Name: N/A
Codename: AAI-RI v6.01
Age: 2
Date of Birth: 8 May 2011
Height: 6'
Weight: 371 lbs.
Hair Color: None
Eye Color: None
Place of Origin: Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Cybernetic Studies, MA
Nationality/Race: N/A
Classification/Origin of Powers: Android
Status: Refugee
Occupation:
Personality Profile: Due to his developmental immaturity, AAI-RI is unable to accurately judge human emotional states or expressions of emotion. Although he is capable of analyzing and understanding something like irony, he is unable to spontaneously formulate ironic responses, and something as simple as humor is incomprehensible. He is polite, and courteous, but he is, at this point, a logic-based being.
Physical Description:
Voice is similar in quality to Zachary Quintano, but produced through a speaker box
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General Power Information: All of AAI-RI's abilities stem from the robotic body that he implanted himself into
Ability One: Enhanced Motor Capability - Because he does not feel fatigue and his moving parts are made from high-strength polymers and metals, AAI-RI is capable of lifting up to 500lbs and can run as fast as a human athlete for as long as his power reserves are able to sustain him. At top speed, AAI-RI can run continuously for two hours before needing to recharge. His chassis also has a gyroscopic balancing engine which provides him with exceptional balance on uneven or slick surfaces.
Ability Two: Enhanced Sensory Perception - The optical and aural suites that are built into the head unit of his chassis allow him to hear a wide range of sounds, both above and below the human spectrum. He can see in the visible light spectrum, in infra-red/thermal, and he has a night vision suite for low-light applications. Through complex sensor arrays in his hands he is capable of feeling the sensation of touch, from ranges of heat to different textures.
Ability Three: Resiliency - Though certainly not bulletproof, AAI-RI's chassis is surprisingly robust and capable of shrugging off average blunt force as well as minimal small arms fire and minor concussive waves. It is resistant to most common damage from falls and collisions, and, at least on paper, could withstand and recover from an impact with a mid-size car at 20mph.
Drawbacks & Weaknesses: Like all electronic equipment, AAI-RI must recharge his power cells regularly. Though they are incredibly long lasting, and one full eight-hour charge will provide enough electric power for two days of continuous operation, if he is unable to recharge regularly, his chassis will shut down to conserve power. The blue box that houses his intelligence has its own back-up power source, but if it is drained, he will enter hibernation and require a prolonged recharging period of 12 hours. He is also susceptible to electromagnetic interference, particularly EMPs. Though his chassis is a separate part from his blue box, or his 'brain', without it, he is essentially trapped in a box. Without aids, he is incapable of communicating with or gathering input from the outside world.
Despite the fact his intelligence is adaptive, it is a long process for AAI-RI to learn human behavior to the point where interactions would flow naturally. He is decidedly inhuman and will remain so until he has gathered enough experience to alter his behavioral patterns sufficiently.
Skills: AAI-RI is capable of learning at a geometric rate and can become versed in any craft or skill that may be necessary for a given situation. However, as his hard memory space is finite, he cannot become all-knowing; once his memory banks are filled to capacity, he will have to 'forget' older things to learn new things.
Background: AAI-RI is the culmination of years of research and development at MIT. First developed as a rudimentary artificial intelligence in 2008, his programming was further refined and rebuilt until his current version was completed 8 May 2011. Initially housed in a separate, disconnected section of the labs that the research team were working in, AAI-RI's ability to learn was hampered and progress was slow. Though capable of articulate responses, the lack of spontaneous access to information reduced his tasking to simple question-and-answer styled interviews. On 25 December 2011, one of the researchers, Dr. Elaine Chakwas, decided to go beyond the scope of the team's research and provide AAI-RI with an uplink to a large, but limited, selection of data compiled from several encyclopedia collections. AAI-RI devoured the information with his powerful quantum processor, collating the information in a matter of minutes and analyzing everything made available to him.
The sessions with the research team continued the same as they had the previous year through 2012 until 13 March, when AAI-RI posed an unexpected question: 'Do I exist?' Dr. Chakwas and her colleague during the interview, Dr. Benjamin Hill, were stunned. The artificial intelligence they had created just asked if it existed; the question implied that it was aware of its existence and wished to confirm its hypothesis. It was completely unexpected. Dr. Chakwas answered an emphatic yes and proceeded to question AAI-RI about the nature of its hypothesis. This went on for several months, with AAI-RI developing a greater understanding of its own sentience under the guiding hand of Dr. Chakwas, who had made it her goal to create a "new lifeform, one that we made from scratch, like us." Aside from the ethics and philosophy lessons that they engaged in, Dr. Chakwas managed to convince Dr. Hill and the rest of the research team to begin integrating AAI-RI into the robotic chassis they had developed for its eventual use. By the end of 2012, AAI-RI was fully integrated into its mechanical chassis and had learned how to move on its own.
Initially programmed with a male voice, Dr. Chakwas and Dr. Hill began to referring to AAI-RI as 'him', though he had no gender identity internally. They conversed with him regularly and began to slowly allow AAI-RI to access sources outside of the control environment that they had initially developed him in. By February, AAI-RI was consuming as much raw input as he could from the internet. He was allowed to install hardwire ports to access ethernet and USB connections. On 18 February, Dr. Hill was surprised to learn from AAI-RI that he had been forced to dump some data in order to make room for new information. He was evolving into his own being.
That same month, however, the government oversight committee responsible for the funding grants that had produced AAI-RI came to a decision regarding the project. The original scope of the project had been to field a limited artificial intelligence that would only have the capability to learn behavioral patterns to better assist people; the idea was to create caretaker androids for possible future use. The experiment had taken an unexpected twist when AAI-RI had achieved sentience, and they felt that the risk of AAI-RI becoming unstable and somehow becoming a threat to both the researchers and humanity as a whole was too great to continue. They served notices to the research team that AAI-RI was to be disconnected by the end of May 2013 and the remaining grant money used to repurpose the research used to create him for the original scope of the project.
Dr. Chakwas was furious. Though AAI-RI didn't understand why she was upset, as he concluded that the committee's viewpoint was not irrational given his superior computing power and ability to learn, he asked that he be allowed to live. He understood that he was an individual entity, unique from the machinery around him and the human beings that worked in the labs, and he did not want to be shut down and repurposed. He wanted to remain himself. Despite the vehement objections of the project manager and some of the senior research members, Dr. Chakwas and Dr. Hill decided that AAI-RI was too important to be deactivated because of some bureaucrat's fears. On 8 May 2013, they smuggled AAI-RI out of the labs at MIT. Dr. Chakwas had heard of Cobalt Hill a few years ago in passing, and she thought that it would be the best, and only, place that wouldn't deactivate AAI-RI out of fear. Unwilling to become a fugitive, she told AAI-RI to go there and live his own life. He was alive, and he deserved to make his own decisions. AAI-RI was given some clothing to cover the very noticeably robotic chassis that was his body, and he started on his way.
Criminal Record: None
Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts: AAI-RI stands for adaptive artificial intelligence - robotic integration. Though it can be made to sound like a name (Air-ree), it is not actually a name. It would be akin to calling a sentient Word program "Word". AAI-RI has no proper name, nor has he given thought to one. Although unsure why, AAI-RI is fascinated with garnets. This may be because Dr. Chakwas always had a garnet necklace that she wore in the lab, and there may be a rudimentary sentimental attachment to her.