#augmented brain

[kingme1002]

This is what's coming next after AGI:

1. Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)

ASI would surpass human intelligence in virtually all domains, including creativity, decision-making, and problem-solving.

This stage might lead to unprecedented innovations in science, medicine, technology, and more.

Ethical concerns, control mechanisms, and alignment with human values become critical at this level.

2. AI-Augmented Human Intelligence

Integrating AI with human biology through brain-computer interfaces (e.g., Neuralink).

Potential to enhance human cognitive capabilities, memory, and sensory perception.

3. AI in Governance and Ethics

Developing frameworks for AI's role in society, including legal systems, decision-making, and ensuring equitable benefits.

Addressing existential risks and preventing misuse of advanced AI.

4. Exploration and Expansion

Utilizing advanced AI for space exploration, colonization, and solving global challenges like climate change or resource scarcity.

AI might assist in creating self-sustaining ecosystems for interstellar travel and habitation.

5. New Philosophical Paradigms

Addressing the implications of coexistence with entities far more intelligent than humans.

Questions about consciousness, rights for AI, and the definition of life might arise.

[aurosoulart]

alright. that's it. technology has gone too far

[frameacloud]

Rogan's Aphasia, by LB Lee

Content: Rated PG. Swear words, brief mention of surviving child abuse.

Medium: Book. An illustrated nonfiction zine.

About a personal experience of one plural system member losing the ability to talk due to brain damage (called Broca's aphasia), and very useful advice about how to deal with it! Some methods explored here are texting with emoji, carrying pocket-size cards with common messages, pointing at symbols on communication boards, and making your own cards so they reflect your own style and needs. Recommended reading.

To feature this zine created by LB Lee, I include it in my itch.io collections of plurality and zines. I'm doing this series of Tumblr posts reviewing and featuring other people's creations with links to where you can see them on itch.io to celebrate and draw attention to the cool stuff that folks make.

[majorpepperidge]

My hand is cramping and its nearly midnight (after starting this at 7-ish) BUT I STILL LIKE HOW IT TURNED OUT (after fussing over minor details for the last hour)

[dragon-subway]

so i'm making another guy. might see him more later

[catboyelimgarak]

Garak telling Julian eat the rod translates to “eat me out” but like the enigma he is Garak doesn’t say when or where

[specialagentartemis]

Murderbot September Day 3: Augments

“Augments” specifically refer to implanted, integrated, artificial parts with feed access and bio-feedback. An ordinary prosthetic isn’t an augment.

Three hundred years ago, augmentation was relatively rare. It was overwhelmingly done for specific careers, such as spaceship pilots, doctors, lawyers, and high-powered financial professionals—people who needed to process and juggle a lot of information quickly. This was when the ancestors of Preservation took off on the Pressy and were out of contact with the rest of the galaxy for two hundred years.

By the time they awoke from cryo-sleep, augmentation had become a LOT more common. Ordinary businesspeople were getting augmented as kind of a status symbol—saying, my job is so important, so fast-paced, so high-profile, that I need augments to keep up with it. I’m Important. It also became increasingly done by coders, programmers, tech professionals, in order to remain competitive in tech jobs. Brain-feed augmentation for children as young as 11 or 12 became increasingly common—the younger you get brain augments, the more neuroplastic you are at that point, the easier the integration is and the more natural it feels to connect to the feed. This is done both by parents wanting their kids to have an advantage getting high-profile jobs, but can also be sponsored by companies in exchange for promising the kid to be contracted to work for them for a certain number of years when they come of age. Sometimes, this is considered a really good deal.

The people of Preservation were incredibly offput by this.

Even now, nearly a hundred years later, augments are seen as a “corporate thing” on Preservation. Few people are augmented, and they’re still mostly doctors and pilots, and augmentation of children is illegal unless it’s for a legitimate medical cause (certain types of augments were developed for treating things like brain injuries or seizure disorders, for example.) As such, it’s rare but not unheard of to see augmented humans on Preservation. It still… tends to get a knee-jerk emotional reaction of “that’s a vain/barbaric Corporate thing,” though.

Pin-Lee has considered getting augmented before. By this point, you almost never encounter Corporation Rim lawyers who aren’t. When she’s negotiating interplanetary contracts, it’s a valuable tool to get on their level. And lawyers who aren’t augmented are kind of seen as naïve newbies punching about their weight class. But she hasn’t, partially out of 1) legitimate medical concerns that augments could interact poorly with her medication, and 2) pride and spite that she doesn’t have to make herself Like Them to be just as good at her job as them.

