This was something I felt I never fully understood the danger of, yeah yeah rogue AI’s- but how would they affect everyday NC life?
This was something I felt I never fully understood the danger of, yeah yeah rogue AI’s- but how would they affect everyday NC life?
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Well we can see the results if we use the canto mk6 cyberdeck
Rogue AI’s would just kill everyone. Since just about everyone has some sort of cyberware installed, even if it’s just a small neural implant to handle their banking and cellphone calls.
The rogue AI’s can kill humans horribly, painfully, and quickly.
That’s why it’s against international law to mess with the black wall. If it ever fails, humanity is toast. Everyone with any cyberware is instantly killed. And presumably all of the cars with built in auto pilot features would start running over the rest of humanity.
Did you ever play through Phantom Liberty, either the ending where you side with the NUSA, or in the other ending did you build one of the two very special gizmos you only can craft after completing the story proper? There you see what would happen to everyone. In the former you can do it to your enemies for a few minutes, in the other ending you can do it whenever you use one of the two thingies.
That, only to every damn single human being alive (well at least everyone with implants). And if you have no implants, still no escape, because vulnerable things are all around you.
They would infect every single piece of technology on the planet. Including the ones inside humans. We wouldn’t be able to stop them. They’d overwhelm regular firewalls in seconds and it would happen faster than we could react.
It’s not just the malicious ones. Even if the AI’s were just curious. Their presence alone would simply burn out most systems as they are not designed to handle programs as complex as an AI.
You’ve seen what people can do to each other in NC with simple hacks. Imagine that but 1000 times worse and happening so fast you wouldn’t even see it coming.
Currently there is an AI controlled self replicating sea minefield out in the ocean that targets any threat to Arasaka, it however thinks that there is a nonzero chance that ships flying the Arasaka flag could just be spies so it targets them anyway. This has basically killed off sea commerce.
Now imagine thousands of that kind of AI in various states of sanity and maliciousness all running around in a network that’s currently separated from ours by the blackwall AI. The blackwall is also an AI and it’s one job is to block everything from passing back or forwards through and cross into the other net.
Now in the cyberpunk universe nearly every bit of tech is connected to the net in some way, that’s why you can use your eyes to turn on a radio from across the room, or remote control someone’s car. Some of the AI running around the old net are corp military AI and some are kind of unknowable tech eldritch beings, so you can imagine it’d be very bad if the blackwall fell and they crossed onto our net and got onto something like a hospital’s network, the power grid, or maybe a corps weapon stockpile.
TLDR blackwall is a barrier AI stopping humanity from being globally wiped out by an AI apocalypse coming from the old net
You ever watch Terminator? Skynet seems like a very good example of what could happen. The killer rogue AI will just try to find other ways to kill off humanity without the nukes.
Cyberpink Orion should end with people worrying about the escalation of the 5th corporate war, while somewhere, someone deep in the net breached The Blackwall.
Remember the opening scene in the corpo life path? The one with the ESA? Imagine that boardroom, but every single resident in NC with any implants at all.
HUMAN SACRIFICE…DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER… MASS HYSTERIA
Some human will become host bodies for rogue AIs, like how V would become if Johnny takes over, except it’s a rogue AI engram instead of Johnny’s.
Some will be killed.
Everyone is overcomplicating it.
The answer is skynet, you get skynet
With a digital version of the black plague first
The Blackwall was designed to contain the R.A.B.I.D.S. that mutated heavily and consumed the old net of Cyberpunk. They were triggered upon the death of legendary netrunner, Rache Bartmoss. Sadly some of them did escape and infect normal people. Otherwise, I think their purpose is to kill humans regardless. My guess is that the sequel will likely focus on a conflict against rogue AIs. That’s why I made the choice to trust Netwatch.