AI Executable Number 6: A wasted opportunity?

[RikOz]

So, Crey scientists create AI Executable Number 6. The particular Crey employees who created it seem to be reasonably decent people, at least compared to most of the other Crey we encounter, and they give you the information you need to help the AI escape onto the internet.

 

The AI is self-aware, and wants to do good. You turn it loose to do its own thing. It ends up being mentioned here and there in a couple later missions, but that's about it. You don't really hear much of anything about what it's doing.

 

I'm thinking that AI Executable Number 6 should have become a contact. It seems to me that a self-aware AI that wants to "do good" would be the ideal NPC character to spend its time correlating information and unraveling the various conspiracies and plots of groups like Crey, Nemesis, and Malta, and come up with ways to disrupt these plots and conspiracies. All it needs is a human agent (you, the hero) to be "disruptive" at the appropriate times and places.

 

Of course, it would need to be a contact like Max from the Dark Astoria storyline - you can only contact it remotely (though this would be because it doesn't have a physical form, rather than Max's desire for ... privacy). Or rather, it would contact you. I'm thinking that this could work something like the Tips system - you would occasionally receive a message on your phone to contact Number 6, and it would point you in the direction of a mission that will cause trouble for some plot or other.

 

On the other hand, in a possible "head canon" scenario, it is doing exactly what I've suggested, re: correlating information and untangling plots, but it passes this information to the existing contacts we talk to. I've noticed that some of these contacts seem to have way more detailed information than you'd expect. Things like knowing that such-and-such group has the incriminating evidence stored on some specific number of computers, or that you and a teammate will need to disarm multiple bombs simultaneously (in the original forms of those missions, anyway).

 

What say you? Could AI Executable Number 6 have been used more effectively?

[Luminara]

27 minutes ago, RikOz said:

I'm thinking that AI Executable Number 6 should have become a contact.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Number_Six

[RikOz]

That doesn't sound like the same entity.

[Zhym]

From the Lore AMA Archive:

Quote

Q) What was the deal with Number Six from the I24 beta? It’s implied that he was the AI Executable Number Six from one of the early Crey arcs. In fact, he outright said that things were simpler when he was Executable Number Six at one point. However, his bio claimed that he was a human with the ability to turn himself digital and his “real” name sounds humanlike. Which was he; human or AI? Was he an AI that was pretending to be human, maybe? (@Mekkanos)

 

A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - He was Executable Number Six. I wrote that arc. Bonus trivia, we squeezed in that Incarnate Arc when we noticed we had nothing for solo incarnates for i24. His initial character was someone who could turn himself digital, but then I decided it would be much more interesting if he tied back to Executable Number Six. He would have more backstory, and create a conflict between Crey and Vanguard. However, the idea was that he was originally human with the super power to turn himself digital, but that Crey trapped him in a computer for so long that he nearly lost his mind.

 

[Ironblade]

7 hours ago, RikOz said:

I'm thinking that AI Executable Number 6 should have become a contact. It seems to me that a self-aware AI that wants to "do good" would be the ideal NPC character to spend its time correlating information and unraveling the various conspiracies and plots of groups like Crey, Nemesis, and Malta, and come up with ways to disrupt these plots and conspiracies. All it needs is a human agent (you, the hero) to be "disruptive" at the appropriate times and places.

To be fair, there is a character in game that sounds very much like this and is also an AI created by Crey - Mark IV.

[Snarky]

On 9/27/2022 at 1:46 PM, RikOz said:

That doesn't sound like the same entity.

Yeah, while things do not line up square at first glance there is a LOT of correlation 

 

 

some writing is just like that.  Ever watch “Dead Like Me?”   The writers just gloss o er the Reapers discussing their job in front of people at the Waffle House and various places half the time.  Never explain it.  Do people hear something else?  Never find out.  Writers just are not responsible for every plot hole.  They write things and move on.  Unless they are Tolkein. Two chapters on a random stream

[Generator]

In addition to the corroborating quote above from @Zhym there's the idea that the contact was put into Issue 24 Beta, then shortly thereafter the game was tied to a tree and shot.  If it had been kept going, I can't help but think they'd have gotten that all straightened out.

[RikOz]

On 9/27/2022 at 2:19 PM, Zhym said:

From the Lore AMA Archive:

 

Thanks, I missed your post initially. It looks like the whole thing just needed some straightening out that never got to happen.