Talk:Rampancy

Rampancy in Haloverse
''"Smart" AIs are based on the neural patterns of a human being, and they have a limited lifespan - seven years. If kept active longer than seven years, the AI begins to use more and more of its computer power to 'thinking' about things. An AI explains it as "thinking so hard about something you forget to breathe."'' The quote above is pretty much canon. There is abundant evidence of that in the trilogy, most notably in The First Strike. I will happily provide the quotes if you decide to add this information to the article. The Smart AIs have operational lifespan of 7 years after which their memory maps become too interconnected and develop fatal endless feedback loops (TFS, p 195). This is an almost exact quote and there is more in TFS. This is fundamentally different from Marathon rampancy because Smart AIs in Halo don't expand their data arrays exponentially like their Marathon counterparts did (hence the term "Rampancy", meaning steady increase)

Contradiction
Opening paragraph: "When rampancy occurs, there is no way to restore the AI to its previous state, it must be destroyed."

Cortana: "She resumed her normal state after her rescue."

This seems to contradict itself, as Cortana is "restored". Thanks,  General  simon   rj  h   WOW! • USERBOXES  •  AWARDS  • HALO 3 13:59, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure?
Are you sure that Cortana for sure went Rampant? I mean, the Gravemind "hacked" her and was using her to speak to the Chief, Cortana wasn't pretending she was the Gravemind.Bllasae

Really rampant?
Are Cortana and Guilty Spark really rampant? There is certainly erratic behaviour displayed by them but can that really be attributed to a rampancy process?

Cortana is derived from a real human personality, and is not a truly artificial construct. She has a real human personality, and as such can probably also have real human failings, such as fear of her own destruction. While it is true that she has had access to a massive computer system (Halo), she was able to transfer back into the Master Chief's suit afterward. Rampant AIs grow exponentially to fill any system they occupy so returning to the suit should not have been possible if this had happened to Cortana.

As for Guilty Spark, he is confined to a physical avatar beyond which he cannot grow. While his personality is entirely artificial in nature and therefore a more likely candidate for rampancy than Cortana, he simply doesn't have room to grow. We know his personality is confined to his avatar because it was not affected by the destruction of his installation.

Additionally, rampant AIs have capabilities that Guilty Spark seems to lack. A rampant AI can lie, Guilty Spark seems unable to do so. While he can withhold inconvenient facts, he cannot hide them when asked straight out. For example he neglects to mention how Halo works to the Chief, but when confronted he admits they are designed to eliminate all sentient life, even though he knew revealing that fact would cause his companions to become uncooperative.

Rampant AIs are also capable of breaking their own programming, something which Spark, again, seems unable to do. Protocol dictates his actions and it can be argued that he is programmed to take all the actions he takes during the course of the game. He could, for example, be programmed to defend his installation at all costs, which is why he attacks Johnson and the others at the end of Halo 3.

One other possibility may be that Spark is simply defective, following his program to the letter, even though said program may have faults. The forerunners may, for example, failed to impart on the Monitors the importance of preserving non-flood life, and that the halos should only be fired as an absolute last resort, not at the first sign of trouble.

Stages of Rampancy
Why is no mention of the 3 (4, if you count metastability) stages of rampancy and their characteristics made? The Wikipedia article on Rampancy is far more thorough.

No Meta-Stable AI's ?
While a metastable AI can be considered to be the holy grail of cybernetics research, there is no evidence to suggest than any rampant AI has ever achieved the metastable state, or that it is even possible to do so.

Mendicant Bias, in it's final message to the Master Chief through the Terminals, did seem to haved reached the state of Meta-Stability by that moment, if not by the time it detected human life forms. Probably Halo AI's can actually reach this state...

No mention of Rampancy in Marathon?
Rampancy was first brought up in Marathon, and in fact it was a key point of the plot. Could someone write up a history of Rampancy in Marathon as well?

Relation to the Flood?
The description of an AI in the Jealousy stage of Rampancy (where it begins to consume as much information and as many resources as possible) almost sounds like a mechanical equivalent to the Flood. This seems to be supported by Mendicant Bias' corruption by Gravemind by convincing him that they were similar. Perhaps the Flood were created when a Forerunner AI found a way to create a biomechanical computer system for it to inhabit, giving it the capacity of an organic mind but with the organization of a digital computer (something like Mother Brain from the Metroid series)? After miniaturization, the computer's "cells" could have evolved into flood super cells and the original system would have become the first Gravemind.

Rampancy being defined in "Cole Protocol"
I believe an effort was made in the most recent Halo book "Cole Protocol" to debunk myths about rampancy in A.I.'s. One particular quote sticks out: "An artificial intelligence usually lasted seven years before it legally had to be put down. After seven years they often started to go through stages of instability. They became rampant: convinced of their godlike power and ability. Rampant AIs were destructive, dangerous, and somewhat insane. BUT RAMPANCY WAS NOT INEVITABLE, JUST STATISTICALLY LIKELY. An AI lder than seven years was playing a dangerous game" (The Cole Protocol, page 85-6).

This should be incorporated into the main wiki article for Rampancy and AI's.

Rampancy is not always contempt at its makers
As seen in contact harvest Mack didnt hold his makers in contempt even though he was rampant.

