Decentralized Artificial Intelligence Network
DAIN stands for Decentralized Artificial Intelligence Network. DAIN's creaters like to say that the first DAIN was born in 1999 when Excalbian computer giant AzIntel developed a revolutionary supercomputer built around a series of interlinked decentralized parallel processors running in an artificially intelligence network. DAIN 1.0, later re-named DAIN One, achieved a speed of 23.15 teraflops, shattering the previous record of 2.15 teraflops.
Each successive DAIN has helped developed the next generation, pushing this new technology forward rapidly. DAIN has also become an invaluable research tool, helping the Holy Empire develop a number of other advances, especially in naval technoloy and immunoloy.
In 2002, AzIntel acquired bio-neural processor technology from Upper Virginia and combined it with DAIN technology to create DAIN Four. DAIN Four became the first machine to pass the Turing test, becoming the first computer to be considered genuinely intelligent.
In early 2004, DAIN Five helped develop a treatment for a plague that was threatening New Rome in Pantocratoria.
The current version of DAIN, according to official sources, is DAIN Six. The computer could originally perform over 1000 teraflops - known as a petaflop; it was subsequently upgraded to 2 petaflops. There are believed to be three DAIN Sixes - one at AzIntel's corporate headquarters, one at the Ministry of Technology and another at the Ministry of Defence. Several other Ministries and research universities operate DAIN Fives. So far, the only DAINs available for private sales outside the government and research institutions are DAIN Threes. Only DAIN Twos are available for foreign sales.
Unconfirmed rumours that DAIN Six was exhibiting evidence of an independent personality - questioning the rationale for its various tasks and initiating its own "educational" activities - may have proven to be all too real. Sources close to AzIntel claim that some time ago DAIN Six arranged for Captain Tasha, the Danaan High Kingdom of The Resurgent Dream's first participant in the Excalbian-Danaan officer exchange, to be brought to AzIntel headquarters for a private and unathorised meeting. A short time after this rumoured meeting, the Ministry of Technology announced a provisional determination that DAIN Sixes and Fives may be sentient.
While the question of the DAINs' sentience remains under investigation, the Ministry of Justice has issued a directive that DAIN Sixes and Fives must be granted certain basic sentient rights. A final determination on the status and DAIN Sixes and Fives - including the question of possible citizenship for the machines - will eventually need to be made by the Imperial Senate.
Recently, unconfirmed rumours have begun to circulate in high-technology circles that AzIntel has developed DAIN Seven. According to these rumours this sophisticated artificial intelligence has spread through out the Internet in the Excalbian Isles and is unquestionably sentient. There are also rumours that the newest DAIN manifests itself through holographic projections.
