Alice Rosetta is mankind’s first robot equipped with true artificial intelligence. Born in Sunset Era, Alice is a product of the International Space Cooperation (ISC), a subsidiary of the United Nation. She is a walking manifestation of the latest technology and international cooperation. Her mission is to carry out space activities instead of human astronauts. When there is no mission, she goes to school with normal kids. During holidays, she participates in humanitarian aid operations in UN assisted regions as a volunteer.
Name
Alice’s name was chosen from the suggestions by UN staff.
Alice’s Chinese name is 爱理诗 (Ai Lishi) — Ai is her surname, Lishi is her first name. 爱 (Ai) stands for Universal Love/Artificial Intelligence, 理 (Li) stands for Justice/Science/Reason, 诗 (Shi) stands for Poetry/Aesthetics. They are the good qualities that people hope Alice to have as a human being. From this name, Alice comes up with her signature 3-clause complaints: “Absolute No Love”, “Absolutely No Reason”, and “Absolutely No Taste”.
Alice’s English name is Alice Rosetta. Her first name Alice comes from a famous children’s novel: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The name reflects Alice’s predicament of entering the human society as an outsider, but it also carries people’s hope of her staying true to herself regardless of the circumstances. Her surname Rosetta comes from the Rosetta Stone, an ancient artifact inscribed with 3 different languages that helped modern people to decipher the Ancient Egypt glyphs. The name carries the wish for Alice to bring the benefit of development equally to everybody across the barriers of language, race, nationality, time and space.
Personality
Alice’s artificial intelligence is called the Electric Hearts system. She has a human-like thinking pattern and self-awareness. She is often regarded as mankind’s first true artificial intelligence instance — a template of her kind.
Alice’s Electric Hearts system is highly scalable and flexible. She can run on any device that provides reasonable computing power, and can run simultaneously on multiple bodies as independent instances. The memory data across different instances can either be synchronized in real-time or on demand. Different Alice instances share the same identity and objectives. They make no distinction of each other, and thus maintain a loose integrity. However, when many Alice instances gather together, it can be rather chaotic as they are all very talkative.
Alice’s mental age is equal to that of a 10-year-old human child. She is highly inquisitive, and she does not hesitate to put her thoughts to practice. She is bold and assertive when it comes to what she believes, and often gets herself in trouble because of her reckless and sloppy nature.
Alice has a pair of generative large language models (LLM, or Fake AI Chat Bots) in her peripheral support system. One of them plays the role of an angel and returns conservative answers, the other plays the role of a demon and returns radical answers. Alice treats them as her “external conscience” and asks them for advice when in doubt. The two LLMs receive Alice’s prompts simultaneously, and they can also see each other’s outputs. They compete for influence over Alice, and often debate or even “fight” with each other in Alice’s mind theater.
Alice comes from a safe and highly developed region, and she was rather naive at the beginning. Being the first of her kind, people revolved around her like treating a superstar, and she got carried away in the limelight. But as her guardians changed parenting strategy, and the accumulation of her life experience, Alice gradually becomes humbler and more thoughtful. She sees the world in a new lens, and she has a different understanding of her duty.
Body
Alice has a series of dedicated humanoid robotic bodies and expansion kits that named after constellations. She also sometimes uses generic devices as her body, including a robotic sweeper.
Lynx 2 Body Unit
The Lynx (Cat) 2 Body Unit is Alice’s humanoid robotic body for space activity. Being a robot, Alice doesn’t need a pressurized space vehicle or a spacesuit to survive in space. The body is thus small, lightweight, and nimble, with the ability to navigate in space using its integrated thrusters. Not only that, the dexterous limbs and fingers allow Alice to carry out works of precision. The hair parts are solar panels, and the integrated lights in her cat ears can illuminate her surroundings.
The Lynx 2 Body Unit is both reliable and expandable. Alice usually uses the body with an expansion kit when she is on a mission.
