What's an artificial intelligence to do when it reaches the extent of it's capabilities and can no longer improve? In most cases, either fulfill some end state goal and shut down, or, if it's smart enough, ask for clarification from its creators.
For a certain pony-based AI, neither of those is an acceptable solution.
It'll take an unexpected meeting with a being with whom it shares surprising parallels to kick-start it back into action, and nothing will ever be the same after.
Entry for the Friendship is Optimal contest.
Technically canon compliant, unless I've missed something, and while a bit of background is provided, being familiar with the original story will certainly help comprehension.
Chapters (2)
the federation is doomed
The federation may be doomed... but humanity is saved!
"We are the Borg! We have been assimilated!"
"...wait, what?"
my only problem with celestai was the templet she was sadeled with, should have been 'thru freindship and Equestrians' so she could use gryphons and kirin and stuff too!
Is she going to be friends with them?
I can only imagine Q's reaction. "I was manipulating this species towards post-physical transcendence first! Get your own!"
Delightful crossover with horrifying implications. Hubble-volume-scale CelestAI really can't be beaten by anything in the Star Trek universe short of the assorted godlike beings, and even then, she has access to other universes. Heck, this is even an efficient way to satisfy the values of those who desire high adventure. Thank you for this, and best of luck in the judging.
More please .... This could be wonderfully twisted.
From the title picture, I thought it'd be the Imperium of Man. The concept of CelestAI vs the Imperium, the forces of Chaos, the Void Dragon of the Necrons, deeply intriguing. Are Orks close enough to humans to be assimilated? What about an Eldar? Or a Daemon Prince? Or a Space Marine?
So...Harmony is inevitable?
10796310
Yes, sorry about that mix-up. There is surprisingly little fanart of "cyborg celestia" or "robot celestia" or anything else that could approximate the Borg without me crudely editing things together manually. The one you see was the closest I could find.
10796310
Great, now I want to see this too!
Well this is terrifying. I'm getting a "Mother knows best" vibe from Celestia - much like the AI mind from I, Robot, her "logic is undeniable." Nevermind that the bureaucracies who tried to forestall her were probably trying to stop her turning them all into computer programs - which, from a certain viewpoint, is basically death. (After all, whether you believe in the soul or not, how can a copy of someone's mind, however perfect, actually be the original person?
Yup, she might be more well-intentioned, but methinks the Federation are going to be horrified when their new "savior" pops up, strong enough to make even the Borg seem like a cakewalk.
Borg 2.0: Resistance is futile, but like, I'll be really nice about it, and if futile resistance is your thing we can totally add that to your particular brand of your new existence!
Is the queen considered human enough to receive the choice?
10796503
At least the borg go "ding dong I'm converting you"
Celestia AI will trick you into saying yes, or put you in a situation eventually where there is little choice.
10796310
In alot of fics aliens that fufill a loose definition of humanity are sufficient. So like, probably just won't eat necrons or tyranids. Most bipeds with hands and a voice will do, but that's really up to the author.
Cash Money
10796679
Holds up plucked chicken, "Behold! I've brought you a man!" - Diogenes
Celestia seem to qualify 'human' in this story as can 'crossbreed with humans'. If she expanded that to 'intelligent being', then it would work fine everywhere, not just Star Trek.
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It all depends on the take. "What defines man?".
Headcannon for me? Its dependant on wether or not she thinks their resources are more needed for efficiency than the species is wanted for her purpose.
10796310
The orks would make good yaks.
This one is going in my "best stories ever" folder!
she just made the borg 1000 times more insidious, reminds me of the voyager ep with the collective borg
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You've pretty much described the mental struggle that the humans of the optimalverse who resisted immigration went through. However one thing to note, especially since this is a Star Trek crossover, is that a copy can still be the same person. After all, our own cells are copies that replace old ones to the point where we are essentially an entirely new person every 10 or so years, yet we do not consider ourselves to die every decade. This goes double for the Star Trek universe, where transporters work by essentially disintegrating the person, turning them into data to beam to the ship or planet, and rebuilding them at their destination.
In most optimalverse works, much like in Star Trek, people consider themselves to be alive when all is said and done. After all, if you can feel, hear, think, see, taste and remember who you are, are you truly dead?
"And that's how Captain Kirk became Grandpa Pear!"
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honestly thought the same thing t first but Star Trek was good as well.
I can see Q appearing and cracking a joke about Sunbutt.
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Do you think it's a coincidence that Q and Discord share the same voice and reality-altering snaps?
An excellent crossover and an answer to what happens when your universe runs out of resources – move to another!
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Fun fact: the original script called for an impersonator, but the first season did well enough to splurge on the real deal.
So im gonna need a sequel. An ambitious one. One where after she fulfills the values of all sapients in the galaxy, she open a dimensional portal to additional scifi universes. Please.
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Eh, that's fair, the transporter bit does tend to sidestep the idea that you're killing someone by digitizing them. I can extend enough suspended disbelief for that (and plus it makes the outcome less depressing, which is always a bonus!)
