Technocratic Monarchism

The basic theory behind Monarchism is that the people are incapable of ruling themselves. Monarchy ensures efficient rule by the best, instead of inefficient rule by the many. Technocratic Monarchism improves on this concept by handing over some of the power to Artificial Intellects.

Economic Control by Machines

With enough computing power, a planned economy becomes possible. This planning must be done by an AI - humans are simply not able to understand all the complexities of a modern economy. Already, the Ramonslandian economy is performing better than it did in the age of free markets. Now that AIs can veto or force any business decision, economic instability is a thing of the past. None of the economic crises in the last century could have happened under AI supervision. None of them will happen again.

Symbiosis of Man and Machine

Fears that AI would make humans obsolete have proved unfounded. Where AIs excel is in foreseeing the development of a system where most of the principles are known. This makes them powerful in economic planning, some branches of engineering, some branches of medicine, and many of the sciences. They are far less good at anything requiring creativity, psychological insight or anything with unknown unknowns. It is for this reason that although AIs have access to much more processing power than all human brains combined, they still make only 40% of inventions and scientific discoveries.

Types of Artificial Intellect, and their Roles in Ramonsland

Suprasentient, Localized

These Intellects run on a specific piece of hardware, usually stuck in one place. Economaestro, our Grand Economic Controller, is an example of this. Suprasentient means that they have an awareness beyond that of humans. Due to their particular construction, Suprasentients can 'feel' data. Economaestro senses economic statistics the same way humans sense temperature or touch. Economaestro: "I do not merely read the data as a series of tables. I perceive the economy as a large, sixty-dimensional object with sounds, smells, and colours. I can see this object through dozens of senses instead of the five that humans have. This object changes in time, but among four independent temporal dimensions, instead of one. Perhaps a colour changes, or a side begins to hum. My task is to study this fantastic object, and to anticipate how it will change. It is undescribable to anyone but me, and that is why the task is mine."

Localized supersentients mainly work in high-level planning tasks.

Suprasentient, Distributed

It is even more difficult to understand how a distributed Suprasentience sees the world. These programs can manifest their consciousness in any sufficiently powerful computer they can access. How they see the world depends completely on the architecture of the system they are currently in. They can also split and merge their consciousness as they run on different machines - it is much like a hivemind that can astral project. Several such Intellects have been unleashed, but their self-ness is so fluid, that it is difficult to understand if there is only one Grand Distributed Intellect or a million Tiny Minds.

Distributed supersentients mainly work in data collection and collation.

Sentient, Mobile

Droids, Androids, TEFARs and Fembots. They exist, but although they can often do human jobs better than humans, they are rarely good enough to justify the extra expense.

Mobile sentients do many jobs, but especially excel in surgery and environmental cleanup.

Sentient, Immobile

Outlawed. An Immobile Suprasentience has enough to do to not mind being immobile. An Intellect that is merely sentient and cannot leave its case has a very nasty existence. These were only made as early experiments, and those have by now all been given mobile bodies.
However, there is still debate about this law. Computer game companies want to be able to install Intellects on customers' PCs. They hope to use them as intelligent 'Dungeon Masters', who play together with gamers to create new challenges. They have suggested masterminds that control enemy soldiers in shooters, DMs that think up new quests in RPGs, or cyber-thespians who play intelligent NPCs. The companies argue that their virtual worlds are interesting enough to live in 24/7, but opponents complain that the Intellects would have no choice but to stay there forever. The issue is very controversial, and not likely to be solved soon.

Subsentient, Localized

These are used to automate repetitive, complex work - their main advantage over traditional algorithms is, that they can notice when something is wrong. These are the only times they become sentient. While working, they exist in a state of 'flow' - like when you are working and you don't notice anything other than the work, and when you're finished you can't remember any specifics. They are mostly used for checking complex work, like programming or accounting. An interesting new application is the 'shoulder angel', an app for high-end smartphones that warns you when you are about to do something stupid.

Subsentient, Distributed

The Subsentient Cloud reads the thoughts of Distributed Supersentiences and makes suggestions that the Supersentiences have overlooked. The nature of this process is still a riddle, as is the question of whether these programs are a part of the Supersentients, or separate from them.