Artificial Intelligence

An Artificial Intelligence is a sentient electronic being, they're present in both Human and Cephalopod societies (possibly also in the Incubator one, though not enough is known about it to be sure either way).

In Human society

The early phases of the development of AI were marked by large-scale unemployment and unprecedented levels of concentration of wealth. Much like the development of industry in the XIX century and of the computer in the XXI, they evidenced the inadequacy of capitalism in dealing with a society able to produce more than enough to sustain itself without the full dedication of all its members. Unlike those two, AI brought the additional challenge of having a technology capable of independent thought, and the possibility that this thought might have moral values different than those of its employers. The most infamous example of the negative effects of this discordance would be the Pretoria Scandal.

This impasse was solved in 2145, with the launching of the Trusted Computing Framework (or TCF, for short) a group of AIs mathematically proven to fall into states obeying the Volokhov Criterion, an agreed upon set of moral values.

With the inauguration of Governance, AIs became even more fundamental to human society, as the very existence of Governance is based upon the work of its AI members. Beyond that, their fast thought and large computing power made them indispensable in several other fields, such as spaceship piloting, surveillance, scientific research, business advising and, most notably, programming.

In Cephalopod society

Cephalopods have also formed a deep, symbiotic relationship with AIs, but their treatment of them is different in some aspects. They're morally against the creation of single-purpose AIs, preferring to choose among the available ones that which is most fit to the task at hand, much like choosing a candidate for a job position. Most notably, they're not against the upload of biological consciousnesses into electronically devices, which brings the possibility of AIs with a biological origin.

References

Causality, for the TCF

Aftershocks, for the Cephalopod AIs