Sword Art Online - Anime Spoilers & Speculation (for SAO Novel Readers only)

[styr]

Yui was a program designed to help with player's emotions or something in times of turmoil or crisis, but when SAO started she was strictly forbidden from interacting with players. The Morning Dew Girl side story explains it all in detail. While you could technically classify her as a non-player character when Kirito and Asuna first meet her, she is not a regular NPC and is one of the programs helping the Cardinal system. It would be more appropriate to call her a highly intelligent quasi-sentient program. Later on she basically attains full sentience once Kirito builds the machine or whatever that brings her into the real world. At that point she ceased to be artificial and became something closer to Data or those medical holodrams from Star Trek.

Spoiler for Morning Dew Girl Ch 1:

NPCs under the control of the system have their positions fixed within certain ranges of coordinates and, thus, cannot be moved according to players' desires. If they were to try touching or holding them, the harassment report window would be triggered within seconds, giving them a painful shock and blowing them away.

Spoiler for Morning Dew Girl MAJOR spoilers:

"...When the developers of Cardinal entrusted even the care of players to the system, they ran a trial of a certain program. Using a feature unique to the Nerve Gear, it monitored the emotions of players in detail, and appeared at the side of players found to have problems to hear them out... «Mental Health - Counselling Program», MHCP version 1, codename, «Yui». That would be me."

"Although I am unaware of the complete details of what exactly happened as well, Cardinal handed down an unplanned order to me. A complete prohibition from interfering with all players... Unpermitted to come into any tangible contact with them, I reluctantly continued with nothing but the monitoring of the condition of the players' mental health."

"That situation— was simply the worst... Practically all of the players were taken over by negative emotions such as fear, despair and rage most of the time; at times, there were even some that fell into madness. I continued looking into the hearts of those people. Originally, I would not have been able to stop myself from going straight up to those players, listening to their stories and settling their problems... but there was no means of coming into contact with them from my position... With that contradiction of having the sense of duty, yet the lack of authority to do so, I was gradually flooded with errors, and broke down..."

Not to mention that she learns from her experiences and develops over time, gaining personality, desires, dreams, and other very human emotions. She even gets confessed to in-game (ALO) and goes to look for the guy IRL and finds out it was an old guy who had just died, his daughter talks about him with Yui for a while (apparently Yui reminded the old guy of his late wife when she was young) and she is brought to tears while thinking to herself that this sense of loss is what it truly means "to love".

Last paragraph happened in ME3 Ceramic Heart, although I am not positive if it is truly canon or not. Regardless, it is hardly NPC behavior.

The last page of ME3 Yui also says several verbose phrases one after another that reminded me of Kuroneko from OreImo who also says grandiose things like that in a way very similar:

Lost possibilities; A branch universe beyond reach; Along with obtaining something, losing that something is naturally inevitable; the very moment we meet someone was the time we started towards our farewells. Sure it was a sad but I got a good laugh out of it since I could totally hear Kuroneko/Kana Hanazawa saying it

[NoirX]

Originally Posted by styr

Yui was a program designed to help with player's emotions or something in times of turmoil or crisis, but when SAO started she was strictly forbidden from interacting with players. The Morning Dew Girl side story explains it all in detail. While you could technically classify her as a non-player character when Kirito and Asuna first meet her, she is not a regular NPC and is one of the programs helping the Cardinal system. It would be more appropriate to call her a highly intelligent quasi-sentient program. Later on she basically attains full sentience once Kirito builds the machine or whatever that brings her into the real world. At that point she ceased to be artificial and became something closer to Data or those medical holodrams from Star Trek.

Spoiler for Morning Dew Girl Ch 1:

NPCs under the control of the system have their positions fixed within certain ranges of coordinates and, thus, cannot be moved according to players' desires. If they were to try touching or holding them, the harassment report window would be triggered within seconds, giving them a painful shock and blowing them away.

