Artificial Intelligence

**Artificial Intelligence**, or **AI**, is intelligence demonstrated by a machine using software, in contrast to natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals. In Charosi lore, AI technology had reached the end of its development until the events of Soulcreek, where Naomi Masher discovered a revolutionary way to progress the technology forwards.

## Description

In Charosi lore, AI's operate at various speed. Prior to Soulcreek, the fastest AI in the world was **Minverva**, which controlled the basic functions of the Institute in Icecrown City. There are two types of AI:

#### Bound AI

These programmes are limited to their basic codes. They are unable to perform any actions outside of their originally set parameters and generally won't respond to unknown commands or processes. These are often called **Virtual Intelligences**, and are the most common forms of AI found around the world. They generally can be found in mobile phones, home computers or large businesses, and usually operate at around 4 to 6 Ghz.

#### Unbound AI

More commonly known as **true AI**, this is a technology solely created by Naomi Masher. An unbound AI is capable of observing certain perameters and writing its own code in accordance to what happens. For example, **Minverva** (who runs the Institute) was able to identify and adapt to unknown conditions that may occur in the building, such as an earthquake or a viral outbreak, and create new code to compensate. The technology suffers from the issue of **bloating**, as commonly writes over old code with newer code but cannot delete the obsolete lines. A bloated AI becomes slow, and eventually won't work. This problem is solves by rebooting the programme, though all its self-written code is then lost. Despite being revolutionary technology, an unbound AI is still not capable of keeping up with natural human intelligence and lacks the capacity to truly 'learn', despite doing something that seems close. True AIs are rare, but generally need to operate at around 10Ghz.

## AI and the Aether

Whilst researching on the Soulcreek project, Naomi came to believe that a human mind would be incapable of comprehending the Aether. Indeed, those that were exposed to it were generally twisted and broken, leaving an insane or utterly destroyed person behind - usually a Faded. This made gathering data on the Aether impossible, as those who tried lost their minds. In the worst case, studying the Aether lead to the Icecrown Incursion.

The Aether was incapable of interacting with technoloy and software. As such, Naomi believed that the key to translating the Aether into data humans could comprehend lay with AI. However, there was no artificial intelligence technology in the world capable of keeping up with the Aether's immense size, and so the project reached a dead end.

The Glitched, however, changed that. Naomi used the unnatural Aperture that the Glitched possessed to access the Aether, via the Soulcreek Prototypes. With **Minvera** acting as a baseline, she developed an AI that could use the nervous systems' of the Glitched as a conduit to streamline the Aether at a steady pace, allowing the programme to keep up. This opened up a huge range of revolutionary progress routes for AI technology to go down, with the idea of using human biology and the Aether to support its development.

## Known AI

#### Minvera

Minvera was the operating system of the Institute. It was considered state of the art, though was destroyed during the 2nd Icecrown Incursion. Minvera's core was scrapped by the Glitch, and handed over to Naomi to create the first Aether/human guided AI.

#### Soulcreek AI

Naomi's first attempt at a faster and more powerful true AI. It was able to achieve high processing speeds by translating the Aether, and using the Glitched and their nervous systems (with the Soulcreek Prototypes installed) as a barrier to prevent it from being overloaded. Eight copies of the AI was made and loaded onto the prototypes. The AI would eventually suffer from bloating, however, and had many defects. It operated at 13.6Ghz - 3.6 faster than Minvera.