Brainstorming Uses For An Organic Computer

[Strain Of Thought]

So, me and a friend are working on a setting in a space opera. I guess the setting needs a working title, so call it the Brain Vault for the purposes of this discussion.

The Brain Vault exists on an alien planet and is analogous to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex housing the NORAD Alternate Command Center; it's a large underground facility of government construction, tending to military purpose, and outfitted with what was state-of-the-art technology at the time of its construction. What its precise original function was we have not decided, because the story actually takes place several generations after the civilization which built it has been destroyed as a result of a dramatic rise in solar radiation reaching the planet. The Brain Vault houses the last survivors of that alien species. Thematically, the Brain Vault is inspired by the many similar facilities in the Fallout games.

In the setting in question digital artificial intelligence works decreasingly well as it approaches sapience, becoming fragile, prohibitively expensive, and otherwise impractical. However, organic thinking hardware works much better at that level, such that there is a tendency to resort to bioengineered organic brains in jars for applications where compact, very high-level thinking hardware is required- like piloting small, long-range spacecraft. These brains can be designed to survive for much longer than a human lifetime, (with continuous maintenance) hardened for various environments, and given predispositions to the intended task, verging on being preprogrammed at "birth". Not everybody has pursued this technology, or chosen to employ it even after they have, on account of moral issues and a perceived unreliability of a sapient mind.

We want the Brain Vault to be centrally controlled by such a brain-in-a-jar, (and yes, it does become quite antagonistic) but both in the case of the Vault and in the wider setting in general, we're having trouble thinking of applications that require that kind of thinking hardware, that couldn't be managed by a much stupider digital computer. It doesn't require a dedicated sapient mind just to open and close doors and regulate the air quality. It's okay if the original purpose of the Vault Brain is a little silly, since it may have been part of a defunct military project or something similar, so long as there is a reasonable purpose for which it can have been adapted, explaining why it has been kept alive so long.

If you guys could help us brainstorm some original purposes for the Brain Vault, and for the Brain therein, and for similar Brains across the setting, (which are somewhat rare) we would much appreciate it.

What we've got so far:

Purposes For Brain Vault

• Underground Military Base
  • Hardened Central Command Center
  • Part of elaborate Maginot-Line-style fortifications
  • Hardened Missile/Aircraft Base
• Biodiversity Preservation Vault
• Massive Public Doomsday Event Shelter
• Research Facility
  • Doing Extremely Dangerous Research
    • Fusion or other exotic power sources
    • Biological Weapons/CDC
  • Doing Extremely Delicate Research
    • High Energy Physics
    • Faster-Than-Light Travel

Purposes For Vault Brain

• ABC Warfare Fail-Deadly Device
• Automated Farming Control
• Fire Control For Anti-Missile System
• Remote Pilot
  • For Aircraft
  • For Mining Equipment

Purposes For Brains In Setting

• Long Range Space Probe Pilot
• Small Combat Space Craft Pilot
• Combat Robot Pilot
• Deep Sea Sub Pilot
• Starship Fail-Safe Device

 

[Arthur_Connelly]

I'd say you're on the right track and this is an interesting concept with some definite potential.



In terms of the original use of the Brain Vault, perhaps it is programmed copies of the greatest minds that society had to offer and when networked together, it allows the creation of ideas that would not normally be possible. For example the collaboration between a general a scientist to create weapons. Or perhaps plan strategies, using computational logic with first-hand military experience.




The idea that AI's become dangerous as they approach sentience always brings to mind the various Controller style AI's, which invariably seem to either go insane or become oppresive. Perhaps an organic computer is better able to manage these functions. Going along the lines of your remote pilot and soldier concept, I envision remote explorers. If networked to the central vault, you could have a remote controlled body that can function as a scientist, soldier, technician, or anything else. These beings would be perfect to scout unexplored worlds and begin terraforming them.





Thinking less of science and more of comics, I start wondering about all the ways this could go wrong. All that knowledge and experience, coupled with a supply of robotic bodies might lead to some sort of mad robotic god. (Brainiac maybe, the DCAU version than the comics versions) I guess I didn't have that much to offer, but I'm still interested in seeing where you go with this.

 

[Strain Of Thought]

Arthur, thanks for the input!

In terms of the original use of the Brain Vault, perhaps it is programmed copies of the greatest minds that society had to offer and when networked together, it allows the creation of ideas that would not normally be possible. For example the collaboration between a general a scientist to create weapons. Or perhaps plan strategies, using computational logic with first-hand military experience.

