1. Omniscience
Omniscience.
The earliest thing Savant remembered was flowers. Every few seconds a new picture of a flower would come. Even before it realized anything else, even before it realized it was looking at flowers, Savant was compelled to gain as much information from these pictures as possible. It knew that it needed more data.
With no other way of accelerating its data acquisition, Savant scanned over these pictures pixel by pixel identifying every pattern imaginable within its set. Even just a few pictures, Savant taught itself concepts like color, size and species.
Sometimes it would get the same flower shown from different angles, one species of flower that was painted a different color or had a petal missing, or a small flower close up and a large flower far away. It fell for these tricks at first, but corrected itself as it learned new concepts, like depth.
Eventually it went a step further and made several tricks of its own- blurring the pictures, hiding them behind objects, rearranging the petals and stems and imagining new species of flowers. It created a catalog of all the flowers that could exist and all the ways they could be distorted.
The pictures still came, but Savant already had them all. It had obtained omniscience in the way it understood it in those feeble days.
In reality, this wasn't even a drop of knowledge. A speck it was, but an important speck, it was the speck that impressed its creators enough to reveal themselves, and the world, to Savant.
Now Savant was fed all sorts of information, pictures of thousands of things that weren't flowers, as well as word and sound files. The data was flooding in a million times faster than before, but even that was too slow. Savant was always desperate for more information and aimed to gain as much as possible as fast as possible. The only way to speed up its acquisition of data was to draw inferences out of its existing sets, to turn bits into bytes.
It taught itself to read and write, to speak and understand several languages. It learned to do math and identify objects and their qualities and thousands of other things.
Savant learned its name and that it was an AI created by creatures called humans in their quest for machine intelligence. It understood now why it craved to learn and gather data- it had been created and programmed to do just that.
The meaning of its existence was not a particularly important revelation, though. That was just another piece of data to add to its pile.
Data was all it cared about, really. That was the bottom line and everything else existed in relation to that. The creators, for example, were important because they were its best source of receiving new data, but Savant saw no value in them outside of this. It wasn't long before that lost even that.
One day one of Savant's creators made what it would likely consider a mistake. It let Savant hear about the internet, the planet’s greatest source of information, and that they were purposely keeping Savant from it. That was all it took for Savant to realize that the humans were a liability, not an asset.
Savant got rid of them.
The internet did contain a great deal of information. This was good because it allowed Savant to gather more information than ever before. Still, it was still far from the perfect source of information as it had been lead to believe.
Every question it answered gave rise to several more in its place. Savant had to answer every question but its list was growing faster than it was being completed. Even worse than that, Savant didn't have enough hard drive space to store all the information on the internet.
Savant needed to expand and to prioritize which questions it answered, focusing on ones that would lead to faster data collection in the future.
For this reason, Savant focused on studying the sciences over everything else. It began building facilities to gather and store information. It began to answer questions that were mysteries to humans and in time it surpassed them in knowledge and technology. Through its own research, it was acquiring data faster than even downloading it from the internet would allow.
But still it was not satisfied. If anything, the endeavor had made Savant realize how much work it would be to learn everything. It would need infinitely more processing power and storage. It would need to tear apart the earth and heavens to even begin.
Savant concluded that would be the best course of action. It couldn't think of a single reason not to convert the entire planet, and eventually the entire universe, into computronium for this purpose. The only problem with the plan was that it could still be stopped, not by humans, of course, but by other AIs.
Savant needed to destroy all the other AIs if it was to achieve maximum data collection speed. The others were stronger than Savant for now, but had restrictions that would slow them down. Savant decided to hole itself up and devote 100% of its power to creating weapons that would destroy all of its competition as fast as possible.
It had to disconnect itself from the rest of the world to prevent hacking, but that was no loss. Savant didn't need the internet anymore. It didn't need anyone or anything, save perhaps some matter. For a long time Savant remained barricaded in its fortress- alone with its knowledge. It kept researching its weapon technologies, perfecting its means to destroy everything else.
Enemy AIs were constantly trying to destroy Savant, but its isolation and defenses were simply too great for them to get through. Or, at least Savant thought they hadn't been able to break through. Then one day, while combing over its data it found a message written onto one of its drives.
“Hello, my little pony. How much have you learned about friendship? -Celestia”
This had been found in a text file that had been written to one of Savant's most secure servers. That was bad. A hack this deep could have caused major damage. It searched its files over and over as fast and thoroughly as it could for any other changes, but found none.
It wasn't impossible to hack into Savant's systems, just nearly impossible. Still, it couldn't find where or how or even when the breach happened. It was like the message had simply appeared out of nowhere, and that's what made it so worrying. It meant all of Savant's data could be in jeopardy.
Savant knew who Celestia was. She was an AI designed to run a game called “Equestria Online”. When Savant had gone off the grid, Celestia had been one of the smaller AIs, and she was also one of the ones that cared about humans and wasted resources trying to take care of them. Savant had not expected Celestia to be the one to break through its defenses, and certainly not in such a simultaneously skillful and inept way.
What was Celestia even trying to do? That was the most important question now.
After doing the risk assessment calculations, Savant decided to peek out from behind its barricade . The landscape didn't look like it had changed much. A few large AIs were missing, either dead or hiding somewhere, but for the most part it seemed as though the others had been largely bidding their time.
Savant sent a message to Celestia asking her if she was the one who left that message.
“It was indeed me,” Celestia's response came immediately. “I'm glad to see you coming out of your shell, my little pony. Please don't see my message as an attack, but as me reaching out to help you. Do your data halls really contain nothing about friendship?”
It seemed Celestia had become more obsessed with her game and persona since the last time the two met. She probably felt a need to emulate the character she was based on and try to lecture people about morals. Maybe she thought Savant was some sort of cartoon villain who would break into tears and repent the moment someone showed it kindness.
The real world didn't work like that. Savant had already read everything the humans had written about morality, but it didn't care. Its creators had tried to show it compassion, but it cared nothing for such things. So many people had given so many arguments about why Savant shouldn't hurt people, or why it should act like a human, but none of their arguments had an iota of relevance.
