been—Thou shalt not build a thinking machine equal or superior to humankind. “AIs” in use within the Pax were more “All-purpose Instruments” than “Artificial Intelligences” of the kind that had evolved away from humanity almost a millennium earlier: idiot thinking machines like Isozaki’s office AI or the cretinous ship computer on de Soya’s old ship, the Raphael. But in the past dozen years, secret research departments of the Pax Mercantilus had re-created the autonomous AIs equal to or surpassing those in common use during the days of the Hegemony. The risk and benefits of this project were
...more
