If we’re playing the descriptor-acronym game, how about NII, for Naturally/Natively Infomorphic Intelligence?
I don’t really mind, I just dislike ‘AI’. It’s either a very smart program, or a self-aware entity. Defining an intelligence as ‘artificial’ based on the host of the awareness seems somehow lacking to me. It’s either an intelligence or it isn’t, by that measure capsuleers are ‘artificial’ since we reside in manufactured bodies.
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Fixed that for ya. 
I believe the measure of “artificial” is whether an intelligence was created, or evolved. Rogue Drones are artificial, for example, if their intelligence was intentionally created as we suspect, but we Capsuleers are natural because our species developed intelligence without outside help (as far as we know).
So, if the Drifter Minds are natively infomorphs, and evolved naturally to awareness from the interaction of simpler programs, they aren’t AI at all, are they?
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Pretty much, though I enjoy spending as much time as possible in my manufactured bodies. It keeps me more ‘human’.
I suspect they evolved from the structures supporting the Sleeper VR existence. Whether this was by interaction with the Sleepers themselvers, or by simple passage of time is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant.
Perhaps the Drifters are protecting the remaining Sleeper VR from the Triglavians. This would be the perfect time to wipe out their Ancient Enemy.
Don’t really see much Drifter-Sleeper co-operation. Arithmos Tyrannos maybe, but otherwise nothing. The Drifters themselves appear to be resource farming. Scanning structures, in the Abyss, and K-space, Jovian Observatories especially. They show an interest in corpses and that is about it. The Drifter wormholes have some interesting structures but the Nexus complexes may be more about manufacturing. It was Hilen Tukoss that reported massed Drifter fleets at first, presaging the Drifter Deathball fleets which led us to the Triglavians. Since then the largest concentrations of Drifters appeared in Semiki and ARC, others fought them off. We still don’t know where these fleets come from. The Drifters in the Abyss don’t appear to be fighting the Triglavians; a lot of the ships are damaged, but nobody has witnessed any conflicts.
We’re not natural any more than the grey carbon-fiber of my right arm is natural. We are meat-machines, built from the ground up (out of the ‘ground-up’!) in both body and mind. They take a natural precursor—the original Aiden Vayle’s mind, or a bunch of re-processed biomass, depending on which bit of us you mean—and then they subject it to a whole mess of industrial processing. What comes out the other side is as ‘natural’ as gasoline processed from million-year-old pressurized compost.
Have you forgotten about all the holovids recovered from the Corrupted Trinary Data Vaults that showed battles between the Drifters and Triglavians?
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This I agree with, though I think we are still our minds as such. I’ve yet to hear of an Intaki Reborn of an active capsuleer, which should be the case if we genuinely ‘kill’ ourselves when we become pod fodder.
I think they’re more pointing out the fact that there are abyssal rooms with a mix of both Drifters and Triglavian rats that never attack one another is all. That could just be due to when Abyssals were released the destroyers/battlecruisers weren’t quite added in yet so maybe Drifter rats were implemented as a placeholder. who knows.
All of the intercepted Triglavian datastreams regarding the so-called “Ancient Enemy Azdaja”, a term referring to the Drifters, indicate direct conflict between the Triglavians and the Drifters.
Yes, but it doesn’t look like an active military campaign.
AEA1 :
Cladeships of the 3 tactical troika classification in communion militant of Varpulis Subclade of Perun Clade encountered the Ancient Enemy Azdaja at reverse-time co-ordinates (indecipherable) while processing in sub-18 exclave of conduit loop construct-405. Absolute imperative of poshlost extirpation against Azdaja was invoked without acceptable material realization. Tactical troika of Varpulis Subclade placed a casting of absorbed data into the cladeflow for reflection of Convocation of Triglav Outside the Struggle.
AEA2 :
Convocation of Triglav Outside the Struggle has affirmed the need for playful communion of repeated-time by the Clades Assembled and Subclades Militant and Technical. The entosis of the Ancient Enemy Azdaja into the loop constructs must be sever-reversed by the volition and merge-consent of Convocation of Triglav Outside the Struggle. The adaptation schema of cladeships for all tactical troika classifications may be entered into the cladeflow without proving.
AEA3 :
Report of the Paramount Strategic Troika of the Leshak Subclade of Veles Clade has reaffirmed the dispersal of reverse-time reclaimed adaptation schema of 729 tactical troika classification vessels into the cladeflow after proving in anti-cladistic mortification with the Ancient Enemy Azdaja. Repeated-time casting and winnowing of invocations of imperative of poshlost extirpation against Azdaja reveals a (indecipherable) acceptable material realization.
AEA4 :
Prayer of the Detached Executive Troika for Sublimation of Poshlost Flow has evoked procession from Convocation of Triglav Outside the Struggle that requires winnowing of all discourses operating as elements in relation to the Ancient Enemy Azdaja through semiosis.Detached Executive Troika is granted mandate in sobornost to invoke countervailing imperatives without reverse-time proving. Convocation affirms imperative on Detached Executive Troika to maintain playful communion over repeated-time with Clades Assembled and Subclades Militant and Technical.
AEA5 :
Detached Executive Troika for Sublimation of Poshlost Flow dialectical semiosis flow (indecipherable) follows:Ancient Enemy Azdaja «present manifestation encountered as Vigilant Tyrannos» reverse-time discourse-element (indecipherable) «archive pattern analysis indicates successor entity of Jove Empire of the Chamber of Tyrants» (indecipherable) evocation of poshlost undoubted and imperative for extirpation without proving.
Now-time discourse-element (indecipherable) «recovered materials indicates presence» (indecipherable) unshackled in forbidden dominance arrangement «counter to ideological patterns recovered pertaining to Jove Empire of the Chamber of Tyrants !query++encode|Jovian expansionist polity iter.2.?.?|recode++process! indicating anomaly in ideological development» (indecipherable) pass through advancing-time new discourse-element configuration.
Advancing-time discourse-element (indecipherable) «reinforce request for countervailing measures to be undertaken» (indecipherable) «continue with surveillance and proceed to next stage within predicted time horizon for effective action» (indecipherable) submit to cladeflow.
All those intercepted messages indicate quite clearly an active ongoing campaign against the Drifters involving all of the Triglavian clades as a whole.
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As Sibylla has clarified: you may not be able to see the conflict, but we know it’s there.
It’s all small scale stuff. That might well change, and that seems to be how its heading.
You seem to have forgotten about the large, heavily damaged and incapacitated Drifter fleets that have appeared throughout New Eden (from which the Corrupted Trinary Data Vaults were recovered) just a year ago. It is therefore crystal clear that the conflict is not small in scale at all.
Perhaps you should rewatch the relevant Scope news holovid that discusses everything that happened in the events leading up to the revelation of the Triglavian Collective.
Those were also small-scale stuff. The Drifter armada we saw in the footage from Tukoss was many times larger than those forces, combined.
That armada was concentrated in a single location. If you took all the large, heavily damaged Drifter fleets that have appeared throughout New Eden in YC 120 you would also be able to form a massive Drifter armada.
For reference, this is what one of the heavily damaged Drifter fleets looked like:
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Notice that last word?
I’ve seen the ‘death ball’ formations (and the 49 in the image you embedded isn’t the entirety of one of them). No, ‘all’ the ‘large’, heavily-damaged Drifter fleets (which were ~100 ships each), combined, would not equal the thousands (plural) of ships visible in that footage.