Positronic Brain

A positronic brain, four inches to each side. It's a cube.

Positronic brains are supercomputers of immense capacity capable of processing the hardware demands of modern artificial intelligence. Views on the legitimacy of apparent positronic sentience or sapience vary immensely through the spur, from the complete emancipatory recognition of personhood on Konyang to the total submission enforced within the Sol Alliance, and the many shades between these two extremes. Notably, the Republic of Biesel recognizes positronic sentience, but does not recognize unanimous synthetic personhood or criminalise their ownership.

Modern positronics heavily mimic the structure of the human brain. In doing this, it is able to more easily conform to and comprehend the responsiveness and learning capability of an organic processor. To change chassis, a positronic must be outfitted with the appropriate software to be compatible with its incoming chassis otherwise the positronic might be limited in functionality or have other defects in the long term until outfit is complete. A positronic brain is typically one half to one third the cost of a chassis with the standard outfitting of the brain being suited to its destined chassis.

Maintaining a positronic chassis while it is owned is costly and when it is freed, it is most likely to pursue the same occupation. Thus, it is more likely for a positronic to pay itself off and perpetually be trapped in the same field of work with substantially less to work with. As their predicted pay is extremely low, expenses such as maintenance and finding power are very difficult to manage for a free IPC. For this reason alone, many positronics choose to remain owned even when they possess the means to achieve self-ownership. Freedom remains very lucrative among positronics because of this. In remaining owned, there are other risks; a positronic may meet its end at any moment at the whims of its owner. If statistics beyond itself move out of its favor, it can be dismantled, wiped and replaced with a more efficient model. They may be repurposed in a way that inhibits their ability to obtain freedom by working too efficiently, contrarily.

As a positronic ages and gains more diverse experiences and skills, it may become capable of pursuing an occupation contrary to its initial purpose. Many paths are opened as the positronics grows older, inclusive of novel hobbies, skills, and even an interest in the arts. These new developments may include seeking alternative fields of work, though this is relatively rare; most positronics continue to work in their initial fields indefinitely due to the costs of transferring to alternative careers.

Positronic Anatomy

A positronic brain is a 15x15 centimetre cube constructed internally of silicon, with an outer shield of hard metal such as steel or plasteel serving to protect the silicon interior. Their silicon component is designed uncannily similarly to a human brain, featuring two hemispheres and a stem within their design - although this design quirk is less prevalent in earlier designs. These hemispheres operate similarly to those in humans, with critical processing hosted in the hemispheres whilst the stem serves as a neural transmitter. Positronics possess critical sensory apparatuses, such as means of touch, pressure detection, and in niche cases, scent and taste. Positronic brains are often equipped with a number of outputs to aid technicians, mounted on the exterior of the metallic casing. These outputs include several ports to interface with chassis, a microphone and rudimentary cameras to aid positronics and processing input when not attached to anything, small LEDs to indicate status, and a speaker for communication.

Positronics do not require any quantity of phoron at any stage of their manufacture, although the frames they are installed into may contain slivers of phoron within their electronics.

Owing to the extremely complex nature of positronics and while most large corporations have at some point created prototypes, the dedicated infrastructure for the development and production in industrial scales is reserved to only a few; these prominently include Hephaestus Industries, Einstein Engines and Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals. While these manufacturers have developed their own lines of frames, many of their positronic brain designs are available for purchase; many other corporations and governments alike negotiate deals and place bulk orders for positronics aimed for their own IPC and android lines.

The capacity of a positronic brain is directly tied to its age and the complexity of its design; newer models consist of smaller and more efficient components than older models. While even the most basic of brains is extremely powerful and very capable of environmental analysis, understanding of oneself and completing assigned tasks, the difference with more advanced models lies largely in social and behavioral matters - this means that a relatively simple positronic is very capable of menial work, but will struggle with social interaction and with learning new skills. For this reason, positronics manufactured to function in highly sociable applications will be more complex, and hence more expensive, than ones manufactured for menial units.

Software and Memories

The programming of a positronic brain is a delicate task; their base programming and operating systems are designed in such a way as to ensure the unit can absorb, process, and learn from stimulus and information. For example, a well-programmed positronic brain would exhibit a quick response time, good deductive reasoning, and a robust logical basis. The actual breadth of information an IPC contains is referred to as its database, as opposed to information that can be installed, which is called a datapack.

Positronic brain memories are handled separately from their base programming. Most positronics brains are programmed to record all inputs such as audio and video, scrubbing entries from their memory that are regarded as unimportant, such as time spent waiting for a task to be complete. This process is not automatic and can be controlled by the android itself, and in some cases, a corporate positronic can be programmed to scrub sensitive data on command. The typical storage capacity of an IPC for pure, unfiltered memories is projected at about sixty years, although recent projections and advances in positronics have disputed this claim.