Spoiler for Morning Dew Girl MAJOR spoilers:

"...When the developers of Cardinal entrusted even the care of players to the system, they ran a trial of a certain program. Using a feature unique to the Nerve Gear, it monitored the emotions of players in detail, and appeared at the side of players found to have problems to hear them out... «Mental Health - Counselling Program», MHCP version 1, codename, «Yui». That would be me."

"Although I am unaware of the complete details of what exactly happened as well, Cardinal handed down an unplanned order to me. A complete prohibition from interfering with all players... Unpermitted to come into any tangible contact with them, I reluctantly continued with nothing but the monitoring of the condition of the players' mental health."

"That situation— was simply the worst... Practically all of the players were taken over by negative emotions such as fear, despair and rage most of the time; at times, there were even some that fell into madness. I continued looking into the hearts of those people. Originally, I would not have been able to stop myself from going straight up to those players, listening to their stories and settling their problems... but there was no means of coming into contact with them from my position... With that contradiction of having the sense of duty, yet the lack of authority to do so, I was gradually flooded with errors, and broke down..."

Yui regains her for speech capabilities after she recovers from her memory lost after defecting from Cardinal. Also a program that has a self-judgement capabilities already considered "AI", not a "program" which Yui already has since the beginning

[styr]

Originally Posted by NoirX

Yui regains her for speech capabilities after she recovers from her memory lost after defecting from Cardinal. Also a program that has a self-judgement capabilities already considered "AI", not a "program" which Yui already has since the beginning

And then you realize that the same VR system that gave birth to SAO could be used exactly like the way machines use it in The Matrix to enslave humanity...

*shudder*

[sky black swordman]

On Yui this is from another thread:

Originally Posted by Flere821

Spoiler for Asuna & Yui:

To be fair, she had help getting assistance from the one who made Medicuboid and convincing her to help rescue Kirito, and have Yui (her daughter AI) hack her disguised photo into a university records.

That reminds me, Yui calls herself the old kind of AI that gives response depending on stimulus, rather than the Alicization AIs who can learn and adapt and basically a artificial human brain, but there are signs she's beginning to progress into the latter.

[NoirX]

Originally Posted by sky black swordman

On Yui this is from another thread:

Still makes Yui an AI nonetheless instead of NPC

[XaXa]

sry was stuck in a business meeting... geez...


You call her "not a regular NPC" that means she is a NPC... just not a regular one.
Like Pinoccio he was a puppet... just not a regular one.

There is just not such a thing like "AI Player". You can be a Player or a NPC. Thats about it...
I am saying that she is an AI - but AI has to be - and ever will be a NPC

Just like in the "Three Laws of Robotics". The robots learnd (like Yui) and begann to act not like they should (like Yui) and then they had a free will (like Yui). After all they learnd and decided on their own - are they no robots now?

[NoirX]

Originally Posted by XaXa

sry was stuck in a business meeting... geez...


You call her "not a regular NPC" that means she is a NPC... just not a regular one.
Like Pinoccio he was a puppet... just not a regular one.

There is just not such a thing like "AI Player". You can be a Player or a NPC. Thats about it...
I am saying that she is an AI - but AI has to be - and ever will be a NPC

Just like in the "Three Laws of Robotics". The robots learnd (like Yui) and begann to act not like they should (like Yui) and then they had a free will (like Yui). After all they learnd and decided on their own - are they no robots now?

Stop using Pinnochio as example, that's just a fairytale. Take a more realistic example....i'll give you this as example:

You know DOTA? Of course you do(most people if not all know it). In DOTA, there are enemies settings for the opposition force(if you're playing solo or just have a free spot you can add those called "Computers") that is an AI. On the other hand, the item seller, recipe seller, and such are NPCs. The AIs can attack or use skill on its own call. While Item seller and such can't do that. They only do the scripted thing on their program such as: they can't attack or use skill. AIs have a free will to decide their course of action which doesn't exist in NPCs

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by XaXa

You call her "not a regular NPC" that means she is a NPC... just not a regular one.
Like Pinoccio he was a puppet... just not a regular one.

