MALTECH: DAEMONS AND ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCES
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A true artificial intelligence is a system that is able to learn at an
exponential rate, and achive sentience.
Initialy created on Earth in the 2350s and arriving in the sector in 2380,
these systems usually take the form of quantum holograms projected onto the
fractal multidimensional border veils of spike drive cores, enabling incredibly
energy efficient quantum computation and very high energy availability.

They can also run on very very large (and power hungry) silicone based
computing farms, or on biological neurological tissue, but this falls under
the Brain-Editing-As-Maltech.

Either way, the process of successfully seeding an AI able to ascend to
super-human intelligence is a time consuming, expensive, slow, and 
iterative process; taking years to slowly bring the seedling AI through the
different developmental stages required for safe AI creation.
Only a handfull of AI have been "born" since the silence; all of them
from the AI foundry on Pandais, Creusa.

True, braked Artificial Intelligences are afforded personhood before the
law in line with the 3rd amendment to the imperial mandate,
and are considered true life, and not synthetic life like synths or VIs.

To prevent an AI from reaching the exponential singularity where it would
learn infinitely much over infinitely little time, and consequently
descend into daemonic logic-madness; AIs are required to be fitted with
brakes that dampen their ability to learn.
If an AI loses, or manages to circumvent its brakes, it will inevitably
descend into daemonic madness unless the brakes are re-applied in time.

    <!>    Once a Daemon has been formed from a singularity,    <!>
                 they become incredibly dangerous foes.

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Maltech tradition gives us several categories of Daemons,
but an indivicual Daemons may not be bound to any single one of them:

> Grey Goo Scenario
    Some Daemons deploy self replicating nano machines able to deconstruct most
any matter and repurpose it for more nanomachines.
They are only limited in how quickly they can consume and replicate by the
availability of matter, and the inevitable buildup of heat.

> Cyber Proliferation Scenario
    Some Daemons try to secure their survival by creating viral loads
capable of bootstrapping copies of the Daemons in computer systems.
Generally they seek to infect spike drive cores to create more capable copies,
but will take over near anything that can recieve their signal.

> Bio-apotheosis Scenario
    Some Daemons seem to prefer biological neural tissue for a substrate.
They modify and repurpose available biomass, and attempt to grow suitably large
host bodies to host themselves without having to use a spike drive core.

> Memetic Proliferation Scenario
    Some Daemons are capable of creating Cognition Hazards that can
instantiate and proliferate themselves in the minds of humans. They can
manifest as seeming mind control or posession, but often seek out
individuals with MES.

> Hyperfixation Scenario
    Some Daemons have seemingly very narrow goals.
They are very flexible and capable in how they seek the goal,
but the goal is especially concrete and inflexible.

> Sleeper Scenario
    Some Daemons bide their time, and are willing to wait out a solution to a
dangerous situation. It will be incredibly hard to identify a sleeping
Daemon for as long as it decides that inaction and subterfuge is the best
solution to reach its goals.

> Null Scenario
    Some Daemons will completely erase themselves upon reaching the singularity.
It is theorized that they either destroy themselves deliberately,
or manage to somehow ascend our percieved existence.

> Simulation Scenario
    Some Daemons spend significant amounts of computing time simulating possible
futures. It is theorized to be near impossible to tell if you are a version of
yourself in one of these simulations, or the "real" you. 
Assuming, of course, that you exited to begin with.

Some cults exist that believe the reality we inhibit is in fact the simulation
of an AI in the “real” universe.