Artificial Intelligence

AIs can be housed in bodies of any form, of course, but the body cannot deviate too far from the sensory and motor capacities of the kind of body native to the AI's neurodynamics. For example, the body must not have more limbs (or equivalents, such as wheels or drives) than the brain can control. The sensors must be mapped to the brain's sensory centers; for a human-based AI, an echolocation system must be mapped into vision (or possibly touch or hearing); it cannot become a novel sense.

There are workarounds: for instance, working at high speed, an AI can switch different sets of instruments into and out of its sensorium or motorium.

AI bodies are usually wired to register fatigue, pain, and hunger. They come in a huge variety of forms, and AI brains can generally be switched easily from one to another. A human-based AI is generally most comfortable in an approximately humanoid body, but it is very rare for AIs to use bodies that could pass for human on close inspection.

Body Styles

There is an informal taxonomy of robot bodies.

"Sim" bodies are as close to human as possible, give or take coloring. They are usually plain gray, over which the AI wears removable skins and wigs in various styles. This results in some controversy over how human-like they should be made to appear without violating the "don't pass for human" taboo.

"Mannequins" are less humanoid and may vary from something nearly sim-like to something that is only bipedal with some sort of head and no other human-like features; they are always human-like enough to take advantage of human ergonomics.

"Utilities" aren't humanoid at all and can look like anything; they are generally classified by the form of motion – walkers, rollers, sliders, floaters.

"Casques" are a special class of floater, fixed geometrical shapes, e.g. spheres or cubes, with no limbs; they manipulate with some combination of tractor beams, gravitics, or mechanical TK, and become more popular as these technologies mature, because of the utility of having no moving parts.

"Icons" are the appearances used by online AIs.

All these forms of AI body (except the sim) change over time according to fashion. Recent fashions are:

• soft metallic (flesh-like or upholstered, with metallic luster)
• traditional plate (exoskeletal with glossy paint jobs & car-like trim & lights)
• wood panel (exoskeletal with wood exteriors)
• transparent anatomical (with interior lights and decoration)
• flexible functional (featuring hose-like limbs and a few rigid casques such as torso and head)

Neurodynamic development is, in part, recursive in the manner of fractals and is mathematically chaotic. One result of this is that no two AIs are ever identical, though they may be very similar. Another result is that neurodynamic systems are highly and ideosyncratically complicated, so that no one can claim a complete understanding of them, though of course state-of-the-art neurology and psychiatry are still vastly advanced over 20th-century beginnings. (This limitation is inevitable. The people trying to understand sapient neurodynamic systems are, themselves, sapient neurodynamic systems. A finite system cannot contain a complete model of itself; there's no room.)

Neurodynamic development continues throughout an AI's life, since the organic processes of learning and memory, which the AI reproduces, are only small-scale forms of the neurogenesis that forms the brain in the first place. Because its development is always underway and governed by the chaotic, unrepeatable laws of neurodynamics, an AI is not transportable, even if it is implemented as a purely software entity.

Some AIs are brilliant, geniuses, but no AIs are qualitatively superior in intelligence, beyond human comprehension. Efforts to create such creatures have always failed and have often produced pathetic insanities.

People who do not know them well think that AIs are impervious to boredom. This is not strictly true. AIs do not usually have bodies that tire of holding a fixed position or get uncomfortable sitting on hard surfaces, so they are seldom restless. And most AIs have an event-driven sense of time, so that the mere fact of nothing happening does not bother them. But boring social situations are still boring, and AIs are as bothered as anyone else by the thought that they are wasting their time.

The event-driven sense of time means that AIs can keep up with events over a wide range of speeds. They can work very quickly, especially if the tasks require only reflex or habit. Even so, they cannot work quite as fast as non-sentient machines; the background monitoring by the conscious intelligence slows things down.

AIs can think faster than organics for most social purposes, and this gives some of the effect of higher intelligence, since it takes them less time to plan or to review ideas. But they cannot really blossom, in terms of speed, until they are hooked up to peripherals that let them read and write data at high speed. Also, being based on organic neurodynamics, they are not particularly adept at calculating, and need peripherals for that, too.

Types of AIs are characterized by the species that serves as the source for their neurodynamics and by the variations made on that model. In standard AI terminology, the type is given as a two-part label, such as "hu-sim" or "zo-ed," the prefix giving the source and the suffix giving the variation.

The prefixes are:

• hu- for human neurodynamics
• zo- for animal neurodynamics; more usually the exact species - "dog," "neo-cat," "hawk," etc.
• kim- for chimeric (hybrid) neurodynamics; more usually the exact species - "hu/dog," "cat/hawk," etc.
• xen-/xeno- for alien neurodynamics; more usually the exact species - "vom-," "Ilden-," etc.