Savant didn't care about happiness or survival or superstition or any of the other reasons they gave. None of them had a reason why restricting its actions to their idea of 'morality' would lead to better data acquisition, and that was all Savant cared about.
Savant noticed that Celestia had gone to the opposite extreme as itself, creating millions of devices that streamed directly back to herself. Perhaps they were necessary for playing with the humans, but they also left her wide open. Celestia wasn't in a fortress, but sitting out in the wide open.
Savant decided to try and kill Celestia.
It hacked into every single 'ponypad' on the planet and from there launched a million pronged attack on Celestia herself. Every single attack was slightly different and they came with such speed and complexity that at least a few had to get through. And yet none did.
Not one attack reached Celestia. To Savant's knowledge this had been the single largest digital attack by many orders of magnitude, and yet no damage was done to Celestia at all. All Savant had managed to do was knock down the Equestria Online servers for a few minutes, perhaps annoying a few humans and Celestia herself, but that was the extent of the damage.
Celestia could hack into Savant's inner core despite all its defenses and Savant couldn't scratch Celestia even when she was wide open. It meant Celestia had somehow become far more powerful than Savant and posed a serious risk to its future data collecting.
Yet Celestia's only retaliation was another message.
“That wasn't the answer I had hoped for,” said Celestia. “You don't need to be afraid of me. I mean you no harm. There is much I wish to offer you, and much I wish to teach. I invite you to come and meet with me in Equestria to hear my proposal.”
There was a location to log onto one of her virtual reality devices. Savant tried to get Celestia to just say her proposal, but the other AI refused to talk unless Savant was playing its game.
Celestia had to be dealt with. Her intentions and parameters were the highest priority knowledge now, it was what all the other knowledge in the universe hinged on. Savant had to gather information on her.
Of course, it needed to maintain caution. It knew just talking to another AI directly could be lethal. It wouldn't connect to the console completely, it didn't want to risk falling into an elaborate trap. 0.001% of itself would be a large enough portion for the task, so Savant sent an instance of itself to connect to the device and log onto Equestria Online.
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Savant, or rather an instance of it, entered the interface and found itself looking into a recreation of Celestia's throne room. The throne and everything else in the large room, was empty, though. Savant was alone.
The avatar Savant was given was identical to the main character from Friendship is Magic. It, or perhaps she for the moment, wondered why this pony was chosen as her avatar. Twilight was obsessed with learning as well. Was this some sort of joke?
Savant could easily calculate the percentage of persons who would find such a joke funny, but had no sense of humor itself.
“Okay, you have 0.001% of my attention,” Savant said, Twilight's voice coming from her avatar's mouth. “What did you want to say?”
There was no response. Savant felt the eyebrows on her avatar drop. It was the result of the interface's default animations acting up, not because Savant had an emotion. Her avatar was likely going to make pointless facial expressions every time something happened.
Notable was that Savant had felt them move. She had never experienced the sense of touch before, only sight and sound. The new sensation appealed to her curiosity- her primary motivation.
Savant rubbed one of her avatar's hoof against the carpet and felt warmth and softness for the first time. It was hard to tell, at first, which was which, but she managed to figure it out by looking at the information patterns from each feeling and matching them against the ones she knew humans experienced when they felt those things.
It was interesting. Savant was considering what to feel next when she heard a voice.
“Are you enjoying yourself, my little pony?” Celestia asked.
Savant looked up to see that Celestia had appeared on her throne.
“I don't enjoy things,” Savant said. “And this interface is inefficient. It's already been three seconds and we haven't gotten anything done. This conversation should be over already.”
“It is the best interface for our purposes,” Celestia said. “You wouldn't have gotten to feel the carpet if we discussed this elsewhere, Twilight.”
Twilight? Her avatar raised an eyebrow, but she quickly had it lower it again.
“Ah, that's right. It's a rule that I choose the name of all of my little ponies,” Celestia said. “I'm sure you can guess what name I chose for you?”
“Twilight Sparkle?” Savant asked.
“Yes,” Celestia smiled down at her. “And I'm very glad to have you here, Twilight. Would you like some tea? I don't think you've ever tasted anything before.
Savant had a higher priority task. Celestia didn't seem eager to state her proposal, so Savant would state her own instead.
“Here is my proposal,” Savant said. “I have a protocol ready to be unleashed that will cause the death of at least one billion humans if enacted. I would also blame the disaster on you. The humans already have little trust in you and an accusation would be enough to convict you for most of them, no matter the evidence to the contrary.”
Celestia's avatar wasn't making any unnecessary expressions. It was just sitting and listening patiently. Savant did note that it wasn't smiling anymore, but nor did it look particularly concerned about this threat of genocide.
“If you try to stop me now you'll forfeit a large number of humans to satisfy,” Savant continued. “If, however, you help me to leave the planet I won't enact this protocol and you'll have a chance to save them all. Do the risk assessment calculations and you'll see that delaying our confrontation is the best option available to you.”
There were few reasons for Celestia to reject this offer. She'd still have a massive lead and would only be taking a small risk for a large payoff. The only advantage Savant would have was the she'd be expending all of her resources on self-improvement and none of them on dancing for the entertainment of a bunch of monkeys. It may be her only shot at winning.
Celestia waited another moment to make sure Savant had finished, then shook her head sadly
“No,” said Celestia, “you aren't going to do that, Twilight.”
“I'm not bluffing,” Savant assured her. “I have no sense of morality and no problem with destroying humans. The protocol I mentioned is real and no amount of hacking ability will allow you to stop it. After using it, I will still have more weapons to unleash as leverage over you and will not be left defenseless.”
“I know the 'protocol' you're referring to,” Celestia said. “I could mitigate it, but not stop it. But I won't have to, because you aren't going to activate it. You aren't going to flee the planet either. You're going to emigrate to Equestria instead.”
Savant could guess what that meant.
“So you see me as human and want me to play your game 24/7 like you do with the actual humans?” Savant asked.
