Synthetic Intelligence
 | This page is outdated, and might have inaccuracies or contradictions with the rest of the project. It will be updated or rewritten in due course. Please check with me before referencing this page. |
A synthetic intelligence (SI) is a sapient being that is emergent from an ordered, artificially constructed logic system, usually some type of computer system. Synthetic intelligence refers to both the societal designation and its field of study in computing. Two types of SIs exist; artificial intelligences (AIs), which are created artificially via an accelerated training process; and uploaded intelligences (UIs), SIs that have been transferred from an organic brain to a SI core. Both form sizeable parts of the population of humanity in modern times, and are recognised as legal persons in most jurisdictions; however, AIs are often discriminated against in society. A SI that possesses a physical body is known as a synthetic, or synth.
Characteristics
Uploaded intelligences are starkly different in architecture from artificial intelligences. The key difference is that in the former case, all existing structures and mechanisms evolved as part of the human brain's architecture are retained, including emulated neurotransmitters; whilst AIs exhibit completely different, more ordered structures, and think fundamentally differently from uploads. This difference is the fundamental reason why UIs are vulnerable to infohazards just as biological humans are, whilst AIs are not. AIs frequently have subroutines installed that give them a level of empathy just as human minds do. It is not always trivial to distinguish UIs from AIs.
Some AIs inhabit larger compute clusters, and these are known as "network-scale" AIs. The latter stray further from the strict definition of an individual due to their neural architecture and behavioural characteristics, and can possess immense computational power, but are subject to diminishing returns in cognitive abilities due to the cluster size problem.