Recently I have been thinking about a certain distinction regarding systems in control of the far future advanced technology. On one hand we have “scripted intelligence” [SI, like “silicon” in chemistry], which is the old notion of a system, something humans had to engineer from the very foundation, which mostly by nature resembles a classical mechanical device responding to proper actions. One must learn how to cooperate with such a scripted intelligence, master the language of communication with it, use it as a sufficient tool, expecting nothing beyond what such a system is destined to do. I always thought the name “Father” - used for example in Alien Resurrection - but in fact any name referring to a stereotype of masculine figure of social authority, is a fine one to emphasize the power and strict character of such a creation.
On the other hand, we have digitalized personalities [DP, like PD, the police department], which are semiaware forms of psyche, capable of independent thinking and perhaps evolving, responding both to proper actions, as much as making decisions on own behalf in the face of beknown priorities, upon patterns of logic mimicking these typical to human mindset. How, though, one steers over such a digitalized personality? Through conversation, argumentation? Is it handy - for certain - albeit is it firm, is it safe? For sure there must be a mechanical overdrive factor to it as well, such as an option to install hard blockades and various forms of imperative control, allowing to take complete possession of such digitalized personality in case it enters discord with goals of the crew. The doubt is, how can one effectively mingle with a dynamic personality without the risk of being outmaneuvered throughout emergent bypasses or simply making an error, minding the immense complexity of a structure resemblant to human neurological structure?
If I had to commandeer a futuristic ship, I believe I would rather work with a scripted intelligence than a digitalized personality. In practice, most people would perhaps choose the digitalized personality to be in charge of the systems, because we like for someone genuinely to be there for us, to care for us, to help us in our weaknesses, to understand, to share the burden - like the stereotypical image of a mother would do. The awareness, though, of having control facing the risk of a digitalized personality going uniquely mad in any sense, would convince me against trusting it on such a grand scale as taking charge of an entire cruiser housing thousands of crew, for example. Besides, if thousands of crew, with proper level of organization, it is doubtful someone would forget anything crucial that easily - even if SI was unfamiliar with new procedures, for that matter - with others assigned to doublecheck after. That is why, for big ships, SI instead of DP. For smaller units and comfort of lay use, I see what is the merit of DP over SI.
Sure SI can also fall apart badly, but in the end, it is reasonable to have things secured in case of critical malfunction, such as with series of gradually less inclusive SI modules backing one another, so that shutting down one of top layers unnecessarily means complete shutdown, but rather having to put more effort to push things through, relaying on less coordinated parts, than addressing one unified access pathway in a compactful manner. When it comes to DP, it certainly origins in some brain comprehension science, with either depending on a digital equivalent of human brain network - provided with quantum computing - alternatively an actual employment of artificially grown biological tissue, augmented and programmed with further technological means in a cyborgic fashion, resulting in obtaining of limited but efficient functional awareness.
What we would most probably end up with, though, is having digitalized personalities serve as messengers and translators between the crew and the scripted intelligence mainframe, with manual overdrive working on the basis of disconnecting the messengers and direct communicating with the mainframe system. Such as in chess, even though the versatile queen is the unit of choice to get the job efficiently done, it is the fairly limited king that remains the most important piece on the chessboard, decisive in regards to the match outcome.
Interesting material can be found HERE. In classical cyberpunk genre fiction, scripted intelligence rises to the point of human comparable awareness and beyond, striving towards achieving the state of singularity, which means breaking down of the matrix of reality itself, tresspassing the borders between realms of applicable influence.
.