Monday, January 9, 2023

CTN 0452-9

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The previous year had a lot of coverage on artificial intelligence, including news of an AI win at the Colorado State Fair digital arts competition and the advent of ChatGPT.

I personally see a lot of potential in these developments, but in mainstream news media (particularly the large outlets) you will see headlines using words such as "cheating", "furious", "sinister", "panic", and the like.

In fiction however, there are many different portrayals of AI. There is the pervasive technophobic/dystopian view found in film (Frankenstein, The Terminator, I, Robot, The Matrix, etc.), which is little different from the sentiment found in mass media.

Then, there are more diverse portrayals, which include AI as willing servitors (e.g., in I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, droids from Star Wars, Joi from Blade Runner 2049), or as indulgent nursemaids to humanity (e.g., Minds from the Culture series by Iain M. Banks).

One AI that falls in between the spectrum of servitor and nursemaid (with a dash of technophobia thrown in at the end) is Cortana from the Halo franchise.


In game, she is portrayed as a holographic projection; purple in the original game, and blue in the sequels.


As a holographic projection, she could be of any size, but she is typically shown as being a small tabletop projection in the game.

Small scale Cortana figures were created for the Mega Bloks Halo sets that looked like they could be close to 1/72 scale.


I was able to find a couple of loose pieces on eBay, and bought them to use for size comparison.


The figures are not particularly detailed and very slender. I'd say they are probably closer to 1/76 in proportion, but the height might work for 1/72 scale.



There is also a Roland AI (clear yellow) from Halo Infinite, as well as some variant Cortana figures in clear orange, gold plate, or blue with white circuitry markings made by Mega Bloks, but they seem to be harder to find and more expensive (I didn't really look to see what Mega Bloks sets the different figures can be found in).


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