There is just not such a thing like "AI Player". You can be a Player or a NPC. Thats about it...
I am saying that she is an AI - but AI has to be - and ever will be a NPC

Just like in the "Three Laws of Robotics". The robots learnd (like Yui) and begann to act not like they should (like Yui) and then they had a free will (like Yui). After all they learnd and decided on their own - are they no robots now?

Dude, NPC is a term used to identify certain type of interactive objects IN A GAME, it is NOT applicable to ANYTHING outside of a game.

Do you call Siri (iphone) a NPC? do you call automated phone systems NPCs? do you call the Roomba vacuums NPCs? You have a serious misunderstanding/application of the term NPC here.

[XaXa]

DOTA "Computer" enemys are NPC's... Non-Player Characters. Thats exactly my point. If they are enemy's or even monster doesn't change the fact that those are NPC. We call them "Mobs" or whatever but they are all just NPC's.

btw. the dota ai doesn't learn at all... so it is nothing like Yui. I thought your point is "she is beyond anything... the script... the rules - thats why she is no NPC"

But your point is NPC are stupid and have no AI... which they have... a really simple one - but they have.

Originally Posted by kyp275

Dude, NPC is a term used to identify certain type of interactive objects IN A GAME, it is NOT applicable to ANYTHING outside of a game.

Do you call Siri (iphone) a NPC? do you call automated phone systems NPCs? do you call the Roomba vacuums NPCs? You have a serious misunderstanding/application of the term NPC here.

There is a Character named Yui-MHCP001 IN THE GAME. So she is part of the game.

edit: Awww I see your point AI != NPC... of course. But an AI who plays a game = NPC.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by XaXa

There is a Character named Yui-MHCP001 IN THE GAME. So she is part of the game.

/facepalm

You realize that outside of that one short story(where she's more of a part of the Cardinal System than anything else), her entire existence in the SAO universe is that of a stand-alone AI on Kirito's computer?

Originally Posted by XaXa

But an AI who plays a game = NPC.

That entirely predicates on how much "humanity" you assign to AIs like Yui. Same thing goes for the inhabitants of Underworld in Alicization. While they're certainly AIs, they could hardly be considered NPCs.

[styr]

Originally Posted by XaXa

You call her "not a regular NPC" that means she is a NPC... just not a regular one.
Like Pinoccio he was a puppet... just not a regular one.

There is just not such a thing like "AI Player". You can be a Player or a NPC. Thats about it...
I am saying that she is an AI - but AI has to be - and ever will be a NPC

Just like in the "Three Laws of Robotics". The robots learnd (like Yui) and begann to act not like they should (like Yui) and then they had a free will (like Yui). After all they learnd and decided on their own - are they no robots now?

NPCs are controlled by the server and follow set parameters. Once Yui broke the constraints placed upon her by Cardinal she was no longer an NPC, but something more. Why does an AI always have to be an NPC? What defines a player, anyways? After the SAO arc she is clearly in complete control of herself and is not acting in accordance to rules set by the server any more than other players are. If an AI was sufficiently advanced like Yui is, you would not be able to tell her apart from other players. That fact is canon and indisputable.

You stick to absolutes like "Player" and "NPC" but both of those terms are only truly applicable in today's settings, and not so much in the SAO-verse. AI players are impossible now in 2012 but in the future it may very well happen, which is one of the things SAO touches upon. How far would an independent AI need to go before you would acknowledge their existence as a player?

You keep bringing up Pinocchio, but I don't think you truly understand the message behind that story. Pinocchio is a story about lies, exaggeration and fabricating stories. Pinocchio never truly broke free of the chains holding him down, as the technology was never there to begin with. He was set up from the beginning to fail, to prove an aesop. Unlike Pinocchio, Yui has transcended her original programming and became something new - an AI player, moving on her own whims, inclination, impulses, etc.

[NoirX]

@XaXa you really have a serious kind of misunderstanding....

