What would you do with Yes Man's programmer?

[Rossum]

Okay, Yes Man was programmed (or reprogrammed) by Emily Ortal who at one point approaches the Courier for help with bugging Houses network. Since Yes Man can effectively be put in charge of all the Securitrons in Vegas then it would make sense for the Courier to get her help with controlling him.

 

 

So, lets say you've got the Platinum Chip, you just eliminated both House and Benny, you haven't installed Yes Man into Houses mainframe yet, and you've got Emily Ortal nearby and can ask her for help on anything before you accidentally create the next Skynet. What do you do?

 

 

Me? I think I'd let her know what Benny's plan was and offer to let her examine all of Houses technology in exchange for a way to control the network without a buggy AI in it. Really, Yes Man is hilarious but you know he wasn't designed for conquering the Mojave. Then I'd try negotiating with her a way for me to take control of the Strip and send some of the profits from it to the Followers and perhaps the NCR.

 

House spent a truly absurd amount of money hiring teams to look for the Platinum Chip. Even without really changing anything about how the Strip works I could divert that funding to the Followers and hopefully keeping the NCR happy enough to not bother me.

[gsmanners]

This may sound crazy, but I think I'd use Yes Man as a bargaining chip with the BoS. They would obviously want all that tech as an ally rather than an enemy. The BoS has a lot of tech I could use. It's a win-win situation, the way I see it. The trick would be doing that under the nose of the NCR without getting in trouble over it.

[drakeelvin]

This may sound crazy, but I think I'd use Yes Man as a bargaining chip with the BoS. They would obviously want all that tech as an ally rather than an enemy. The BoS has a lot of tech I could use. It's a win-win situation, the way I see it. The trick would be doing that under the nose of the NCR without getting in trouble over it.

 

In retrospect, early on if you ask Mr House why he thinks Benny betrayed him, House replies something to the effect, "He [benny] MISTAKENLY believed he could use the platinum chip to his advantage," then House goes on to say something to the effect of how Tribals do not understand how inherently complex technology can be.

 

And while I can only speculate, I would say that House had some kind of failsafe built in, activated in the event of his death, to prevent any other person from taking over, with at least part of that failsafe being the "assertive personality file" that Yes Man found. In all likelihood the "assertive personality software" was a program than ultimately counter-hacked Yes Man once he had taken over the network, thus putting an artificial intelligence in charge of all House's network and disabling Yes Man's ability to accept input/commands from any other source.

 

Or maybe Emily put that in herself, a true AI for Yes Man that schemed to take over from House and just uses Benny and the Courier to get control. After all, the Followers want to get rid of House, and some have access to Enclave tech ... we don't really know much of Emily's background, do we?

 

Of course, its all just conspiracy theories ;)

Edited March 23, 2011 by drakeelvin

[gsmanners]

I think the idea of Emily giving Yes Man a sophisticated AI is giving her a little too much credit. As for failsafes, that's laughable. House doesn't even have the most basic of defenses other than his robots guarding his body, and it's just common sense that you lock down that area, surrounding the exits to your inner sanctum with independently activated deadly force. I deduce, therefore, that House is an idiot who stole all "his" tech from others (standard MO for a rich guy) then put all his eggs in one basket. That said, the software would be the least interesting part of his tech. I think I'd be more interested in the kind of hardware he uses (that can, for example, keep a guy zombified for centuries).

[drakeelvin]

I agree, House is really dumb he ranks up there with General Oliver. That said, SOMEBODY put the assertive personality software in House's computer system. Maybe it was one of those paranoid employees at H&H Tools? :P

[Rossum]

I first figured that Yes Man was just a hacked version of a pre-existing securitron AI, like Victor or the police/soldiers. Emily basically copied that AI, removed all the combat code and redesigned him to decrypt data transmissions, answer questions, and basically do as he's told. The result is a simplified AI who just can't say no. The fact that every other securitron shows a picture of a full head on its screen while Yes Man is a disembodied smiley face kind of implies that he's different than the other AIs.

 

Anyway, when you install Yes Man on the mainframe then he searched through all the files and might have found code for the other AIs along with the Mark II OS and stuff like that. His "make me more assertive" code could just as well be him replacing all the combat coding that Emily removed from him or he runs something like an error checking program or makes himself Mark II OS compatable or whatnot. Yes Man could consider himself to be a damaged AI and just ran some kind of utility program to fix himself, and the act of fixing himself means that he doesn't have to listen the Courier. Normal AIs like the police or Victor were ultimately loyal to House (think of House as having administrator privileges over them), Emily probably removed that security protocol so Yes Man had to treat everyone as his 'administrator' no matter what. Yes Man uses a program to fix himself and suddenly he has security features... namely that he doesn't have to listen to anyone except Mr. House... and Mr. House is dead... so Yes Man can do whatever the heck he wants.

 

 

Or it could be some bit of code like whatever turned President Eden self-aware. Eden was just a big computer until he randomly became self-aware, perhaps Yes Mans program started mutating or whatever as a result of being installed on a mainframe instead of a securitron and just has to reboot himself to turn into a self-motivated freak of science.