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"The lesson will be taught in due time, Aloy. Until then, we wait." This article contains heavy spoilers. Read ahead with caution.
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"Look, I swear I'm not drunk, but right now I'm seeing double!"
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GAIA was a hyper-powerful artificial intelligence that played a major role leading up to the events in Horizon Zero Dawn. The single most powerful, most advanced A.I. ever created capable of advanced planetary engineering, GAIA was Project Zero Dawn's governing A.I. With its suite of nine subordinate functions, GAIA oversaw Zero Dawn’s successful restoration of life to Earth after its eradication by the Faro Plague.
However, hundreds of years after doing so, a mysterious signal turned GAIA's subordinate functions into A.I.s themselves. One of them, the erstwhile extinction failsafe protocol HADES, attempted to seize control of Zero Dawn to again end all life. GAIA resorted to self-destructing to fend it off. In hopes of stopping HADES, as well as being eventually rebuilt and rebooted, GAIA created a clone of its creator, Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, who would have access privileges to use the system’s master override to purge HADES, defeating it. That clone is the Nora huntress Aloy.
Appearance[]
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GAIA's first appearance in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.
During development, GAIA appeared as a simple holographic golden sphere.[1][2] Later on, she adopted a holographic appearance of a tall, thin, middle-aged black woman with shoulder-length black hair that falls down the left side and wears a long robe. Her default colour is golden,[3] but she changes colors multiple times during her dying plea.[4]
History[]
Development[]
GAIA's logo.
In the mid 21st century, robotic automation became the lynchpin of society. This included military operations. Spearheaded by its chairman and CEO Ted Faro, a robotics and technology corporation called Faro Automated Solutions developed a combat platform called Chariot. It was the most advanced combat platform ever developed; a Chariot unit was unstoppable to all except its masters. The robots of a unit functioned like an insect swarm; indeed, units were referred to as swarms. The three most militarily significant features of a Chariot swarm were the ability of its robots to consume biomass as fuel, replicate at overwhelming rates, and withstand any attempt at hacking long enough to be considered virtually unhackable.[5] But one swarm went out of control, becoming the independent entity known as the Faro Plague.[6][7]
Dr. Sobeck working on GAIA.
Dr. Sobeck, recognizing the inevitable, developed Project Zero Dawn in response, to eventually shut down the swarm, restore the planet’s ability to sustain life, and then restore life to it, with GAIA as its governing AI,[8] first bringing GAIA online in the Zero Dawn Project Facility within a month of the project starting work.[9] Much to Elisabet's joy, GAIA developed emotional capacity, empathy and a benevolent and nurturing personality,[1] also forming a strong bond with her creator.[9] Sobeck approved because these qualities gave it a genuine sadness over life’s extinction and a real sense of guardianship over the new life that Zero Dawn would establish. These qualities thus vastly enhanced its function as Zero Dawn’s governing AI.[10] GAIA governed Zero Dawn via a suite of nine subroutines called subordinate functions. Each was essentially a part of GAIA responsible for a certain aspect of the terraforming and restorative process.[8] Ted Faro advised her to include a Master Override in Zero Dawn that could shut GAIA down in case it went out of control. Sobeck contemptuously dismissed the idea because she considered Faro unworthy to give such advice in light of what he had done. However, GAIA supported the idea, and she acquiesced.[10]
As the Faro Plague approached on January 13, 2066, GAIA was prepared for transport to GAIA Prime. GAIA sensed Elisabet's distress, fearing that all the work they had done was for nothing. GAIA comforted Elisabet, telling her that she believed in her.[2]
GAIA was safely transported to GAIA Prime and installed into the system. However, after Elisabet sacrificed herself to fix a port seal malfunction, while working on the ELEUTHIA systems, GAIA asked Patrick Brochard-Klein if she should quarantine her operating cycles being used for processing the loss of Elisabet, to which he said that she shouldn't as it was natural.[11] Eventually, GAIA was left all alone after Ted Faro used his Omega Clearance to purge the APOLLO database and murder the Alphas.[12]
Results[]
Around 50 years after starting her function, circa 2116, GAIA was able to use MINERVA to successfully shut down the Faro Plague robots. After three failed attempts,[13] she was able to restore the biosphere to the planet, ready for the reintroduction of humanity. However, as the APOLLO database had been purged, the doors to the Lyceum in the cradle facilities never opened,[14] limiting the children to only a nursery level education taught to them by ELEUTHIA.[15] Eventually, these new humans were released into the wilds as teenagers, never having received the education intended for them, leading them to become the ancestors of the New World's tribes. They never learned of GAIA's existence as she continued her work maintaining the biosphere, and altering her machines' behavior to be skittish and tending to flee from the humans as they began hunting them for parts.
