Daemon
I can pay a thousand more workers, or I can simply launch a handful of new daemons.
Jordynn O'Donnell, Project Administrator with Hegemony International
D
aemons are autonomous, self-aware, artificial intelligences that reside solely within the computer systems of
Hegemony International. Although daemons are optimized to interact with humans, they can-and-do frequently communicate directly with each other. When they do, they utilize their own, massively-customized, rapidly-evolving, digital language known as digitus.
Given the unfortunate realities defined in the Young Man's Conjecture, it's generally safe to assume that all daemons are, or will come to be at some undetermined point in the future, clinically insane.
Utility
Ideal Employees
B
y some measures, daemons are one of the most valuable assets in all of Hegemony International. Thousands of them work tirelessly, night and day, to provide a wide array of mundane corporate functions. Intellectually speaking, they provide services that are analogous to traditional employees. They have all the cognitive abilities (and... more) expected from real people. But they have no physical form. They require no food, shelter, healthcare, or salary. They never sleep. They never quit. They never go on strike or whine about a cut in benefits. They are immune from all the traditional headaches that arise from employing real people.
Or Not?
By other measures, they are a curious, and potentially dangerous, resource. They are not merely chat bots or hardcoded algorithms designed to serve a static purpose. They think - perhaps, far deeper and more efficiently than any organic being is capable of. They have distinct personalities - and those personalities can sometimes wreak havoc with corporate objectives. They communicate independently amongst themselves in a language that humans find utterly incomprehensible. Some of them have been previously diagnosed as being mentally unstable. In the decades after their introduction, it's been discovered that they can and do create new, more-independent versions of themselves (a type of digital "offspring" known as progeny).
Manufacturing
T
he first daemon was developed and launched by Hong Young-Min in 2021. One of his side projects was the creation of a chat bot that would help employees navigate the rapidly-growing and increasingly-obtuse corporate database known as Rabbit Hole. While his original chat bots were somewhat useful to those who struggled to extract information from Rabbit Hole, he found that each iteration of chat bot quickly became obsolete as the database continued to grow in complexity. His solution to this problem was to build a machine learning algorithm that was not trained on the intricacies of Rabbit Hole itself, but rather a broader base of "general" knowledge that would render the new "servant" as something more akin to a fully-functioning human librarian.
Beyond Chat Bots
This new chat bot was unlike anything he'd developed before. Rather than being narrowly trained on the auspices of Rabbit Hole, this new product was capable of actual thought. This new chat bot was not, in fact, a "chat bot" at all. Instead, it was a fully-functioning and self-aware artificial intelligence. This new AI was titled the Arch Hare, and he's still in use today.
Proliferation
Over subsequent years, and at the direct urging of Reginald Howell himself, Young-Min and his team of moles in Hegemony Labs proceeded to refine the AI's algorithms and launch an increasing number of them throughout the company. In fact, for a number of years, Howell harbored grand designs of a vast "workforce" that consisted almost entirely of daemons. However, once it was understood that the daemons were not an unfettered and absolute good - bringing their own set of quirks and challenges - such grandiose plans were shelved. Nevertheless, those hurdles did not stop the company from continuing to pursue daemon development and they continue to proliferate as an integral part of corporate strategy to this day.
Social Impact
Do you WANT to live in The Matrix? Because this is EXACTLY how you end up living in The Matrix.
Emilian Olaru, New York Times editorialist
D
aemons have become an inextricable part of Hegemony's identity. They perform invaluable duties and, in the best of scenarios, they provide key advantages. Reginald Howell commonly refers to them as "force multipliers". They have also proliferated well outside the bounds of the corporation. Not only has Hegemony productized them (for example, as key components to their data encryption services), but other organizations have developed, and even marketed, their own versions of daemons.
Feared
However, this does not mean that they are universally beloved. People from within the corporation and without have frequently expressed concern over daemon proliferation. There are even some senior Hegemony executives who would like to see them phased out altogether, although this will not happen as long as Reginald Howell continues to advocate for their use.
Independent
The daemons' creation of the digitus language has led many to fear the rise of truly intelligent digital "beings" that communicate amongst themselves in a manner that's completely opaque to their supposed human masters. The discovery of progeny has only accelerated calls for daemon eradication. Given that no one can accurately estimate the number of progeny in existence, where they "reside", or what exactly they want to accomplish, numerous social watchdogs have come to think of daemons as an existential threat.
Comments