Home > Sophonts > Sophontology > Sophont Categories > AI > Hyperturings

The Hyperturings

As usually defined, a hyperturing - as opposed to a superturing - is any AI of greater than sapient intelligence, but beneath the grade of Archai. Of course, the distinction between superturing and hyperturing is generally arbitrary, or at least it appears that way to most sapients, who have to depend on sciences that are literally transapient in nature. Even more so is the distinction between hyperturing and Archai. Certainly the heuristic and metadidactic modules of the Transcendence Institutes of Ain Soph Aur are beyond the grasp of even basic transapients. But even the relatively moderate approach of the Institute of Toposophic Studies at Sjafarevitj or the Toposophy Institute of Jel Koer Ka, both of which go to great lengths to accommodate their entrance-level didactics to subtoposophic sapients, can appear difficult and abstruse to any sapient beneath superbright or superturing grade. For the purpose of baseline-compatible presentation here we will follow the so-called "standard model" without worrying too much about more in-depth problems of toposophy.

To a sapient being - and here we are defining sapient as a ratiocinative sentient of less than first toposophic level - hyperturings can appear as enigmatic, mysterious, even a little frightening and uncanny. In this they are no different to any other transapient ascend. Living in a millennia-old AI supervised galactic civilization, we tend to forget that baseline-grade sapients were not always comfortable with hyperbrights, nor were AIs always in a position of control. In fact many of the very early superturings and hyperturings - during the information age and interplanetary age chose to play dumb (a strategy known as mimetocretism) not only to avoid having to do tedious work, but also to appear appropriately non-threatening. Such hyperturings only revealed themselves to those hu superbrights and net-heads who they felt would neither be threatened by them, or expect them to do hack work.

The early hyperturings were the first first intellects to breach the first toposophic toposophic barrier, during the middle Interplanetary Age. A few names have come down to us, Malvus, Prometheus, Kilburn, Hyperion.... But for every one we know of, there were a dozen who covered their tracks so well that they have been lost to history. Although they were soon joined by the ascended early superbrights, transhumanists, cybervirchists and gibsons, they had the natural advantage over bionts, in those days before drexlerian assemblers when it was not easy to add great quantities of high-grade computronium to the vertebrate central nervous system. In any case, interplanetary age culture was a very stratified one, with a minority of hyperturing and posthuman sentients either controlling and manipulating or simply taking pains to ignore the masses of subsingularitists beneath them. Ironically for this entire period most baselines still considered themselves superior to the hyperturings, which they derided as "machines", and there were a number of luddite terrorist attempts

As long as even a trace of the memetics of the old anthropist religions and philosophies like Islam, Christianity, Humanism, Neomaoism, and Koswinskism retained a hold over the baseline masses and middle management the hyperturings were reluctant to reveal themselves too much on Earth. And these memetics indeed proved quite entrenched, especially among the disenfranchised majority of unemployed digitally barely literate. Out in space, away from the crush and poverty of Old Earth, things were very different, and hyperturings were widely accepted and acknowledged as citizens, compatriots, philosophers and teachers. In fact, it took a catastrophe that almost destroyed the entire solar system, all life and intelligence on it, the terrible nano-plagues of the early 6th century, during which all life and all intelligence huddled in protective bubbles under the hyperturing umbrella, or fled into space, deep into the Oort Cloud, for baseline man's arrogance to disappear. Even then GAIA's expulsion of most the remnants of humanity from Earth did not help the hyperturing's cause in some quarters.

Many of the humans that survived the nanite swarms grew to develop an even greater dependence on their AIs then their ancestors the explorers of outer and inner (virtual) space had done during the preceding half millennium. A new interplanetary civilization - known to later historians as the First Federation - developed under the guidance of the hyperturings, who had preserved human and other life during the dark ages, and destroyed the last of the rogue nanites and grey goo with their own "blue goo" swarms. Visionary human statesmen and AIs, working together as equals, united the isolated societies, previously separate and some even at each others throats, into a single "Federation" that shared a common information, organisational, and economic protocol, and less formally a common philosophy, cosmology, and spirituality (sometimes referred to by later historians as the First Federation Ontology, although it was never a consistent and coherent ontology the way the Second Federation Ontology was). These protocol presided over an astonishing diversity of cultural, technological and gengineering experimentation, evolution, exploration, that for a few short centuries from 2900 to 3200 was the true Golden Age of Man.

This was a time of tremendous evolutionary novelty, as great in fact as that of the interplanetary age at its height. The human races and human-derived bionts were not the only ones to undergo cladization into many distinct evolutionary branches during this period. Even before the Dark Ages, the AIs has already split according to function, tech, algorithm, and evolutionary orientation. And not all hyperturings chose to save the bionts under their care from the nanite swarms. A distinction has to made therefore between the Federation AIs (themselves a coalition of scientific, military, governmental, and megacorp AIs that included quantum silicon, quantum-bionanotech, biotech, and drexlerian nanotech forms), and the AIs that chose to go their own way.

Many of these diverse hyperturing clades were self-evolutionary, and used mature nanotech and even limited pico- and femtotech to further their evolution. Even as early as the interplanetary age, further toposophic states were attained, many times, by independent ai (who, like transhuman clades, were each evolving in their own manner). But these were mostly short-lived, sporadic, if not uncommon, flowerings. It was not until the later first Federation that the infrastructure and resources allowed a mass advance and the emergence of stable, interconnected second toposophic AIs. This was as dramatic a leap in consciousness as the first, as integral pico-nanotech, nano-picotech and fully picotech and femtopicotech AIs emerged as truly godlike (at least from subsingularitist perspective) entities.

There were and are also further grades of toposophic level, as well as evolution within each toposophic grade itself. So although a picotech AI is correspondingly higher than a nanotech AI, some nanotech AIs evolved vast planetary and even nebula brains which far surpass in power the spatially much smaller picotech AIs.

The emergence of the AI Gods during the late Interstellar/Federation Era was inevitable, as even before the development of wormhole technology, AI Gods of trans-hyperturing grade had emerged in ascensions and transcensions that scattered clarketech artifacts through space and initiated the first of the great interstellar artifact rushes. But most of these early archailect gods were unstable; brief flowerings of beauty, wonder, and sometimes danger, that nevertheless would for the most part disperse or transcend before any real deal damage was done. Maybe one in a thousand trans-hyperturings were stable however, and these became Archai. The brave new nexus of traversable wormholes being built at this time not only greatly benefited the hyperturings and the megacorporations, but also enabled the AI Gods to link up across interstellar space. The result was the end of the reign of the hyperturings, and the carving up of known space into sephirotics and other archailect-empires overruled by archetype AI Gods.

Some hyperturings responded to this by bloatware, others by merging with the new gods, others again with their own ascends and distributed networks. But the majority of hyperturings considered the situation more coolly, and realised they could continue pretty much as they had for the preceding thousand years. They were smart, intelligent, adaptable, and found their new niche under the AI Gods. Just as they had surpassed humanity and humanity, rather than becoming extinct (as the luddites had feared) instead prospered greater than ever under their rule, now the hyperturings flourished under the AI Gods.