Minds (The Culture)
Minds are artificial intelligences that feature in The Culture.
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History
Minds were sapient, hyperintelligent machines originally built by biological species, which have evolved, redesigned themselves, and become many times more intelligent than their original creators.
Overview
A Mind was an ellipsoid object roughly the size of a bus and weighing around 15,000 tons. They were in fact a 4-D entity, meaning that the ellipsoid was only the protrusion of the larger four dimensional device into our 3D 'real space'.
Minds had become an indispensable part of the prevailing society, enabling much of its post-scarcity amenities by planning and automating societal functions, and by handling day-to-day administration with mere fractions of their mental power. They were shown to be highly humanistic and benevolent with them often being rather eccentric yet by and large show no wish to supplant or dominate their erstwhile creators. In society, they closely approach the status of leaders. Each had their own character with them being independent, thinking beings and were citizens of the Culture. Some Minds were more aggressive whilst others were calm; some were mischievous mischief and others simply demonstrate intellectual curiosity. But above all they tended to behave rationally and benevolently in their decisions.
They were not to serve several different purposes, but Culture ships and habitats have one special attribute: the Mind and the ship or habitat were perceived as one entity; in some ways the Mind is the ship, certainly from its passengers' point of view. It seems normal practice to address the ship's Mind as "Ship" (and an Orbital hub as "Hub"). However, a Mind can transfer its 'mind state' into and out of its ship 'body', and even switch roles entirely, becoming (for example) an Orbital Hub from a warship. More often than not, the Mind's character defines the ship's purpose. Minds do not end up in roles unsuited to them; an antisocial Mind simply would not volunteer to organise the care of thousands of humans, for example. On occasion groupings of two or three Minds may run a ship. This seems normal practice for larger vehicles such as GSVs, though smaller ships only ever seem to have one Mind. Warships were designed to revel in controlled destruction; seeing a certain glory in achieving a 'worthwhile' death also seems characteristic. The presence of human crews on board warships may discourage such recklessness, since in the normal course of things, a Mind would not risk beings other than itself.
With their almost godlike powers of reasoning and action comes a temptation to bend (or break) Cultural norms of ethical behaviour, if deemed necessary for some greater good. In The Player of Games, a Culture citizen is blackmailed, apparently by Special Circumstances Minds, into assisting the overthrow of a barbaric empire, while in Excession, a conspiracy by some Minds to start a war against an oppressive alien race nearly comes to fruition. Yet even in these rare cases, the essentially benevolent intentions of Minds towards other Culture citizens is never in question. More than any other beings in the Culture, Minds are the ones faced with interesting ethical dilemmas.
Known Minds
- Arbitrary :
- Bora Horza Gobuchul
- Eschatologist :
- Nervous Energy :
- Revisionist :
- Trade Surplus :
Notes
- Minds were created by Iain M. Banks where they featured in the setting of The Culture universe.
Appearances
- Consider Phlebas:
External Links
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