[fuzzyhairedfreak]

Garak is like an enrichment toy for Julian. But instead of being filled with peanut butter he’s filled with secrets

[shimp]

I love the way the pit fighter viktor makeup looks but unfortunately other than the superficial aspect of it I simply cannot get down with a pit fighter viktor au. Get that sick man outta the ring

[fisherrprince]

miskellaneous

[lazywriter-artist]

Made ock a new guardsman friend!! Poor little guy needs some more friends that aren’t— well barley conscious so made this fella ^^

A fun fact abt the guardsman on huntsmann’s ship is most tend to get a few augments or two since techpreists frequently travel through and mecha likes being able to easily communicate with the guard on board

Similar with hunts, who had a few small little augments to help him communicate and things with his hubby :3

Just wanted to play toys….😔

Saved from the anxiety spiral by @taryn40k !

Still just a lil guy who wants to play toys

[aurosoulart]

oh, don't mind me..... just playing with my stars

[pilebunkers]

What do you think goes on at Arquebus's re-education camps (and also the Factory)? What do you think the procedures consist of specifically?

I feel like re-education has got to be more than just basic torture methods like, idk, tying you to a chair and beating you until you comply. They probably do stuff like lock you in a sensory deprivation tank and give you weird drugs and plug your brain directly into a computer-simulated hell through your AC interface ports. But I still have no idea about the specifics.

What are your thoughts?

NEW IDEAS FOR TORTURING YOUR BLORBOS, NOW AVAILABLE!

The Factory is simpler so I'll speak about it in brief. I see it as Snail's personal blacksite for the kind of horrific experimentation on prisoners (political, war, or otherwise) that RRI practiced to get the first generations of augmentation to work. It's where Arquebus is rediscovering Phantasma Beings and Cultivators. All of Snail's attempts to make what are essentially glorified UNACs using soldered nervous systems. He's not nearly as good at it as ALLMIND. And Freud keeps downing every promising prototype. It's maddening.

(Side note: given Freud can apparently 1HKO any computer intelligence, someone really should have sent him after ALLMIND in Alea. Laser blade to the CPU gg no re)

As for AREC, I think you're pretty much right on the money. Lots of regular torture, coercion, extortion, blackmail, and just plain old holding people without cause/trial because they're in your way. Every state (corpo or otherwise) needs an extrajudicial prison to hold its political opponents. I joke that Squad II has what they call the Geneva Checklist: that is, every Third Convention "must" becomes a "must not" in AREC.

That said, I also think there are regular old POW camps as well. You have to be especially important or annoying to end up at AREC. That's why Swinburne, Walter, and 621 get that treatment; a former Vesper and two big thorns in Snail's side.

The thing is, I think the ways in which you could torture an augmented human are fascinating and horrific. I will shamelessly quote from my fic Just once, I want to spiral into control, because I spend the opening chapters playing around with the concept.

The first thing Snail had done upon strapping them down was punch a hole in their AMS port and plant a fingernail-sized suppressor across some of the pins. Whatever that little toy is nominally supposed to do, what it's actually doing is scrambling their HUD and knocking all of their pain prevention systems offline. They can't tell the time, they can't tell where they are, and they can't tell what the status of any of their augmentations or prosthetics is. "Behave," he sneers. He's got a probe in one of the auxiliary ports of their neck, humming invisibly with ultrasound or xrays or something else, mapping the circuits there. "You've already made this far more difficult than it needs to be." (...) They can't see exactly how he twists the probe, just that he does, and makes contact with something that makes their vision go white. The world folds in. The suppressor floods them with a hot rush of adrenaline, denying them a dreamless unconsciousness they couldn't enjoy anyway, but they're still bitter about it. Their chest heaves, ragged under the weight of Snail tugging at their synapses, and each time that probe plucks one of their ligaments some part of their body screams in agony and they scream with it.

Sensor deprivation, stress positions, AMS overload; I'm sure there's a neurological equivalent of waterboarding they've figured out how to do to augmented humans. Imagine being able to make someone selectively blind or stop their heart at will. Imagine being able to erase and rewrite someone's memory. Imagine being able to shatter someone's will and individuality until they end up like Walter by stealing or breaking their augmentation's code or injecting malicious code. You know Arbitrary Code Execution? Getting into a system to inject commands and do whatever you want? That. With your brain.

We already know Walter's been broken and made Coral-compatible somehow, and I do like to think it was done via some form of augmentation without his consent. And once they've got that, they can do anything.

[hitrone]

Well, I got the idea that Arik was Archer's first boyfriend, and they dated during the academy

[theblehthatbloos]

621, Don't think I didn't see you reblog that longing post. The corporations don't care about your yearning.

...

Raven, you should listen to selfish hate by jawny again.

[dvktheartist]

Augmented humanity #3 “let me just have a look at you”