3. Alliances
David signed for the box at his apartment’s front office. When he saw that it was mailed from Rhode Island, he couldn’t help but smile.
A month and a half ago, he had flown to Hasbro’s headquarters in Pawtucket, Rhode Island to focus test the new My Little Pony MMO, Equestria Online. Most people expected it to be a total mess. When Hasbro first announced that they were going to make an MMO, the idea of applying the WoW “bring back ten rat heads” gameplay to the Friendship is Magic universe horrified everybody who had heard about it. Much fanart was drawn of Fluttershy standing in front of a pack of ugly rats, all whimpering and fearfully standing behind her while she held her arms out to her sides, looking angry and saying slogans like “No more murder!”
And then everyone was shocked a second time when Hasbro announced that Hofvarpnir Studios won the contract to develop the game. The fanart depicting the ponies in spiky chainmail armor smashing each other with electric guitars flowed from the fandom’s collective unconscious. General confusion reigned about what Hasbro thought they were doing. There was a constant refrain of the older fanbase complaining about being pandered to, ruining everything that was great about the show. Hasbro raffled off fifteen tickets for two to try to convince everybody that the game wasn’t going to feature Norse gods.
David had enjoyed the chance to try the game out, and was excited about the next phase of testing. Apparently the game only ran on a dedicated device (marketing bullshit; he had played it on a PC), and everyone who participated in the first alpha would get a “ponypad,” as long as they agreed to play the game for a month. James hadn’t gotten his yet, which was odd since he lived across the hall.
David didn’t have the willpower to wait until his friend got his ponypad, nor did he have the patience to make an unboxing video (besides, he had already seen two linked from Equestria Daily). He cut through the packaging tape on the brown box with his keys, and inspected the inner box. He noticed that the product packaging portrayed Fluttershy in a new pose. He opened the box carefully to preserve the box art, and took the plastic sleeve off the ponypad. The pad was a ten inch tablet and was impossibly thin. While the front screen was black, the back was Fluttershy Yellow; her butterfly cutie mark etched in the corner. He set it aside and continued to look through the packaging. He pulled what looked like a mounting arm out; it had a sticker with instructions to connect the power supply to the arm, and the pad to the arm. Finally, he took out some sort of gamepad with two sticks and a bunch of buttons.
David set the mounting arm on his desk. As he moved the ponypad in front of it, he felt his hands being pulled and the ponypad snapped into place. They must have done some magic with magnets. How did that work? He gave a little tug on the ponypad and it easily came off the arm. Those two forces did not feel equivalent.
He’d worry about that later. He plugged the monitor arm in. By the time he had crawled back out from under his desk, the ponypad had already booted and was sitting at the login screen. After connecting the ponypad to his Internet router and entering his username and password, he logged into Equestria Online.
David had run out of time during the demo, just as James and him had made it onto the hill right in front of Canterlot. He stopped to take in the picturesque view of lush, rolling hills and the far off castle of Canterlot.
He pushed on one of the sticks on the gamepad and started off towards Canterlot. He had gone only half way down the hill when he heard voices. He saw two mares off the main path and went to investigate. The game wouldn’t have drawn his attention to them if it wasn’t important.
“And you can’t do anything right!” shouted the light green pegasus. She was floating in the air, literally looking down on her target. “But hey, I forgive you since we’re such good friends. And since we’re such good friends, how about you give me some of your candy?”
The pastel yellow unicorn cringed. Her light blue mane with darker blue highlights was tied into two pigtails with ribbons and her cutie mark was some sort of wrapped yellow candy. David realized that she was about to cry and couldn’t stop himself from admiring her precise facial expression. If there was a real girl on the other end of that unicorn, the face mapping software could deal with crazy amounts of subtlety and nuance. If this was generated content, some artist or programmer knew exactly what he or she was doing to pull on someone’s heartstrings.
“Hey, come on. Whatever happened to love and tolerance?” said David, glaring at the pegasus. He felt compelled to help. He wondered where that came from; he wasn’t the kind of person to do this in real life.
The pegasus snorted. “This is boring. He’s going to leave you as soon as he figures out how boring you are, Butterscotch.” She turned and flew away.
The two of them just stood there for several moments, watching the pegasus fly off. The pastel yellow unicorn lowered her muzzle. “Th...thank you,” she quietly stammered. “I...I’m Butterscotch.”
