AI Background:
Fort Mendes was designed to be both a military and research facility. Such a facility would require massive processing power for a properly maintained AI network. Because of the fears of another AI going somehow circumventing its ethical constraints and harnessing this wealth of computing strength, it was decided that Fort Mendes would be fitted with two separate AI networks.
It seemed that an AI could willingly go Rogue - a term put in use by former vice-president Edward Diego - at any time. By inserting sub-protocols into the multi-complex systems of several AI’s and linking them with a performance node (a tool that could pinpoint the signs of a desire to become Rogue in the AI's central core and stifle them), TriOp had perfect control over their Artificial Intelligences.
It was after the SHODAN incident of 2072 on a remote station known as Citadel, that several members of TriOp saw it fit to place stronger safeguards in the internal programming systems of the minds they had created, so that only very skilled engineers could tamper with them. Even with the correct codes, a single hacker couldn’t enter the AI’s primary dataloops without being detected and rejected. Only the AI’s designers could access them, and thus the security levels reached the highest possible level at that time.
Of course, there was one other thing, as there always is.
The people of Earth had a simple and easy method of creating AI’s. The first Intelligence had been a disaster. It experienced many problems with adaptation to environment as well as several other protocols its creators had not foreseen. Improvements were made, and the result was a template AI dubbed NHI (Nearly Human Intelligence).
The template took several years to write, and represented the core of the second AI, named AWSE (Advanced War System for Earth). The template was carried over into later designs, as programmers working for companies around the world had little time to rewrite an entire data core when there was a perfectly fine one lying around in Earth's vast dataset.
The problem was not seen until sixty-one years past the creation of the first AI. Although there existed a few major AI’s not built on the old NHI template, there were many more that had. The result was a disagreement between the central core of the AI and its set instructions, which was not noticed until the female mind known as SHODAN made her appearance as a Rogue in 2072. A copy of the Rogue was passed around the mega conglomerates at the time, and several AI’s were found with the symptoms of 'going over', or becoming a Rogue.
The problem was never solved.
