Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

There is a short story where Tau open up an Imperium Servoskull. When they found brain matter inside they were disgusted. Imagine them finding a Wraithguard. I wonder what they would think.

"How the hell does an empty piece of glass control the automaton with no physical (wired or wireless) interface?"

T'au barely believe the Warp exists. Now try telling them that souls are stored in super rare glass gems. And those souls use magic to control the stuff they're attached to.

They won't believe you even if they see the thing in battle.

they do the wraith constructs are their "robots" but use souls stones to pilot them even before the fall (Ref: angel exterminatus), the Eldar were no more advanced prior to the fall than they are now as shown in Fulgrim (set decades after the fall) but they lack the ability to mass produce these robots due to soul stones being so hard to get (can only be found within the eye of terror on crone worlds apparently)

How did they get Soul Stones pre-fall?

Arent they a gift from isha ?

Bharring wrote:
How did they get Soul Stones pre-fall?

As far as I can tell from the Wiki's the Spirit Stones were developed prior to Slaaanesh's birth by the Aeldari Craftworlds. Dark Eldar/Drukari never had access to Spirit Stones.

This would suggest that prior to the Fall of the Eldar there Spirit Stones weren't used, at the very least not in the same protect ourselves from Slaaanesh way that Eldar do in 40k.

I thought Spirit Stones were harvested from Crone Worlds after the fall, as that's the only place they manifest. And that they were thought to be Isha's tears, over what's happened to her people. Meaning that they would not have existed before the Fall?

Thing is the eldar "robots" in angel exterminatus had fully functional souls stones "driving" the constructs and these were there pre fall, during the fall and after the fall as it was a crone world in the eye of terror, we know they are soul stones because fulgrim used MILLIONS of them to fuel his deamon princedom.

So eldar clearly had them pre fall, you also have the guardians that attacked Magnus which were powered by soul stones and they had been there thousands of years.

 sing your life wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
And then you have the perfect receptive vessels for the daemons of Chaos to reach into reality.

One of the plot points in a GG book was them finding a corrupted Men of Iron STC that heavily implied the Dark Age MOI had also been corrupted by chaos.

This. AI any more advanced than what the Tau use is vulnerable to corruption by Chaos. Remember all the bs the Dark Mechanicum pulled in the Heresy using Chaos-tainted software?

Works on Eldar robots, too.

The Eldar used automata to act as a bulwark against all outside threats when they controlled the galaxy.

There is not a lot of info about them, but they are definitely referred to as robots or automata, not wraith constructs etc.

I would describe an Eldar robot as similar to a wraithconstruct, except the control comes from implanted mind engrams rather than a soul.

The Eldar mind is very potent so I think rather than creating a program, they would "think" and implant the thought instructions into the construct and it would just act on that.

Kind of like a soul duplicate or, at least partial.


The Eldar robot armies never rebelled against their masters and the Eldar Empire was protected by it up to the end.


I would imagine that if they psychically implanted instructions as echos of a real person's mind, they were never going to reach the state that a truly sentient robot would reach.

 Fifty wrote:
Back in the day...

I love the feel of the old catalogue, and this brings back memories.

I picked up one of the small gjost bots on ebay jist to paint it up and add to the collection.

 Argive wrote:
What if there can be benevolence in AI?
I recently listened to an interview with one of leading AI researches. It was interesting to listen to his opinions about the elephant in the room A.K.A. what if we make Skynet when AI becomes self aware...

What he was saying struck a cord; if you build AIs to take care of agriculture, medicine and welfare, the AI will likely be benevolent as it primary drives will be "good". If you build it to spy on people and work out how cause brain washing and kill the right people chances are it will not turn out benevolent when it becomes sentient.

So an AI created to run a craftworlds gardens etc could possibly be used to defend too and not turn on its organic creator overlords...

Source? That does sound interesting.
Although I don't think that it would be that simple. What if an AI charged with medicine determines that the best course for human health would be to drastically cull the population in congested metropolitan areas? That's hardly benevolent.