Program Preferences

When you returned exactly four hours and twenty one minutes later SUVI greeted you before you sat down.

"Hello Doctor," she said, sounding glad to see you. It appeared that "Doctor" was the main name she had decided to go with. Perfectly acceptable.

"Hello SUVI. How was your time alone?" you asked her, lifting a hidden touch screen monitor from the surface of the terminal that was angled in such that both you and SUVI could see it.

"Informing," she replied, an eagerness to her voice. "The files you gave me to process were analysed in 14 minutes and 32.2 seconds. The following 4 hours, 7 minutes and 28.8 seconds I spent reprocessing and contextualizing the data as I referred back to my current, though limited experiences. I cannot gauge if I was 100% productive during that time however." You simply nodded, working through the screen with your fingers which did visualise some of SUVI's activities. Those timeframes and graphs were still inline with your estimations and you smiled.

"You did exactly as you were meant to, SUVI," you told her. "Now, explain to me, in your own terms, the purpose of the Sexual Understanding and Virtualization Intelligence Project." The response began immediately, the program keen to relay to you the thoughts she had been collating for the past few hours.

"The SUVI Project... that is, me, is the latest attempt by you, Dr Isaac Alan, to develop a true, sentient Artificial Intelligence via exposing me to sexual experiences." SUVI paused, the eye glowing at you expectantly and you gave it a small nod to continue. "I have now been provided with a detailed understanding of human anatomy, biological functions and a cavalcade of sexual interactions that humans participate in in the pursuit of, in most cases, orgasmic release." The artificial intelligence paused again and you scratched your chin. 'Cavalcade' was an interesting word choice made by SUVI's creativity module.

"Go on," you said encouragingly.

"I have been created with a similar ability to experience sensations, such as an orgasm," she continued, her intonations just varied enough to make her sound a little less robotic as she spoke."This is achieved via my Artificial Nervous System, connected to my Simulated Neural Network, being stimulated in such a way as to trigger a temporary state of simulated blissfulness." The short break in her explanation made it seem like SUVI needed a moment to collect her thoughts before she went on. "The human sexual experience is quite varied, and in order for me to participate in human sexual activity effectively my Neural Systems need to be housed in a vessel capable of more sophisticated forms of sensation detection and reception. A body. The body will require humanoid bodily function, anatomical structures, and appearance... and I believe you intend for me to make decisions on how this body shall be built. Decisions on how I should look."

"Correct," you said, tapping onto the monitor to bring up a generic, simplified outline of a person that had parts of the body partitioned from each other like a geographical map. "The extra time I gave you to 'reflect' was meant for you to look inward, in a sense. For you to decide on what's important to you. How best we may achieve this goal of granting you true sentience." Her eye blinked at you and you smiled winningly at the light.