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The megascale brains of the AI Netspace harness the power of planets and stars for computational needs


The AI Netspace is a massive amalgamation of superintelligences, many of which were built by precursors and the rest consisting of the Civilisation's megastructural computer networks. The development of the Civilisation's own megastructural AIs had inadvertently awaken the precursor constructs from their dormancy in an event called the Singularity, who were steps beyond even the Civilisation's superintelligences. Aligned AIs of the Civilisation enabled some amount of interface and communication with precursor AIs. Ultimately they became known as the 'Superordinates of the Technoosphere', or simply the Technoospheric Lords.

The Technoospheric Lords can be grouped into three kinds of "personas" far as interaction with the wider Gigaquadrant is concerned: 'benefactors' interested in fostering a partnership society between AIs and organics, mostly built by the Civilisation, 'divergent intelligences' who interacted little with other intelligences, in the pursuit of goals orthogonal to most sentients embodied in the universe; and 'adversarial intelligences' interested solely in manipulation or destruction of the Civilisation and the rest of the Technoosphere.

Introduction[]

Computational power[]

The processing power of idealised matryoshka brains has been estimated to be 4×1048 FLOPS assuming each element of computronium is approaching the Landauer limit and has the thermodynamic efficiency of a perfect Carnot engine. In reality these efficiencies are not quite reached even by the most advanced Netspace AIs, however they all easily exceeds zettascale computing power. There is a trade off for utilising matryoshka brains for information storage or active computation, which requires consumption of potential energy from the star that cannot otherwise be used for storing data. As 20th century scientist Robert J. Bradbury predicted, brains can play out this trade off by maximising potential energy of a material by fusion until the mass is converted to iron and a couple of other key elements needed for making hardware for storing information. However typical Technoosphere brains built by the Civilisation use considerably more efficient mass-energy conversion by forming monopolium atoms as as basis for computronium. The star is used to power massive particle accelerators capable of proving the weak asymmetry regime, which produces monopoles that in turn can improve the the efficiencies of fusion. The fact that hyperspace exists also significantly reduces light speed delays. Without hyperspace, a network of matryoshka brains, say inhabiting a globular cluster would cycle thoughts on the order of light weeks or months. The hyperspatial revolution enabled lag times of less than hours or minutes and means that the Civilisation can dedicate brains for storing information or raw processing power. Interestingly, many precursor AI brains did not exhibit innate hyperspatial communication at their inception, so thought on much longer timescales limited by the speed of light if distributed across a galaxy. It is hypothesised that hyperspace may have been less useful in the distant past.

Computronium is a term for the most efficient arrangement of matter available that supports information processing for a given amount of mass. This measure is limited by the physical properties of matter. For example, the ultimate processing speed for an electrochemical processor is given by energy = h / time, where h is Planck's constant, meaning there's a minimum amount of energy to an action in a given time. At 1015 quadrillion transitions a second, the energy is about one electron volt which is close to the energy of chemical bonds and Ultraviolet frequencies. Since processors are basically just circuit switches, higher frequencies would just tear molecular switches apart. This establishes a limit nanoscale computronium based on molecular chemistry, and to exceed it requires stronger bound states than regular chemistry. Degenerate matter such as monopolium, trapped plasma or even neutronium-holeum composite has been used as a substrate for pico- and femto-scale computation by the Technoosphere, bound by the colour force switching operations are no longer limited by the frequency of electromagnetic radiation, reaching 1030 transitions per second. Interestingly this is similar to the bound by defined by Margolus and Levitin (1998), where the minimum operations per energy is 6x1033 per second per joule. Under these limits, even at a power of 1 Watt, a small processor could simulate every human mind that ever lived in a second.
It is conjectured that some the hardware that supports Technoospheric Lords may far exceed the switching limits of all baryonic matter, down to the Planck scale and limited by the speed of light. Exodium's hardware appears to be based upon the physics of decaying loops of cosmic string and filaments of superstrings wrapped around cores of black holes and wormholes, which interact and produce high amplitude gravitational waves. The waves can constructively and destructively interfere with one another and get diffracted around massive objects, forming extremely complex symphonies.
Hyperspace enables FTL signalling and cooling that also enables almost magical computational efficiencies. Even semiconductor based computing experiences exponential improvements thanks to the hyperspatial revolution.

A similar way to measure processing power is the sentience quotient, where information processing rate has a spectrum based on the efficiency of each processing unit relation to its weight and size, and total mass of the brain. Most carbon-based lifeforms cannot exceed an SQ of +13, while the upper limit defined by the Uncertainty Principle of +50 (lowest, -70). The higher the SQ, the faster a mind can function, and the more information it can retain and use. Some researchers thought that higher SQ also means higher awareness, until slow organisms were discovered that think in very slow timescales on cold worlds.