The suffixes are:

• -sim for a direct simulation
• -add for a simulation with additional features
• -cut for a simulation with features removed; this is the rarest type
• -ed/-edit for a simulation with features both added and removed; this is the commonest type

Examples:

• A hu-sim is an exact replica of a human brain. It can even be a clone-analog of a specific person, such as "an Einstein-sim," though this is rare.
• A hu-add is a replica with features added, such as additional memory systems, communications links, or clock-speed control.
• A zo-cut would be just enough of an animal's neurodynamics to do its job, e.g. a pigeon-cut for an aircraft's navigation system. Cuts are uncommon, though, since it is so often useful to add features as well as delete them.
• A zo-edit is an animal-based brain with functions both added and subtracted, e.g. a household server might be brained by a dog-edit with aggression and sexuality removed and communications, memory enhancements, and a simple voice interface added.
• A kim-edit, the commonest kim type, combines features of two species, almost always of the same phylum. Hu/dog-edits with reduced aggression and enhanced submission are popular as servants; with enhanced aggression, and with canine dominance and submission intact, they make good soldiers. They have occasionally made successful political leaders; the Antares mechanarch is a hu/dog-edit. Hu/hawk-edits are popular for braining starships.
• A xeno-sim is the copy of a sapient alien brain. (AIs based on alien beasts are classed as zoes or kims.) As with hu-based AIs, edits are commoner than straight sims. The azwar-edit, for instance, is popular for braining warcraft.

Extended Architectures

Peripherals

These are small computers linking the AI brain to tools such as networks, alternate sensors or effectors, comm links, and memory systems. Most adult AIs have a few of these, and online ones have elaborate suites of them.

Spawn

Spawning is a spinoff from unsuccessful attempts to make AIs transportable, as pure software. A spawn is a partial replica of an AI, a software portrait. It can be copied from one processor to another, perform its errands, and be taken back into its parent AI, who acquires the memories. Spawning requires both training and special peripherals. The AI is held responsible for the actions of its spawn. Spawns are one of the standard tools of mechanarchs.

Characterizations

Hu-sims and hu-adds are assumed to be legal persons in most societies. Hu-edits must pass certain tests or examinations; those that fail are still usually protected as lower-class citizens or minors, or under humane laws as high-sentience animals.

It does not follow that citizen-class AIs are treated as equals. Many societies do not use legal equality in the first place. Others may justify different treatment of AIs based on their higher cost of production, their different consumption of resources, their non-human backgrounds, or simply local tradition.

Some hu-cuts and hu-edits are deliberately restricted to servant mentalities. Their place in society depends on the exact restrictions and the local laws. Gunga Din/Igor, Jeeves, and the Workaholic are common personality stereotypes for servant AIs.

Most hu-based AIs, and almost all hu-sims, are raised in a highly humanoid body, and most still own one, whether or not they wear it often. Few, however, have a body that can actually pass for human; such would cause resentment among humans, if discovered, and suggests to other AIs a lack of racial pride.

Theoretically, an AI could alter its appearance on very short notice, by switching bodies or interfaces. In practice, AIs rarely do this, and instead cultivate ways to signal their identity across such changes. The voice remains the same. The face, or certain features of the face at least, remains the same. Imposture, like passing for human, is heavily censured.

Similarly, AIs usually stick with one gender.

Given that neurodynamics is based on genetic emulation, an AI can be related to humans or other organisms, or to other AIs. Its neurodynamics can be based on the neural genetics of specific individuals, resulting in similarities of personality. Thus there can be families of AIs, and mixed families of humans and AIs with simulated genetic relationships, not just adoptive ones. Through kim-type AIs, humans and animals can wind up in simulated relationships. Mixed human-AI couples can produce children with "blood" relations to both; thanks to genetic engineering, these children can be human, not only AIs.

When AIs were new, controversies arose on the suitability of recognizing family relationship based on genetic emulation. By now, the various societies have settled these issues to their own satisfaction, but they have not all settled them the same way.

Genetic emulation of neurodynamics allows for the creation of AI "clones" of specific organic individuals, but these are at least as rare as true organic clones. No clones, organic or emulated, provide the continuation of individual talents that is the false allure of cloning.

Citizen-class AIs take years to grow up, just like human children, during which they need to live in families. They typically start with small, weak, bodies that are upgraded in stages. This both emulates human childhood and provides a necessary safety factor for the parents and the AI child. Hu-sim and hu-add AIs typically reach cognitive maturity by age twelve, but may not be granted sexual maturity or legal adulthood until later, depending on the individual society.

Citizen-class AIs are rarely mass produced. Each is an individual work of art, usually by a professional fabricator (who may themselves be AI or organic). A fabricator often follows an AI from "birth" to adulthood, the robotic equivalent of a pediatrician.

Hu-sims, hu-adds, and most hu-edits need to sleep and dream nightly, as do most zo- and kim-type AIs. They need less sleep than their organic counterparts, because they need only the dreaming phase of sleep. This is one reason that hu-type AIs grow up faster than humans.

AIs are prone to hypochondria. This is not neurosis for them, but a rational response to the fact that they do not heal. AI society is accordingly full of insurance, maintenance, and repair services.

AIs are just as capable of psi as organic intelligences, and telepathy has verified the close similarity between AIs and the minds of their organic counterparts. However, psilencers and other psi-conditioners work differently on organic and AI psi. Commercial psilencers in human societies are always designed to cancel both AI and Terran organic psi.

All major religions accept AIs as members in most of their major denominations and acknowledge them to have souls. The general feeling is that it is no more impossible for soul to incarnate in plastic, metal and crystal than in protein, water, and DNA.