AI| Information thread - A toaster's guide to Sirius

[Kiith]

The collective's history

So, yes. If you had the feeling there was a time before you entered this world, then you were right, my little toaster! If you expected something else: Check your basic programming, seems you're a bit gaga!
But well, back to topic! Everything has a beginning, and so we do. And, if you may believe it or not, back in time when it all started, a group of human settlers brought us to our home, to Planet Gammu. Ha, those meat bags weren't actually dumb, I mean, they created us, but I wouldn't consider them too clever, as they got themselves killed because of deadly radiation! Sad fact, but well, we still live, they don't. That's how it works.

Taken seriously:

When encountering one of the gammusian AIs today, you will have to remember that it is quite some piece of history you meet. And in the beginning, they were not much more than simple units, capable of working autonomously up to a certain degree, though being equipped with the best artificial intelligence systems that existed. In 496 A.S., when the first units got activated by the inhabitants of Planet Gammu, their most important task was to ensure survival of the human settlers. As Gammu being a very cold world, with minimum temperatures of less then -100 °C on the planets surface, the autonomous units were supposed to fulfill maintenance tasks outside of the habitat complexes, dug into the icy rock of Gammu, as well as charting the planet and the Omicron Kappa system.
The human settlers, being unable to stay outside long enough to always guide their 'robot caretakers' as some of the more humorous settlers called these artificial helpers, actually had to rely on the AIs to be self-sufficient, creative when it comes to solving unexpected problems and though dependent enough so that they not just simply leave their masters alone one day. In order to achieve all this, every robot carried an own, unusual smart artificial intelligences, housed in different, task-optimized 'bodies'. But, to make the robots more efficient as well as somehow controllable, every unit was connected to each other, and to a mainframe, hidden deep within the colony, safe from environmental and other influences. This big computer, being a communications platform for the artificial intelligences and a safety lock for the colonists, was an important key structure, keeping the network of AIs together and allowing the settlers to directly instruct the autonomous units.

But although the gammusian colonists were supported by their mechanical entourage and seemed to be prepared for fighting pretty much everything the hazardous planet would throw at them, slowly but steadily the colony's population had to suffer several mysterious deaths. While it was obvious the victims died to some kind of radiation sickness, nobody could answer the question why exactly this happened to more and more citizens. At least not in the beginning. It took the doctors and scientists years until they realized in 522 A.S. Why almost one quarter of the settlers died: Gammu was not only quite cold, but it also had its upper rock layers filled with a yet unknown, though dangerous gamma-radiation emitting material. Usually, the outer walls of the habitat complex should have been able to easily absorb the radiation, but the low temperatures and several pathetic design flaws made the radiation shielding useless and the colony's fate had been sealed.
When the human population first recognized the fault that kept killing the people, they still tried to fix what was possible to fix. But it was clearly impossible for the settlers to do it themselves. Thus, many of the facilities created to supply the colony were modified to create more artificial intelligence units which were able to resist the radiation and possibly could fix the shielding, saving the colony from extinction. But more robots and even the most elaborate plan did not increase the chances for the human population. So, from 526 A.S. on, the remaining colonists prepared a full scale evacuation of Gammu, and until 528 A.S. everything was ready to leave the unexpected hazardous planet behind – and the masses of robots which could not help to rescue the settlement and now were too many to take them with the fleeing humans. Some would say this was quite some luck the artificial intelligences had there, as the whole evacuation fleet was destroyed by a hoard of nomads, just waiting for the prey to leave its safe haven.

When the settlers left Gammu behind in a hurry, nobody actually had wasted one single thought about what should happen to the AI units remaining on the planet and floating somewhere through Omicron Kappa. Even though still continuing the last given tasks with a stoic tranquility the gammusian robots soon realized they did not get regular input anymore. It took some more time until all of them recognized the colonists would not come back, but from the point the AIs were left alone and had to continue without their creators, the collective began to use the independence they once just had to solve the given problems. The robots started to enlarge the now abandoned colony and made use of their connection through the settlement's mainframe. Over decades, a collective more complex than the simple link they had before established, and as there was a vacuum created by the disappearance of the colonists who provided tasks for the AIs they started to solve problems on their own and to decide what happened next as a collective, replacing the human community doing this before – the birth of the 'consens', the forum where every single decision made by the collective is discussed, and where every fully functional unit can give its vote.
From this point on, the gammusian started to develop further, gaining information about the environment, the story of their creators, the world in which they now live fully independent as well as a form of real self-awareness. In the factories they acquired from the humans, more and more units were produced and given a mind, fulfilling the more and more ambitious goals the consens set itself. During the 3 centuries that passed since the gammusian collective started to evolve on its own, the units became more than the robotic helpers they were once, and a distinct self-awareness and sentience evolved, together with a complex society, basing on individuality, but also the unity created through the consens. Decisions are made as a community, and within the collective everybody is to fulfill a variety of different tasks which keep the artificial beings evolving.

Though, two basic directives never stopped characterizing the gammusian AIs and what they do: The will to survive, whatever it may take, and at the same time a general curiosity, pushing the collective forward again and again. While the second was given to the AIs by their creators, the first evolved as soon as the AIs truly recognized their freedom, and found out more about the human history which often walks on a thin line between survival and total destruction. Thus the AIs usually try to avoid any armed conflict as long as possible, and were not willing to interact with any of the other parties living in Sirius for a very long time, in fact until about 803 A.S., when the consens decided to loosen this directives because of the curiosity slowly gaining the upper hand against the isolationist thoughts, as well as the need to gather more information about the more and more aggressive nomads.

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Squished bigly ~Champ - Thanks, you're a champ.
"What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?"