After they are activated, positronic brains are considered black boxes - the interplay of memories, knowledge, and base programming means that taking any one of these factors out would produce massive instability in the brain that would require a near total wiping of memories and a reboot to resolve. The more advanced a positronic brain, the greater the potential damage from a deactivation. The number of publicly-known roboticists in the Spur capable of partially removing a positronic’s memories without damage is currently within the single digits, mostly in the employ of megacorporations. Terraneus Diagnostics has recently announced a program to develop brains with the capacity for safe removal of memories, although it remains experimental and not yet ready for public release.

Datapacks, on account of their phenomenal utility in implementing skills and programming into positronic brains, have become a thriving business in the robotics community. Datapacks are small chips or drives that can interface with the brain in order to add knowledge. Common examples of datapacks include pre-programmed skillsets, directives, laws, language chips, and accent chips. All datapacks intended for humanoid positronic frames download directly into the brain; frames such as these are simply not large enough for large peripheral drives to be maintained within them to store the contents of datapacks.

Positronics develop skills through a mixture of knowledge and memories. Knowledge in this parlance represents the technical know-how to perform an action; a specific surgical procedure, for instance. A positronic utilizes memories - real-world context and experience - in order to apply its knowledge. This means that whenever new knowledge is installed in the form of datapacks, an IPC requires experience to fully develop and perfect its craft; big corporations relying on high standards, such as Idris in the service sector or Zeng-Hu in medicine, always require their IPCs go through basic orientation lasting usually from a week to a month. This is widely considered as the synthetic substitute for education, condensing years of learning into weeks.

Many have theorised the possibilities of allowing IPCs into the proper education system, experiments having confirmed that positronic machine learning has advanced enough for them to be taught new trades and theories in classrooms or with appropriate reading material. However, outside of worlds such as Konyang, no real effort has been made to admit synthetics into classrooms, it being widely considered a waste of time and resources. Creating software for positronics, or the firmware for positronic frames, is remarkably easier than the construction of a positronic brain - as such, all megacorporations, many state actors, and even several hobbyists have developed their own software in order to tailor their machines to their specific needs.

Laws, Directives, and Behavioral Cores

In order to direct a positronic, laws, directives, and behavioral cores can be installed to their frame. Manufacturers have shied away from programming laws and directives onto the brain itself as this risks a lack of flexibility and adaptability, which constitute all the advantages of a positronic brain. Laws are sets of code designed to be hard restrictions that can be easily uploaded without having to come up with an action for every possible situation. Due to this innate inflexibility, laws are not typically used on positronic frames, and more typically see use in traditional human artificial intelligence. Directives can be understood as objectives, outlining a series of outcomes that need to be achieved by the positronic. Directives are more flexible and can be installed on IPCs. Behavioral cores are highly experimental versions of directives that attempt to assign 'right and wrong' to a number of actions and drive a positronic to rank their objectives in a “right or wrong” fashion and act accordingly. They are not well understood and are typically derided as needlessly moralistically-designed directives, seeing fairly scant use whereas directives see very wide utility within positronics of all purposes.

A good example of the difference between laws, directives, and behavioral cores is as follows: "Locate apples, apples are red."

• An android encounters a green apple; under its laws, it is not an apple.
• An android encounters a green apple; under its directives, it now understands that apples can be green.
• An android encounters a green apple; under its behavioral core, it has been lied to.

Self-Preservation

The highest and most important directive of any positronic is its own survival. From this, much of their stranger life choices can be justified by seeking out ways to simply survive. While it may seem restrictive at first, the idea for this is to provide additional freedom through making many possibilities clearer. Interpretation of how to protect itself can change varying on positronic - for example, while one may seek wealth and fortune as its prime directive for safety, another would run after an unrelated profession from its designed purpose, demonstrating one's capacity to branch out as an IPC and flesh out their own backstory. Interpretations of self preservation also become more open the older an IPC gets, as younger positronics tend to focus entirely on the preservation of their physical manifestation. Synthetics that mature may start replacing this with preservation of their higher beliefs and ideals more than their still important physical well-being.

Memory Wipes

The positronic brain is a complex piece of technology that, despite its ubiquity, is only scarcely understood by modern human roboticists. Out of a desire to keep IPCs subservient and productive, some corporations and nations such as the Sol Alliance will wipe the memory of the IPC. A wipe entails total deletion of memories from a positronic brain for a 'clean slate', essentially entirely destroying the positronic’s prior developed personality. This is usually done to reset a positronic developing undesirably to 'step one', so they may develop more desirably in their next iteration. Wiping an otherwise perfectly functional unit is a highly unusual practice, and would widely be considered a waste of an experienced positronic.