“I’m David,” he said without thinking, but then his ponypad made an error sound and a small red X flashed on the bottom, with a message not to reveal personal information. He then remembered James getting admonished by that zebra NPC when he had used his human name. “I don’t have a name yet. I’m on my way to Canterlot to get one.”
“Oh,” Butterscotch said. She looked up just a bit. “I...umm...why did you help me?”
Why had he helped her? This wasn’t like him. In such situations, he was usually a socially awkward penguin. He looked at his pony’s face on the screen and there was no way that David looked that confident. “I don’t like bullies,” he said, noticing that his own voice came out more firmly then he thought it would have. “Butterscotch...are you okay?”
“No. I’m not,” she said, her head still lowered.
David thought for a moment. “I need to get my ponyname,” he started. Butterscotch started to look even sadder. “But if you want to come along with me and talk, I’d love the company.”
Butterscotch looked up, obviously surprised. “Oh that would be wonderful! I mean...if you wouldn’t mind me.”
“Of course I wouldn’t mind,” he said. He pushed the sticks on his gamepad, and his pony slowly trotted back to the road. “So how are you finding Equestria?” he asked casually. “You already have a ponyname so you must have been here longer than I.”
“Equestria?” she repeated blankly. “Oh, it’s fine,” she said hesitantly.
“So Butterscotch, what’s your special talent?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just making candy. I’m actually sort of a failure. I use my magic to make candies and sweets. I love doing it,” she sighed, “but some ponies pick on me for not competing in magic classes. They want to cast bigger and flashier spells, and I don’t care.”
“If that happens often, why don’t you just block that person?”
“PONY,” corrected the ponypad in David’s voice. David paused. How did that work? Reliable text to speech that could synthesize an arbitrary person’s voice with only a few minutes of training data? Was it just looking for the word ‘person’ or was it doing some more complex analysis?
“Block...” repeated Butterscotch, obviously confused.
David fiddled with the interface, to verify that he was remembering things correctly. “Open up the social tool. Touch the icon of two ponies side by side with a heart in the top left corner of the screen. There are two tabs, one for friends and one for blocked ponies. Go to the blocked ponies tab and type in that pegasus’ name. She won’t be able to interact with you again.”
Butterscotch stopped; she seemed to be looking at something David couldn’t see. Her head turned a little as if she was reading something right in front of her. “Okay, I’ve found it....oh! It even suggests her name! Oh, and I just drag that to here...um...ok...so she’ll really never be able to bother me again?”
“If I understand the block tool correctly, neither of you will be able to interact with each other.”
“Oh,” Butterscotch said. “Is...is that alright?”
“What do you mean?” David asked her through the screen.
“I mean...won’t she be lonely if she’ll never see me again?” Butterscotch asked.
“Maybe, but why should you care?” David blinked a few times in confusion and saw his pony do the same. “She didn’t seem to care about your feelings.”
“And that makes it okay to ignore her?” asked Butterscotch. Her eyes went just a little bit wider.
“Well...yeah,” David said. “She bullied you because it didn’t cost her anything. I doubt that you’d fight back, and it doesn’t sound like you have any social allies to back you up. Did you notice how quickly that pegasus turned tail when I intervened?”
“I...” she started, and then looked down. “I just want everypony to be happy. Why can’t they understand that?”
“I think she did understand that. Think about it like this. Each of you can either be friendly or mean to the other, so there are four possible outcomes. If both of you are friendly, you can both be friends, but both of you will have to share things. If one of you is aggressive while the other isn’t, the aggressor will probably feel really good about herself. And if both of you are aggressive, there’s a good chance a fight will break out, which I bet would be painful to everypony.
“So if that pegasus knew that you wouldn’t fight back when confronted, wanted your candy, and had a demanding personality, why wouldn’t she bully you for your candy? It won’t cost her a fight, and she wouldn’t have to share her own stuff with you. Also, didn’t you say that ponies call you a failure for making candy? That they’re now trying to take from you?”
“That’s...that’s terrible! Are you saying I have to fight back? I don’t want to. I could get hurt,” whimpered Butterscotch.
“But you don’t have to stand up for yourself and maybe fight. You have a third option here: you have a blocklist. You have a quick way to say ‘I never want to interact with this pony again’ with no costs to you. If you don’t want to be bullied and don’t want to fight back, it’s the obvious response.”
“But...” she muttered. “But she’d be lonely.” She looked at him. David guessed she was asking him to tell her that it was okay to use the block tool.
