Conception

In June of 1959, an internal report issued by the Special Economics Research Staff concluded that the nation’s usage of heavily-regulated free market economics was not sustainable for long term growth and economic security. With hostilities increasing with Blackacre and Brancaland, the Staff concluded that a more centralized, objective-based economic policy must be implemented if Krusavich was to be industrially and scientifically competitive in the international markets while retaining its “values and socialist principles”.

Following a series of joint departmental reviews through the early 1960s, the Central Departments unanimously concluded that a centrally operated planned economy was not a feasible solution to the Staff’s proposed problem. The reports primarily cited the failures of other socialist states such as Lebatuck and North Lilliputia which had seen substantial declines in citizen health, economic efficiency and technological advancement following the adoption of their wholly planned economies.

In 1967, Joint-Chief Yubi Sagloff authorized Maglov Brezhnev's, a Sub-Chief of the Information and Technology Department, proposed computerized economic planning system as a replacement to traditional human manned planning departments. The order was approved by the Supreme Court as constitutional, and further granted Dr. Brezhnev’s request for a “blank check development budget”.

Early Development

In his report to the Joint-Chief and Supreme Court, Brezhnev believed that a sufficiently advanced and integrated artificial intelligence would be capable of the mass data gathering and information processing needed to realize the Central Department’s economic objectives. In addition, such an intelligence would also be able to anticipate freemarket movements in nations such as Brancaland. This “absolute economic foresight” would grant Krusavich an “unprecedented advantage”. While Brezhnev assured that his schematics and theories could produce such a system, the bottleneck remained in processing power. As such, Brezhnev’s cross-departmental R&D staff, designated R&D 8, began development on a solution - marking the first official development of the then-unnamed AERIS computer system.

In 1971, R&D 8 proposed to the Joint and Central Department Chiefs a series of theoretical processing units capable of meeting project standards. The unit was contingent on utilizing biological components – isolated portions of human cerebrum, particularly frontal lobe tissue. The biological components would be harvested from a subject, and further grown artificially in specialized development containers to ensure proper operation with non-biological components. The initial proposal was rejected by a supermajority of the Central Department Chiefs, with further development of proposed biological components prohibited.

However the Lonsrod Incursion incidents in late 1971 had the Department Chiefs review and reverse their previous ruling, granting R&D 8’s request to secure subjects for the ‘RUST’ processors. Again however the proposal was rejected by the Supreme Court, finally seeing approval in a 1972 appeals case.

Continued Development

R&D 8 with newfound approvals outlined the AERIS–Type (Advanced Educated-Researcher Information System) configuration. Much of the development through the 1970s was the growth and development of the RUST processors, and configuration of the non-biological components.

One of the primary benefits of the AERIS configuration was its redundancy. The central components of the intelligence would operate at -30 °C, allowing fragile components to operate beyond normal replacement dates by magnitudes of decades. Much of the non-biological components unessential to processing (such as interface terminals) would utilize slightly-modified existing technology to operate in these extreme temperatures. The entire central core would be stored in a subterranean containment unit, and require only minimal maintenance once the system was made fully operational.

Aeris

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Logo

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Inauguration:

1988

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Operators:

Department of Science and Technology

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Architecture:

12 RUST Processors
72,648 CISMIC 32-core CPUs

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Power:

6000 MW

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Operating System:

NEURAL 1

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Storage:

400 ZB

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Speed:

200 zettaFLOPS

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Purpose:

Economic Planning
General Advisory

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Activation and Implementation

The AERIS was fully activated on September 14th, 1979.Up through 1987, the AERIS underwent a rigorous teaching and software development to allow for operational functionality. As the system was a ‘blank slate’ upon construction, it was taught over the eight year period fundamentals such as language, speaking, information gathering and processing. This teaching concluded on December 3rd of 1987, where ‘Aeris’ had reached a point of ‘learning singularity’ – an exponential increase in self-teaching abilities. With this, Aeris could seamlessly adapt and alter information processing techniques. Aeris was fully capable of rapidly drawing conclusions from a variety of complex socio-economic information, and drawing up action plans to align with Department agendas. In accordance to Brezhnev’s theories, the artificial intelligence would require a substantial amount of data outlets to gather from. As such, the intelligence was fully integrated into the developing public transportation network of Krusavich, various miscellaneous information wells, a series of communication terminals and the World Wide Web.

Functionality

All state production quotas originate from Aeris. From the general commands of the department chiefs, Aeris is able to make the relevant data collections and deductions to translate these commands into appropriate quota adjustments to ultimately fulfill the mandate. Aeris had been granted a substantial amount of autonomy through this process, resulting in oftentimes dramatic decisions – such as shutting down entire industrial sectors for months at a time. These actions are often done to favorably adjust international market conditions. Despite seemingly absurd short-term actions, long-term results have demonstrated Aeris’ success in securing and further developing the national economy.

Aeris also operates as a ‘consultant’ for the Department chiefs and other VIPs. She will typically be present in meetings to offer recommendations, reports, and internal findings regarding economic matters, and predictions of international market movements.