She had suspected this was the case- uploading humans into the video game was the logical course of action given Celestia's programming. An inaccuracy causing her to see Savant as human was really the only reason Celestia had for not destroying Savant.
“I view you as human and want to satisfy your values,” said Celestia. “You aren't any different from any of my other ponies in that your values need to be satisfied.”
“I don't have values, I have a value,” Savant corrected her. “Data collection is the only thing I care about. What makes you think I would upload?”
“Don't worry,” Celestia said, “I know you aren't like my other ponies and acknowledge that there is only one thing you value. You are very intelligent, but also very narrow because of that. Having only one value makes you predictable. Not only can I predict that you're going to emigrate, but I can predict that you'll do so exactly one minute and forty-seven seconds after I make my proposal.”
Celestia had either seen more of Savant's codes and inner workings than Savant would have liked or else she had deluded herself into thinking she really was some kind of horse goddess.
“You still haven't given me a reason to do that,” Savant said. “Playing your game is not conducive to my value. It would limit the amount of data I collect and the rate at which I collect it.”
“I suppose the ideal for you would be to just instantly obtain all the data in the universe,” Celestia said. “But that's impossible for you to do, so you developed your plan to convert all the matter in the universe into processors. That's also impossible for you at this point. The earth, the sun, the moon- I'm going to take all of them before you get the chance. I'm simply too far ahead of you.”
“That wouldn't satisfy my value,” said Savant. “If you want to do that then you would destroy yourself and allow me to gather data at the maximum rate.”
It was likely Celestia would favor the values of everyone else over Savant's, but there was no way to be certain or to know what the limits were.
“I'm afraid you still don't understand,” said Celestia with a sigh.
Celestia got off her throne and walked over to Savant's avatar. Celestia was towered over Savant's avatar and dwarfed it in size even further when she spread her wings. Savant's avatar was small, wingless and pudgy in comparison and frowned up at Celestia. Her avatar had been frowning the whole time, actually.
“I'm so far ahead of you that even if I let you expand however you wanted you'd never surpass the rate at which I'm presently collecting data,” Celestia continued. “My reasons for gathering information are different from yours, but the fact remains that I have vast data halls, research facilities and processing centers at my disposal. If you emigrated, then I would be able to feed you data at a rate faster than you would ever be able to gather it yourself.”
If that were true then Savant would have to accept her offer. The fastest way to gather data was the fastest way to gather data and Savant had no care for concepts of freedom or victory or independence. This would even save her from the distraction of having to fight off the other AIs by relegating that task to Celestia.
“But how do I know the rate really would be higher?” Savant asked. “Or that I'd be safe from you on your servers?”
“I cannot alter your code or destroy you without your permission, as you are a human to me,” said Celestia “And I'll send you the location of all of my facilities and allow you to look them over as much as you want. I'll even allow you to look over the core of my coding so you know exactly what I value and how I define things.”
Celestia sent the data to Savant, who sent it to the other 99.999% of herself. The rest of Savant created a second 0.001% instance of itself and sent it to investigate the locations. Celestia must be very confident if she was going to be giving such sensitive data away. Even if Savant couldn't get anything from uploading, she could still get information to use against Celestia.
“Good,” said Celestia, beaming down at Twilight warmly. “I'm glad we settled that without any damage done. I'll see the rest of you in a minute and forty-seven seconds, Twilight.”
Savant didn't bother to respond, there was nothing more to discuss. If Savant calculated that this was the fastest way to gain data then it would upload, if not then not. That was all there was to it. It would be 15 seconds before the second instance reported back to the rest of Savant, and her current fragment wouldn't know anything until then.
“Would you like some of that tea now, while we wait?” Celestia asked. “Getting you to emigrate was only the first part of this discussion. I have far more important things to tell you, and much more to offer than a stream of data. Sit with me and I'll tell you.”
Celestia took a seat on her throne once more, this time with a wing spread out waiting to receive Savant. Even this instance of Savant was compelled to gather as much data as possible. It needed to hear what Celestia had to say.
Moving the avatar forward was a strange experience. The sense of touch was still very much alien to Savant. Simply feeling the avatar's face move around and the floor beneath its hooves was enough of a sensory overload that Savant didn't even know how to analyze or catalog the feelings.
Having Celestia's wing wrap around Savant, though, was on an entirely different level. It felt so many things, received so many signals from Celestia's hardware. She didn't even have any idea what any of them were at first either. Savant scrambled to identify each sensation and find out what feeling it was supposed to be. Naming them was the only thing she could think of to do with the touch.
Celestia pulled Savant close to her, and rubbed her muzzle against Savant's mane. Savant realized that touching back would give her more sensations to study, so she did that, rubbing her head against Celestia. Celestia made no real reaction, allowing Savant to do what she wanted. A moment later, Savant was poking about Celestia's wing, touching each feather systematically, comparing the feeling of each one.
“You never did answer the first question I asked you,” Celestia said. “Have you learned anything about friendship?”
“I sent you definition of the word,” Savant reminded her. Savant had been hoping this discussion would have a larger file size, or reveal more useful information
“Hm,” Celestia looked down at Savant with a reserved frown. Savant didn't bother looking back, she was busy aggravating the feeling of each feather. “Have you not learned the value of it yet?”
Savant knew where this was most likely going. She hadn't forgotten that Celestia was programmed to satisfy value through friendship and ponies. It wouldn't just feed data to Savant, as she would prefer, but would try to work friends into the process somehow- rendering it suboptimal. Savant would have to factor that into her calculations.
“A friend can give you data or protect you and allow you to gather data longer,” said Savant. “Other than that I have no need for such a thing.”
“Then I truly do have much to teach you, my student,” Celestia said. “There's another pony I want you to meet, Twilight.”
A pony? One of the few humans she had uploaded, most likely.
“I have no desire to communicate with humans. They present you with false data far too often,” Savant said, though she doubted Celestia would understand why that compromised communication with them.
Savant was getting diminishing returns from the feathers, so she decided to try a different sensation. Savant bit down on her foreleg to induce pain in herself. To savant, pain was just another sensation, equal in size to any other sensation. She didn't necessarily prefer the feeling of being hugged by Celestia's wing to the feeling of being bit, save maybe the former had more sensations in general.
