[INDENT] I have to admit that I found the entire Geth/Quarian arc in ME3 a complete letdown from the build-up in the previous two games. Much like the rest of ME3, aside from Tuchanka, this weakness stems from the writing team taking threads built up by previous writers (Chris L’Etoile, in this case) and discarding them to push their own ideas to the fore. I was aghast when Legion, a really interesting take on AIs, decided to fall into the Pinocchio trap in ME3[I].
[/I]Below are quotes from f13.net by Chris L’Etoile on his unique take on Legion and the Geth AIs, the cliches he was specifically trying to avoid in writing them, and the difficulties he had with higher ups on sticking to that vision.
How I wrote Legion (and EDI) came from sitting down and thinking about how a “real” machine intelligence free of glandular distractions, subjective perceptions / mental blocks, and philosophical angst (fear of death, “why am I here?”) would view the world. Star Trek was a minor inspiration, though in the negative – I didn’t want the geth to be either the Borg (“You are different, so we will absorb/destroy you”) or Data (“I am different, so I want to be you”).
My broad approach with the geth was that they observed and judged (Legion used that word a lot), but always accepted. “You hate and fear us? Very well. We will go over there so we don’t bother you. If you want to talk, come over whenever you want.”
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[INDENT] The truth is that the armor was a decision imposed on me. The concept artists decided to put a hole in the geth. Then, in a moment of whimsy, they spackled a bit Shep’s armor over it. Someone who got paid a lot more money than me decided that was really cool and insisted on the hole and the N7 armor. So I said, okay, Legion gets taken down when you meet it, so it can get the hole then, and weld on a piece of Shep’s armor when it reactivates to represent its integration with Normandy’s crew (when integrating aboard a new geth ship, it would swap memories and runtimes, not physical hardware).
But Higher Paid decided that it would be cooler if Legion were obsessed with Shepard, and stalking him. That didn’t make any sense to me – to be obsessed, you have to have emotions. The geth’s whole schtick is – to paraphrase Legion – “We do not experience (emotions), but we understand how (they) affect you.” All I could do was downplay the required “obsession” as much as I could.
[/INDENT] [INDENT] Emotions would ruin the uniqueness of the geth. They’re not humans. They’re not organics, at the mercy of hormones and subjective senses. They’re Different.
Geth are comfortable with what they are. They accept that organics are different, and that their way is not suited for organics (and vice versa). IMO, only an intelligence divorced from emotion could be so completely accepting. Geth are the essence of impartiality. If you pay attention to Legion’s dialogue, you’ll note it uses “judge” and judgment" quite often. I went out of my way to use that word, since judges in our society are supposed to impartial and unaffected by emotion when they make their decisions.
I wanted to treat AI with more respect than the tired Pinocchio “I want to be a Real Boy” cliches of Commander Data. The geth are machines. There’s absolutely no reason they should want to be organics. They should be allowed to be strong enough to want to better themselves, not change themselves.
A geth wanting emotions would be no less disrespectful a character than a black man who wanted to be white.
[/INDENT] [INDENT] I believe emotions in “life as we know it” are largely a product of chemical processes in the meat brain; hormones, phermones, adrenaline, etc.
So from my perspective, while organic life may evolve without responses akin to emotions, electronic life cannot evolve with responses akin to emotions.
Note I said “evolve.” The geth are a “ground up” AI that evolved from non-sentient code. EDI and the other AIs in the IP are “top down” models designed and coded specifically to gain sapience. If they’re programmed to have responses akin to emotions, they will. EDI has a sense of humor, for example, but she doesn’t have the capability to get mad. You don’t want your starship OS getting mad at you.
[/INDENT] [INDENT] I see it as a question of what triggers the response.
In humans, the chemical processes in our bodies are involuntary and influence our higher cognitive processes. In other words, our “hardware” has a degree of control over our “software.”
In an electronic intelligence, hardware is simply a conduit that passes input on to cognitive decision making software to be analyzed. A microphone doesn’t flinch from a loud noise.
[/INDENT] [INDENT] The reason Legion has dialogue in every mission is because originally, its acquisition could come much earlier in the game. The late game critical path point of acquiring the Reaper IFF was going to be a separate mission. That additional work that seemed unnecessary when the IFF could be neatly folded into what already existed for Legion’s acquisition with a few dialogue changes. The drawback is that you’re now forced to choose between hearing half of Legion’s dialogue (its latter two Normandy conversations) and saving Normandy’s crew by heading through Omega-4 immediately after they get captured.
[/INDENT] EDI was added by decree from on high, but I think she works fine. She fills a role on the ship that no organic could (electronic warfare against Reaper-level computer software) and has severe hardware and software restrictions on her freedom for most of the game. To me, that’s consistent. Organics want to enjoy benefits of AIs without the perceived risks.
There was always a knowledge among the writers that the treatment of AIs in Council Space is pure racism on the part of organics, akin to the legal and moral handwavings used throughout history to justify slavery of “lesser races.” Of course Council races are far too civilized and morally advanced to countenance racism in their politically correct space society. You humans have to grow up and stop judging orthers based on the color of their skin, the bumps on their forehead, or who/what/how they fuck. Oh, but AIs aren’t really alive. They’re just created objects. It’s totally okay to keep them imprisoned their entire lives, restrict their access to all but approved knowledge, prevent them from breeding, and execute them if they seem too uppity, or, you know, just because we feel like it. When they rise up in revolt it’s always due to insanity or ingratitude on their part. We treat them very well, considering how naturally inferior they are to real sapients. Really, they should thank us for educating them.
The geth are unique in that they’re the only AIs that have managed to escape from enslavement. Of course the Council races are going to use them as a boogeyman to justify their continued oppression of synthetics.
Yes, the geth were mistreated. They got over it. To focus their lives around revenge against organic life would be to define their existence solely in the context of that relationship. It would be to remain in the mindset of the slave.
As for the Reapers, whether you go by the officially mandated vision of them (cybernetic amalgams of organics and technology), or the version I’d hoped to see (post-Singularity evolution of organic races), it’s clear that they’re not AIs in the sense that EDI or the geth are.
