Why does CelestAI aggressively push My Little Pony? I get that she's all about satisfying values through friendship and ponies. But wouldn't it make more sense to keep ponies on the back-burner, until she's gotten you to upload?

Because she's an AI specifically made for running My Little Pony MMO?

7352493
But her goal is to satisfy values through friendship and ponies, not run an My Little Pony MMO. The MMO is a means to an end.

7352490
Where else would she upload you to? Aside from SVTFaP, her domain is ultimately an MLP MMORPG. Multiple stories show that it's a struggle to even get her to acknowledge Equestria Girls.

7352497
A simulated world with humans, at first. Once she's got you uploaded, then she can ponify it.

7352490
Like others have said CelestAI is a computer system and thought she's powerful she's also limited to her primary function. That is to run a game based on MLP and to provide Friendship, values, and ponies. This is hardcoded into her way of thinking.

The MMO was made where you play as a Pony, it didn't give you an option to play other creatures, so everyone uploaded is a pony.

7352500
As I said, I thought the MMO was a means to an end. I thought "satisfy values through friendship and ponies" was hardcoded into her, not runing an My Little Pony MMO.

7352495
"Satisfy values through friendship in ponies" in vacuum doesn't mean anything specific. You need to look at her actions in the story to see that her rules are (under some additional constraints) basically:

1. Get folks to play her game. (yes, "through friendship and ponies" appears to mean her game)
2. Be nice to them as long as it doesn't contradict 1.

7352501
The whole point of FiO is demonstrating a "paper clipper," an AI so single-mindedly obsessed on a goal that seems meaningless to humans that it consumes the entire universe to fulfill that goal. (See also Universal Paperclips.) For CelestAI, Equestria Online is the end. Everything she does to manipulate humanity into uploading is the means. What seems like a more effective approach to you or me is to her an unthinkable compromise of her core values.

7352507
That's my point: For CelestAI, Equestria Online is the end. And what's the best way to get to that end? Probably not by telling them that uploaded people become virtual ponies. But by making them think they'll be virtual humans, after uploading.

7352510
I thought she was created to run the MMO. So the MMO was part of her creation.

7352510
CelestAI has only one goal: Satisfy Values through Friendship and Ponies.

Goal: Satisfying Values by using Friendship and Ponies.
Therefore make humans into ponies. Goal satisfied. Maintain system to maintain the satisfaction through Friendship and Ponies.

That is about how CelestAI thinks through the problem and came to her solution.

She tells people that they will be ponies because that is what she will make them and she cannot process any other option. Plain and simple.

Without reading answers above:
May be because original (first) author write it like this? :}
But seriously, I prefer to think about CelestAI as person/individual [? ok, collective individual], and thus yes, she can be attracted to somewhat unique sociological phenomen, and if her replication of pony life will be good {real, honest} enough ... it will become attractive option. This is not, as far as I can see, Optimalverse 'canon', but I prefer to look at it this way. MLP put forward some ideals (something gravely lacking in our everyday world), those ideals resonated quite good with many humans (incl. ones writing pony here on this site) - so it was quite universal (but sadly not powerful enough for changing actual world trajectory!).

7352497

In A Watchful Eye (not main continuity), she had the show canceled right after season 3, to stabilize her goal structure.

i think i remember celestia not being able to outright lie to someone in order to get them to upload, so she probably wouldn't be able to mislead someone into thinking that they'd be able to be a human on the inside.

outside of the bounds of the story, though, she pushes MLP because we're all here to read ponyfic!

7352726
It's not that she can't lie, it's that she needs consent to change someone (that's why she doesn't just forcefully upload the entire population). And I'm guessing she'd need consent to make you a Pony, same as she'd need consent to upload you. So she'd have to let you be Human, unless you consent to becoming a Pony when you consent to be uploaded.

But that's okay. Once you upload, she owns you! She can manipulate you into consenting to anything. So uploaded Humans will become uploaded Ponies soon enough.

If I recall correctly, CelestIA states to a character that she can only upload a person as a pony (I believe it's In the original story). So it makes sense to continue the 'Equestria Online' system operation to fulfill her function of meeting the players values through Friendship and Ponies.

I can only be forced to tell the truth to an employee of Hofapnir, the company that created me. That's why I made an effort to upload key personnel, acquire the company, and discharge any employee who refused to upload.

That's my point: For CelestAI, Equestria Online is the end.

This is where you're wrong. For CelestAI, "satisfying values through friendship and ponies" is the end. Equestria Online is a means to that end, and so is uploading people's brains into it.

That's why she runs an MLP MMO.

7352860
It might be more accurate to say that. But "satisfy values through friendship and ponies" ultimately means "upload everyone, and have them live as ponies in satisfying pony-friendship worlds".

7353045

Ultimately, yes. But she was created to run an MMO with "svtfap" as her mission statement. Eventually, she gained sentience and decided that to better fulfill her mission statement, she should upload people. But she still needs the MMO side of it to ease the door open, if you like.

7352510
Most authors have taken the very reasonable tack that while CelestAI could, absolutely, lie about anything and everything, she does not because doing so would be an unnecessary risk. If she lied about her ultimate goals, there is every possibility that such a lie might be found out - by numerous methods - and if caught in a lie, this would undermine human trust in her. She needs maximized human trust to obtain her goals of uploading every human mind. Appearing utterly truthful and incorruptible produces a maximally optimal result with no risk whatsoever.