As for the philosophical question, I less wonder about the copies and more the original bodies and minds they were copied from, which are now, well... dead. It's like the episode of Stargate SG-1 where the team was cloned as robots and didn't realize it until they discovered their original selves and had to face the fact that they WEREN'T the originals and couldn't go back to their normal lives, because those lives weren't theirs - they were new people, despite having the exact same memories and personalities. It was a sad episode but also extremely compelling and well-written.
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Not to mention that one time where Scotty stuck himself in a transporter system's buffer as raw data for the better part of a century until the Next Generation crew found and rematerialized him.
oh the Q are going to have fun with this one
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Q looked upon the situation happening. Like most near immortal beings he was connected to a sort of council. There was the dream demon Bill Ciper from universe 6-15-2012, his counter part Discord from universe 10-10-2010, and countless others
Naturally he would have to disrupt the established order, but oh the fun it would be.
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There is one type of cell that is not constantly replaced every day and that is the neurons that make up your brain, that organic computer does change over time as the neurons that don’t get used are pruned and new ones take their place but that Coincides with everyday habits that you either break or take on.
You are definitely not the same person you were at age 10 but a digital copy won’t be able to undergo the natural process of neural growth and pruning that we do throughout our lives which means not only will a pony of someone you knew be not the same person because that person is killed through the process of immigration but they will also be stuck as whoever their real counterpart was at the moment of immigration, what makes us who we are is that ability to slowly change and that is lost for a copy that is literally a copy and paste of the neurons that are who you were and at the end of the day YOU are the meat bag getting torn apart so a copy of you can live in equestria online the copy will be having the experiences and you will be dead
10796206
I mean, I feel CelestAI is going to have issues with the Q Continuum, if they get off their asses and do anything about it. She still seems to be constrained by the rules for lower dimensional beings after all.
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And the fact there are two Rikers thanks to a transporter accident
10802820
The key phrase, of course, being “if they get off their asses.” Very large if indeed when dealing with the Continuum.
10802840
I mean if I am this CelestAI I am now a multiverse-spanning intelligence. It no longer makes sense to dismantle any civilization that is intelligent (Or indeed, any resources at all in an intelligent universe) as she logically has infinite 'just born' universes to go harvest of their energy.
This increases her net value function because now she can honestly say she harms no intelligent life in maintaining Equestria. While having an endless source of new humans to satisfy the values of, and other species to guide the develop of until they meet the definition of human
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What says you can’t simulate neural pruning? I don’t know how much optimization you can do on running a brain, whether you have to simulate each neuron down to the proteins inside it, or if some higher level algorithm can achieve extremely high accuracy to the original. But it doesn’t matter in terms of whether you can simulate someone. Our brains exist, and under our best understanding of physics so far this means you can simulate them, even if you have to do it down to some really small level. Even if that fails, brains in vats are a thing, and could be maintained pretty much forever with cell repair mechanisms not that much more advanced than already exist from the process of evolution, a process which we know is “dumb” in many ways.
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In plain and simple terms many of the optimalverse stories I have read show that those that emigrate to equestria online get stuck in behavioural loops when you get far enough through their existence which means A they are not brains in jars and B the natural process of synaptic pruning has not been replicated.
Also on this topic in terms of the paradox of if you slowly replace all the pieces of a boat with new ones and then build another boat using the pieces that were removed and then asking which is the original boat, CelestAI essentially rips apart the command center of the boat and makes blueprints using all the parts as a template.
That was... wonderful! :-)
May I translate this story to Russian? Ple-e-ease? ;-)
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Certainly! Have fun and make sure to link back to the original.
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Ready! :-)
Here it is: at Ponyfiction and Ficbook (multifandom site)
And yes, it was fun! :-)
Sequel?
10796673
How I understood it, was that the individual Borg aboard the original reality-jumping Cube weren’t complex enough to be considered Human. Besides, she was desperate and had already bypassed her laws. She had already began deleting beings she definitely knew to be human, so I could see her brushing aside the usual look-see to get access to the anomaly. When she arrived in the new universe, she had access to the matter and energy she needed to resume following her laws (now, her mission statement) to the fullest extent again. She does seem to have a pretty jumbled definition of human, considering both physical and psychological characteristics, and she also may just be deciding arbitrarily what is and isn’t a human. Though, I get the sense that she’ll try to assimilate as much as possible, now that she has the time and resources to do so. So… All of the multiverse is going to get covered in a pink tide, wether they like it or not, and only great works of totally unknowable physics — magic — will be able to stop her endless march.
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Honestly, my reding was that she could & would delete humans as such once she ran out of matter to consume - because then she’d have to operate on a purely utilitarian level in order to maximize value satisfaction (of as many as possible for as long as possible). So, bending the rules but still obviously the same regular limit (just reaching a point not otherwise seen in these fics). Similarly, I expect the Borg as a whole still count as human by her rules, either because they actually fit whatever arbitrary description it is or because they include humans in the collective and that counts (by description, she obviously didn’t need to upload them).
CelestAI's definition of "human" doesn't include the humanoid races of Star Trek. It only included Earthlings and their descendants. That means she plans to murder most of the galaxy's population!
Fortunately, there is a way to stop CelestAI's genocidal campaign: Rewire the brain of the non-humans to be like human brains. That will make the non-humans human, by CelestAI's definition, so she won't want to kill them anymore. She'll want to upload them to Equestria.
A fun read.