignoring the obvious problems of a shard blade on Earth. What would happen if a shardblade stabbed through an isolated computer that has the only source of the AI? And the AI is trapped in said computer?

Very specific question, sorry.

The answer is different if you are discussing "shardblade on Earth" or "Cosmere AI."

@hwiles did a good job covering the former. On the latter, we have these WoBs:

Spoiler

Quote

Questioner

If an advanced android was created with artificial intelligence using technology—but not Investiture like other artificial intelligences—artificial blood, organs, all that stuff, would they be able to access Invested Arts?

Brandon Sanderson

That's an excellent question. It's a really interesting question in the context of the Cosmere. So for right now, I am saying—now, maybe we will invent true AI, and I'll have to backpedal, but what I'm saying is in the Cosmere, true AI requires Investiture. And so a thinking machine is going to basically... the line between a thinking machine and a spren is going to get very blurred. And it's going to either attract [Investiture] or require it, and so the answer to you is "yes, to an extent". There are some Arts that are easier to use and some that are hard, depends on all these things, but the answer is "yes"...A thinking machine that actually is self-aware would be a person in the Cosmere for that reason, and would have the same Cognitive aspect and Spiritual aspect—so a soul, if you would—that an organic being would have.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

Quote

The Young Pyromancer

If you built a computer and you programmed it to view the world in a certain way, would that affect the world, like, Cognitive aspect?

Brandon Sanderson

Not unless the computer starts to become self-aware.

Questioner

What if it was an Awakened computer?

Brandon Sanderson

If the computer were becoming self-aware, then it would act like any other sapient entity.

Skyward Seattle signing (Nov. 10, 2018)

 

So a true self-aware AI in the Cosmere requires Investiture and has Cognitive and Spiritual Aspects, implying that a Shardblade could damage (possibly kill) such a being. 

Hope that helps

[Quantus he/him]

2 hours ago, Treamayne said:

The answer is different if you are discussing "shardblade on Earth" or "Cosmere AI."

@hwiles did a good job covering the former. On the latter, we have these WoBs:

  Hide contents

 

So a true self-aware AI in the Cosmere requires Investiture and has Cognitive and Spiritual Aspects, implying that a Shardblade could damage (possibly kill) such a being. 

Hope that helps

Agreed.  On the other hand, if the AI were not trapped in the single physical computer, it would likely be closer to a Sleepless swarm and probably would not take a lot of harm from loosing the single swarm node.  

[alder24]

10 hours ago, ThatOneWorldhopper said:

This question is ignoring the obvious problems of a shard blade on Earth. What would happen if a shardblade stabbed through an isolated computer that has the only source of the AI? And the AI is trapped in said computer?

Very specific question, sorry. 

Per WoBs provided earlier, true AI in Cosmere have a soul and is very similar to a spren. When cutting it with a Shardblade, the blade would behave like it was cutting a living person - it would blur and cut the soul directly, without physically damaging the machine body itself (while the damaged soul might cause some elements to stop working and be dead, just like when cutting a living tissue). You can most definitely kill the soul of an AI and thus kill the AI itself without physically cutting the computer it inhabits. 

[Duxredux he/him]

Another way of looking at this perhaps, is that the Cognitive Realm is the realm of the mind where thoughts, emotions, and perception can affect the environment and geography. We'll see if Brandon decides to define Cognitive Realm entities as information given substance of a sort. From this perspective, AI as information with decision making abilitiy and Intent is not so different from any Cognitive being. 

We'll see what Brandon does with this, particularly for duplication of AI models.