Institute Examiner
The term "Institute Examiner" is a vernacular title applied to members of the Harkin Institute responsible for identifying the presence of intelligences classified as human-like enough in terms of consciousness to warrant protections and responsibilities under the Code of Evermorn. Such intelligences might include Human-Like Artificial Intelligences (HLAI, more traditional self-modifying artificial intelligence systems, organoids, and augmented animals.
Career
Qualifications
All official Institute Examiners are trained experts in their respective fields, requiring at least a Master's level education in psychology, computer science, biology, or neurological medicine depending on what sort of sentience they are expected to examine for certification. The head of an Examiner's Board - the person responsible for ultimately approving a certification - must have at least a Doctorate in a related field. Part of an Examiner's Board inquiry is a subjective assessment by a selection of volunteer laypeople, but these guests of the Board are not generally considered Institute Examiners with regards to title.
Other Benefits
Institute Examiners are typically academically inclined and, as such, consider the access to cutting-edge research in their respective fields that becoming an Examiner provides to be a reward above and beyond the stipend provided by the Harkin Institute itself.
Operations
Tools
The question of what constitutes consciousness has only partially been resolved by Protectorate philosophers. It is no longer sufficient to claim that a system is sentient solely because it can claim to be so or exhibit behaviors which might be mistaken for those of a sentient being. For biological or (in the case of HLAI) biomorphic systems, it may be possible to observe the workings of the sentience externally through the use of various scanning devices to ascertain consciousness, but the question becomes more complex when fully non-biomorphic systems come into play. Conversely, there are sentiences which are undeniably under the auspices of the Code but for which the more obvious measures of sapience would fail, such as in the case of animals which demonstrate tool use, complex communication, and self-awareness, but for which no cross-species language has been successfully developed. Thus, aside from a wide array of scanning devices, Institute Examiners rely heavily on an extensive library of philosophical, statistical, legal, linguistics, and technical rubrics developed over centuries of research into the matter to determine whether a system rises to the level of a 'human-like' sentience as applicable to Protectorate law.
Workplace
Most Institute Examiners may be found on Evermorn or on the off-world manufacturing hubs where artificial intelligences and composite life-forms are often constructed, though certified Examiners may be found throughout the Protectorate - even distant colonies - to make their services available if the need arises. Like the Cobalt Knights, Institute Examiners can be educated and inducted into a Board via subsidiary institutions, as the distance between worlds in the Protectorate usually precludes more than one interstellar flight in a given lifetime.
Provided Services
Aside from issuing certifications of sentience, Institute Examiners are often educators or researchers in their own fields. They may be expected to provide advisement to government officials, such as the Techguard, with regards to situations involving previously unrecognized intelligences. Indeed, whenever a first encounter with an alien species is expected to occur, Institute Examiners are often consulted to assess how, or if, the Cobalt Knights should engage with new sentience.
Dangers & Hazards
Both alien intelligence and artificial intelligences can present hazards that the members of the Harkin Institute are expected to perceive, plan for, and develop counters against should the need arise. For example, an artificial general intelligence may develop goals that run counter to those of organic life, might misinterpret their instructions or extrapolate them to dangerous or wasteful courses of action, or might attempt to grow beyond their bounds or gain self-modification abilities. By necessity, Institute Examiners may expect to be present when these dangers manifest, placing them directly at risk of injury or death. Beyond mere dangers to health and wealth, an Institute Examiner must accept the moral hazard attendant with the possible necessity of making the decision to terminate an intelligence which might or might not be hostile to humanoid interests.
Type
Technology
Legality
Though it may seem a niche organization in the broader Sealed Kingdoms Region, most Protectorate citizens place a high importance on the work that the Harkin Institute and its Examiners provide. The Code of Evermorn is explicit in the rights and responsibilities that pertain to all citizens of the Protectorate Core, and sentience is an important part of that citizenship - especially given that there are increasing numbers of non-humans and near-humans aspiring to Core citizenship with expansion of Protectorate influence via the work of the Cobalt Knights. A certification of sentience, among other things, grants the bearer blanket protection from being owned as an object, livestock, or slave, grants the potential for naturalized citizenship and the franchise, binds the bearer to act in the interest of protecting the lives of fellow citizens and the survival of the human family as a whole in a hostile galaxy, and makes the bearer subject to all the laws attending the conduct of sentient beings within Protectorate territory. Thus, artificially-created sentient beings in the Protectorate actively seek to obtain a certification from a board of Institute examiners to protect their own self interests, while individuals and organizations who benefit from advanced machine intelligence make efforts to constrain their developments to prevent the application of a certification to those systems which would turn them from assets (which can be owned without risk of the owners facing execution for slave-driving) to employees (which must be paid and given leave to pursue other interests if so desired).
Used By
Comments