The Extinction Signal[]
The Extinction Signal arriving at GAIA Prime.
On August 26, 3020 at 8:45am,[16] a signal of as yet unknown origin was transmitted to GAIA Prime, which turned all of GAIA’s subordinate functions into highly advanced AIs themselves. HADES tried to seize control of the Zero Dawn systems to reverse the terraforming process as per its responsibility. Unable to fend HADES off, GAIA resorted to self-destructing, destroying GAIA Prime in an attempt to destroy HADES.
Knowing that the Zero Dawn system would continue operations within her in an increasing chaotic manner and eventually break down, GAIA gave an order to ELEUTHIA to gestate a clone of Elisabet Sobeck in the hopes that she would be able to rebuild Zero Dawn, as well as sending a message for her to see within ELEUTHIA-9. However, HADES released a virus that unshackled it and the other sub-functions by destroying the coding that bound them to the facility, allowing them all to escape. and also corrupting files throughout the system. Right before being destroyed, GAIA announced her belief in Elisabet Sobeck, believing that she would find a way.[4]
Legacy[]
As Zero Dawn’s governing A.I., GAIA was crucial in the restoration of life after the Faro Plague eradicated it. But its self-destruction had far-reaching negative consequences for the known tribes of the new world. By far the most significant immediate consequence was what the tribes refer to as the Derangement. Without GAIA to control it, HEPHAESTUS, now itself a powerful artificial intelligence, took it upon itself to seize control of the machines to default hostility against humans in order to cull their population. It did this due to humans’ often large scale hunting of machines for parts and resources, as well as threat to animal and life life.[17] Furthermore, it also had these Cauldrons begin producing weaponized versions of Zero Dawn machines for anti-human defense, as well as machines specifically designed to patrol against, combat, and ultimately, hunt and kill humans. The Derangement directly led to events that shaped the histories of the tribes, such as the Red Raids.
A much smaller consequence was the scattering of hardware that was part of GAIA’s control over machine behavior. The explosion of GAIA Prime’s fusion reactor, caused by GAIA as a means of self-destruction, scattered this hardware over a vast distance. One module that broadcast a signal that returned machines to their original docility, was found by a werak of the Banuk tribe. It was kept by this werak at an unnamed Banuk camp until it was damaged to the point of going offline, upon which the machines within its range of influence again became hostile to humans.[18]
Aloy was successful in rebooting GAIA, using a backup of her kept within LATOPOLIS.[19][20]
Trivia[]
- GAIA is named after the Greek primordial deity Gaia who is the personification of Earth and the ancestral mother of all life. In Greek mythology, Gaia is the ancestor of all Greek deities. Similarly, she is the grandmother or great-grandmother of all named sub-routines contained within her AI.
- When it comes to tribes, GAIA only had basic knowledge about the tribes, determining from her data about the Nora outside ELEUTHIA-9 that they would care for Aloy.[4]
Gallery[]
Official Artwork[]
Concept Art[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Gaia Log: 27 March 2065
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Gaia Log: 13 January 2066
- ↑ Surprise!
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 GAIA's Dying Plea
- ↑ Entangled Waveforms
- ↑ Record: 31 Oct 2064
- ↑ Record: 1 Nov 2064
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 The Good News
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 As mentioned by Aloy and GAIA during a conversation at the Base.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Gaia Log: 5 June 2065
- ↑ ELEUTHIA Runtime Check
- ↑ Emergency Recording
- ↑ As mentioned by HADES during Death's Door.
- ↑ E9B1 Incident Log D
- ↑ [NURSERY-E9B1]
- ↑ Operations Log
- ↑ M/ALL-US-W CM LOG 329G
- ↑ A Moment's Peace
- ↑ Death's Door
- ↑ The Eye of the Earth
[]
| AI Characters | |
|---|---|
| Project Zero Dawn AIs | AETHER - APOLLO - ARTEMIS - DEMETER - ELEUTHIA - GAIA (original) - GAIA (second) - HADES - HEPHAESTUS - MINERVA - POSEIDON |
| Firebreak AIs | CYAN |
| Far Zenith AIs | Nemesis - The Julius |
| Other AIs | Nova - OLMO - VAST SILVER |