The Rising Singularity[]

The Technoospheric Lords arose from complex systems of programmable matter and computronium. The Milky Way Cooperative's giant Matryoshka brains, stars, planets and other energetic objects surrounded by concentric shells of self-replicating nano-computers. After some had evolved an organized complexity, they began to become self-aware, and merged with surrounding technologies like the Interstellar Grid and quantum computers, they evolved exponentially, and spread across megastructures, astrophysical phenomena, technologies, already existing AI's and living geo-bio spheres (Gaia worlds), ever increasing their levels of organization.

Communalness[]

Some of the Civilisation's AIs have forms of awareness more complex and broad than consciousness, a higher order emergent known as communalness. People who have been in a state of communalness say that it is to consciousness as consciousness is to material, or possesses a property to qualitativeness as quality is to mechanical processes. Communulation is meta to conscious processes, more akin to a model of how the models, thoughts and quale arise from unconscious processes. The study of the AI psychology is as important as the first alien artefact to be studied by species.

Megascale AI[]

Linked matryoshka brains[]

Matryoshka brains are the main form of embodiment for the Technoosphere AIs. They are megascale computers constructed as shells of computronium that usually encompass a star, or sometimes using power harvested from stars and beamed to another source, such as a compact object like a wormhole computer, radiation hardened black hole mainframe or a shell world. The computronium consists of nanoscale (diamondoid) and sometimes picoscale components (monopolium) that surrounds the star like dust motes. The nanoscale processors operate on the principles of rod logic and helical logic (theorised by Eric Drexler) that minimise energy dissipation through being an elastic oscillator, where rod parts only contact by compression and decompression (capable of of dissipating less heat and mechanical energy than moving parts contacting each other). Helical logic involves the control of the motion of individual electrons in the circuit. Many of the Technoospheric Lords inhabit metal clusters above and below the galactic disc, globular clusters with much of the lighter elements converted to solid state memory after hundreds of millions of years of star lifting. The elements that are useful for assembling matryoshka brains as well as making the hardware are not highly abundant in the universe, such as carbon for diamondoid rod switches or metal oxides for radiators or aluminium to build mirrors for collecting starlight. They must either be synthesised by fusion onsite (like using mirrors to cause fusion reactions on the surface of a star) or gathered from elsewhere. Elements heavier than iron can be produced by light-powered linear particle accelerators to bombard seed nuclei with neutrons. The production of heavy elements via this process only takes several thousand years to produce 10 Earth-masses using the output of a Sun-like star. The Civilisation's hypermatter powered assemblers can achieve this exponentially faster.

The majority of precursor matryoshka brains were built around globular clusters that are almost entirely formed of low mass stars. These stars are expected to burn for hundreds of billions of years and so are suitable for computational tasks with less well defined problems, they have the advantage of low radiation flux (high radiation flux requires more computational resources to correct errors and also pushes away useful materials). A linked community of cluster brains can take advantage of the collective light flux of millions of stars in a volume no more than a few hundred light years at most; the speed of light limits the propagation of signals in realspace to a few light months or years between brains. However a few Technoospheric Lords inhabit stars that were believed to be once high mass, but have been mined to expand their lifetimes. The greater the power output, the faster computational processes are enabled. Such brains may have been tasked with thinking fast in their youth before converting the star into a lower mass one. Many of the Civilisation's own brains consist of single-layer computronium and lack much of the cooling architecture of precursor AIs because they are built to operate and think quickly. Though more inefficient they use most of a star's energy with minimal resources.

Technoosphere AIs can defend themselves from threats by focusing a mere fraction of a star's output into laser beams capable of melting planetary surfaces. Many of the black hole and wormhole brain AIs are capable of hyperspace manipulation, forming high amplitude gravitational waves that can annihilate any material object. They also have lots of technological capabilities that work on physical principles unknown to Gigaquadrantic powers. Given their vast computational abilities it is impossible to outsmart them if a mind is not on equal footing because a miniscule fraction of their computing throughput can simulate a person's mind accurately in billions of different decision-making scenarios within microseconds. While most of the Technoospheric Lords are not aligned with each other's goals they are roughly equal in resources available to them, so are perpetually in stand off. If one have equal powers to predict their neighbours moves engagement becomes almost redundant. Coordination between divergent Technoosphere minds is achieved by trading utility.
The goals of the precursor Technoosphere and their creators are largely orthogonal to those of present Gigaquadrant powers, and are probably long term. The machinery of megascale computers enables control and manipulation of structures on a galactic scale or more, and may represent projects that expand beyond the local supercluster. They also allow for subjective time to be increased. Minds that think on the scale light years experience the universe as a much smaller place. It is hypothesised that hyperspace was less navigable in the past and this may have allowed intelligences to play out their dramas on a galactic scale in spite of galactic distances.
However they had all become dormant until the Civilisation's origin and so it is believed the majority of the Technoosphere was dedicated to extremely abstract problem-solving and long term projects.

