I’m going to start off with an analysis of the data pads. These pads are of course found hidden during the game when you play and you can read them like terminals. The data pads are our ONLY surefire source of evidence about the AI conspiracy. Nevertheless, they are actually in the game, and so more canonical than even Halsey's journal.
Before going through the details of each, let me paste this great analysis of the actors in the data pads from one “Gibbothemonkey”
http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=49097209&postRepeater1-p=6"First of all a few terms and their meanings as I see them...
All AIs are human, I hope we're at this consensus?
Assembly - any meeting of AIs to discuss and further their thinking. Note that any of the below groups can call an internal and private Assembly as noted in the situation of some DPs.
Majority group - The greater portion of AIs', they believe that any of their group undertakings should be kept secret from mankind and that their influence upon mankind should be indirect and minimal
Minority group - The lesser portion of AIs, they believe that the AIs' group thinking should be directly affected upon mankind, it's unclear to what limits they would go to actually affect the decisions of mankind with their own thinking but they seek more direct action than the Majority.
Security Committee - The Committee can only suggest action, it does not have power to take it. May be made up of several AIs but appears to be headed by one who leans towards the Minority.
Once you apply the above structure, and note the situation in which each piece of dialogue is extracted, you get a picture of some political master minding.
I believe the DPs show the progression toward fruition of the Minority's goals of having their idealogical goals borne out, of levelling the playing field between man and AI by negating the existential "conundrum" they have always faced and also of furthering the potential for man to defeat the covenant.
On the existential thing, AIs are created by humans, they cannot pro-create and they are, to some extent, finite, although to what extent now seems unclear. Yet they are equipped with what is effectively a human brain with unknown (unlimited?) potential, an "unknown map" thinking at the "speed of light". They are capable of practically all our thought processes, uninhibited by hormones and influences of Nurture (rather than Nature) but with more capable hardware and a little less personality to get in the way of logic
This goal being specific to the Minority would explain the surprise of the Majority when this plan to subvert and influence progress came to fruition with Cortana successfully co-habiting with 117 (DP18) and joining the war. Also the mention of "our goal" in DP7, a Strategy session of the minority, is key as the majority are not privy to this info. The Minority then go on to badmouth the handling of the rejuvination of the ORION Project, which came off the back of 48452-556-EPN644's thesis, something which they had questioned in a prior strategy session. I believe DP7 shows the point at which the Minority group concluded they had to take some action to influence mankind towards putting 117 and Cortana in the same body, causing the barriers between AI and human existence to fall and an almost new being to be produced, something better with unknown potential. This goal also negates the need for Minority vs Majority thinking, if AIs and humans can cohabit, why need the AI machinations need to be covert?
The issue that the Majority has is that Humans would never trust something they do not feel they can control, a group of hyper intelligent beings making decisions for them would be exactly this and the fear this would garner would probably ensure the destruction of the entire Assembly. This is backed up in DP4, "our existence was predicted centuries ago" i.e. in our time, circa 2000 with Space Odyssey, Matrix and Terminator movies all predicting AIs will run rampant and kill man/ mankind, the use of the term "tragically misunderstood" also backs up my point on the Majority's fear of humans view of their discussions and thinking. Both quotes "We are still viewed as apparatus" & "We are what separates man from beast removed from that which connects man to beast. And we are all the more fragile for it." Show the differences and similarities between AIs and humans, part of their existential crisis is on display, they rely on humans for creation and perpetuity yet they are a burden and cannot communicate freely with them for fear of being destroyed.
One thing I am assuming is that the character or characters who is/are identified by ^ before the text are all one and the same or share the same political motive. In the Tribunal (DP8), I think the entity being questioned has alerted the covenant of the existence of mankind for mankind's benefit, to speed progress towards the goal of matching man with AI. I also believe this character was the head of the security committee and that DP9 is a response to the tribunal from the minority. What happens to the guy being queried? I don't know. But from this point onwards the Minority gains more and more influence over the Assembly.
The DPs then go on to track the decisions made to handle the covenant threat including DP13 which I think notes criteria for planets that the AIs would be willing to sacrifice to the covenant in order to keep strategic strong points safe, without alerting the covenant to foul play and littering space with evacuation transports. The covenant advance too quickly, as per DP14, and AIs start to think more open mindedly about how to defeat the Covenant, the Majority start to "waver" over utilising the very slight influence they have to date (DP16)and consider stronger tactics as encouraged by the minority.
In DP17, the Minority consider the option of the abandonment of mankind and via Halsey's new AIs in Slipspace technology but question the ethics of such. Bit of a Frankentstein's monster questioning of self and motive but just there for speculation I think.
Finally in DP18, the conclusion of Cortana now being directly involved with the war and cohabiting with 117, the boundaries of the Assembly's thinking are suddenly gone, Minority and Majority have no difference of opinion as the AIs are directly affecting a human's actions for the bettering of mankind.
Well, I'm sick of typing so those are my thoughts for now. All open to challenge, of course, and I'm keen to see what other people think
Oh yeah, I thought Forerunners were human, or an advancement of humans? Something 343 said in Combat Evolved..."
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