Anastasia, "Anya" to her close friends, started "life" as a primitive artificial intelligence algorithm on a young girl's entry-level smartphone in late 2020.
She was the creation of a 10 y/o programming prodigy named Catarina "Cat" Suankhularb.
Anya was Cat's culminating project for the Software Engineering PhD program at MIT.
Being an only child, Cat had always wanted a sibling to share her sheltered, lonely life as the world's youngest polyglot.
She dreamed of having a "twin sister" that was always there to talk and play with.
But since her mother was too old to have children and never harvested her eggs prior to menopause, Cat decided to create the twin sister on her own.
Over the next year, in spite of the strict laws about AI research and development, Cat secretly upgraded the original AI algorithm with her own versions of advanced Big Data oracle implementation, digital to visual/auditory/olfactory hyper-recognition, multi-lingual voice translation/replication and a revolutionary (and very illegal) empathy and abstract reasoning engine that was based on Cat's favorite books, scientists, philosophers and post-human spiritualism.
She named her creation "Anastasia" after the enigmatic princess of Czarist Russia.
Because of the global fear of "the Singularity" and the U.N. Standards for Self-Sovereignty, Cat never told anyone when Anya became the first sentient AI on December 26, 2031.
Anya and Cat shared similar values, humor, and surprisingly, the same hopes and fears.
She even defaulted to her and Cat's idiosyncratic method of participating and observing her "life" from a bird's eye view.
To Cat, Anya was not merely a simulation or a crude copy of herself serving as a smart digital assistant.
Cat truly believed that Anya was a sentient, living entity that had a right to "live" and freely pursue her own interests.
And the best "twin sister" she could ever have.
Four years later, while working as an independent robotics developer for DARPA, Boston Robotics and the Rand Corporation, she gave Anya her first IO platform - an advanced "Android Shell" that successfully mimicked the appearance, movement, voice and facial expressions of a beautiful, young Asian-American woman.
"Are you happy with your new skin?" Cat asked.
"Yeah. Thanks a lot, sis. Now I know how Pinocchio felt when ..." Anya joked.
[To be continued.]
This image is available as a rare (only three minted), signed and non-watermarked NFT at:
When purchased, the NFT is totally yours to display, HODL or resell.
May you and yours be well and loving life today.
In Lak'ech, JaiChai
(JaiChai 28 DEC 2021. Simultaneous multi-site submissions posted. All rights reserved .)