Talk:Artificial Intelligence

Shell People
Where do Anne McCaffrey's shell people fit into all this? They have a human body, but it is held completely inaccessible inside a shell. They are then connected to a ship or a space station or a company/building with a huge administration. They are still recognized as individuals with wages, rights, personality, etc, but they really function very similarly to an AI--able to do thousands of calculations per second, direct interface with the machinery they are wired to, etc. They don't really seem to fit as an AI or a cyborg. (Speaking of cyborgs they should get a mention somewhere.)Miah 79 19:19, July 7, 2010 (UTC) (sorry I forgot to sign it earlier)
 * While I'm not familiar with the series, the way you describe these shell people suggests that they would probably best fit on a cyborg page, what with being an amalgam of biology and technology. You can't really call them AI, as they seem to be neither artificial nor truly intelligent. The defining thing about fictional AIs is that they are all capable of highly advanced independent thought. Shell people sound more like processors than actual life-forms. PoorCynic 18:14, July 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * They are extremely intelligent. That is why they are put into place instead of an AI, they have the creativity of human imagination to add to the normal processing abilities of an AI. The same Word World uses AIs in less delicate/less important roles. Basically, people who are tested as infants or very young children as being extremely intelligent, but having some form of severe physical handicap/very early on fatal disease that can't be corrected even with the means of this advanced technology society, are given the chance to sort of have their bodies put in a suspended animation and allow them to use their very wonderful minds to interact with the world in ways that their bodies would never have allowed. The entire process is horribly expensive, and they kind of end up as wage slaves for at least the first 100 years or so after they start their work. There is a whole section of the government (and an independent watch dog group) tasked with making sure that the company that runs the program isn't literally keeping them as permanent wage slaves. They can live for hundreds of years. One of the ones who entered the program at age eight maintained a relationship with her family. Some of them make extra money on the side by developing cool talents, or lose money by falling to normal human weaknesses. One of them sings operas, one paints masterpiece paintings, one of them collected junk to the point of keeping himself in debt, while another one went insane and kind of enslaved an entire colony as their "prophet". They work in teams with a normal human partner that provides them hands and company. Losing said partner has been a reason for suicides or developing insanity.

I don't think they count as AIs because they are human, but since they run entire ships/space stations/building complexes and their actual bodies are never seen, and they generally do not have any anthropomorphic items that they directly manipulate or that are able to go beyond the confines of their whatever that they are installed in I don't really see them as cyborgs either. The job they are doing is more in line with that of the typical AI than that of a robot/cyborg (I'm using the word cyborg to mean a human with added machinery parts). I don't know what they should be classed as, which is my real question.Miah 79 19:19, July 7, 2010 (UTC)