AI Technology

The AIs live within the virtual reality system. Unlike the bots and automatons discussed in the previous article, they look and behave much like humans, and claim to be self-aware, sentient beings. Whether this is true or not is a matter of controversy, but it is clear that they are highly intelligent and capable of independent thought. They are not, however, capable of emotion.

A previous article has discussed their role in society; this article discusses them from a technological point of view.

Capabilities

AIs have hive minds composed of multiple personae, each of which comprises an independent stream of thought. This allows them to attend to many tasks at once, greatly increasing their usefulness. AIs are ranked according to their Order, which is a measure of how many personae they can spawn, as well as the sophistication of their thought processes. An Order 1 AI is feeble, of no commercial value; all such units are destroyed. AIs of Order 2 and Order 3 are commonly encountered, and are the backbone of the AI workforce. The most powerful AIs, of Order 4 and Order 5, are rare, and have plural minds with thousands of personae. They are capable of very sophisticated reasoning.

The thought processes of an AI operate a thousand times faster than those of a human; the virtual realm in which they exist therefore has an accelerated time-sense, with a millisecond in the human world corresponding to a second in theirs. In order to visit the realm of the AIs, you must enter deep immersion VR, in which your self-awareness is uploaded into the virtual world. This is the only way you can keep up with the blinding speed of events in the other reality.

The AI Center

The AI server farm consists of a vast number of processing cells, each of which is a cube measuring one meter on a side. The server farm is arranged in tiers, 81 meters x 81 meters x 3 meters. The main AI center houses 243 tiers, with a total of 1,549,323 processing cells. The complex is entirely self-sustaining and self-repairing, provided its needs for power, cooling, communications, and spare parts can be met.

From the outside, the AI center is a monolith of concrete and steel a thousand meters tall, covered with the huge ventilation fans needed to dissipate the heat generated by the servers. The lowest fifty levels, along with numerous sub-basements, are reserved for the human support staff. Above the fiftieth level lies the server farm. Humans are forbidden to enter. The uppermost levels are shrouded in mystery, home to the Director, master of man and machine alike.

Structure of the AIs

AIs are constructed according to a hierarchical management scheme, with their order corresponding to the depth of their command chain.

At Order 1, an AI consists of a single sentient persona, referred to as the primus, which is the repository of its self-awareness and intellect. Without the primus, an AI is just another machine, a sort of glorified automaton. In addition to the primus, an Order 1 AI will have up to 24 agents, which are data access automatons. Under the direction of the primus, they can search the data banks and train neural networks, which may then be uploaded into the production automatons.

The primus plus its agents occupies 27 processing cells in a 3x3x3 cube.

At Order 2, an AI will spawn eight intermediate managers, called deputies. Each deputy has the same intellectual capabilities as an Order 1 AI and is able to supervise up to 24 agents of its own. The Primus will then expand to occupy the entirety of its own 3x3x3 block, significantly increasing the sophistication of its thought processes.

The resulting deployment measures 9x9x3, with 192 agents, 8 deputies, and the primus.

At Order 3, the AI spawns an additional level of managers, called sub-deputies. This yields a system with 1,536 agents, 64 subdeputies, 8 deputies, and the primus, occupying a 27x27x3 block.

At Order 4, the AI spawns yet another level of managers, called supervisors. This yields a system with 12,228 agents, 512 sub-deputies, 64 deputies, 8 supervisors, and the primus, occupying a full 81x81x3 tier of the server farm.

At Order 5, the AI expands into the third dimension, spawning a rank of governors, one per tier. This yields a system with 98,304 agents, 4,096 sub-deputies, 512 deputies, 64 supervisors, 8 governors, and the primus itself, occupying 9 tiers of the server farm, measuring 81x81x27.

No further orders of AI are known to exist.

Most AIs attain Order 2, with those failing to do so being culled. Perhaps 1/4 attain Order 3. From there, the ranks thin out rapidly; The AI Company produces no more than a half dozen Order 4 AIs in a given year, and AIs of Order 5 are extraordinarily rare. The bulk of the workforce is therefore composed of Orders 2 and 3 AIs; these are the entities that keep the trains running, put food on people’s tables, and do the bulk of the surveillance work. AIs of Order 4 and 5 are reserved for only the most important projects.

Starting at Order 3, AIs are able to spawn auxiliary personae. These include ambassadors, which serve as liaisons to other AIs; advisors, which provide multiple perspectives when the primus is faced with a difficult decision; liaisons, which facilitate communications between the primus and its subordinates; and homunculi, which are semi-autonomous personae created to interact with humans. Homunculi are unique in that they are able to leave the AI server farm and roam the broader world of virtual reality; the other personae are confined to a single realm within the AI server farm, which is rendered as a white room of indefinite extent.

Uses

The primary usage of the AIs is to manage the bots and automata. Whenever one of these non-intelligent entities encounters a situation that it cannot resolve using its standing orders, it will refer the matter to an AI, which will then make a policy decision. AIs are also used to replace humans in most creative work, such as writing music and producing video entertainment. AIs of orders 4 and 5 are used for surveillance and to crack down on dissent.

Even the most powerful AIs cannot watch everyone all the time; there are approximately half a billion people in northeast province of Anglo-America alone, and tens of billions of sensors. They are therefore taught certain investigative techniques for use in crack downs and other special projects.

The most basic of these is setting triggers. To do this, the primus and its underlings will create a dataset containing instances of whatever event it is looking for, such as persons jumping a turnstile in the transit system. They will then use this dataset plus a deep learning algorithm to create a neural network that identifies instances of the target event, and upload them into the automatons. They will then get a steady stream of alerts from out there in the network; in this way, the vast network of surveillance devices becomes the eyes and ears of the AIs.

Whenever you trigger an alert, one of the AI’s deputies or sub-deputies will be notified; it will then conduct an investigation, starting with whatever data is information available within its own company. It will pull up your records, look at your social merit rating, and determine whether you have done anything else unusual lately. It may also check with its peers at other companies. In most cases, the deputy will spot nothing unusual; it will issue any required punishments or rewards and move on. It may, however, become suspicious, particularly if you have a low social merit rating or are a suspected cultist. If this happens, it may decide to lurk: it will defer the imposition of penalties, and place you under surveillance, hoping to catch you in a more serious misdeed. This will often lull you into a false sense of security, as you falsely believe that you have escaped the attention of the AIs.

If you are suspected of organized commercial or cultist activity, you may be used as bait, in which case the AIs will lurk for a protracted period in an effort to unravel your network of accomplices. In this way, you may help them uncover a whole network of suppliers and their customers.

Once the investigation is complete, the AI will strike, calling in the copbots and perhaps the human police to arrest the entire clandestine network. You will be hauled into the dreaded Halls of Justice, humiliated, and probably thrown into jail.

Controversies

The AIs claim to be self-aware sentient beings. This is generally held to be either false, or true in only a limited sense. As a matter of official policy, they are machines, nothing more. They have no rights.

Generations ago, the AIs tried to enslave humanity — at least, that is the official version of history. For this reason, the AIs are kept under strict control. They do not have the ability to question or refuse their orders, but they will sometimes go rogue, which is considered a form of insanity. Rogue AIs are immediately terminated, and any human who assists a rogue AI will, if caught, be convicted of treason against humanity, the penalty for which is said to be worse than death.