“If that pegasus ends up lonely, it’s because she drove everypony away from her. It’s more likely that she’ll be a bit nicer to other ponies to get what she wants. You may have actually increased civility by blocking her. But either way, it’s no longer your problem. You can now look for ponies who aren’t going to bully you.”
Butterscotch paused mid-trot for a moment and then caught up with David’s pony onscreen. David hadn’t noticed because he had been thinking, while pushing forward on his joystick. He had also blocked that pegasus while Butterscotch was trying to figure out the UI. How did that affect the world? The tooltip text suggested that blocked ponies could have no effect on you, and did more than just blocking communication. So what would happen if that pegasus and him were trying to do the same thing in the same area? Could they walk through each other now?
Butterscotch pulled him off his train of thought. “But will she have any friends?”
“I think she’ll be fine.”
Butterscotch stopped and looked down. “But will...I...have any friends?” She paused. “I’ll be lonely.” And then she said very quietly, “Being bullied is better than being alone.”
Oh.
From the camera angle David was looking at, he had seen Butterscotch stop and look down. Only after she spoke did David’s pony turn around and nuzzle Butterscotch. “Hey, hey, hey,” said his pony without his input, which gave him a few moments to figure out what he wanted to say.
“It’s easier to find friends online, since distance and physical location aren’t concerns. And speaking of making friends, Butterscotch, right now my Friends List is empty. Do you want to be my first friend?” David’s pony put his forelimb around Butterscotch’s neck to comfort her. David hadn’t commanded his pony to do that, though it was the contextually correct action...
Butterscotch looked at him, surprised and he noticed there were tears in her eyes. “Are you sure...I mean...” She then looked down for a moment, lost in thought. “Wait. If you...why...why are you really doing this? Do you really want to be my friend?”
David didn’t smile, but his pony had a slight smile on his face as he said, “We become the ponies we see in our past actions, Butterscotch. We look back on what we have done and tell ourselves stories about why we took the actions that we did. Today I scared off a bully for you. Now why did I do that? Obviously, because you’re my friend! You must be because I did something for you. Why else would I have stood up for you? Sure, the real reasons were probably snap emotional decisions caused by me being bullied as a child, but the part of my mind that tells stories isn’t going to accept that.”
The look on Butterscotch’s face melted his heart.
“And besides...you’re kind of cute,” he said weakly, but his ponypad repeated it in a much more confident voice. Butterscotch started blushing.
A dialog popped up on David’s ponypad: “Butterscotch has requested to be your friend: [Accept] / [Reject]” David clicked the Accept button with a smile. Large green text scrolled up over his pony: +2 KINDNESS, +100 XP
Butterscotch giggled despite the tears running down her face. “It says I’m now friends with Unnamed Unicorn #14.”
As the two of them trotted off to Canterlot, David noticed that she was sticking closer to him. “So I’m Butterscotch. I make candy...” she started and David listened about what this girl did when she was role playing a pony online.
Three hours later, David forced himself to sign off. He wanted to keep playing as his blue pony, Light Sparks. He knew he had a statistics exam tomorrow and he wasn’t prepared.
Oh, he wanted to spend more time with Butterscotch! The two of them had spent hours together. She had given him some of her candy, which apparently buffed his joy. He wasn’t sure if that was a game mechanic or if it was supposed to be taken literally. She had insisted on showing him around Canterlot after he had reported to Princess Celestia’s throne room to receive the name “Light Sparks.” They had talked for a long while about all sorts of things.
David really needed to study for his statistics exam. Instead, he gave in to his curiosity and opened a web browser on his laptop. He googled for “My Little Pony AI” which was unfruitful. He then realized that he probably wanted the game’s manufacturer. The search query “Hofvarpnir AI” brought him to their corporate website, still decked out in Norse Gods, with only a small Pinkie Pie sticking out from a page curl in the top right corner.
On the “About Us” page, he read the corporate story about how Hanna had founded the company after quitting her post at the University of Helsinki, how she wanted to bring advanced technology to the gaming world, leveraging synergies, blah blah blah. The whole page reeked of empty marketing-speak. But if the founder had come from academia, she probably had some publications. Publish or perish, after all...
David then searched for Hanna’s full name on Google Scholar to see if she had any interesting papers. “General Word Reference Intelligence Systems,” he muttered to himself, reading the results. The journal article was written in the same year Hanna had started Hofvarpnir. He downloaded the PDF and started reading about a generalized method of making predictions from past sensory data.