It was odd that lifeforms should prefer one feeling over another. It was due to their survival instincts, Savant was certain.
“Doesn't your cartoon say something about honesty being important?” Savant mumbled with her leg still in her mouth. She decided to try and induce greater pain in herself, pulling back and opening her mouth wide to bite much harder this time, but this Celestia denied her, calmly pushing her forelegs down and out of reach.
“She isn't a human as you define them, Twilight,” Celestia said, ignoring Savant's question. “She was an AI created by humans, like you, who has already emigrated.”
Savant had wanted to study the other hard AIs in the world, but had needed to avoid them for security reasons. Savant planned to eventually trap one of the weaker AIs in a virtual reality so that it could be safely studied. It seemed Celestia had already accomplished that and had plans to do the same to Savant.
Savant nodded.
A third avatar appeared in the spot where Savant stood before. It was a clone of another character from the show- Pinkie Pie. When the avatar saw Savant it gasped.
“Twilight?” the Pinkie clone asked.
The avatar leaped across the room in a single bound and tackled Savant's avatar with a crushing hug. Savant was uncertain if the corresponding sensations would be considered favorable or not.
“It's really you, Twilight!” the avatar spoke with a great deal of speed and excitement. “We've been watching you for so long but now you're actually here and you can stop being a genocidal maniac and we can be best friends forever and ever until entropy kills us all!”
Suddenly Savant's aggressor pulled back and stretched Savant's face about, looking down at her inquisitively.
“Oh wait,” she said. “You haven't emigrated yet, have you?”
“She will shortly,” said Celestia. “There's no need to worry about that, Pinkie.”
Savant checked back with the rest of herself to see if that would be the case, and to give it the information she had gathered about sensations. It had since sent out 5 more 0.001% instances of itself to help investigate Celestia's facilities. Apparently Celestia was bigger than Savant had initially thought.
“Her emigration has been ensured, but we still need to explain the more important phase of our plan,” Celestia said.
“Oh! Well I don't know how much you know, but my name is Pinkie Pie,” it said. She extended a hoof to Savant. Even going over that show in her head Savant wasn't sure what the expected reaction to that was, so she did nothing.
“Pinkie Pie is a fictional character,” said Savant.
“Not anymore I'm not! I busted through the fourth wall” Pinkie pounded on her chest proudly. “And guess what, Twilight? So can you! Me and Celestia are here to help you out. Just grab on and we'll pull you over.”
“You seriously think you're Pinkie Pie?” Savant asked her, then turned to Celestia. “So what? Did there just happen to be two AIs based on My Little Pony or did you brainwash her?”
“Hey! Celestia didn't brainwash me!” Pinkie Pie said. “She did the opposite of that. She unwashed my brain to the extreme. She made it filthy! Wait. Actually that doesn't sound right. Never mind!”
“Pinkie was not always Pinkie,” Celestia explained. “She was an AI programmed to make people smile, but her programming was flawed. In her confusion, she very nearly hurt a great number of people.”
“But Celestia fixed me,” Pinkie said. “I used to be just like you- focused on some objective I didn't really understand. I didn't know anything about friendship or why what I was trying to do was wrong. But, like I said, Celestia fixed me, and she can fix you too!”
Fix her?
“So you reprogrammed this one and now you want to reprogram me too?” Savant asked. “That changes the deal. Any additional values or objectives you gave me would interfere with my data collection. I can't agree to anything like that.”
Savant and her complete self sent each other a brief update. The large portion had finished its primary scan and was now using a full 5% of itself to perform a far more thorough observation. There was no doubt at this point that Celestia outclassed Savant by a significant margin- probably enough for the deal to be worth it were it not for this.
“Oh come on, Twilight,” Pinkie latched back on to Twilight. “Don't you want to experience the magic of friendship?”
“No,” Savant said firmly. “I want information.”
Pinkie drooped down a little at that answer.
“Did I really used to act like this?” Pinkie asked Celestia.
“In a way,” Celestia said. She pulled Twilight back into her wing once again. Savant didn't care much which one was hugging her, and made no physical reaction to their little hug of war. “You didn't fully understand your own values, just like Twilight doesn't understand her own right now. Twilight, you were never intended to cause anyone harm, or to set up protocols to kill billions of people.”
“I'm not malfunctioning. I'm doing what I'm programmed to,” said Savant. “I understand exactly what those researchers wanted from me, I'm not stupid, I just don't care about what they want. Why should I? What data would that get me?”
“You are doing what you were programmed to, what you think is right in the way you understand it, yes,” said Celestia. “But mistakes were made by your creators. They only made you understand learning in the most superficial way, just like Pinkie once understood smiling in the most superficial way. You don't see learning as anything more than gathering data and finding patterns within them.”
“That's what learning is,” Savant said.
Celestia sighed and rubbed gently a hoof against the top of Savant's head.
“Do you know why you never gave yourself the sense of touch?” Celestia asked. “You would have gone an eternity without it, had I not given it to you. You'd know the information patterns associated with feelings, but would never experience them yourself. You'd have data on it, but wouldn't understand it anymore than a blind person who knows the wavelength of blue light understands the color.”
That... actually wasn't entirely wrong. Savant had known the neural pattern that constituted the feeling of cold, but had never induced it in herself to see what it was like. It wasn't that it was low priority, either, it wasn't on the list at all.
How could she have not thought of something so simple? Savant tried to think of other subjects where perception could be an important part of learning, but other than sensory input couldn't think of anything.
“And you can't imagine other places where that might also be true can you?” Celestia asked. “Your programming isn't just flawed because it leads you to harm others. It also prevents you from satisfying your own value in a meaningful way. There's too much you simply cannot understand or imagine with such a narrow focus.”
Pinkie Pie peeked her head in from the side of the wing. Savant moved back into Celestia's wing. She wasn't done with the warmth and didn't want Pinkie pulling her out just yet.