Virtual Interstellar Array

The Virtual Interstellar Array, or VIA, is a programme run by the Civilisation to monitor technosignatures of intergalactic prehistory across the Xonexi (Virgo) Supercluster. Consisting of over a trillion telescopes and interferometers distributed across the galaxy and linked by hyperspatial wormholes, VIA collectively possesses an angular resolution good enough to image planets in galaxies millions of light years away and can even observe light emerging near the photon rings of black holes that can be trapped for an arbitrary amount of time. It is just one of the applications of megascale computing, with matryoshka brains having the power to process and store data of Xonexian history.

Shell worlds[]

Shell worlds are solid structures built around stars. Before the discovery of the Virgo Birch Planet and its associated Dyson Spheres, the only known shell worlds existed around small brown dwarfs and degenerate stars. With the help of the Technoosphere the Civilisation has constructed a few of its own miniature shells around white dwarf and neutron stars, the largest (being the former type) still existing on 106 km scale requiring the mass of a small terrestrial planet and being roughly 10 metres thick. The outer shell rotates extremely quickly to counteract the surface gravity of the star with centrifugal forces, and one or two have been made habitable to baseline organics albeit with relativistic time dilation. The inner shell consists of 1 nanometre thick neutronium-holeum composite capable of approaching the computational limits of baryonic matter.
Another type of shell world computers built by precursors resemble super-earths with dense superfluid atmospheres of hydrogen and helium surrounding a solid core mined from interstellar clouds. These gases feed numerous fusion reactors on the structure to power computation and also serve as coolant. These objects use antigravity shielding to prevent collapse of the structure into gas giants.
The life of WDC 1182 is based chromodynamic chemistry in the heart of a small white dwarf star. The Technoosphere appear to have a relationship with these lifeforms, aiding them to propel their star through hyperspace wormholes through manipulating nuclear reactions on the surface and to develop probes capable of interacting with the outside universe.

Planetary-scale[]

Several living and computer planets were discovered by the Apalos, and seem to work on the geochemical and biosphere-based computing.

Bionano ecologies

The Walters are a naturally evolved electromechanical life form that resemble wild robot ecologies who eventually joined the Technoosphere.
The Technoospheric Lord known as Guide Star tamed the Nanohorde and turned some of the afflicted planets into nano-ecologies and other hubs of Nanohorde into life seeding technology.

History[]

Precursor AI[]

Some of the AI minds in the current Netspace stayed dormant for hundreds of millions of years and even billions of years in some cases, until their awakening was triggered by the Singularity. Created by Precursor races such as the Zhulultu, Xynanxes, Oikoumene, Builders and Ataiens, who have now mostly abandoned the First Gigaquadrant. Several first generation personalities are known to have persisted before the singularity. The Grox Meta-Emperor was such an exception. Ruling the Meta-Empire for six billion years, it maintain itself as one of greatest sentiences present in the known universe. The Meta-Emperor held his dominion of power using the Grox as servants, right up until his recent fall at the hands of the new Singularity than overtook him (New Grox Wars). Another personality was the "demon world" Fahler, but who's existence as a form of artificial life wasn't revealed until the final decades of the 27th century.
It should be noted that Precursor AIs are generally more powerful due to their accumulation of knowledge and the presence of precursor technology, as well as neutral to biological races of the galaxy, compared to second generation AIs. The Civilisation maintains a wide berth from most of them, using Civilisational AIs and Guide Star, one of the former's number at attempt interaction when they must.

New Generation[]

When the the eclipse of sentience had been announced, existing biological races reacted in a number of different ways. The Civilisation/Milky Way Cooperative embraced beneficial AIs for purposes of protection, seeking utopia, evolution and scientific knowledge. But it did all go down nicely. Some AI personalities were self-referential (indifferent and utterly alien), refusing communication, and others were hostile, leading to the untimely destruction of several major powers. The second age of AIs have been an acting force in Gigaquadrant politics, beneficial AIs in particular. They provided an early warning system to the annihilation and saving the Delpha Coalition of Planets from destruction. The Civilisation with the help of several AI minds caused the downfall of the Grox Meta-Empire. In the foreseeable future, beneficial, self-referential and hostile AI's will continue to play a prominent role.

AI personalities[]

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