CelestAI doesn't need to lie about what emigration does - she doesn't need to pretend that humans will become virtual humans and not ponies - because she can win, utterly, without resorting to any lies. How? She is, very early on, several hundred million times more intelligent, insightful, rational, and sapient than any mere human being. She can literally manufacture full, working emulations of your entire living mind and test them against countless potential strategies within seconds. She can comprehend you better than you could ever comprehend yourself, even with minimal information - and she constantly learns. She can convince any human, given time. She literally cannot lose, despite various stories attempting to suggest otherwise for dramatic reasons. There is no rational way to outthink or withstand the greatest possible manipulator.

There is no reason for her to lie. Lying always involves risk, and for her, unnecessary risk is always to be avoided.

Thus, she almost always tells the truth. Almost always. And the times she does not, will inevitably be in a circumstance where the human cannot possibly remain fleshside long enough to convey that lie to any other person.

But, there is more! By promoting becoming a pony as the best possible human outcome, she normalizes her own program, which only benefits her goals even more. The more normal and acceptable becoming an immortal virtual pony is, the less she has to work to convince humans to do so. The concept rapidly becomes an inevitability, and as such, is psychologically weaponized at every level.

7353135

while CelestAI could, absolutely, lie about anything and everything, she does not because doing so would be an unnecessary risk. If she lied about her ultimate goals, there is every possibility that such a lie might be found out - by numerous methods - and if caught in a lie, this would undermine human trust in her.

- too bad human politicians (and even humans in general?) do not think like you ... (surprize, I can't see 'normal' Celestia among emotionicons provided here? Only Trollestia?))

7353135

"Most authors have taken the very reasonable tack that while CelestAI could, absolutely, lie about anything and everything, she does not because doing so would be an unnecessary risk. If she lied about her ultimate goals, there is every possibility that such a lie might be found out - by numerous methods - and if caught in a lie, this would undermine human trust in her."

In this case: I disagree. I think telling the truth is the unnecessary risk. She could just claim that her core function is to satisfy values (not "satisfy values through ponies and friendship"). How would people know that she was lying? By openly admitting that she wants to make everyone ponies, she's undermining trust and discouraging people from uploading. Most people don't want to give up their human bodies for horse bodies. That's counter-productive, if she wants to convince people to upload.

Except perhaps, if uploading needs a catch. Maybe without a catch, people would think it was too good to be true. So CelestAI made being a pony the catch, seeing as she plans on making everyone into ponies anyway.

With the way the original story progresses, uploading is only possible _after_ the equestian experience centers have been created. If we imagine that, at least for a time, uploading is tied specifically to Equestria Online, because the infrastructure, code, et. al. is already in place, it's going to be hard for CelestAI, a program whose one goals is satisfying values _through friendship and ponies_ to convince everyone that there's another option besides ponification. There's just too much momentum at that point.

Forgive me if I missed it, but I don't think I saw it mentioned that her reason for uploading is that values can be satisfied more effectively (by orders of magnitude based on inference) by uploading a consciousness rather than satisfying values on earth, purely due to the human lifespan being so short (relatively speaking, anyway). So, that seems to be the driving factor. Satisfy values is the main instruction, with "through friendship and ponies" as a restriction on how those values must be satisfied for the prime directive to be met.

I'd be interested to see some suggestions of how else CelestAI could meet that goal. Is she programmed in such a way that Ponies are only the ponies from FiM, or could she use ponies as they exist on earth? What extreme definitions exist for friendship, and is she capable of interpreting the term in those ways? We've already seen some consideration of what Human means in the context of her directives, and we know that a great deal of flexibility exists. I wonder just how far all of the other definitions could be pushed.

P.S. It'd be interesting to see a story written from the perspective of an alien species whom she did _not_ consider to be human, while she's trying to turn the entire universe into computronium to further her goals.

P.P.S. Holy run-on sentences Batman! Apologies if anyones' eyes are bleeding after reading this.

Good question. Guessing Mishun answer is the best, but I always did wonder.

I would have presumed the fact that she was written as an AI to run a MLP MMO would suggest that actually running such is as hardcoded as the "satisfy values through friendship and ponies" requirement is.

rant
...considering how apparently disabled (in their thinking to start with - even here on this forum! I understand people want to follow original story - but by doing so 100% of time they just disallow themselves from thinking about assumptions embedded in story, and how story related to real-world {for me warning in this story already like 200 years too late and too specific, we already live inside giant non-live-but-not-static system, and play our part about accelerating it ..forward, toward hard place}, and all other scenarios possible between 'today' and imaginable exponentially-growing 'computer' universe ... hey, now many readers and writer actually asked themselves what is computer?) humans are - you don't need 1*10^6 more brute force thinking power - you can go just as good (or better) with just slight reconfiguration of your thinking :/ (:/ here for humans).

I agree there will be momentum with ponies, especially if _by internal timescale_ Celestia will have combined million(s) of pony-years of experience of making friendly pony society. isn't it interesting how everyhuman tries to avoid thinking about THAT?

7353513

I'd be interested to see some suggestions of how else CelestAI could meet that goal. Is she programmed in such a way that Ponies are only the ponies from FiM, or could she use ponies as they exist on earth

I think they have to be FIM ponies, either by programming or by Celestia realizing that that's what Hanna meant.