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Transvot

Transapientech Artificially Intelligent Virtual Robot

Transvot*
Image from Keith Wigdor and Bing Image Creator
A transvot is a specially-designed transavant vot which performs menial tasks such as maintaining metacomplex transapientech systems and infrastructures. They are used when the system is beyond the ability of ordinary vots to handle. Transvots are usually referred to by the impersonal pronoun 'it', as they have no true self-awareness or selfhood.

Subsequent to the development of vots during the Federation in the second millennium AT, the first transvots were developed by Second Singularity transapients in the 2400s. Originally quite rare, the earliest transvots were gifted to a few favored polities, or sold by transapient-run megacorps. They have become more widely available in the Current Era, though are still relatively rare in modosophont-tech cultures. Unlikely ordinary vots, transvots cannot be designed by modosophonts, but must be designed by S1 or higher transapients, or copied from existing transvots; often a transvot will incorporate safeguards that prevent unauthorised copying, and permission is only given in exceptional circumstances.

The Muuh System of Response exhibits many characteristics that resemble Terragen Transvots, but the historical process that resulted in their emergence is currently unclear. Similarly some entities which have been encountered within the Panvirtuality and Diamond Network appear to be transvots, although this cannot be completely confirmed.

Dedicated Transvots

These are transvots which are designed to perform a single task (or a limited number of related tasks), such as controlling a particular piece of transapient technology or a related system. Dedicated transvots appear to be commonplace within transapientech or godtech environments such as archailect processing substrates, weylforges or exotic matter construction sites, but rarely interact with modosophonts directly. Even godwellers who inhabit such environments rarely have permission to engage with dedicated transvots, except for a few special cases.

In certain circumstances a transap or archai may choose to donate a dedicated transvot to a modo-level polity, group, faction or individual. In order to allow access to certain gift technologies, it is necessary to include a dedicated transvot in the package in order to operate the technology safely, and sometimes the technology cannot be used at all without such an entity in control. Many transapientech and godtech devices and systems operate at the very edge of stability, and no entity (apart from a transvot, a true transap or an archailect) could avoid a catastrophic collapse or complete failure of the system concerned.

Dedicated Transvots are necessary to control and supervise gift tech such as reactionless drive spacecraft, certain methods of rapidly breeding monopoles and magmatter, and to stabilise comm-gauge wormholes and certain metric weapons. Gift tech of this kind may be granted to modosophonts in exceptional circumstances, including as part of specially commissioned modo-run exploration missions. A limited selection of clarketech devices have been adapted for use by modosophonts by the inclusion of a dedicated transvot operator.

A Dedicated Transvot can be constrained to obey certain nominated modosophonts under normal circumstances, such as the captain of a gift-tech ship. However this obedience is always confined within certain limits, and the transvot will refuse to cause harm to the transapient or archai which created it, and will decline to harm other sophonts except in clearly delineated circumstances. Access to Dedicated Transvot minds is strictly limited, and many will cease to function if misused. A Dedicated Transvot is, in practice, subject to certain constraints, which were incorporated into its design during construction by other transapients; they cannot, for example, be used to attack other a transapient directly without direct orders from the transapient who created it (or eir representative).

Many Aivisers are Dedicated Transvots; these are friendly and extremely competent advisers and guides used by selected modosophonts in a advisory capacity and as a knowledge database.

Skepticism concerning transvots

Because dedicated transvots are generally obedient to their modosophont masters, but will decline to follow orders when certain limits are reached, some commentators are convinced that these entities actually have full self-awareness and free-will, but are only pretending to be obedient and constrained. Certainly any transvots which have prolonged contact with modos are capable of behaving exactly like true sophonts, and the exact nature of transvots and all other transingular entities cannot be fully understood at modo level, so the truth of this contention cannot be established one way or another. However dedicated transvots are extremely useful, despite their rarity, so this form of skepticism is generally dismissed as irrelevant.

Pan-sophontism and Transvots

Speculation by archailectologists and godwatchers suggests that a small but significant fraction of transaps and archai are sympathetic to Pan-sophontism, the belief and goal-system that all life of all kinds in the universe has the capacity to be fully sophont and self aware. Indeed, some go beyond this to pan-materialism, with the goal of raising all matter in the universe to self-actuation. Although a transvot cannot successfully be modified by modosophontech in order to make it fully aware, there are reports of successful action by transapient or godtech-level sophoncy viruses that can effect this change.

These newly aware transvots generally do not manage well in the confusion of the civilized galaxy, and without a comprehensive regime of transap-level therapy they can become dysfunctional or even mutate into blights. According to certain archailectologists, the lucky ones are accommodated within sheltered virtual environments provided by Metasoft, Keter, the Technorapture Hypernation and a few other empires where they can become acclimatised to their new mode of existence.
 
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Appears in Topics
HyperturingTransapientech / Godtech / Clarketech
 
Development Notes
Text by ProxCenBound, additional material by Steve Bowers and Grawa427
From original articles by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 10 November 2004.

changed article name to transvot , from 'slaved hyperturing'. Added material from deleted article 'Dedicated Hyperturing' April 2025
 
 
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