Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Danora Allance (Engineer/Artificial Intelligence Expert) in Side Sim - AIs and CEs… what a combination

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Mark Sinclair (Chief Engineer) in Side Sim - AIs and CEs… what a combination

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“Chief! Sorry…I was,” she started laughing with nervousness as she came out from behind the desk. “Sorry. I was making sure the new interface was running smoothly in here as well. The AI should be more agreeable now.” She smiled and did beside his desk, hair in light wisps around her face where it had freed itself from the braid down the back of her head. Her eyes bright and shiny as she looked at him.

Danora
Eng/AI Spec

“Well, Lieutenant, it’s good to see my desk getting some use while I’m not here,” Mark said, easing the tension a bit as he sat down at his chair.

“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing one of the other chairs in the office. “So if the AI will be more agreeable, what was it like before I arrived on board?”

-Lt (j.g.) . Mark Sinclair, CE

Danora laughed and stepped towards the offered chair. Taking a seat, she shook her head. “The AI worked fine, but had to be called upon for some of the actions we may use her for. At least in Engineering, I’m linking her to all the systems. I’m setting her to monitor all systems and extrapolate, from records since inception, the performance of the ship. We can see how far down, or up, we have gone in the performance arena. This is also going to allow us to instantly know from all the past maintenance records, which systems are most likely to fail at any given time and be able to adjust rotational routines to accomidate the new information. Such as, say we realign the chips on the transporter pads every six months. But AI tells us that on average, every five months there is a power loss within the system. If it’s not significant enough to be out of specs, we wouldn’t get the alert. AI would be able to tell us about the difference and we now we can set the maintenance to five month intervals, instead of six.”

She bit her lip and blushed. “Sorry… didn’t mean to ramble. This is a bit of an obsession for me, as you can see.” She sat almost ramrod straight, knees together and hands on her lap. She hadn’t done more than an informal swift check in with Sinclair since she and he had taken up their respective positions. And now, she was a bit worried she had overstepped, both in her actions as well as her words.

Danora
AI geek

Mark had headed over to his desk, and leaned back against it with his arms crossed in a relaxed manner. “Well, it’s good to have someone enthusiastic about the AI system in charge of the ship’s AI,” Mark said.

“So, Danora… why did you decide to specialize in AIs? It’s not always a common area for specialty in Starfleet.”

-Lt. (j.g.) Mark Sinclair, CE

Danora thought for a moment. “I guess like anyone, I got into it because it fascinates me. We are on a cutting edge with AIs in the ships right now. But soon they will be ridiculously common place. I don’t want to wait to learn about them when everyone else already knows. I wanted to learn about them now and be part of that growth. If I can learn about AIs and, out here in the dark, learn how they can help us, isn’t that reason enough?” She laughed. “I mean, we have a brain, so to speak, that can keep up on things we have to think of every time. And can help alert to problems before the specs actually are breeched. Specs, which, by the way, are usually set by folks in simulators or regular Earth orbits. Not by those in space pushing the edges of warp drives to escape the unknown, or trying to figure out a process that could make or break the number of living people on the ship.”

Her animated speaking soon had her sitting on the edge of her seat as she looked up at him. “This is a chance to cover ground and set precedence for ships to come and to think of ways to use the AI that no one in a chair or behind an engineering table even thought of.” Realizing what she was doing, she bit her lip and scooted back in the seat. “I just think that with an AI on board, having an AI tech makes sense. Don’t you?” She shrugged and watched his face and body for reaction cues his voice might not tell. She didn’t want to be seen as the outcast who was more interested in tech than people. But sometimes she realized it was true. AIs fascinated her in a way no person ever had.

Danora
Eng/AI Spec

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