Archived Memories
Can a machine think? Can it reason, compare, contrast, and respond? What are the parameters for true intelligence?
The first experiments with “thinking” machines were limited by how large a database the programmer could build for his “weak” artificial intelligence to reference. Such an AI was inherently flawed: it was unable to learn, adapt, or feel. All that changed with the discovery of brainmapping.
Brainmapping technology began with twenty-first century projects like the Human Brain Project and the BRAIN Initiative. The research overcame traditional limitations and enabled neuroscientists to map a human brain’s physical structure, electrical impulses, and chemical changes in real time. Breakthrough technologies in supercomputer processing allowed this data to be compiled and emulated in a braintape, an incredibly complex digital model of a person’s personality, skill set, and even memories. The process is not perfect, and producing exact copies is still out of reach, but every day the corps come a little closer.
Braintapes allowed far more advanced, or “strong,” AI to evolve - AI that was capable of adapting to its environment and learning from experience. Haas-Bioroid discovered how to customize a braintape via neural channeling to create the complex behavioral programs utilized by a bioroid’s optical brain. Nanobots can rewire the optical brain to learn and adapt like human brains can. Jinteki developed neural conditioning techniques by reverse engineering the braintape to stimulate the brain until it resembled the model. Cloned brains, as organic structures, retain the human brain’s innate ability to create new neural connections without the need for nanobots.
Brainmapping and taping services are available to those who can afford it. Many risties voluntarily have their minds “backed up” in the hopes that one day exact replicas will be possible. Megacorps lure others with huge incentives, licensing copies of the finest minds for their archives and product lines. Making copies without consent is illegal, but rumors of black-bag kidnappings and elite abduction teams abound.
Synthetic Life
Android: “having the form of man.” Science fiction made flesh. Are they humanity’s greatest creation, or its grossest error? The answer depends on whom you ask. The only certainty is that androids are here now, and they are not about to go away.
Two distinct sub-types of android currently exist: the bioroid and the clone, manufactured exclusively by Haas-Bioroid and Jinteki respectively. Other companies such as CyberSolutions and Al-Jazari Android have also tried to create versions and subtypes of their own, but only Haas-Bioroid and Jinteki have successfully implemented braintapes to create true artificial intelligences.
Bioroids are thinking machines; their robotic bodies house complex optical brains and quantum processors. Although many bioroid models possess a covering of synthetic skin, common features like silver eyes and cabling at joints mean no one would ever confuse a bioroid for an actual person. Clones, however, look almost human. Grown in specialized vats, a clone only differs from a true human by the bar code printed on its neck. Many humans are discomfted by the semblance of humanity presented by clones and synthskin bioroids, so both Jinteki and Haas-Bioroid take great pains to mitigate this so-called “uncanny valley” effect.
Androids exist everywhere in society, from the bioroid waiters in high-class restaurants to the clone miners in the helium-3 strip mines on Luna. Anywhere there’s a job that needs doing, there seems to be an android to perform it. However, humanity still dominates felds such as the arts, research and development, and corporate leadership and decision making. No one is quite willing to let an android decide the fate of a corporation worth billions — not yet — but androids easily fll out low-level positions like accountants, clerks, and receptionists, not to mention manual labor and high-risk jobs. This proliferation of androids, coupled with the lower costs of maintaining android staff over human workers, has led to a sharp divide in opinion over these “labor solutions.”
With more and more people being put out of work by android replacements, a growing sense of dissatisfaction has swelled into outright hostility toward androids. The lobbyist organization Humanity Labor and the radical group Human First have capitalized on these attitudes and seek to limit or outlaw the spread of simulant labor.
Attacks against androids are not considered a high priority by many law enforcement agencies. Because they are manufactured synthetically, androids are classifed as property, not people, so any violence inficted on them is mere vandalism, not assault or murder. However, this has not stopped simulant rights groups like the Liberty Society from trying to get androids recognized as true human beings in the eyes of the law and society. Unfortunately for them, both Haas-Bioroid and Jinteki have a stake in maintaining their bottom line, and by extension, the status quo.
System Log
Although “weak” or applied AI systems have been used for years in devices such as secretary software agents, none of these devices approached true human intelligence, or “strong” AI, until the creation of bioroids. The key to strong AI proved to be brainmapping, a technology originally developed to diagnose and study brain disorders.
