The Zero System, Destiny, and the Future - Why you shouldn’t let a battle algorithm determine your life goals
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The ZERO system is a program that interfaces between a pilot and a Mobile Suit.
The purpose of the system is to enhance a pilot’s natural abilities by increasing their reaction time and accuracy, even allowing the pilot to “feel” the response of their Mobile Suit as though it were an extension of their own body, and to provide an adaptive, real-time battle plan that suggests the most advantageous course of action based on accumulated battle data and iterative projections of likely outcomes.
How exactly the ZERO system does all this is a little unclear– but we do know that it’s open-source, DRM free, and runs off a floppy disc.
The future is the 90’s!
There are two Mobile Suits installed with a permanent copy of the ZERO system: the Wing Zero, which has it built into the cockpit, and the Epyon, which displays the system data via a flight suit helmet (technically the Epyon’s system was reverse-engineered by Treize without the benefit of the original ZERO program, but its effects are identical). ZERO has also been installed on Sandrock as a one-time boost, in order to counter the modified version of the system created by Zechs, which was utilized to coordinate the movements of the Mobile Doll fleet– a novel use of the technology that elevated the otherwise limited AI of the Dolls to monstrous effect by giving them the intuition and oversight of a human mastermind; in this case, Dorothy Catalonia.
--But this isn’t the only battle-enhancing algorithm used in Mobile Suits! There’s one brief but significant moment in episode 10 that clues us in to the fact that OZ has a machine-learning program of its own, installed on the Taurus Mobile Suits.
“There is a problem with the Taurus. It has the ability to learn from accumulated battle data. I’d like to trust OZ’s control system, but there’s still the chance that the machine will ignore the pilot’s commands and move on its own. If the command to kill overrides the pilot, the consequences could be significant. Destroy it, otherwise it will be a menace to mankind.” –Doctor J
Who wrote the program for the Taurus suits? The most probable answer is Chief Engineer Tuberov, the man responsible for the Mobile Doll AI system, which is no doubt the successor of the Taurus AI. However, it’s worth noting that there was a lot of cooperation and cross-pollination of ideas between the original creators of Mobile Suits; Tuberov, Howard, and the five Gundam scientists were all involved in the earliest days of MS development, and so it's not inconceivable that Doctor J is aware of the dangers of the Taurus’ AI because he helped develop it.
And Doctor J has good reason to consider the Taurus AI dangerous, because if it’s anything like the ZERO system, it’s the absolute last thing you’d want in the hands of a power-hungry military organization. A system that automatically provides unscrupulous pilots, or pilots with unscrupulous orders, with the most efficient means to an end is a recipe for atrocities. It’s not safe in the wrong hands; hell, it’s not even safe for the pilot. There’s a reason ZERO wasn’t installed on the finalized Gundams, and was left buried inside the files of a discarded blueprint.
The system gives a pilot the best chance of success by grabbing them directly by the brain chemistry– heightening awareness, speeding up reflexes, and inducing an almost trance-like state of hyperfocus that eliminates “distractions”, and ignores any physical and mental barriers that might get in the way of victory.
--Unfortunately, what constitutes a “distraction” in the eyes of the machine is not always in line with the pilot’s conscience, and what it considers a “weakness” is often the biological feedback of strain and bodily distress. If left unchecked, the system overwhelms the pilot and can make them keep fighting through unsafe levels of exhaustion and injury, and in extreme situations, overstimulation from the system itself can cause brain hemorrhaging.
While assessing all of the potential outcomes of a given battle, it takes into account every likely scenario up to and including the pilot’s own survival. It will tell you if you’re likely to die. It will show you all the ways you are likely to die. If you let it dig too far into your nervous system, it will in fact let you feel how you’ll die, pumping your adrenaline levels up to the screaming pitch you’d experience if it were actually happening.
ZERO will only show a pilot the quickest way from point A to point B– it does not take into account any factors besides efficiency. It does not have a conscience, it does not have human priorities, and it does not value life.
If you give it a problem to solve like “how do I win”, no solution is off the table. The goal is always “victory”, and the most common obstacle to achieving victory is the fact that people have things they are unwilling to do; the most common “weakness” is that there are things people care about.
“I can’t attack without risking the safety of my allies” is not a parameter the ZERO system is equipped to recognize. You’re not using your beam rifle because there’s a Colony in your line of fire? Seems like an unnecessary hindrance. The thing holding you back is your concern for someone you love, or an ideal you value? Easy to fix.
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--The ZERO system is an algorithm; like any algorithm, it amplifies certain results based on what data you feed it and how it’s trained on that data.
Used for single combat, it will generate strategies that make the pilot victorious based on their skills and those of their opponent; when extrapolated to broader and broader contexts, this can be used to predict the most likely, or most advantageous future for that pilot– as long as that future is combative. And because the system is only trained to recognize Win States, Enemies, and Vulnerabilities, every future is going to be combative.
The strategy supplied for ultimate victory will be the most efficient and pragmatic one: eliminate all enemies, all future enemies, all potential enemies.
This is why it’s vital that the pilot be aware of what the system is doing, so they can mitigate how much control it has over their mind and body. Whatever the mechanism that allows the ZERO system to interface with a pilot’s brain may be, a good pilot who is prepared for the effects can withstand and overcome them.
