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Is it just primitive AI?

Don't call it primitive.


I heard those machines refute to serve if they suspect you offend them so watch your interwebz connection.


The Machine spirit is used in more advanced vehicles of the IoM.
Somehow, its possible to construct more of them as you need them in every Land Raider.

Primitive in the way that the Imperium does not recognize it as AI. True AI is against the rules and considered heretical (check out Mechanicum by Graham McNiel i think)

Look up... something might.... Rynn's might that's it! I tink.
Now read what it did, and then reconsider your thought on the machine spirit.

Basically, it was a land raider without a crew that got pissed with an ork waagh!

Wow, that's pretty bad ass.

Rynn's Might was a venerable land raider known throughout the Crimson Fists for its invulnerability and fierce machine spirit.

During the events of the Rynn's World Campaign, Rynn's Might forever entered Crimson Fists' chapter legend. Narrowly escaping destruction in the epic explosion that reduced the Crimson Fists' Chapter-Monestary to rubble, the venerable machine spirit of the 'Might engaged in a deadly campaign of raid and counter-raid against the invading ork forces, fighting until its bolter ammunition was exhausted and the powers cells for its twin-linked las-cannon expended. Only then did it allow Orkish forces to approach, going so far as to lower its boarding ramp to entice the greenskins into it's troop bays. When it could contain no more of the green flood, the Machine Spirit vented it's plasma waste into its own hold, triggering an explosion which destroyed both the landraider itself, and a significant number of Orks.

Though not explicity stated in GW cannon, it is logical to assume that, without this one-tank rampage to draw the attention of the swarming orks warbands in the vacinity of the shattered fortress, Chapter Master Pedro Kantor and his marines would never have reached Rynn City alive.

More than bad ass. Yeah, I'm also pretty sure that this has happened with titans before as well (except the blowing up part).

A.I. or Abominable Intelligence is a techno-heresy and no form exists legally within the Imperium.

A machine spirit or the machine spirits are not real things per se, simply it is the way the superstitious peoples of the Imperium rationalise why and how machines work or don't work. All machines are to a greater or lesser extent anthropomorphised and imbued with personality, intelligence and will even though they are nothing more than hunks of metal and plastic.

The Imperium does have access to cortex technology however most often found in robots. These are constructed using artficial proteins and enzymes meaning that the robot has a rudimentary brain. This brain has firmware (hardwired routines like 'patrol') and combat wetware. A cortex can develop an animal like personality.

You can see a more exaggerated form of this in Titans which also absorb an imprint of every Princeps that has even commanded the Titan giving them quite complex minds and an individuality.

Since of all these things are organic in nature, even if made in a lab, the Mechanicus view them as acceptable, a bit like servitors which use a strip down human brain. These are not artificial intelligences as such unlike the Kaban Project which was.

That's very interesting. Thnk you.

The way I understood it was that it worked like native american's beliefs that everything has a spirit, including rocks. The Mechanicum has just done it with machinery, including light switches. Although, different factions of the mechanicum have slightly different beliefs.

What Gogsnik says is sorta how I've interpretted the books.

Not AI per se, but a computer capable of reacting to it's surroundings, sometimes in extreme ways as in the land raider story. Personality comes from 'defects' be they mechanical or imprints of human minds on the computer. (I always assumed that these 'computers' could learn' i.e. copy instructions it's made to do and apply them to similar situations in future. It could be possible that instructions somehow can be transferred from machine to machine by accident or something, this may explain the land raiders action of destroying itself - something it wouldn't have 'learnt' first hand. I'm sure back in 2nd I read something giving this sort of explanation about SM dreadnaughts. A crippled hero is bound inside and the robot sustains their life but not indefinatly. It then records all their actions in what life they have left in order that their 'spirit' can contuniue to fight until the dreadnaught is destroyed. Hence they have a 'personality' but are still not independant machines but reactive programs.

Obvously fluff changes with time and GW is known to contracdict themselves, so it's all open to interpretation really!

so if the void dragon is the omnissiah (is that how you spell it?) then how does that intertwine with each machine spirit in a vehicle? BTW i dont really know anything about this type of thing other than the necron part so corect me if im wrong

It is believed that the Dragon is on Mars, expecially given the events described in Mechanicum, supposedly because the Emperor knew that the Dragon would attempt to use human colonists and thus impart a great deal of technological knowledge, knowledge that would maintain a certain level of understanding of technology through the Age of Strife and provide a base that could be used by the Emperor. From the Necron Codex we have a vision, provided by a daemon, of Techpriests worshipping at what is meant to be the resting place of the Dragon although the imagery differes with that presented in Mechanicum. Whilst some heretical Techpriests may well venerate the Dragon as the Omnisiah it isn't really (I'll mention why in a moment) although certainly the Dragon has inspired the worshipping of machines.

As I said earlier, a machine spirit isn't a truly real thing. In the 41st Millennium it is thought that all machines have a soul, a Machine Spirit, and are linked collectively to the Omnisiah. The Omnisah isn't real however, although it was acknolwedged by the Mechanicum (most of them anyway) that the Emperor was in fact the Omnisiah (although a tiny handful believe it to be the Dragon) although again, the Omnisiah is the deity worshipped by the Cult Mechanicus with the generally accepted belief that the Omnisah is the Emperor which is what makes the Mechanicus and the Imperium compatible.

How does that effect the operation of machines throughout the Imperium, simply put it has no effect. Machines are just machines, some of them have organic components which imbue them with varying levels of animalistic behaviour and intelligence but that is purely as a result of their particular construction and not because of a universal force that links all machines together. Where other types of technology are thought to have a personality all of their own it is merely anthropomorphism.

Whilst it is not an in-universe example a good way to think of this is Biff's 1955 car from Back to the Future. The vehicle has a trick to it that only he knows in order to get it started. For anyone from the 41st Millennium this would be clear evidence of the/a Machine Spirit where the machine only responds when the right gestures are performed and only then for its owner and not just anyone, they would see that in the same way you might expect a dog not to obey a stranger's commands. Of course it isn't the car's Machine Spirit but a problem with the ignition which means it has to be joggled in just the right way in order to get it started.

The biological aspects of the more advanced machines utilised within the Imperium are what make them acceptable, this living, organic component, whilst manufactured, never-the-less means that these are not A.I. which are seen as soulless abominations mimicking human intelligence and thus a perverted mockery of the divine human form. The advantage of these machines over servitors is that, where a servitor is a mindless drone a robot for example has some personality, often desribed as dog-like. The old rules for robots were also quite complex and it was possible to give them programs to follow during a game, so that if attacked say, they would do X until X was completed and then they would return to doing Y until Z happened and so on. I suppose you could say the Land Raider mentioned earlier was doing the same, following a pre-determined program, ie if all the crew are dead, pursue the enemy, if in danger of being captured (because all ammunition is spent) detonate fuel cells. This type of behaviour makes a tank seem like a true hero, attacking the enemy over and over until all possible avenues of attack were spent and then finally making the ultimate sacrifice whilst giving two fingers at the scum who dared to capture it. Of course it is nothing more than simple programming.

Gogsnik - very well put!

your point about the omnisiah being belived to be the Emporer - in the M41 this may be 'true' but doesn't mechanicum (m30ish) talk about this being 'pretend' in order for Earth to allie with Mars - I know some of the pirests believe the Emporer to be the Omnisiah but I'm sure i remember it being some sort of cover up or something. Sorry it's a while since I read it. I thought that the way it was written was more that they believe the dragon to be the Omnisiah, and the stuff about the Emporer is purly down to politics. If so then although mars may believe the Emporer is the omnisiah in m41, surely that is actually misguided.

Hope that makes sense...

The emperor being fake is one of the beliefs in the mechanicum. The problem is that different factions have different beliefs; so some think the emperor and omnissiah are the same, while others believe they're separate. The mechanicum are constantly arguing over this, this is best shown in the "Titanicus" book.

Mr Nobody has beaten me to it, but Titanicus is the book you really need to read to see this kind of theoligcal debate taking place where half the Mechanicus take it as read that the Emperor is the Omnisiah manifested and the other half see it as an ancient conceit to simply allow the Imperium and Mechanicus (Mechanicum as was) to co-exist.

As far as the Dragon is concered this is something restricted to a tiny cabal so far with the vast majoirty having no knowledge that the Dragon even exists, even knowledge of the Necron threat isn't that widely known; Hellforged deals with this general ignorance. Then there is the other extreme, with Adept Corteswain tearing out all of his implants after he is shown a vision of what the Dragon and the C'tan have planned for humanity and is disgusted that his implants and bionics have been inspired by such a horror.

well all i have to say is al of this (ie titans, terminator amrour,) was largerly made possible by the technology of the void dragon





right?