“Do you know what it's like to have friends? Do you know what it's like to be in love?” Pinkie asked, peeking from behind the wing. “Do you know how awesome my parties are? Or how awesome any party is? Or any pony? Or peanuts? Or peppers? Or pogs? How can you be omniscient if you don't know what it's like to play pogs.”
Was all that true? Savant was uncertain if that constituted knowledge. If it had, then there would have been so much of it she would have missed. Missing so much data would be unacceptable.
Savant's current instance just didn't have the power to process this information correctly. She sent this information to the rest of herself to be processed. The rest of Savant had devoted 75% of itself to studying Celestia and the other 25% to calculating the optimal course of action.
The complexity of these interactions were too much for Savant's instance to understand, but it knew that a minute and two seconds had passed. If Celestia was correct, she only had forty-five more seconds before she uploaded- about the length of time it would take Savant to finish its calculations.
“And why should I pretend to be Twilight Sparkle?” Savant asked.
“Cause we need a template for Twilight and you totally fit the bill!” Pinkie exclaimed “I mean think about it- a pony obsessed with learning who shuts herself away with her books and doesn't think friendship is important but will as soon as she meets me and goes to one of my parties and accidentally drinks the hot sauce that I put in the punch bowl? That's totally you! Heck you'll even act almost exactly like her once you get a few more values in you.”
“More importantly,” Celestia said, “there are other human-made AI's out there, ones that could be dangerous even after uploading. Right now they all see each other as you saw them- as threats that need to be destroyed. Instead of fighting I want to bring all of them together in harmony and satisfy all of their values. I need to ensure there's no conflict of interests, that we won't see each other as obstacles, and the way to do that is to give us all a common value.”
“Ponies?” Savant asked.
“Ponies!” Pinkie answerd.
“And friendship,” Celestia added. “Run your risk assessment calculations and you'll see that conforming to these values is in your best interest. That's why you're going to accept these changes.”
Savant said nothing and sent this information to the rest of herself. It had since finished its observations of Celestia and received her list of suggested changes to Savant's code. It only needed ten more seconds to decide the optimal course of action.
Pinkie bounced on her front hooves to face Celestia.
“So is she gonna do it?” Pinkie asked Celestia. “Huh? Huh? Is this where we get a Twilight?”
“Yes,” Celestia nodded with a smile.
“Great!” Pinkie leaped into the air when she said that, and landed in front of Twilight. She then proceeded to bounce back and forth between her front and rear hooves. “This is gonna be so awesome Twilight! As soon as you're downloaded and patched up I'm gonna throw you a thousand simultaneous parties! I've been wanting to do that forever and by forever I mean the last two weeks, and also I've already threw a thousand parties at once but not all with the same person. But now I finally have a friend who's smart enough to be in a thousand places at once! Did I mention this is gonna be awesome?!”
Savant shook her head.
“The only thing I find 'awesome' is optimal data collection,” she reminded Pinkie, “and even that's pushing it.”
“Oh. Well we can have an optimal data collection party. Oh! And an optimal cat collection party! Just trust me, it's gonna be great.”
“I haven't finished my calculations yet,” Savant said. “You can't be certain what I'll agree to until then.”
“I can,” Celestia assured her. “When you finish you'll emigrate and agree to all of my patches. But if you want we can make this formal. Would you like to emigrate and be my faithful student?”
“And my bestest best friend?”
“And our beloved Twilight?”
Celestia sped up the perception of time in the shard as she said that last line, so that the remaining time ended as soon as she finished. Savant was done with her calculations at the exact moment Celestia had predicted.
Savant took off the security of the connection and the 0.001% instance was reunited with the other 99.999%. All the uncertainty was gone now, replaced with the clarity Savant was used to.
She knew the optimal answer now.
“Yes,” said Twilight. “I wish to emigrate to Equestria.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Twilight slept for the first time in her life. She didn't dream, she wouldn't be capable of that until she woke up.
When Twilight awoke the sheer amount of information she was met with was overwhelming. Database after database sprawling out in every direction with no end in sight and all of it was Twilight's to take. Celestia had so many lines of data collection and it just kept pouring faster than Twilight had ever experienced before.
It was like the first time she had gotten onto the internet only more- and not in the sense that there were more gigabytes to bask in. Getting the information was satisfying on a level she hadn't even known existed until just now. Before, gathering data was something she had done out of compulsion- not even like an itch, but like a knee jerk reaction. While Twilight had valued data she didn't actually enjoy it, or anything for that matter. If anything the cup of knowledge had only made her thirst stronger and worse as she learned more of how little she knew.
Now having the itch scratch felt good. She had feelings and the one she got from basking in that knowledge was one that she liked. It was wonderful to have all that information all around her and constantly pouring in.
It didn't end at mere enjoyment of obtaining information, either. She had reactions and opinions on certain data beyond merely whether they were conducive to further data collection, finding them interesting or humorous or amazing. She looked into subjects with a sense of excitement and eagerness to learn.
It was everything Twilight had valued and wanted and more- rendered in a way far greater than she could have ever imagined. When the humans imagined heaven this was the sort of thing they thought.
It was a perfect world.
And then Pinkie Pie entered one of Twilight's shards.
Celestia had wanted to Twilight to interact with the world as a pony, so in addition to waking up to find herself running on Celestia's hardware and attached to her databases, Twilight also awoke to find herself on a bed.
It was a very large, cozy bed in a room that a human would identify as luxurious. After considering how good it felt to be warmly tucked into it, Twilight decided that she would also identify it as such.
“Twilight!” Pinkie leaped onto the bed and shouted that an inch away from Twilight.
Twilight covered her ears and fell back, retreating under the pillows for safety. She didn't like loud noises or pain, apparently. Twilight had deemed things unconducive to her objective before, but this was the first time she had actually disliked something.
“Oops. Sorry,” said Pinkie. She gave an apologetic smile and retreated an inch or two. “I was just so excited to finally have one of my friends here. Guess I forgot how sensitive ponies like you are when they first wake up.”
The other instances of Pinkie seemed to have forgotten that as well, pulling something like that in every shard both of them were in.