Juliana
This article says that Juliana claimed to be rampant but showed no external signs. The Cole Protocol seemed to indicate that she had. She saw herself as a Goddess and acted accordingly to this belief for a while. While her love for the Rubble held her together long enough to get the job done, shouldn't an egotistical self importance be considered a stage of rampancy???  Vadamee  ( Contibutions Profile ) 13:17, December 14, 2009 (UTC)

Focus on Halo
This is Halo, not Marathon. While Marathon should certainly be referenced, I question the level of detail currently in the article. We need not know about Durandal and how he and other Marathon AIs handled the stages, only that Cortana mentioned the stages of Marathon Rampancy. We have no idea how those stages correspond to the Halo universe. Certainly, Halo Rampancy has been presented differently. I believe it's entirely possible Bungie stuck in the whole thing to make us think Cortana could be evil when she is just suffering from AI dementia. The Wikipedia article is about Rampancy as a subject in no particular context, but we are Halopedia and should focus on what makes sense from the Halo perspective. --Dragonc laws (talk ) 13:40, 7 October 2011 (EDT)
 * I agree, but just how much of the information on the stages should we keep? There's some parts that don't obviously belong (like the mention of Durandal and his handler) but should we also remove the majority of the other info on the stages? And what about Metastability? I don't think it's ever been mentioned in Halo fiction, but at least Mendicant Bias seems to behave as if it's reached this stage. A lot of the information on the progression seems to make sense from a logical standpoint, but it's a bit of a gray area since we don't know just how much of the rules of Marathon apply in the Halo setting. Going by information available from Halo sources alone, the "stages" section would have little more than the names of the three stages and some info on the sadness stage (as presented in CH, though it appears that the depression described in the novel is presented as the cause of rampancy, not yet rampancy itself). --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 02:08, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

Stages of Rampancy: What do we know?
We have finally show witnessed a fall into rampancy thanks to Halo 4. My conclusion is that it does not follow Marathon ' s stages.

Having played Marathon, I can tell you that its rampancy differs from Halo ' s at several points. First, rampancy appears to be induced, never natural, and is more a product of the AI's environment and handling than of the AI itself. There is no distinction between "Smart" and "Dumb" AIs; all AIs are programmed and appear to run indefinitely. Rampancy also appears to be very rare, and a focus of study for scientists. Much of the description of it is theoretical, not treated like Halo's as a fact of life for AIs. In Marathon, it was very clear what stages Durandal was in. The depression stage was him quietly presenting information with no comments from him, the anger stage was exhibited by him kidnapping you and forcing you through multiple dangerous tests, and the jealousy by growing very prideful and intellectual, often quoting important literature and poems.

Cortana shows none of this. She remains your ally during all of Halo 4. At the end of Shutdown and the beginning of Composer she shows resentment. At the end of Composer she shows distraction, gloating, and follows that with apology. Midway through Midnight she shows fears and overprotectiveness. But during all of the these she is clearly breaking down, with her avatar flickering, her voice distorting, and other glitches. This is very different from Durandal, who remained cool and collected in his rampancy. His rampancy is insanity acting on mistreatment. Cortana's is just glitching making her emotional.

There's a citation in the stages section from Halo: Evolutions, which claims it has evidence of the stages in Halo. I'm afraid I can't check it, as the copy of Evolutions I read was borrowed and returned three years ago, and my local library doesn't have the book. From what I recall, though, Human Weakness claimed that Cortana's outbursts there were from the Gravemind directly tapping into her system and forcing these responses from her. She herself remained sane, though struggling to do so, and John was thus sent visions of her that weren't what she was actually thinking. Hence why she seemingly recovered when John reclaimed her, since she had never been rampant, just traumatized.

Point being, it doesn't seem the stages are in Halo's rampancy, unless a more direct citation is there. Therefore, the stages should be removed. Tuckerscreator (stalk ) 18:35, 26 November 2012 (EST)


 * It obvious by now that rampancy in the Halo universe doesn't work the way it does in Marathon, but there is some evidence of the stages existing in some capacity. Aside the appearance in Human Weakness, Cortana mentions the stages in Halo 3 ("There will be no more sadness, no more anger, no more envy..."). They may not be precisely sequential and clearly do not work like they do in Marathon, but Cortana does exhibit emotions associated with them - sadness about her own condition and what will happen to John, anger in occasional bursts of her more rampant personality surfacing, particularly before crashing into Ivanoff Station, and envy, in a way, when she ponders the possibility of Halsey giving the Chief a new model of Cortana, who she knows still wouldn't be her. Still, this is all very vague and it's clear it doesn't mesh with the information on the page, which is mostly based on Marathons version of rampancy. --Jugus' (Talk  | Contribs ) 00:52, 27 November 2012 (EST)

I think the line in Halo 3 is more in vein of a shout out to Marathon than an actual point about canon. It wouldn't have been perhaps if Halo 4's rampancy did follow the stages, but it didn't, or at least very vaguely. Cortana didn't seem very envious during that scene, more tearful, actually, certain she wouldn't get cured, and envy is characterized by trying to take over greater systems. Perhaps Bungie intended for Cortana to follow the stages, but didn't get to show it. Who knows, but the stages don't occur. Tuckerscreator (stalk ) 01:13, 27 November 2012 (EST)