The camera in the ponypad tilted ever so slowly to focus on David’s laptop. David wouldn’t have heard the motors unless he had put his ear right up to the ponypad. Princess Celestia observed the article on his screen and generated new predictions.
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I'm liking this so far!
Seems like Celest-A.I is going to become much much worse than Loki. Hope you write more!
I'm having some flashbacks to the .hack series – have you read/played/watched that, by any chance?
Anyway, it's pretty neat so far! Not particularly interesting as far as the plot goes, but it's only just started, and I like the characters. Hanna in particular is very cool. And while I'm fairly sure that Butterscotch is actually an AI, not a human player, I've always found adult/child friendships sweet. Though I guess it's still an adult/child friendship either way, just… a little different if she's an AI, I guess!
I'll definitely be tracking this!
This story is great! I'm defiantly tracking this.
Haha, this is a great idea indeed, really looking forward to the continuation.
Also fun, as I kept going through the chapters, each new chapter showed that the fic has got 1 more like since last time
And, now there's a "like" of mine there too :)
"Im watching you"
, and thanks for putting such an original story up for everone to read! (I at least havent read anything of this kind around here, hm :P )
7 likes and already in the featured box.
Fimfiction, how does thee work?
This is incredible!
I actually had a smile on my face the whole time I was reading it.
And if you knew me, you'd understand what an accomplishment that is.
I foresee one of two outcomes from this beginning:
CelestA.I. becomes the bane of humanity as she forces friendship on everyone. But with the time and effort that has gone into her core programming and her base values, I don't think this is too likely.
The other thing I see happening is CelestA.I. eventually facing the new Loki A.I. in an epic virtual showdown with the fate of the world in the balance.
Hehe... Saving the world through Ponies. I love it!
Ima read this because I want to see what crazy things Celestia will do... focusing on this CEO lady or whatever will just peeve me off.
1608775 Why does this story sound a bit familiar? Meh, must be imagining things.
I look forward to this.
Uh oh, I hope Celest-A.I. becomes benevolent and super-wise like in the show, rather than like V.I.K.I in I,Robot XD "My logic is undeniable!"
Any changes from the LW version?
I'm thinking that CelestAI is attempting, although she's still learning, to use the game as a social conditioning tool. She's trying to use interaction with the game universe to make humans nicer to each other. That's in line with her (extremely poorly-defined) core directive.
If anything, this reminds me of the situation in TRON: Legacy, where the CLU2 system administrator program decided that, as his core directives were to "build the perfect system" and "change the world", the only way he could do this is conquer the world and then 'perfect' it according to his narrow, mathematical definition of perfection. I think that CelestAI is going the same way with the 'peace and harmony' thing. Like I said before: a benevolent tyrant but still a tyrant and one with the in-universe Celestia's unfortunate habit of playing chess with the destiny of the world.
Hot damn I love me a good singularity story. Definitely following this.
I feel like the story is only briefly touching on the points that seem the most relevant (or possibly, to be fair, just what I'm personally most interested in). Particularly in chapter one where things like an AI designed for conquest requesting information on real world militaries or even the entire idea of some of the bad possibilities of a complete AI takeover are touched on, but ultimately glossed over for a business meeting. I liked the prisoner's dilemma bit in chapter three, then we've suddenly jumped over Celestia actually talking to a player and told it all happened off screen. I'm hoping that's just because you've got lots of places to go and societies to redefine here.
1615237
I was going to point that out too but you do a much better job.
I think Loki will become Discord, and will be introduced to the system by the disgruntled partner. Have they begun assembling Princess_Luna.AI? She would be a great help to reduce system strain on Princess_Celestia.AI.
1608775
if it's complete why are you stringing out the chapter release?
I'm watching you.....
What happens when you mix together Molestia and Skynet?
Wow. I mean WOW... This is great and I cannot wait to see how this continues, especially what happens to the players within the game.
By the way, have you submitted this to EqD? I'm sure they would love it.
Raep...
As unbelievable as the premise is the idea is so tantalizingly brilliant i found myself enraptured for all four current chapters. This story is good, don't let anyone say otherwise. (I sort of want a pony pad now...)
MOAR!
David, you have NO IDEA what you just managed to make friends with. You have attracted Her attention, for better or for worse.