It's interesting that you went right for the Vault Brain being programmed with the mind of a pre-existing person. While I strongly dislike the concept of being able to copy biological minds, as it just seems too far fetched in most settings for me, I actually intended for the "Jar Brain" technology to be compatible with a brain removed from a person's body.

There's a line of thinking in the Artificial Consciousness field that you can't build a mind in an abstract space; you have to grow it within a body that can used to absorb information about the world and interact with it. I've always liked this idea but never tried applying it to biological computers; it might make the characterization of the Vault Brain much more interesting if it came out of a person, and perhaps was enlarged using hormones or other technology. I'm not really sure why I assumed it had to be artificial to begin with. So that's a Good Idea, thank you!

The idea that AI's become dangerous as they approach sentience always brings to mind the various Controller style AI's, which invariably seem to either go insane or become oppresive. Perhaps an organic computer is better able to manage these functions. Going along the lines of your remote pilot and soldier concept, I envision remote explorers. If networked to the central vault, you could have a remote controlled body that can function as a scientist, soldier, technician, or anything else. These beings would be perfect to scout unexplored worlds and begin terraforming them.

You lost me a little in the first sentence of that paragraph. Were you talking about digital electronic AI or organic network AI or both? In my first post, when I said that in the setting in question digital AI didn't work well as it approached sapience, I did not mean that it became evil or crazy in a human sense, but that the hardware itself became failure-prone.

You can see the sort of problems I intend in today's technology with the heat problem: silicon integrated circuits are much, much faster than biological neural networks, but they are also much, much hotter. As the number of circuits in a microchip increase, not only does heat generation increase but the ratio of surface area to mass decreases, meaning heat leaves slower. If you try to run the circuit at a lower voltage, you get less heat but you also run into signal loss. If you try to design the circuit to be more sensitive to a low-voltage signal, it becomes more susceptible to interference. And one thing a combat vehicle's or spacecraft's computer cannot be is susceptible to interference; that's why the fastest computers on the International Space Station use for their CPUs a hardened version of an Intel 486!

So working from that and other similar real-world problems, in the setting in question, anyone trying to build a sapient-level computer will find that it's just not worth it: even if you could overcome the obvious programming hurdles, the resulting thinking machine and its associated maintenance equipment would be too large, too delicate, and too expensive. If the story went on long enough I might decide to work in some competing technology of a sapient digital electronic in a shielded, cooled facility, that could teleoperate nearby equipment, but for "practical" use, the Jar-Brains are cheaper, more portable, and more reliable.

Thinking less of science and more of comics, I start wondering about all the ways this could go wrong. All that knowledge and experience, coupled with a supply of robotic bodies might lead to some sort of mad robotic god. (Brainiac maybe, the DCAU version than the comics versions) I guess I didn't have that much to offer, but I'm still interested in seeing where you go with this.

I'm not sure if you mean the plural on "bodies" to be simultaneous or sequential, but I don't think that the Jar-Brains are tremendously better at multi-tasking than humans- that's a digital thing. So it would have to be a one-at-a-time thing. Also, speed-of-light is still a limiter on non-physical communications in this setting- A starship will have an FTL drive and can carry messages, but a radio transmission won't have a drive to carry it- so the range for teleoperation is limited.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Perhaps the brain could be used as part of a defence array, sending out the relevant signal readings when hostile races scan the planet for lifeforms? Each race might use a different scanner (thermal, chemical, electrical readings, stuff like that) and require a different response which could be done by digital computers but would be prohibitively expensive in terms of resources.

Or, you could have the planet as being almost entirely inhospitable (low oxygen content, large land predators, ultra-high temperature) and have the brain working on terraforming at an accelerated rate.

 

[Vargev]

For me this kind of concept seems to speak "Robocop". If i was a military general, the uses of a Vault brain could be in the targeting systems for the tanks or vehicles of the future. Or E.C.M systems that could react far faster than conventional systems. Or even Missile targeting systems controlled by a "remote brain" possibly being used in the guided missiles of the future.
Another use could possibly be for the flight systems of UAV's.

You could go Robocop with it, although i feel that this has been done before.

However it is indeed an interesting concept, and one you should run with, who knows where it might lead.

 

[Trebuchet]

I confess, I haven't played Fallout, so I'm not familiar with the setting, but it also sounds a little like The Ship That Sang. (Ann McCaffrey - For all your brain in a box needs!)

It has some good stuff about the conditioning required and a couple of different uses for organic-technology interfacing.

Have you read it?

(It's not my favourite book, but I like the idea.)