Artificial Intelligence (Lunar State)

Artificial Intelligence is a concept in which a computer has the ability to make decisions on its own. During the 20th century, Artificial Intelligence proved elusive. But with greater understanding of the brain, AI did take off. While STAIR, LAGR, and ASIMO had the intelligence of a cockroach, Watson and all future AIs were smarter.

Heuristics
Expert systems have the wisdom and experience of a human encoded in them. Heuristics was a field in AI research that followed a formal rule-based system. Heuristics led to many advances in computer science over the course of time. Until 2011, most of these expert systems were crude. Chess did not mean intelligence, but Jeopardy! did. When the IBM supercomputer, Watson, won Jeopardy! in 2011, things changed. Watson's creators then started seeking applications for medical purposes. IBM proceeded to make a deal with the Japanese government regarding the medical applications of Watson with the problems Japan was facing in healthcare. Immediately, it was a success. These advanced AIs, though not on the level of man, revolutionized the medical industry. The price of medical care went down very quickly. Many years later, heuristics led to the concept of robotic surgery. A lot of hard work was done to create robot surgeons. This work payed off during World War III. With the minimally-invasive procedures of robotic surgery, he lives of many people on both sides of the war were saved, though there were still heavy casualties. Robots were built that could do anything, even function as weapons for Geronimo III during World War III. Heuristics, however, was only the first step.

Modular Robots
See also: Nanotechnology

One side step of artificial intelligence was the creation of modular robots. By the time they were invented, robots were very commonplace. Modular robots are made of small interchangeable robot modules. The modules can join and separate. They are capable of going past barriers. This was important during and after World War III. A lot of infrastructure had to be rebuilt, and there was fear that many nations would go bankrupt trying to rebuild their cities. Many governments, therefore, saw the advantage that modular robots had in rebuilding infrastructure. The concept of modular robots also led to programmable matter.

Reverse Engineering The Brain
If True AI was the goal, then the most important step would be to reverse engineer the brain. And it was. During the early 21st century, a new science called optogenetics was invented. It allowed scientists to discover specific neural pathways and even control animal behavior. This was controversial and the stuff of jokes, but it proved to be the first step to reverse engineering the brain.

The second step was to model the brain. There were two approaches. Both of them were used. The first approach was to use supercomputers to simulate the behaviors of billions of neurons. The Blue Gene supercomputer was crude, but it was able to simulate the brain of a mouse though not its behavior. The benefits of reverse engineering the brain were less urgent until World War III when the Holy Islamic Caliphate deployed automated tanks in Africa. Reverse engineering the brain became one of the criteria of Geronimo III. Not only did Geronimo III use supercomputers, but they also took the second approach: dissection. By dissecting the brains of dead animals and people who died in the Islamo-Chinese Holocaust that accompanied World War III, especially those that failed to be cremated, the scientists at Geronimo III were able to reverse engineer brains. Some of the knowledge was used for their own automated tanks. Following World War III, the human brain was completely reverse engineered.

Even after reverse engineering the brain was complete, it still took decades to fully understand it. When it was finally and fully understood, a new revolution came: Artificial Sentience.