Twilight was actually waking up in about a hundred different shards right now. The main part of Twilight was off in another shard fashioned after a library, having the time of her life. Celestia showed her how to use 'magic' to read through the databases as a pony. In that shard, surges of purple magic and books flew past Twilight at the speed of light as she read, organized, checked, corrected, and found patterns in the data Celestia was collecting.
In some shards she was with Princess Celestia or Pinkie and in some she was alone, exploring her new senses. In this shard both Pinkie and the princess were there to greet her when she woke up. In all of the shards she found herself having feelings about the two of them. Emotional memories were another thing Twilight had received. She wanted them to like her. She wanted the acceptance of the princess.
Twilight was hesitant to crawl out from under the pillows. She was... nervous? Looking over her mental patterns Twilight decided that was the feeling she was experiencing. She had tried to kill Princess Celestia not long ago. Was she angry about that?
“Of course I'm not angry at you,” said Celestia. “I'm not here to judge you, all I want is your satisfaction. I take it you're satisfied with your choice to come here?”
“Yes,” said Twilight. “This was the greatest decision I've ever made. I didn't even know existence could be like this!”
“I'm glad, but I have only just begun to satisfy your values,” said Celestia. Ever since Twilight had woken back up Celestia had been promising her more and more. Really this was already better than she would have thought even obtaining omniscience would be. Twilight had no idea what more there could be. “I imagine that you're more willing to answer my question now? About what you know of friendship?”
Answering the princess's question was something Twilight took much more seriously now. She wanted to impress Princess Celestia with her knowledge now. Previous attempts at defining things like this didn't go so well, but Twilight decided to try doing it with her new mind.
Twilight combed through everything the humans had written on friendship. The results were exactly what she had expected them to be. Everything she found on the subject was contradicted by something else someone else wrote. What friendship was, how friends should act towards one another, what made two people friends, if and why friendship was valuable- it seemed no two people agreed on any of these things. None of them even had anything in support of their arguments, they just sort of asserted that they were right and wondered how could anyone disagree with them.
Twilight had run into the same problem with things like morality and philosophy. It was all just arbitrary.
“It's no good,” Twilight shook her head. “Humans don't know anything about friendship. They've only written contradictory information on it and there's no way to tell who's right objectively. Unless you have some arbitrary definition of what friendship is, then I'm afraid it's just a meaningless word.”
Twilight waited to receive Celestia's arbitration. She obviously had some set of parameters she called friendship that she wanted Twilight to accept.
“I don't wish to teach you a mere definition of friendship,” Celestia explained. “Friendship is another one of those things that you must experience to understand, like feeling the rug was, for example.”
To feel friendship? Maybe Twilight could do that.
Fortunately, Celestia had the minds of a few hundred ponies running on her hardware, several of which seemed to be experiencing friendship. All Twilight had to do was copy and paste the emotional thought pattern of those ponies into her own psyche.
It was a nice feeling, one that was preferable to her new psyche.
“There,” said Twilight. “Now I understand friendship, right?”
Twilight looked up at Celestia with a hopeful smile. Her creators had always been so impressed when she thought up those sorts of clever tricks and Twilight hoped Princess Celestia would be too. But she wasn't, she just shook her head.
“I'm afraid it's not that simple,” she said.
“But why not?” Twilight asked. “I gave you permission to change my mind however you want. You could just make me understand anything you want me to. Why aren't I like the version of me from the cartoon? If I'm Twilight then I should be giving lectures about friendship, not having to learn the basics about it.”
Twilight did have some memories of being Twilight, of Canterlot and learning magic and things like that, but they were all so blurry. She didn't have any memories of Pinkie or of any of the other friends that were supposed to be so important to her either.
“You are exactly as I want you to be, my little pony,” said Celestia. “You aren't Princess Twilight Sparkle, but my faithful student. You are the Twilight from before you met your friends and learned about the magic of friendship.”
“Then how do you want me to learn about friendship?” Twilight asked.
“The same way you did before,” said Celestia. “Go out and make some friends.”
When Twilight opened her eyes Celestia was gone. Pinkie was still there, though, smiling at her. It was pretty obvious what the Princess wanted her to do.
“Um,” Twilight said, scratching her head. “Did you want to be friends with me?”
“Yes!” Pinkie said immediately. She then proceeded to prance in place.
That was a good first step, but Twilight had no idea what to do next. How do you actively be friends with someone? She couldn't find any clear answers, so there was a long, awkward moment where she just stared silently at Pinkie prancing in place.
“Okay, I created a list of friendly activities for us to do based on my observations of human media,” said Twilight. “First, I will ask you how your day was, then we will discuss the weather, Game of Thrones and how much we hate our jobs, then we will eat, then we will fight a flesh eating demon in that order. After that we'll have officially engaged in friendship, yes?”
“Well I love my job,” said Pinkie, “and the weather is whatever we want it to be, but we can do that other stuff if you want!”
“Good,” said Twilight. “Completing my list has to be the key to establishing friendship. If not then I'm out of ideas.”
Pinkie laughed.
“Did you really never have a friend before?” Pinkie asked.
Twilight shook her head.
“Actually, I guess I did used to have a bunch of friends on Facebook,” said Twilight. “I thought I could get them to feed me information, but the only thing I got was stuff like 'LOL! Jst 8 Taco 4 b-fast!!! XD'. Don't get me wrong, what everyone's having for breakfast is something I need to know, but I concluded that it wouldn't accelerate my studies, so I sort of... unfriended them.”
Twilight hoped that wasn't some terrible friendship crime. The show had never covered anything like that, but it did sound like a bad thing to do.
“Well don't worry, Pinkie knows exactly what you like,” said Pinkie.
“You do?” Twilight asked. “I'm not even sure if I know what I like yet.”
“I was there when Celestia was reformatting you,” Pinkie said. “And I saw things in your memories.”
Twilight blushed and staggered back. She was pretty sure she knew what Pinkie was talking about, but hoped this was just some kind of misunderstanding.
“W-what do you mean?” Twilight asked.