But even if a pilot can survive the physical strain of the system and successfully moderate between their own priorities and those of the algorithm, the psychological effect of being in possession of so much power and insight into the future and the abilities of one’s opponents comes with its own insidious dangers.
The temptation to let the machine ride is powerful; it makes you faster and stronger than everyone else, it lets you see things before they happen, it allows you to stop thinking about complicated questions of right and wrong and simply focus on the most immediate action necessary for survival and success. It removes grief and replaces it with vindication. It takes away the confusion of competing moral imperatives. It grants a human the clarity and singularity of purpose of a machine.
For those seeking refuge in numb retribution, this is a deadly soporific; for those who are insecure and merely hungry for power, it is fatally intoxicating.
The scientists responsible for creating ZERO knew what a monstrosity they had built, and never implemented it. But once it was unleashed on the world anyway, they surmised that the only way to use the system wisely was to become, on one’s own terms, the sort of soldier the system would have tried to force one to be anyway: a soldier with a clear understanding of their purpose, who is strong enough to complete their objectives without needing to resort to draconian measures or rely on the vulnerability of others, and therefore someone who the machine could not easily manipulate.
(Important to note: This is a “perfect soldier” in nearly the opposite sense of how the Romefeller Eyebrow Brigade would define it.)
What the Doctors mean by a “perfect soldier” in this case is simply a fighter with a clear objective and few tactical weaknesses that could be exploited. During their time in space, the Gundam pilots are isolated, scattered, and lack a clear purpose; their Colonies have betrayed them and their loyalties are used against them-- in that atmosphere, the advantage of a system that can choose the most advantageous target for you is obvious, but at the same time, a struggling pilot operating alone is at the greatest risk of being overwhelmed by it. This is why the Doctors advise the pilots to become "perfect soldiers" on their own-- or else, go insane.
The ideal example of this mindset is obviously Wufei. He already thinks in terms of absolutes, and acts according to the strictest assessment of who is Evil, and therefore an Enemy. He fights almost exclusively alone, relying on his own considerable strength to achieve his goal of enacting justice, he habitually shuns any close attachment that might complicate his path forward.
When Wufei pilots the Wing Zero, all the system does is confirm what he already held to be true: his goal was to eliminate anyone trying to escalate militarism in space, defeat Treize and Zechs, and as a slight compromise, cooperate with his fellow Gundam pilots as a team.
It’s as though Wufei’s brain was already running on the ZERO system. And since he’s already equipped to make his own tactical decisions in the field, he has no need of an external system to tell him what to do. ZERO has nothing to offer Wufei, and holds no power over him.
But even Quatre, who is in most ways the polar opposite of Wufei, and who at his lowest point fell prey to the ZERO before anyone realized what it was, is eventually able to master the system. Armed with the knowledge of what the system is intended for and what duty he has to perform, he is able to use it in a way that maximizes his natural tactical abilities and resists all its negative effects. Upon gaining ZERO's insight, Quatre realizes that he, too, no longer needs it.
A pilot with superior skills and a firm resolve can operate effectively without it; a pilot with superior skills and a firm resolve might find themselves struggling against it to their detriment.
Either way, it is up to the human pilot to navigate the outcomes presented by their surroundings and choose the course of action they deem best according to their logic and intuition– this is true regardless of whether there is an artificial source of input or not.
The ZERO system may enhance human abilities by brute force, but the processes it accelerates are already fundamentally present within the human being. In fact, it’s hardly more than a limited, mechanically-accelerated version of what our senses and nervous system do already.
What it boils down to is that the ZERO system, like all current examples of machine learning and algorithmic generators, presents the illusion of an objective, autonomous process that can stand in for human input. But it isn’t a true “artificial intelligence”-- and even if it were, it would not “transcend” or replace the need for humans. It is only a means of sorting and arranging data sets that come from humans and must be interpreted and acted on by humans in order to have any physical effect.
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--We know a lot more about the dangers of algorithms and machine-learning and automation now in the 2020’s than we did in the 1990’s, but between the ZERO system and the Mobile Dolls, I think Gundam Wing did a damn good job of illustrating them.
Ultimately, it is always a human who makes the decisions, and is responsible for the consequences. Surrendering that responsibility to a machine is not only morally reprehensible, it is in fact, not possible– a human built the machine, and a human made use of the machine, and a thousand, thousand collective moments of human decision-making led to whatever outcome the machine facilitated.
The world hasn’t yet arrived at the techno-singularity, either in the present or in A.C.195, and those who are eager to pass the blame prematurely to “AI” are usually those who wish to avoid being held accountable for their actions.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the only person to use the ZERO system for something other than combat is Treize. For the confined leader of OZ, the system is a magic eight ball to scry the future with.
At the time of creating the Epyon, the system did not show him a viable path forward, or at least, not one he considered acceptable. Treize interpreted this as meaning he had NO future, but I can’t help but wonder if he was asking the wrong sort of question for a predictive battle algorithm to answer.
...Or maybe, the answer he got was “Ask Again Later”, which, actually, would have been correct.
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