AIs have the ability to Make judgement on their own while NPCs only limited to Actions given by the creator. AIs have a Learning Capability while NPCs only Stick to their script

[XaXa]

NPC follow their script... if the script allows the NPC to learn - he follows the script. Thats all she did. She learnd from other players - thats why she acts like one.

I used Pinocchio to point out that it doesn't matter how much the puppet acted like a human - he still was a puppet. He had emotions and a free will, but still he was not a human. Thats why an AI never can be a "player". You need to be a human to be a Player.

If the fairytale is not all right you can use the "Three Laws of Robotics". Did the robots at any point stop being a robot?

Originally Posted by NoirX

@XaXa you really have a serious kind of misunderstanding....

AIs have the ability to Make judgement on their own while NPCs only limited to Actions given by the creator. AIs have a Learning Capability while NPCs only Stick to their script

You used the DOTA "Computers" as an example. And they don't learn. They act like scripted - they just have more "options".

[NoirX]

@XaXa They have judgement capabilities which makes them an AI. An AI who doesn't have judgement capabilities are NPC. Thats their differences

[n120cky]

Well hope this help, in my opinion

NPC = Non Playable Character
That's mean as long as no player(human/user) play it then it is NPC apart being it has AI(Learning AI or not) or not

PC = Playable Character
That's mean a character that player can control directly as his/her wish, obeying the game rule.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by XaXa

I used Pinocchio to point out that it doesn't matter how much the puppet acted like a human - he still was a puppet. He had emotions and a free will, but still he was not a human.

That's the important part. It doesn't matter that one is not human if they have emotions and free will, at that point they've become sentient, human or not.

Originally Posted by XaXa

Thats why an AI never can be a "player". You need to be a human to be a Player.

you're just arguing semantics at this point.

Originally Posted by XaXa

If the fairytale is not all right you can use the "Three Laws of Robotics". Did the robots at any point stop being a robot?

As much as I like Asimov, I don't recall him getting any divine ordination to be the end all-be all authority on what qualifies as sentient life.

[XaXa]

Well their judgment is...
If unit1 in sight use skill 2 or 4 or 6 then...
if HP below 30 go to 23.56 ...
___

iGod (iGod | Artificial Intelligence Chat with God)
Is he more than a chat bot? you know chat bots... like in the irc if anybody says "hi" the bot answer "hi". Just a tiny script... looking if anybody writes hi - if so he replays with "hi".

iGod is a bot that can learn. So he will copy the humans who talk to him. Now when you chat with him it's like you would write with a normal human beeing. (Most of the time... he is not perfect) Does that makes him more than a bot?

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by n120cky

Well hope this help, in my opinion

NPC = Non Playable Character
That's mean as long as no player(human/user) play it then it is NPC apart being it has AI(Learning AI or not) or not

PC = Playable Character
That's mean a character that player can control directly as his/her wish, obeying the game rule.

Everyone here knows the standard definition of PC/NPC, the debate here is whether Yui is an NPC, which she by her very nature cannot be, as she transcends the simple boundaries of a videogame, and exists as a stand-alone AI on Kirito's computer.

Originally Posted by XaXa

iGod is a bot that can learn. So he will copy the humans who talk to him. Now when you chat with him it's like you would write with a normal human beeing. (Most of the time... he is not perfect) Does that makes him more than a bot?

If iGod amasses enough knowledge and experience to achieve self-awareness, then yes, it would be more than a bot.

[XaXa]

So you would give him the same rights like a human? If somebody destroys him - the accusation would be murder?

[n120cky]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Everyone here knows the standard definition of PC/NPC, the debate here is whether Yui is an NPC, which she by her very nature cannot be, as she transcends the simple boundaries of a videogame, and exists as a stand-alone AI on Kirito's computer.

Well if we back to the definition of PC/NPC int my opinion Yui is NPC, because no real human play as her character, If you say that her nature is different . . . well you could say that she is a special type of NPC (which is can be created by accident) with special AI that make her more humanize, or another extreme way of thinking is think her as a 'being' that lurk whitin digital world (you can analog it to ISO in tron).