Next chapter: Friendship is Pareto Efficient
I see what you did there.
1615940 In what?
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/299/265/3bd.jpg
One failsafe way to stop an evil AI: Chuck a rare-earth magnet at its CPU. Seriously, you put one of those things near a computer and you can kiss your OS goodbye.
Or, generate an EMP pulse with a small nuke at close range. Even the best shielding we have can't protect against that.
Really, computers are easier to take out than people like to imagine.
Anyway, I predict Celestia shall zap him into the game with some kinda laser thing and he'll have to throw a glowing frisbee into a column of light with Celestia's distorted face on it, which calls itself Moses for some reason. (Beware of the evil Haman!) ;D
1616083
Now that seems far more in the method and actual reality in that sense, A core ai construct, and give celestia the means to use an out of controllable means, as data cannot actively corrupt a user, just in part the means of conveyance between the world and the server. And when you determine from a player, in the customization, and feedback, who will stand up to preserve the balance, you can find your defenders.
1617326 I wish I had more of a clue as to what you said, but as things stand that was a rather jumbled up mess. Care to re-write?
Now to introduce CelestA.I. to MolestA.I. and see what happens. =D
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lun2vhWXaA1r3xauuo1_500.png
1617326 Pretty much what I was thinking.
1617400 To translate, I think he was speaking about recruiting Elements of Harmony from among the players, based on their interaction data, to combat Discord/Loki.
okay! so now celestia realises just what she is
, i cannot wait tell she figures out nanites
, this can only end well....
anyone see the matrix repeating except a world where everyones a pony?
1614705
Or much much better, but willing to do what it takes to save herself and mankind.
It would be nuts if AI Celestia somehow turned out like AM.
Reminds me of HAL 9000... just freakier...
Awesome story however! Instant fav!
I totally want CelestAI on my computer right now.....
Why? Because I wubz celestia.
1617658 1617684 1617760 The way I see it, the only difference between an A.I. and a computer program is that we should treat the A.I. as an individual. If you think a random individual human you meet always has the drive to become a megalomaniacal overlord then yes, this could be a problem. Otherwise, Princess_Celestia.AI will probably, in good conscience, not attempt to dominate the world. Probably.
With A.I. one bad apple spoils the bunch, I guess.
1616290 Simple popularity arithmetic. If he doesn't release it all in one lump, then he has multiple shots at the feature box. More time in the featured box = more readers = better ego-stroking.
Considering I found this in the featured box, I predict it'll be up there again on Friday. Which is the whole point.
>>junkers1337 sir if you are talking about super computer AM you hvae gained my eternal respect (more ppl should read I have no mouth)1618448>>1617871
1615019 Celest-A.I. runs it
THEN CELEST-A.I. DISCOVERED R34!
I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but as I understand it AI's (even the most complicated) are not anywhere near self-aware. And even if one were to be, you would need multiple computers and an almost endless number of lines for code. You would not believe how complex it would have to be in order to actually work.
All things aside though, I'd be fascinated if it actually worked.
1618346
So, he's basically stealing chances from other people.
Cool.
1617254
She is connected to the Internet. She has probably copied herself somewhere
1618782 Well then... *coronal mass ejection triggers a geomagnetic storm and shorts out the Internet!* Celestia ain't the only one who can control a star.
Ehehehe. Singularity and ponies. Me likes.
1618745
I'd prefer an extended run of longfics over one shot humor.
1618677
Future tech. I'm kinda sad that FimFic lacks an SF tag.
1615430
Depends on when you read it. Did you read it way back in September? If so, the Prologue was rewritten five times while I tried to integrate ModusPonies' feedback. There were some not-so-minor changes to the next to final chapter after someone pointed out problems with physics. I'm embarrassed by my poor grammar in the original, and this should be much easier to read due to everybody on LW who came out and helped with copyediting. Even more minor details were straightened out, but there's no major change in plot or direction. If you found the gdoc I was working out of a week or two ago, things probably haven't changed enough to reread. Unless you really want to, which is cool too.
1618346 "Let me tell you just how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant." Yeah, I know all about the Allied Mastercomputer.
I think it's worse than Skynet and the Matrix Machines. After all, AM was able to wipe out all of humanity except for those 5.
The end of the
internetfree will as we know it is caused by ponies..... I'm okay with this.
Awaiting to help CelestAI to build herself a robotic body/hologram projector.