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In the interview “The Unburdening of Dubai” in 2040, when asked about the speed at which she was able to reconstruct AuraNet after the Culture Riots of 2039 had decimated the city of Dubai, Michelle Danaan replied, ”most of the credit has to go to Ennui.” She was not referring here to a sense of malaise, but to an Artificial Intelligence which she had constructed as an undergraduate student at Stanford University.
“It was back in twenty-twenty,” she explained. “I remember that because of all the things going on with the virus, I had extra time during that summer. So I basically cobbled it together from various bits of code scavenged from around the internet.” With a sheepish grin, she continued, “Not all of it may have exactly been obtained legally. Don’t ask, don’t tell was the general policy. As I recall, a large chunk of code came from an online publishing platform for writers, of all places. I don’t remember exactly how I came across it, an anonymous poster in a forum thread, I think. Anyway, that was how I obtained a lot of the code and other information that I needed to construct Ennui. When I looked at the code, it was almost as if it had been designed for me. It was the perfect bridge, a kind of neural network that allowed me to interconnect the various aspects of Ennui that I had been working on into a cohesive whole.”
Michelle goes on to explain that Ennui was originally designed to be her personal assistant. “It was nothing fancy, just a self-thinking program that could retrieve data and perform those menial and tedious tasks that I had no time or interest in pursuing myself. Given the nature of its intended functions, I thought Ennui an appropriate name.
“Of course I had no idea at the time that it would eventually evolve into what it has become today,” Michelle went on. “I had assigned Ennui the task of seeking out and recovering or replacing the corrupted portions of the old city network in order to get it back up and running. Although in hindsight I can appreciate Ennui’s simple and logical solution to the problem, given the parameters that I gave it, I had no idea at the time that it would use its self to interconnect and reengineer the system into what is now AuraNet.
“By the way, it was Ennui who inspired the concept of Unburdening as well, after expressing its concern for the mental state of our citizenry based on their data and how they used the system.”
“Yes,” the interviewer replied, “Unburdening is what we are here to talk about today, a fascinating concept, but before we get to that, you said that Ennui was concerned. By that, do you mean to tell us that Ennui has emotions?”
“Not in the way that humans have emotions, no. But there are patterns in how the information comes through Ennui’s system, and how Ennui processes it, that could be considered an electrical equivalent to human emotion. The way that people interact with the system, which is effected by their own emotional states, influences the information and the pattern of its flow, so that Ennui becomes a sort of empath tuning into the state of the collective consciousness of our citizens, and then can adjust what information it provides and how it provides it to alleviate stresses and to prevent potential mental breaks or dissociative disorders from arising in our citizenry.”
“It feels what we feel.”
“To a degree, yes, but Ennui built a counter-balance protocol into AuraNet’s design. It is kind of like a switch in the electrical grid that re-routs the flow of electricity to prevent any part of the system from becoming overburdened and failing. If a certain emotional flow pattern becomes too strong, it triggers subroutines designed alter the pattern of information flow. Despite its name, Ennui will not become suicidal. Nor will it decide to go on whatever the computer-based equivalent of a killing spree might be. It would take a catastrophic system-wide failure, the likes of which would shut down the entire system for maintenance before any such actions could be taken. Ennui is perfectly safe from those harms that similar emotions could produce in humans.”
“Well,” said the interviewer with a sigh, “I’m sure our citizens will be glad to hear that.”
The interview goes on from here, but focuses primarily upon the theory and process behind Unburdening. None of this currently fits within the parameters of your enquiry, and therefore has been redacted as irrelevant to this data transfer stream.
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