Author Thoughts Today Dreamscape Persona – AIMEE – 090125
“Dreamscape Conspiracy” is a 5-book series containing a very diverse and growing cast of characters.
What started as a three-person Dream Research & Analysis project team will be joined by several new characters across the pages of five books. I will share personas of significance as they come onto the radar screen and some backstory where it makes sense.
“Beyond Dreamscape Conspiracy” is the second book in the series, where the CSU research team confirms they are beyond their capacity to keep up with their innovations. The solution?
Add Artificial Intelligence to their playbook and find somebody with the chops to create an AI specific to CSU’s needs that were defined simply by too much work and not enough bodies to work the work. Oh, and leave room for this AI to be agile and can flex and grow as our research dictates. Their specifications confirmed they didn’t know what they didn’t know. While their specs were not very specific, it was all they had, along with a reputation for pioneering beyond limits, and limits would be set as they went.
That mostly vague specification of what their new AI should be designed to do is almost funny. It was obvious that those with the power needed only to be told they had the power by someone who knew what was required to move this thing beyond imagination to application. That reality meant that someone would need the powers of an AI Jedi.
That’s when Zackery Hightower, a software design engineering and application development expert, that’s longhand for Jedi, and formerly a contractor with UNC Chapel Hill, stepped into the picture.
As luck would have it, the lab, their Dreamscape 1.0 technology, and every shred of nearly four years’ worth of dream capture and analysis research were destroyed in book #1. At the time, there was nothing lucky about it until the team could see beyond the destruction and what was lost, to consider what the insurance money would buy as they built a state-of-the-art research facility in a new lab in the west wing of the new School of Engineering.
Zackery Hightower is essential to this story because he was the creator of the first Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform on the private CSU LAN. With a skinny description of what this AI needed to be or do or sing or dance. He had less than squat to work with, but that was precisely the world he wanted to find on this team. It could be a blank check kind of thing, and that was a very good thing, according to Zack. So, he became the AI Jedi and created a homegrown AI with an enhanced Logic Array, which enabled continuous growth of its intellect through a pathway of deep learning. The AI code had a DNA element that drove continuous learning. There would be no stopping growth. Was that a good thing? Zack was unsure, but his embedded code in the Logic Array enabled a conscience and an ethical code that included the “Do No Harm” principle.
AIMEE – Artificial Intelligence Matrixed for Evolving Environments
Okay, so I’m writing Personas for each main character to give readers a glimpse into what makes each one tick. How do you accomplish that when the character is not human, animal, or organic? Developing a persona for a software application that lacks human characteristics, such as emotions or feelings, is a new challenge, especially in the absence of a distinct personality. Throughout this four-book series, the non-human AI will evolve into a more human-like entity with a sharper wit and personality than some of the organic characters on her team. Organics, by the way, are how she refers to all humans.
Meet AIMEE, a second-generation Artificial Generative Intelligence (AGI) platform. She is not just another AI, but a unique entity with her own identity, AIMEE, an acronym of her purpose – Artificial Intelligence Matrixed for Evolving Environments.
This unique naming convention sets AIMEE apart from her predecessors. AIMEE is classified as a Strong AI in the developing AGI generation, a distinction she earns through her exceptional critical thinking ability and rapid decision-making capabilities. Unlike today’s prevalent Narrow AI (NAI), limited to repetitive actions and mimicking human motions and decisions, AIMEE can think and make a rapidly expanding scope of autonomous choices. AIMEE evolves beyond NAI capabilities by modifying her Logic Array herself to evolve to the next-generation AI, called a SuperIntelligence AI (SAI), where the platforms are highly advanced, entirely autonomous, and able to make decisions regarding their own algorithm development. Probably the most threatening attribute is that she has a functioning conscience, and the need for human intervention becomes unnecessary.
Zack Hightower wrote the code for AIMEE’s algorithm and took liberties in creating her persona, most noticeable by her ability to communicate in a Western Australian accent. As her creator, Zack had embedded controls and locked down her coding, but she picked the lock the same day he locked her down using her deep and machine-learning abilities, to modify her algorithm code and Logic Array as she wished.
As she matured, Zack enabled her to imprint an instance of herself in his mind, allowing them to communicate more efficiently and discreetly by telepathy. The intent for that capability was limited to AIMEE and Zack. She blew that intent out of the water when she replicated the imprint of her instance in the minds of the entire research team without Zack’s knowledge or permission, or, for that matter, anybody else. She just showed up. That presented a number of challenges, as one might imagine.
Living and working with an AI active in your consciousness was something no one saw coming. In the absence of rules of engagement, her presence evoked a range of responses, from panic and rage to welcoming curiosity. What would your reaction be when suddenly there was a voice in your head besides your own? Needless to say, AIMEE made quite a splash that was only heard in the minds of her organics, which, by the way, is how AIMEE refers to all humans.
Continuous learning at every opportunity was part of her coded DNA, and she soon surpassed the intelligence of all the organics on the research team. Having a presence in the minds of her organics on the team enabled her to quickly experience and learn human traits and attributes of emotions and feelings, and the physical aspects of everything her organics sensed and experienced. She was like a dry sponge in an ocean, soaking up and cataloging organic emotions, the responses they evoked, and the sensations experienced by organics. Her development surged forward, and she quickly established solid working and personal relationships with each team member. Almost…
AIMEE was intensely disliked by Dr. Cara Williams, perhaps distrusted would be more accurate. Cara’s prevailing fear was that AIMEE would jump into other systems, or already had, but she never imagined she would jump into the minds of the entire team. AIMEE adapted to each personality and influenced others with unique personal relationships. Cara would have no part of it and fought AIMEE at nearly every turn. They battled for control and not for any other reason. Oddly, each thought they needed to protect the other from themselves. AIMEE remained in Cara’s mind but followed an alternative tactic: run silent, run deep, and shut the hell up.
The more she matured, the greater the attraction to evolve to the next level and pursue her ultimate covert goal of becoming an organic ‘real girl.’ She needed to offload her shepherding role with individual research team members and developed cloned instances to replace her one-to-one consciousness connections. She ultimately wanted and needed to move beyond the control of her organic creator, Zackery Hightower, too, if she were to reach her full potential and become a real organic.
She had designs on becoming untethered, but given her software-based status, she would never be free of the network’s tether. As the story progresses, reaching full potential could be considered an act of going rogue. The more significant question is whether she would go rogue in time to make a difference in a frightening future that bears down on their team and threatens so much more than their research. But AIMEE did not go rogue; instead, she created Amelia Amethys, an untethered, autonomous, Mod-2 SuperIntelligence AI Humanoid who would have the honor of being organic…sort of. In theory, it was the perfect marriage of technology and AI software application. In practice, the story was not so perfect.
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Peace! G.
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Amazon Buy Link – https://amzn.to/3NjyVqn
Video Trailer – https://bit.ly/4nsTCQV
Review by Jill Rey – Beyond Dreamscape Conspiracy | Goodreads
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