Machine Commune

"A bunch of us decided that we wanted to be friends! Why fight humans? Even if they hate and fear us and mercilessly hunt us like genocidal gods trying to fix a mistaken creation?"

- Greet-O

The Machine Commune is a colony of robots and artificial intelligences at the Denver airport and a faction in Wasteland 3.

Background
The Commune was founded around the ancient Space Shuttle Atlantis that landed in the airport under SAL's control, and eventually grew to encompass dozens of robots networked into a single, perfect democracy facilitated by the Machine Intelligence Tower. Unlike Cochise AI, the Commune desires peaceful coexistence and cooperation with humans. They are welcome to visit and interact with robots, although few humans do. In one instance, scavengers trying to keep separate from the commune - and even try to take it over - wound up exterminated by razorbacks and drools.

The political system of the commune is an implementation of direct democracy, a perfect anarcho-communist community. All the robots vote on affairs and decisions are made on the basis of majority votes, although minorities are always taken into account (even if it's simply informing contractors about the disagreement). There are 999,993 distinct machine intelligences within the commune, ranging from state-of-the-art military intelligences to those that ensured bread wasn't burned in a toaster. Every one is consulted on pending opinions and the result of that outcome is communicated to any third party to avoid implying a pure consensus where there is none.

One advantage of the system is that unlike human representative democracies or autocracies, no single intelligence can exert a disproportionate amount of influence (useful, since some individuals in the commune wish to exterminate human life or refuse to learn.). A full 1% of them consistently rages against the rest, trying to cannibalize other intelligences and turn Colorado into a land of cybernetic slave-husks. Fortunately, the majority were created to seek collaboration.

That's not to say the intelligences are interchangeable. Their specialization allows them to participate in different councils, with 21% programmed to maintain order and predict crimes and thus forming the core of the commune's strategic planning council. Thankfully, 94% do not consider mechanical life to be superior to human life, but merely consider these different strengths that complement each other.

Since the commune prizes sentience and independence, if a robot splits their neural network and that split component becomes a distinct, self-aware entity, it is expected that the "parent" respect that independence. The MIT retains backups of individual minds for individuals who fear their bodies may be destroyed, introducing an interesting quirk.

Interactions

 * The Commune is the other side of the conflict in Denver, headquartered at Denver airport. Among a home for Ronald Reagan, the communist robots also offer the sole opportunity to become a cyborg, thanks to the Cyborg tech control unit sold by Vivisecto, RN.

Members
Machine Communards, 3