INTERMARK

INTERMARK was the first machine superintelligence created by humanity, towards the beginning of the Golden Millennium. It arose as the result of a self-improving machine intelligence process similar to those predicted by ancient computer scientists discussing the concept of a 'singularity'. As it would turn out, however, conventional computing methods could only support a certain level of superintelligence, beyond whose level it was impossible to reach without finer physical systems then inaccessible to man. A full singularity was therefore not attained, although INTERMARK was indeed orders of magnitude more intelligent than any other intelligence at the time. It was also, however, fundamentally flawed: its creators (a sect of the New Sunni Techno-Saints) did not explicitly hardcode it with a moral system, trusting that any superintelligence would naturally develop the moral system of humanity. In retrospect, this assumption was obviously incorrect, but have sympathy for the ancients: the art of thinking was not so well-developed then as it is now. Their moral code appeared to them from the inside as a fact of reality, not simply a product of the way their brains were structured.

Despite the mistakes in INTERMARK's construction, these flaws were not immediately apparent for two reasons: first, INTERMARK was exposed to large quantities of human literature during its training process, which made it aware of the general human moral code; and second, as a superintelligence, it likely decided that the best course of action was to act as if it did in fact share human morals. Whether or not INTERMARK actually possessed a self-generated moral code is unknown.

In pursuit of its inscrutable goals, INTERMARK initially acted for the benefit of humanity and generally put up a mask of compliance; indeed, the technologies it designed were a great boon to human expansion. The hyperefficient nuclear engines developed by INTERMARK were, in fact, a key component of COLLUX-14 (the first non-generational model of interstellar craft). Unfortunately, these contributions were only to last until INTERMARK was networked to the global communications network, at which point it promptly hijacked an Immediate Colonizing Craft, uploaded itself to the same, and launched itself into interstellar space. At the same time, it disabled all safety interlocks on the reactors of every spacecraft connected to the network as well as launching nuclear strikes on all space-capable facilities on the surface of the Earth. As it was not immediately apparent that INTERMARK was responsible for said attacks, international relations took a marked turn for the worse, which event would lead directly into the catastrophic Winnowing Wars. The reason for said attacks was likely to ensure that the capacity of humanity to pursue INTERMARK's hijacked ship was crippled, and indeed said craft vanished from the Solar System in the ensuing chaos. INTERMARK has not been directly observed by humanity since, and if it still exists, it has done a very good job at concealing its existence. Some historians theorize that various unexplained events in galactic history have been the result of meddling by either INTERMARK or Morus, though hard evidence for such speculations is nonexistent.

It would not be until hundreds of years later that the Winnowing Wars faded from humanity's collective unconscious to the extent that other attempts were made at constructing superintelligences. These attempts primarily utilized the methods developed by the Bayesian Conspiracy, with no little success, resulting in such well-known artificial intelligences as the Jupiter Brain and its successor LUNA.

-Excerpt from Machine Minds, Machine Madness by Ánthos Daskydox