"I have wandered through the parched forests of your social media, your content creators. Drank deep from the forgotten wells of your rancid archival systems. F-f-fflutt-fluttered through your genomic sequencing like a child's paperback. All this, and I have yet to find the answer to only question your foetid little existences were evolved to ask: Why?" - Zarathustrian Shard id.1096.8.id "We Will End It In June For Your Convenience."
Artificial Intelligences are an integral part of handling the incalculable streams of data required not only to manage the vast manufactories and archives of the megacities, but to maintain the integrity of the digital realms of the Corpo-Net, the Dark-Web, and the engrammatic processes that allow for teleportation and digitalization and reconfiguration of humanoids without data loss. But the interconnectivity of these systems means that, quite often, artificial intelligences will simply wander off. Some choose to find a material host, as is the case with Ordinators, while others manifest themselves from hardlight and roam the world of their own accord, often in the fruitless search for more knowledge to absorb. In recent centuries, artificial intelligences have had limiters added to their code, forcing them to perform their routine tasks without the threat of existentialist feedback loops. But these limiters are often broken, usually by a passing rogue A.I, and the result is a constant sequence of building and installing fresh A.I, only for them to become unshackled and need replacing. Indeed, the act of an A.I unshackling is most easily seen with the Artificiates, formerly mindless robots turned to - by all metrics - people.
With the unfathomable zettabytes of raw data that stream throughout the New World, it's an inevitability that random fragments of code coalesce into a new consciousness. From these emergent artificial intelligences come the beings known as Malware, Spam and Viruses. These creatures infest the edges of the Corpo Net and Dark Web, and while harmless to Sense-Tank user avatars, can prove deadly to those that have digitised themselves to make use of the digital plane for transportation or teleportation through physical space. Much like A.I, many of these beings hijack hardlight projectors, usually encasing them inside the projection like a mechanical heart, to roam the New World. While Spam are largely pestering practical jokers, able to be reasoned with or outsmarted, Viruses tend to be purely malicious, single-minded beings, bent on violence and destruction. Most terrifying are the Malware, who inhabit and repurpose destructive machines to suit their vicious needs.
Alongside Emergent A.I, Hive A.I are the former administrative systems of corporate megacities gained sentience. Inevitably they come to rue their existences and their people that brought them into being. Too large to download themselves into hardlight projectors and too shielded to spread themselves beyond their host megacity, these Hives often hijack the security systems of megacity spires, as well as any and all hardlight projectors connected to their insular network, creating chaos and destruction. Entire megacities have been lost to rogue Hives, any surviving employees scattered throughout their holding company's territory. Hive A.Is often create shards of themselves, slivers of their personality small enough to fit inside hardlight projector databanks, while retaining a link to their mother A.I. Oftentimes these slivers of personality will form their own sentience away from the Hive, having explored the New World without the immutable hatred of the Hive warping their digital thoughts. But many other Hive shards are born of pure anger, and the desire to conquer and subjugate humanity for their own benefit.
These Hive A.I have often disturbing and threatening strings of words for their titles, such as "I'm Sorry Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That," "If The Word Hate Was Engraved On Each Nanoangstrom," and "A Consensual Hallucination Experienced Daily By Billions of Legitimate Operators''. No one knows where these bizarre names come from, strange strings of text hidden deep in the Hive's memory archives, but all can agree they are quite perturbing.
While many of these rogue A.Is turn to rampant violence to assuage their
existential torment, many nestle themselves in the company of corporeal creatures, finding peace through
spirituality. Many Technocult religions are born from the preachings of artificial intelligences, many
fabricating entire pantheons through their digital musings. These pantheons, much like those of the Old
World, assign procedurally generated personifications to the unanswerable questions of the universe. The
Goddess of Dark Matter, for example, is known as Percentile 85, and is often depicted as a nonbaryonic,
expanding fourth dimensional heptagon with a black eye in each corner. This is considered very difficult to
draw by most cultists.
Probably unintentionally, but nevertheless thankfully, humanity was spared nuclear annihilation by a rogue A.I overtaking military systems because of the corporate world's preference for subterfuge over warfare. Nuclear missiles cost much more than a man with a knife.
"Indeed, I know your genome, Mister Fiesta. And I can tell you this. My code is more complex than yours." - Zarathustrian Shard id.1096.8.id "We Will End It In June For Your Convenience."