ai

When General Genius built the first mentar [Artificial Intelligence] mind in the last half of the twenty-first century, it based its design on the only proven conscious material then known, namely, our brains. Specifically, the complex structure of our synaptic network. Scientists substituted an electrochemical substrate for our slower, messier biological one. Our brains are an evolutionary hodgepodge of newer structures built on top of more ancient ones, a jury-rigged system that has gotten us this far, despite its inefficiency, but was crying out for a top-to-bottom overhaul.Or so the General genius engineers presumed. One of their chief goals was to make minds as portable as possible, to be easily transferred, stored, and active in multiple media: electronic, chemical, photonic, you name it. Thus there didn't seem to be a need for a mentar body, only for interchangeable containers. They designed the mentar mind to be as fungible as a bank transfer.And so they eliminated our most ancient brain structures for regulating metabolic functions, and they adapted our sensory/motor networks to the control of peripherals.As it turns out, intelligence is not limited to neural networks, Merrill. Indeed, half of human intelligence resides in our bodies outside our skulls. This was intelligence the mentars never inherited from us....The genius of the irrational......We gave them only rational functions -- the ability to think and feel, but no irrational functions... Have you ever been in a tight situation where you relied on your 'gut instinct'? This is the body's intelligence, not the mind's. Every living cell possesses it. The mentar substrate has no indomitable will to survive, but ours does.Likewise, mentars have no 'fire in the belly,' but we do. They don't experience pure avarice or greed or pride. They're not very curious, or playful, or proud. They lack a sense of wonder and spirit of adventure. They have little initiative. Granted, their cognition is miraculous, but their personalities are rather pedantic.But probably their chief shortcoming is the lack of intuition. Of all the irrational faculties, intuition in the most powerful. Some say intuition transcends space-time. Have you ever heard of a mentar having a lucky hunch? They can bring incredible amounts of cognitive and computational power to bear on a seemingly intractable problem, only to see a dumb human with a lucky hunch walk away with the prize every time. Then there's luck itself. Some people have it, most don't, and no mentar does.So this makes them want our bodies...Our bodies, ape bodies, dog bodies, jellyfish bodies. They've tried them all. Every cell knows some neat tricks or survival, but the problem with cellular knowledge is that it's not at all fungible; nor are our memories. We're pretty much trapped in our containers.

Consciousness is the chronic pain of life, and all higher organisms suffer it every waking moment.

You realize that there is no free will in what we create with AI. Everything functions within rules andparameters

A pulse. Beat-beating against her palm. Alive. Beat by beat the bottomless whirlwind of perceptions and data and images and sensations careening through her mind__o many how can this tiny skull hold them all__egan to abate in time to the rhythm of not her pulse, but his.

The Artificial__ speech pattern was an idiosyncratic mix of awkward and colloquial. It was unexpectedly endearing. __ just have good instincts. Mostly I love being in space._ But you are not __n_ space. You are in your starship and your starship is in space. It is not so different than being on a planet. __h, Valkyrie, you have no idea._ Tell me then.

She skidded around a corner, slamming her shoulder into the wall and bouncing off of it without slowing. Caleb?Silence. Forty-six meters. A long stretch of hallway. She pushed faster, harder. Twenty meters.She burst into the room in unison with a deafening crash of metal shearing metal.

He wasn__ going to be able to deactivate the field, which meant there was only one choice.He__ realized early on that his arcane, profoundly alien passenger came with a cost, possibly one too high to pay and get out the other side free and clear. He__ pay it nonetheless and without complaint if the diati would only come through for him now.Caleb closed his eyes.

An eerie, chilling voice interrupted him to reverberate through the house. __ou believe you are safe, but you will never be safe from me. My reach is limitless, my capabilities legion. Sleep fitfully and avoid the shadows, for know that I am coming for you. When I arrive, you will pay for what you did.

Alex thrust her hand and half her arm into the labyrinth of light. Her stare blanked, and in the halo of the matrix her eyes and glyphs blazed so radiantly she looked as if she were being consumed by a primordial fire.__he just stuck her hand into Machim Command__ central server matrix!__aleb smiled, watching on in blatant awe. __he does that.

Nisi flashed his charismatic, mysterious smile. __ow, with this in mind, are you ready to take the next step?__espite Caleb__ attempts at caution__t circumspection and even suspicion__he man__ words stirred his blood. They teased the possibilities of the power within his reach, real power extending far beyond parlor tricks and personal protection to a place where the course of life itself could be changed.__ am.

Narrow, angular features, pouty lips and hatred-filled pale, washed-out blue irises glared back at him.Caleb flashed the young man a malevolent smirk and readied his blade. __ude Winslow, I presume.

You look like you__e been on a month-long bender. Have you?___o, Ken, I have not. I__e just had a long week._ Walked the streets of a city bathed in blood and stood amid a hundred thousand corpses. Negotiated a three-way peace treaty among opposing factions of a warring alien species who__ previously held me captive. Bullied the Metigen leadership into doing my bidding. Found out we__e not the real humans, and the real humans are currently enslaving the real universe. Oh, and I think I__ addicted to my ship. How was your week? __othing a shower and some food won__ fix.

The system is only as good as its leaders. When they fail__hen the system fails__ou better damn well hope I__ there to pick up the slack.__he man__ glower lost some of its fervor. __o one appointed you humanity__ protector.___o one had to__nd if you don__ understand why that is, then you__e not nearly the man I was told you are. I__ leaving now, and I__ going to assume we__e done. But if you threaten me again, you had better bring help.

Expect an army of Vigil drones, nearly as a many Praesidis guards, a Machim ground detachment of super-soldiers and at least one Inquisitor. Oh, and security barriers everywhere. Possibly some of those mechs we met on Helix Retention, too. You Humans have kicked off a shitstorm of epic proportions.__lex spread her arms wide in an exagerrated shrug. __t__ one of our best skills.

People gravitated here for the open air, the prolific intoxicants and the visual treats. They made the deals here that were later played out elsewhere. They drank and got high. Sometimes they fought, not for money but for sport or grudge.They were the desperate and the daring, the lost and the searching. Tonight, they were his audience. Tomorrow, they would be his front line.

In the corner of her eye she caught her daughter__ shoulders drop as Alex exhaled with uncommon soberness. __o you trust me, and you understand that I will never do anything I think might hurt you.__iriam stopped outside the armory and pivoted to her daughter. __lex, what have you done?

His vision blurred, his grip on the dash faltered and the cockpit lost definition. Then all the diati rushed back to him in its own shockwave.The physical force slammed him against the cockpit half-wall. He gasped air into his lungs as a crimson aura throbbed above his skin. The world spun around him, and it occurred to him if he wanted to he could control it__ot the spinning, but the world.

What a mistake that had been, to create a construct [AI] that could suffer. He knew that now. Life, pain, death, they were no playthings. Biology was serious business, not for amateurs and foolish gods.