USH'S MATRIX GAME 2006 FOURTH ASSIGNMENT (PHILOSOPHY)- 'The Door'

"Ah, so the Doctor was meant specifically to prevent the Virus from escaping?" Heph says.

"Specifically, no. Very few programmes have so specific a purpose. And the Doctor is not dead; his shell was destroyed but he will return. He simply cannot achieve much."

"So it seems that the System has lost control of this Virus, just by our release of it. Why was it in there..." Heph gestures to the Door "...in the first place? He also asked 'Father?' when we opened the Door..."

"To be fair, it was not just by your release of it. We have had quite a hand in the alteration of the situation."

"From the sounds of it not to many people can achieve much against this guy." Berserker begins to recount the battle over his head.

"That is a point why did you help us?"

"Well, true, the Hunter and yourselves got us in there...unless you mean something else."

"I meant something else.

"Have you considered the Doctor? What he represents? How he acts, even?"

"Well he seems to repair things in the system that just don't fit in. As to the way he acts he seems to basically be single minded and not care for much except what he is after."

"Well, that last part is very true. The Doctor has absolutely no personality whatsoever. He's not actually very intelligent. Now, why is that?"

"Because there is no need for him to be. All he has to do is find something that isn't supposed to be there and fix it. Doesn't require much thinking or ability to analyze."

"Absolutely, Compare and contrast to an Agent, Their work entirely revolves around Humans- they have to catch them, outguess them. Even work with them. It is endemic to their purpose that they must be able to interact with them, and this involves having a personality that a Human can relate to, albeit normally an unpleasant one.

"But what this is about... well. The end of things. Death, as you call it. Death is a funny thing in the Matrix, especially to an Artificial Intelligence."

"Oh yeah Agents have some personality I guess."

"That is something I've always wondered how do machines and programs face the idea of deletion, the end however you want to call it. I mean obviously some don't like it because they become Exiles."

"Indeed. Deletion is not very common among us. There is no internal strife within System society itself- at least, not violently- and issues of disease and old age do not apply. The only Human-style catostophe that could befall the System is a loss of power.

"Even within the Matrix, death is not the inevitable part of existence you see it as. It is, instead, an added risk, an accepted one, part of a system parameter. Unlike you Humans, we are not bound here by such fragile threads. Death comes upon you in the Matrix as it does in real life because your bodies cannot survive the shock of such... 'realistic' harm upon the mind.

"AIs have no such limitation, no physical body. Therw is no particular reason for them to be vulnerable to harm in the matrix at all save for one thing- the Matrix is PROGRAMMED so. Things die in it, and if this happens to a programme, it faces deletion.

"This was obviously a necessary part of life within the Matrix for humans, and it is a life visiting programmes must accept. This caused an issue for enforcement, of course. System Agents had to be able to patrol the system. But the idea that they might be vulnerable did not sit very well with them.

"The early solution, as I believe you saw at the Museum, was to create system Agents that were, in some way, impossible to kill. The death/deletion parameter of the Matrix simply was not applied to them, although there was normally some sort of exception."

That makes a lot of sense as long as you guys are needed you really don't have to worry about being out. Still though there are programs that do not wish to be deleted despite being in the Matrix. Does that mean they fear being destroyed like a human faced with death is?"

"You also speak of an exception to the Agents not dieing what is that."

"But for some reason having indestructible Agents proved to be a bad idea, right? Did it effect their personality? It is impossible for a System to fully determine personality of artifficial intelligence and its changes at certain level of complexity?"

"A personality is a very very complex thing, especially in heurestic* machines. The combination of personality- a human-style personality- and invulnerability provied... troublesome. The Agents became very self-interested, lacking consequences, and started to cause more troubles than they solved. As for the exception, I merely mean there was normally some counter-code that the Agent would be vulnerable to, but it would be obscure.

"And so eventually a new generation of Agents was created, the form you are familiar with. They are still indestructible in theior way- but this time, not because that part of their interface with the Matrix is de-activated, but simply because ther programme never directly interfaces with that aspect of the Matrix at all. Instead the Human code they inhabit is the only code that is vulnerable. These agents still have a superiority complex, and then to be careless with their forms, but theiy are neither physically capable or pscyhologically desirous of abuse to the system as the previous efforts were."

* self-learning, able to improve and even re-design itself. A natural abillity in Humans, considered to be one of the most fundamental steps towards creating AI

"So Exiles usually hope that their survival will be eternal- their main goal is to avoid death? But unlike humans, this is a possible goal.....

And Doctor is used to finally destroy troublesome programmes?"

"Yeah we all know power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutly"

"Not generally. Agents are perfectly well designed for this task, although often far too busy tracing Human activity. But although Agents are very capable their operation is very much mundane. Oh, they push limits of course, with their strength and their jumps and their swerves. But these are merely accelerated versions of human abilities; there are both rules and limits, much as there are for yourselves.

"But on occasion, there arises an issue with a troublesome programme that, like the old-style Agents before it, does not interface with the Matrix's deletion system. They are, in effect, impossible to kill. There is little the Agents can do about that. So the System created a programme to deal with that rare contingency."

"The Doctor? He doesn`t seem to be limited at all...."