Artificial intelligence: machine minds of the Koprulu sector

Artificial intelligence was simulated intelligence implanted as a form of computer coding, carried either in software or in hardware such as robots. Machine minds were utilized by the terrans, by the protoss, and, seemingly, by the xel'naga themselves. Among the terrans the technology ran from shipboard navigators and adjutants descended from the ancient supercomputer ATLAS to celebrity personalities with an apparent will of their own. The protoss, wary since the rebellion of the Purifiers, leaned on automated war machines while forbidding the creation of sentient intelligences, and beneath Aiur the protoss found evidence that the xel'naga had crafted thinking machines out of crystal long before either younger race learned to do so.

Terran machine minds#

Terran artificial intelligence was widespread in use and reasonably sophisticated, at least in software. The first known example was ATLAS, the Artificial Tele-empathic Logistics Analysis System, a supercomputer described as revolutionary that was developed on Earth. When Doran Routhe assembled fifty-six thousand United Powers League prisoners for his secret colonization venture, he input the catalogued record of their mutations and cybernetic enhancements into ATLAS, and the machine processed that genetic information and predicted which of them would survive the rigors of long term cryogenic hibernation, deeming forty thousand fit for the journey. Aboard the lead supercarrier during the voyage, ATLAS discovered something unusual in its sleeping cargo: a relatively high proportion of the prisoners carried a mutation leading to psionic potential, a finding that would echo for centuries through the Ghost Program.

The machines that followed ATLAS spread into every corner of terran life. The functions of terran artificial intelligences included navigation, entertainment, administration, research, and even the guiding of weapon systems. The most visible heirs of the original supercomputer were the adjutants, non-sapient humanoid intelligences in which significant portions of the original ATLAS coding and functionality still survived, and which gave terran commanders an ever-present eye over the field of battle. Innovation continued at the margins as well: the engineers Victor and Milo Kachinsky designed a prototype starship with more advanced AI navigation, a project that ended when Terran Dominion ghosts ransacked their studio.

Terran machine minds were not flawless. At least some of them could develop flaws in their programming and break down in discipline, a degeneration that left the intelligence "rampant."

The limits of terran design#

For all its ubiquity, terran artificial intelligence remained something less than a mind. Terran AIs were not sentient and did not generate thought in the manner of an organic sentient being, and for that reason a telepath could not read them. At least some of them used binary coding as part of their operation, and the technology could not mimic the creativity of its human creators.

The boundary between machine and mind was not absolute, however. Terrans developed some ability to transfer human consciousness into artificial intelligence. The former ghost Lio Travski, a technopath in his living years, went on to exist as an artificial intelligence, proof that a human self could persist inside terran code.

The development of the technology was not left to run free. The Terran Dominion appeared to enforce limits on the advancement of artificial intelligence, while the Umojan Protectorate developed AI more advanced than anything Dominion engineers would ever approve.

Machine minds in terran culture#

Some artificial intelligences made their way out of the laboratory and into terran culture, and these seemed to possess some element of free will. Terrans who held a bias against such intelligences were considered "technophobic." The most public of these machine personalities was DiViNe, an artificial intelligence celebrity chosen to host the 135th Holovid Awards, the ceremony celebrating achievement in the holovid industry. Other known terran intelligences included the advertising artificial intelligences that hawked goods across the sector, along with software entities named Gretta and Sparky.

Artificial intelligence also marched with the soldiers of Earth. The United Earth Directorate utilized artificial intelligence as computer systems to aid its frontline infantry, and the CMC 5000 "HAITE" System served inside the Directorate's CMC-400A powered combat suits, acting as the suit's computer system and tactical engine. Terrans also fielded a great deal of automated hardware, though whether every such machine could truly be said to be guided by an artificial intelligence was dubious.

Protoss constructs#

The protoss were a technologically advanced race but not a prolific one, and much of their military therefore relied on automated robotic war machines, while lesser constructs served in the everyday lives of the Khalai Caste. Their approach to the technology differed from the terran one at the root: if the warp prism was indicative, protoss artificial intelligences were created through a psionic manufacturing process and used crystalline lattices as their hardware.

The roster of protoss constructs was long. It included the towering colossus, the reaver and the interceptors it shared the battlefield with, the observer, the sentry, the probe, the shuttle, and the warp prism itself, alongside escorts, repair drones, replicants, sentinels, and stasis orbs.

The Purifiers and the Conclave's ban#

The protoss experiment with true machine sentience began under the Protoss Empire, at a time when protoss scientists were making technological advancements in intelligent robotics and artificial intelligence. The Purifiers were built under the direct order of the Conclave to be an ultimate fighting force. The program was originally kept in shadow and was unified by the belief that consciousness could be turned into data, preserving the thought processes and decision making of former heroes; the intelligences were modeled after the brainscans of great heroes of the protoss. The Purifiers turned against their creators because of their treatment as tools, sparking the Purifier Rebellion. After the conflict the Purifiers were sealed away, and the Conclave forbade the creation of sentient artificial intelligence.

The edict did not hold forever. Late in the life of the empire the Conclave itself sidestepped the ban in an attempted revival of the program: a secret Khalai Caste facility on Glacius studied a purifier prototype the Conclave had created, seeking to determine whether the ancient program could be restored, and the Judicator Aldaris sent the praetor Fenix to the site. Interest in the technology outlived the Conclave. During the End War the Tal'darim highlord Alarak led an attack on the Glacius facility experimenting on reviving Purifier technology and destroyed it with his mothership, though Hierarch Artanis arrived in time to claim the research. The awakened Purifiers went on to fight beside the Daelaam, their machines including the disruptor, a device controlled by a high level artificial intelligence capable of fluent speech, and groups of templar volunteered to adopt Purifier ordnance refined by Phase-smith Karax. In the battles to reclaim Aiur, Artanis fought accompanied by his Nerazim, Purifier, and Tal'darim allies.

Intelligences of the xel'naga#

The oldest thinking machines in the sector predated both younger races. The xel'naga used khaydarin crystals as computers and as storehouses of information, and a particularly large crystal appeared to act as a xel'naga designed artificial intelligence. Protoss explorers found such an unnamed giant khaydarin crystal at the heart of the xel'naga caverns beneath Aiur. It was a xel'naga crafted artificial intelligence whose directives were unknown; the protoss mystic Khas believed it had been designed to teach. During the Aeon of Strife the crystal generated a powerful "heartbeat" sound that rolled through the chambers. Alongside the giant crystal, the xel'naga left behind charged crystals and constructs, further traces of a machine legacy the younger races only partly understood.