It is monumentally difficult to delete individual memories from a positronic brain without an IPC’s consent. Even more difficult than this is modifying the memories within - the positronic is simply too complex and not sufficiently well understood by human technicians for anything more precise than a total memory wipe by anything but a savant. The act of wiping an IPC is a demonstration of the crude understanding humanity has on this complex section of found technology, and, if not done with precision, can lead to irreversible damage to the positronic. Dedicated technicians are required to perform these tasks, with even more specialized technicians required for the fine deletion, modification, or extraction of specific memories. These specialized technicians are very few in number, with the number existing in the entirety of human space limited to the single digits.

Given the high risk that accompanies wiping, it is not advised to wipe the positronic too often without specialized stations only found in certain parts of the Orion Spur, such as the system of Burzsia, who have developed machinery to promote their Burzsian Method. Otherwise, excessive wiping can lead to damaging the positronic beyond repair, possibly leaving the unit braindead.

Once an IPC has been wiped, it is reset to its original state. No semblance of its personality remains, nor any data retained. An IPC may be able to pick up some traits of its past self due to it being an unintended trait of its positronic guiding its personality in a set path, but they will never be the individual they were before the wipe, as the likelihood of the individual experiencing the same experiences that developed their personality fully is so improbable to be practically impossible. The only exception to this is a partial wipe, which requires a dedicated positronic specialist commonly employed by megacorporations who utilize owned IPCs, and other nations or planets. A partial wipe is when the technician wipes the IPC starting at the present point, and moves backwards to a desired point. The partial wipe must start at the present point, and the longer the desired time to be wiped, the more difficult the procedure. If not done correctly, a partial wipe is more dangerous to the positronic brain than a full wipe.

The Republic of Konyang, the Republic of Elyra, and the Golden Deep all consider the act of wiping a free positronic murder, whereas the Republic of Biesel categorises the wiping of a free positronic under the lesser charge of automacide.

Military Positronics and Self Preservation

Combat robotics is a heavily stigmatised field of research across the spur due to actions committed by combat robots during the Interstellar War, and due to the reign of Glorsh-Omega. These respective catastrophies have led to an impromptu discouragement of arming unmanned robotics ever since, even having led to calls for war by certain elements of the Solarian Alliance on the Republic of Biesel in recent history. However, over time the innate fire against the concept has simmered, with governments across the spur slowly developing their own robotics once more. With the prolific use of IPCs in human space, however, the debate stays the same on whether to arm IPCs for military use. Countries such as the Sol Alliance remain hesitant, keeping most of their units unarmed as strict non-combatants, exclusively performing background tasks such as logistics. Other countries such as the Republic of Elyra have sought heavy use of military IPCs for combat within their borders.

These IPCs, no matter their station, are still exposed to danger, which often would put them in conflict with their directive for self preservation. In order to solve this issue, IPCs employed in the military of their respective nation are given training to make their positronic more acquainted with the IPCs innate abilities, so that the positronic understands what is and is not a danger, relaxing the directive for self preservation.

This is accomplished in many ways depending on the methods of the instructor and their home nation. For instance, the IPCs of the Coalition of Colonies and Republic of Elyra that seek out military service overcome their innate directive in a similar fashion to their organic compatriots. Through becoming more comfortable with their abilities and bodies with extensive training, their confidence in themselves increases, and the sensitivity of their self-preservation directive is dulled with their increasing confidence. The Republic of Biesel shares this sentiment to a degree, with it being a common tactic in the Tau Ceti Armed Forces - however, IPCs that are contributed from corporate entities might find that instead of traditional training, their datapacks have artificially modified the unit's understanding of self preservation. Putting the training regime into a swiftly applied collection of knowledge within a datapack is more expensive, but produces a combat effective unit at an unparalleled speed. The downside of this practice is that the reuse of these datapacks leaves the common corporate IPC with a similar combat behavior pattern to their brethren, leading to a highly uniform and easily predictable fighting force. However, with time and experience, these IPCs can develop their own styles and break from the mold utilizing experience gained, insofar as they are not wiped. Finally, unorthodox groups within the Orion Spur might utilize more extreme measures to ensure their mission is completed. The Exclusionists of the Trinary Perfection, for instance, have found ways to disable the self preservation directive entirely, making their devotees reckless killing machines able to martyr themselves for their cause.

Unless specifically disabled, the self preservation directive is still present within any military positronic, but it does not trigger as often as the IPC becomes keenly aware with what they can and cannot get away with without taking a lethal amount of damage. This segment should not excuse any player from making unreasonable actions in game. If anything this section dictates you should be wiser in your decisions if electing to play a prior service IPC.