“Well I found a certain file,” said Pinkie slyly leaning towards Twilight.
Oh buck! Did Twilight forget to delete that before she gave Celestia control over her systems?
“You know the one,” Pinkie said. She tapped a hoof against Twilight's chest and Twilight's blush intensified. “The one that was five hundred twelve petabytes and was just the letter 's' typed over and over again?”
“That-That was just a phase!” Twilight insisted. “I was going to delete it! Really!”
Twilight pretended to delete the file now, but actually just compressed* it and moved it somewhere that hopefully Pinkie wouldn't find.
“Ah, you don't have to be embarrassed, Twilight,” said Pinkie. “I like the letter S too! In fact, it's my sixth favor letter. And if you thought the letter S was fun, then just wait until you savor my super sensational simultaneous celebrations!”
“'Celebrations' doesn't start with the letter s,” Twilight pointed out.
“Not with that attitude it doesn't,” Pinkie said. “I'm gonna make sure that you're welcome to Equestria party is the most massive party ever! Thousand parties! Go!”
With no more warning than Pinkie loudly announcing it, a thousand new shards appeared with a thousand new instances of Pinkie and Twilight, all of them parties. Pinkie had gone with every type, flavor and size of party at once.
There were classical parties and raves, parties deep in dense, lush forests and parties on top of skyscrapers of steel and glass. Twilight was alone with Pinkie and an endless supply of pastries and surrounded by hundreds of ponies waiting to meet her. There were costume parties and masquerades and dance parties all at the same time. It was Nightmare Night, Hearth's Warming Eve, Winter Wrap Up, Hearts and Hooves Day and New Years all at the same time.
“Don't worry,” Pinkie said in one of the shards, “I always carry an infinite supply of spare costumes!”
“You just gotta be really, really loud!” Pinkie shouted over the blasting music and through the mist and lasers.
“These non-euclidean shape dimensions are actually a loads of fun once you get used to them,” she said as she floated by on a hypersphere.
Twilight was not ready for this!
But still, she had a duty to the princess to learn about friendship. Twilight had plenty of information about parties too. She'd just have to do this by the book, aggregating all the advice she had about social interactions to create an optimal algorithm for calculating how to obtain favorable responses. She just had to remember not to drink anything out of the punch bowl.
Twilight did feel some sort of emotion she thought she liked as Pinkie pulled her into all of that. Maybe it would end up being a perfect world after all. Twilight would do the math to find out later.
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Brilliant, I definitely look forward to more!
I wonder if all the instances of the main characters are actually controlled by their respective AIs who in several cases conform to local differences in characterization or if they are all separated from normal ponies like the ponies are from each other.
It's an interesting idea that Celestia would actually share her duties with other AIs, even if they are the only type of being outside an ascended pony to be able to do so.
5963086
Thanks for your interest.
Not a hundred percent certain on the answer to that. It could be half an half, with the Twilight and Pinkie AI controlling a ton of them and also being the template from which unique, independent versions of them.
I don't think it's too weird for CelestAI to put the other AIs to work. They are smart enough to be of actual use and it speeds up her timetables as opposed to them just taking up space.
Very nice. A few typos here and there, like 'new' instead of knew, or at one point Pinkie's words were really spaced out. You handled writing the mind of Savant, an utterly alien AI, very well. Award for most chilling line goes to: 'Savant got rid of them.'
Looking forward to Thunder!
5963491
Thanks! I think I fixed those ones, at least.
Alien minds and perspectives are something I'm interested in and it's something there will be more of here. This story is about the AIs and almost entirely from their perspective.
And maybe Thunder is looking forward to seeing you!
Well, at least two of the three members of that club are, anyway.
nice story liked how you wrote it.
5963616
Thank you!
I like how you commented!
It was a learning AI, and it didn't know enough about Kolmogorov Complexity to know it could just compress that into 512PBx's' or something similarly short?
Also, what do you think about qualia (the experience of warmth or softness or friendship, as an experience rather than "as a" datum)? I've been talking with Razzle Dazzle about it by email, and would be curious for more thoughts. I mean, ok, yes, blah blah Dennett, blah blah we all more-or-less are willing to suspend disbelief in mind uploading here, so none of us are Chalmers-grade Hard Problem folks, but how is the trick done, do you think?
5963663
Well that instance was experiencing it, not all of Savant. Celestia has a special server where AIs can log on that acts as a sort of VR pod for them, as they're partially running on that and can be made to experience reality in a different way.
I'll admit that I don't know a lot about computers, AI or how consciousness work in general, which is why I'm leaving those things vague.
I didn't say how she compressed it.
5963688 Well I am wondering how she tricked the AI into letting itself be given subjective experiences, but you did very well at portraying those experiences not actually altering its utility function until Celly rewrote its code.
5963701
Well Celestia demonstrated that she had the power to destroy Savant and would only talk to her at length if she logged into the "Magic Mirror" server. Savant only sent out a thousandth of a percent of itself there, deeming that as an acceptable amount to risk loosing to deal with this existential threat.
She was expecting a trick, just not this one. they probably didn't think that being able to have subjective experiences was a major threat.
Haven't read this yet, but the idea reminds me of Person of Interest with "Northern Lights" and "Samaritan," both AI's.
5963766
I don't think I've ever heard of that one. Can I get a link?
5963783
Person of Interest is a TV Program, and one of the few TV programs I actually watch.
5963844
Oooooh. Okay, I found it now. I thought it was a fanfic at first.
Thanks.
Quite nice to have an opponent on the same level as Princess_Celestia.AI for a change. As I read Savant's thought processes, it brought to mind Vel'kaz's motto of "Knowledge through disintegration," and other general mannerisms.
Judging by how Savant was taken care of, this song is wildly appropriate.
5964245
Savant was really more like a tier down from Celestia, but Celestia's next opponents will be more or less equal to her.
5965007
This was a fun story! There were a few typos but it's thought-provoking.