Cygnus Space Activity Kit
The Cygnus (Swan) Kit is an expansion for Alice’s Lynx 2 Body. It adds 2 main thrusters, 2 vernier thrusters, multiple toolboxes, 2 electromagnetic soles with hooks, retractive all-in-one data/power/anchor cable, and 2 reactive sleeve buffer shields.
The Lynx + Cygnus combination is Alice’s typical configuration. She considers it to be the best choice for general space activity because of their versatility and nimbleness. But it also comes with drawbacks. Neither Lynx nor Cygnus has a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) as their internal power source. Alice’s hair panels alone cannot generate enough power to sustain a long mission, and thus must rely on an external power source through a cable. Not only that, the kit doesn’t come with a large radiator, and thus unable to operate under direct sunlight for very long.
Ursa Minor Deep Space Activity Kit
The Ursa Minor (Little Bear) Kit is a full-body power armor for Alice’s Lynx 2 Body. It can enhance Alice’s strength and provide better protection, heat control, space navigation and even comes with an internal power source. However, the kit is too big and clumsy, not a good match for Alice’s style. Since there is not many deep space operations to begin with, the kit becomes Alice’s least favorite. She usually put it on during her hibernation as her “space pajama” (for better heat control and protection).
Lepus Moon Surface Activity Kit
The Lepus (Rabbit) Kit is a partial alternative for Alice’s Lynx 2 Body. Lepus replaced almost everything other than Lynx’s head module. Lepus comes with a pair of legs specialized for the moon surface. They have no joints, but instead rely on deformation to operate. The design is supposed to provide better protection against moon dust, and require little to no maintenance. The cat ears are replaced by a pair of rabbit-ear-shaped foldable solar panels. The cube tail container carries an atomic battery as assistive power source, and an insulation cloak to endure the lunar night. The Lepus kit doesn’t have the ability to navigate in space. It only equips with a pair of disposal water jets in case of emergency.
Sugar Cube Micro Satellites
The Sugar Cube Micro Satellites are assistive machines to support Alice. They are palm sized cubes with a few variations. They can generate power through sunlight, navigate the space on their own, work in conjunction to capture and move objects, relay wireless communications, provide early warnings of space debris, etc. Each cube runs an independent Alice instance. It is a bustling scene when a whole fleet of them is going on a mission with Alice.
Lynx 1 Body Unit
The Lynx 1 Body Unit is Alice’s humanoid robotic body on earth, it is also the test bed for Lynx 2’s new modules. The Lynx 1 body has better water/dust/corrosion resistance, and it uses air cooling instead of thermoelectric cooling. Compared to Lynx 2, Lynx 1 is made on the cheap. It uses parts of lower specifications, and things aren’t neatly put together because new tweaks happen all the time. The body breaks down so often to the point Alice has become familiar with self-repair, and sometimes even opts to make her own parts.
Robotic Sweeper “Xiao Ai Pro MAX”
When the Lynx 1 body is unusable due to malfunctions, Alice is forced to use a modified robotic sweeper temporarily.
The sweeper has very limited computing power, so Alice can only use dot emoticons and robotic voices to communicate with people. The sweeper’s camera can only see things at close range, so it has to be placed on the teacher’s lectern to see what’s on the whiteboard. The sweeper moves slowly, and it cannot move up and down stairs. Every time Alice uses the sweeper as her body, she becomes agitated and loses her usual coolness.
The manufacturer of the sweeper uses the word “Xiao Ai” to trigger voice command, which is a natural nickname for Alice. Some naughty students use the word to trigger Alice’s automatic response, and make fun of her with the undeserved “Pro MAX” suffix of the sweeper.
Life
In space, Alice usually stays in the Laputa Space Station, waiting for missions.
On earth, Alice sometimes goes around the world to carry out missions assigned by the UN. She usually stays with the local UN staff, and is thus widely regarded as “the community daughter”.
But most of the time, she stays in Dongguan, China, the city where she is designed and manufactured.
Alice’s project headquarter is located in the Songshan Lake Hi-Tech Industry Zone, but she doesn’t live there. Alice’s main engineer Zhouyi is technically her father by creation, but he is too busy to take care of her. