Editing Ascendant Justice's AI

{{Title|''Ascendant Justice'''s AI}}

{{AI Infobox

|name = ''Unknown''

|ended = [[2552#September|September 23, 2552]] (estimated date within time/record anomaly)

This unidentified [[artificial intelligence]] construct was used by the [[Covenant Empire|Covenant]] aboard the [[Covenant supercarrier|supercarrier]] ''[[Ascendant Justice]]''.<ref>'''Halo: First Strike''', ''page 64''</ref> When [[Cortana]] infiltrated the ''Ascendant Justice'' the Covenant AI tried to stop her, but it was mostly unsuccessful as she eventually caught it and decompiled it. The Covenant AI hated that Cortana was able to improve upon Covenant technology, believing it to be heresy,<ref>'''Halo: First Strike''', ''page 86''</ref> and managed to send a message over the [[Covenant battle network|battlenet]] before it was caught, both warning of the capture of the ship and sending the necessary calculations for a sub-atmospheric [[Slipspace]] jump. This likely allowed the [[Prophet of Regret]]'s [[Solemn Penance|assault carrier]] to perform such a jump during the [[Battle of Mombasa]].<ref name="infidel">'''Halo: First Strike''', ''page 170''</ref>

The AI demonstrated "fractured" thinking, as though it were suffering from the errors of being copied extensively. Cortana also stated that its algorithms looked very familiar, leading Cortana to speculate that a [[human]]-made [[UNSC]] AI had been captured and copied.<ref>'''Halo: First Strike''', ''page 195''</ref> When the AI faced its death from Cortana, it screamed a fractured statement: "Do what you will-will-will-will. I go to finally to my heaven reward paradise final-final-final-infinity-infinity-infini-AT NONCOPYSTATE."<ref name="infidel"/> This indicates that it either saw death as salvation from a fractured life caused by repeated copying, or that it has been programmed to possess Covenant religious beliefs.

It is this unnamed AI's code that allowed Cortana to copy the code-breaking part of her logic into another Cortana, sent with Blue Team. They effectively used this fracture of Cortana to break into and eventually destroy the Covenant command platform ''[[Unyielding Hierophant]]'' and its resident fleet.

 

It is hinted, though never definitely stated, that the AI may be one of [[Cortana]]'s fragments from the ''Unyielding Hierophant'', sent back in time aboard the ''Justice''. When examining its code, Cortana finds its patterns to be "maddeningly familiar", at one point noting "small portions of the alien software looked like her. It was almost as if it were her code... only copied many times, each time with subtle errors introduced by the replication process.<ref name="copies">'''Halo: First Strike''', ''page 237 (2010 edition)''</ref> Such a copying process happens when Cortana creates her fragments at the ''Hierophant'', as each creates its own copies with escalating errors until they multiply into thousands of corrupted duplicates. As there would be no other reason for an AI's code to be copied as it would only create an AI with a shortened lifespan<ref name="copies"/>, it is perhaps likely that the correlating code indicates that the ''Justice'''s AI was once a Cortana fragment, recovered from the remnants of the ''Hierophant'' or the few survivors of its escort fleet, then made to work for the Covenant and sent to Alpha Halo.

{{Conjecturalization End}}

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