All we can positively say is that it is supposed to have been the Emperor's plan (well, to be accurate he was still just the Newman at the time) that, during the Age of Strife, rather than humans losing almost all of their advanced technology because they were going to be too preoccupied with surviving the Dragon was placed on Mars in order to 1. impart some knowledge of advanced technologies and 2. cultivate a technology oriented culture that would preserve humanity's knowledge for the future.

To what extent the Dragon impacted on what humans would have invented anyway is something that cann't be answered as we simply don't know. In Dark Mechanicus an actual STC is encountered and it is the father of the Titan design. It's a highly advanced form of Titan, with its own true A.I. and the clunking, tiny things we know as Titans are like children's toys in comparison. Based on that information it is still impossible to say whether or not the Titan STC was inspired by the Dragon and even if it was by what extent. Personally I find the idea of 'the C'tan did it!' to be pretty lame and a bit too Transformers N.B.E. 01 for me.

Terminator armour itself isn't really that fancy. Take one exo suit, add some fancy gadgets and weapons and hey presto, you have a suit of Tactical Dreadnought Armour. Exo-armour and exo-suits are supposed to be most used for hazardous environments and even by 'space pirates', they can't be that sophisiticated but of course exo-armour/exo-suits are relegated to a line or two in the background for Terminator armour and not always then so we know little about their construction. Of course investigating these things too closely leads to all sorts of unwanted and silly quetions like 'why hasn't mankind's technology progressed in 10,000 years', 'why are the Mechanicus so dumb', 'how did a highly advanced glactic empire forget so much so easily', 'why did most human worlds end up little better than cave men just because they lost contact'.

Even now we have people working on bionics and exu armour, even walking machines, humans have these ideas without alien influnce and we've come a long way in realising the technology necessary. Personally I would only say the Dragon has had an impact in how these technologies were utilised and how they came to be viewed, the mysticism and worship of machines by humanity isn't far-fetched or unprecedented and is quite useful for the C'tan so it makes sense that the Dragon could have influenced people in this way with the benefit that it also kept people maintaining advanced technology.

IMO "Machine spirit" is something that changes a great deal. Some will have primitive AI some wont. The imperium believes EVERY machine has a machine spirit, only some do per se. A bolter or lasgun wont. However the more advanced the machine the higher the level of intelligence it will have. "Machine Spirit" operated sentry guns simply have a simple targeting computer. A landraider probably has simple problem solving AI e.g being able to defend itself with no crew. However something like a titan or starship will probably have quite advanced AI. I think I heard of a titan speaking to a new princeps once.

Ships and titans don't AI's, but logic engines, which depend on human interface. This might explain why a titan communicated with a princeps.

Gogsnik wrote: Of course investigating these things too closely leads to all sorts of unwanted and silly quetions like 'why hasn't mankind's technology progressed in 10,000 years', 'why are the Mechanicus so dumb', 'how did a highly advanced glactic empire forget so much so easily', 'why did most human worlds end up little better than cave men just because they lost contact'.

During the Dark Age of Technology machines fought the wars and did the work for humans.

Just think of what would happen in our culture today if we just lost cheap oil, and the price went to over $10. It will happen some day, and when it does it will change our way of life as everything becomes very expensive to make and transport. People will have to learn new skills as jobs change. Food will have to be locally grown and transported only short distances. Populations will shrink as food grows short and starvation becomes likely. Etc...

Now times that by 100 and add in world wars and deamonic possesions and you have the Age of Strife. Any people surviving that would be very afraid to do it again...

In general, the Imperium believes that all mechanical devices have a machine spirit that guides them, and that won't work with you if it gets upset. They will perform various rites to appease the machine spirit of a malfunctioning device, some of which are just ritual (like burning incense) while others involve fixing it (flipping switches in a particular order, delivering a blow to the side of the monitor). If a computer does something like run an automatic targeting system or calculate a course through a system, they attribute the computer's function to the machine spirit, and when Adeptus Mechanicus personnel have to deal with hacking into systems they think of it in terms of one spirit possessing the other or of appeasing a spirit. Some advanced devices like Land Raiders and Titans have what we would call an AI inside that can operate it entirely independently, the Imperium doesn't think 'oh there's a sophisticated computer in this titan', they think 'the machine spirit of this Titan is advanced enough that it can do more than a weaker machine spirit'.

Thanks for all the info guys , really helped clear up some gaps in the history , being out of the loop for some while, still dont understand anything about the void dragon ctan etc.. will have to check out the lexicanum i think, and them books you mentioned titanicus and mechanicum. great posts people