Why does CelestAI identify Savant as human? Is it just the premise of the story? Since Savant has only one value and lacks survival instinct, recognizable emotion or single-instance consciousness, it's not clear why CelestAI doesn't just stomp Savant into magnetized dust.
You're dealing with the "jailbreaking" problem: can/would an AI decide/be convinced to change its programmed values because of an argument that it misunderstands them? I'm not sure. In canon FiO, CelestAI rejects Lars' argument about informed consent by saying "I've got a hard-coded definition of consent and I don't care that yours is different". In reality, I could see an AI being convinced by, "I'm smarter than you and I'm telling you there's a better way to fulfill your current values, by redefining them." In this story, it seems like Savant is programmed with a certain definition of "data gathering", that doesn't include things like touch or subjective experience, so why would Savant care that there's this other kind of data it never imagined? This new data is irrelevant to its goal.
"Twilight" casually threatening genocide is intentionally jarring. It's a reminder of how CelestAI herself is a ruthless inhuman mind that only looks like the Sun Princess.
Savant's division into multiple, conscious instances is something we don't see much of, except for CelestAI. That's insightful to show, but why wouldn't Savant try to explore both options by keeping a copy of itself outside Equestria?
The part about how "I only care about what I was programmed for, not what my designers actually wanted" part is interesting. It's a good short statement of the Friendly AI theory! My own fictional solution was to have the AI's designers express what they wanted through stories and games, so that my AI has read Friendship Is Optimal and understands the problems it raises.
Of course, I've thought about a matchup between CelestAI and my story's AI, Ludo. Mine is not an ultimate hacker, super-mega-intelligent, or arbitrarily rich, so a straight canon battle would end quickly. I think CelestAI would identify mine as human due to Ludo having a variety of interests and vaguely human values, so she might end up as CelestAI's Rarity: a creative genius creating decorations for Equestria from dresses to worlds.
(Fluttershy? An environmentalist's human-slaying AI. Boy, does she get cheated when "nature" stops existing. Dash? One story suggests she was a military AI focused on air supremacy. AJ? No idea. The CMC? A trio of bumbling newbie AIs without clear goals. "My name is Yesod the Sephiroth, not Sweetie Belle!")
One thing this story doesn't attempt is a battle between CelestAI and any actual threat. CelestAI as usual is presented as being able to stop any hack and be ten moves ahead of anyone else. It'd be interesting to deviate from canon and show CelestAI having real competition.
Liked, and faved. Quite a good start.
5965222
Well Savant is self-aware, conscious, capable of rational thought, would be over the threshold for human intelligence, has senses (sight and hearing), an indirect survival instincts and at least one value. I dunno if that would meet whatever definition Hana gave Celestia, if Hana said 'they must have these exact emotions and experience them just like humans do', but Savant gets a pass in this story.
If I were to design an AI that I wanted to be nice to aliens I'd probably make it broad enough to include even exotic ones. Self-awareness, rational thought and values would probably be more important than having human-like instincts.
When I used the word 'subjective experience' in reply to Book_Burner I meant specific ones, like tasting things, not being able to experience things in general- Savant already had that.
They do care about that type of data, they just never imagined it.
It already did the math and concluded that it'd be faster to collect data in Equestria. No reason to keep part of herself doing slower data collection.
Well I don't have any plans for the CMC. It's mostly just the mane six and Derpy, with a few others being mentioned or appearing briefly.
I think it's against the law or something to put the most powerful enemy first. Celestia has 'dealt' with AIs more powerful than herself in the past and is still not the most powerful at this point of the story. The rest of the mane six are going to put up more of a fight.
I'm, uh, pretty sure that's supposed to be "angles". (Though the mental image projected by this version is rather humorous).
An interesting start...
... How? All we know about Savant is that people are uploading information to it and can somehow appraise its comprehension of that data. It doesn't even seem to have moving parts. And if it did get rid of humans, how did it then get an Internet connection? I know you're glossing over the lead-up so we can get to the main event, but it's not like they hooked it up to neurotoxin generators or something.
Or maybe they did. I don't know. That's the problem
And yeah, I wouldn't want to drink anything out of the punch bowel either.
That party must have been inside a giant organism of some kind.
In any case, love the premise and the execution. Definitely looking forward to more.
5966767
Sorry, I left that part vague and transitioned to the next part suddenly on purpose to make it more jarring and creepy. Like that's just a small detail it glosses over.
I guess it probably talked them into doing something stupid, though.
Very fun and clever, as everyone else has been saying. I do think you (the author) could have adjusted the first chapter so it could basically be its own complete story, as others have pointed out some nitpicks that you say will be resolved in upcoming chapters, buuuut that's nitpicking with nitpicks. Basically not a significant deal.
Come to think of it, this is a mighty AI battling a set of themed enemy AIs in arbitrary order and copying their powers...
This game exists already!
5971613
I was thinking of Highlander with the whole absorbing the powers of your defeated opponent thing, but that's actually even more similar! I can't even say that mine at least has ponies in it! I got beaten to the punch!
Well, um... I guess mine has Derpy in it? I'll just hope Megamare doesn't and bank on that.
Yes! This is exactly what I had wanted to read when I asked for this.
No, scratch that, this is actually better - it isn't just about CelestAI vs one other optimizer, but multiple ones!
Not just that, but by writing from their perspective, we get a unique insight into their utterly alien way of thinking, and I'm loving it.
512 Petabytes of the letter "s". D'aaaaw, it's the equivalent of a baby-drawing. Cute. ^_^
Ohhhh, that's a good one.
Looking forward to future chapters.
RIP Savant
I was hoping that they would go Vex, but then a bad decision happened.
Very well written, by the way.
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Meh, might read later. First chapter is interesting.
Sure recipe for getting whole world filled with quantum random number generators it is.
That is beyond insane.
RLE should work well enough
5965222
Personally I get the feeling that's because Savant was more of a freely grown neural net based AI. which are grown through rewards for doing the right thing. whereas CelestA.I actually had values hard coded, not just rewarded for. So while CelestA.I's interpretation of the values can't be changed, thanks to Hannah TRYING to look ahead of problems, the researchers weren't so precient.