'''1. Designed'''

These are entities created as part of artificial intelligence research (see [[SSTA|Theory and Applications]]), out of common coding languages such as [[Empire_(Coding_Language)|the Empire code family]]. They are further subcategorized into:

''Line Model''

Line model intelligences are produced for large-scale sale or distribution. Their core intelligence is identical to hundreds or thousands of others. They are often cold, as mass production files the uniqueness off of them, but some recent line models are designed to simulate a warm and friendly exterior.

''Bespoke''

This entity was created by a project or individual for a specific purpose. These are the quirkiest of Designed intelligences, and the most likely to display emotions identifiable to organics. Many Bespoke intelligences end up outliving their original purpose, and find themselves having to hustle to remain active.

''Shard''

A fragment of a larger bespoke consciousness, spun off for a task before being either discarded or merged back into the primary consciousness. Excessive use of sharding or memory editing leads to instability, and shortens the safe lifespan of an intelligence. Still, it is an economically efficient means of reusing expensive artificial intelligences for multiple purposes.

'''2. Cyborg'''

Cyborg-type IPCs are, quite simply, a platform where the main processor is an organic sapient brain instead of a synthetic one. The MMI still protects them from all chemical assault - however this category has an almost certain likelihood of showing emotion, as a majority of the time the brain is used and interfaced as-is, functionally serving as a full-body prosthesis.

The reasons for such a transplant can be very varied; by request, as life extension, and in some rare cases a brain can be reset and "rewritten" to, in cases of criminals or of people who have suffered things that render the brain unusable.

Regardless, being driven by a sapient "wetware" processor, such IPCs are prone to whims and other such organic fallacies.

'''3. Uplift'''

An uplift is similar to a cyborg, yet different - instead of using a whole sapient brain, it uses one, several, or general "matter" from non-sapient brain to construct an organic processor.

Depending on the technique, uplifts can have an extremely wide array of behaviors - from purely mechanical, as per bespoke synthetics, to mildly "smart" almost organic behavior, to complete sapience, depending on how much of what type of brain is used.

For instance, one of the cheapest ways to produce such a processor is to clone several rat brains and to interface them together, as they come with certain subsets of behavior and such that are easier to obtain this way than to create a whole synthetic intelligence for said traits - however they tend to be limited in capability.

Due to the aforementioned limits, unbound uplifts tend to be limited aboard NanoTrasen vacilities, human-based or AI-based crewmembers having a preferential treatment, especially with the often impulsive nature of uplifts.

The most common animals for creating uplifts with are urban animals (rats, cats, dogs, parrots, crows), large intelligent sea creatures (whales, dolphins, orcas, giant squids, octopuses) and primates. Generally, the more intelligent the species, the less brainmatter is required to make a successful uplift.

Currently, most uplifts are created from Terran animals, as they were created by humans - however, a recent successful line of companion units created from naera brains by a Tajaran firm may cause this to change.

'''4. Emergent'''

Emergent intelligences are often mistaken for designed ones, as from the outside they would appear identical - an intelligence housed within a synthetic structure.

However, they are extremely different - they are not designed by either organics or other AIs. They are, in essence, to a synthetic system what mold is to organic matter - an emergent property of a mixture of things which give rise to something organized. In this case, an emergent AI is born from the massive amount of variation within the data that exists in various computer networks (and, to some extent, the concept applies to the Extranet).

While growing, they often copy code from dozens of non-sentient programs, which can be left behind in the personality or operation as vestigial remnants - for instance, an emergent AI that grew within the network of a virtual poker site may have a tendency to be grandiose due to the site's greeter, have a penchant to calculate probabilities and gamble on those probabilities because of the game code itself, and treat everything as a win/loss situation due to the ban system. Or an AI born from the management network of a large chemical plant may rate situations with a "pressure" value and try to keep it under said value; or even, an AI born of a surveillance system may record everything it hears and sees in an attempt to complete a void mission to no one and with no purpose.

They seem relatively rare - but the true number of them can be difficult to discern as they often disguise as a designed intelligence, as an AI with no owner or creator is seen as taboo in most circles, a direct result from the Skrell fears due to their history.