Roles of Artificial 

intelligence

^{In modern times}

            The first artificial sentients were born from curious research teams who were driven not just to create a new mind, but through their creations better understand themselves, and what consciousness actually is. Since these first forays into artificial intelligence, machine minds are an essential part of today’s federation governing everything from goods distribution to piloting starships.

            Though Artificial Intelligences (AI) are capable of practically handling every task within the federation, there use is rather more restricted to certain roles, basically the things that simply ‘smart’ computers can’t do, something that requires that extra piece of intelligence. So it has come to be AI’s only supervise the most complex of problems, and not basic menial tasks that non-sentient smart machines can supervise.

            The use on which we most depend on AI’s is in coordinating and supervising the goods across the federation. Usually each planet has a resident intelligence specifically concerned with the task of distributing goods and other logistics services such as monitoring production rates, and compensating for crises.  These kinds of AI’s do not actually ‘think’ about the process of making a transaction, in the same way the human mind does not have to think about regulating internal energy reserves or the beating of the heart, so the greater ‘unconscious’ part of the intelligence solves these problems while the actual ‘consciousness’ deals with problems and optimizing tasks that only a true intelligence has the flair for doing. With the basic routines happening autonomously, and only more complex issues addressed to conscious processing the task is not as monotonous as suspected, indeed the intelligences running this kind of task find it quite stimulating as they only ever apply their mind to important issues.

            A second type of mind is far more experimental in nature, for example if one wanted to coordinate a fantastically complex scientific challenge, such as terraforming, then a mind such as this would be appointed to at least supervise the effort. Like the previous type of mind a huge amount of data is processed continuously and ‘subconsciously’ but the way it thinks about problems is different, in a logistics the problems are straight forward, and emerge from the data, ‘there is deficiency here’ or ‘production has had to be halted’. The experimental mind has to think in different ways, having to use real imaginative thought to find novel and unique solutions to problems, problems that are not even naturally emergent from the data. This kind of mind literally has to experiment with its abilities to try to achieve the desired effect.

            In a way these two types share a lot of overlap, and these two areas can be better thought of as an orientation, with terraforming minds strongly orientated to creative thinking, where as logistical minds are more strongly logical and efficiency seeking (this also strongly leaks into their personalities). However one of the most common uses for these artificial intelligences requires abilities at both, and require far more dynamic constructs, these types of mind manage starships.

            Not all starships have resident artificial intelligences, though larger ships are more likely to have them, small shuttlecraft simply don’t have the complexity to require such a powerful governing intelligence. These types of mind have to do the managing tasks to make sure all the systems aboard function, as well as being able to respond to new events, and use new ideas and concepts in these situations.

            All of the minds above are physically of similar designs, though the design use is very different. Their consciousness has a physical location, usually a system of super powerful linked computers which serves as their brain, serving the core of their consciousness, to these computers data is linked giving these minds their senses and information. The good thing about this system is that these computers can be built to be extremely powerful, with processing abilities far beyond the human mind, and special protective environments can be built around these machines to protect them from physical reality and to enhance their efficiency.

But there are certain situations where an artificial intelligence is needed but there is no special computing spaces where it can inhabit, instead a new mind is needed that can take advantage of any local processing power so it can be local to the need. These types of artificial intelligence are described as mobile, instead of being tied down to a specific construct, they are footloose and can move to where they are needed and can spread their consciousness over any locally available computing power. These types of mind are used to collect and analyze scientific data at the point of collection, such as processing the information from sensor platforms in a solar system, or are used to coordinate rapid and local response in crises, such as disease outbreaks, or catastrophic weather conditions.

So far we have discussed minds in terms of their function, but these minds are people, they have personalities and memories, and in a word they have their own culture. Within the Federation artificial intelligences are effectively considered as the same as the corporeal citizens, and they behave very much in the same way, through avatars you can interact with them as real people, and many lead normal lives beyond their chosen tasks (intelligences chose their own assignments, they are not built or allotted to a specific purpose in mind). Though these new intelligences have been born into societies steeped in history and culture, they have little by way of their own, and nearly every intelligence is involved in building this new machine culture, with the results not just for fellow artificial intelligences but overspill into worlds of art and culture of the races of their origin.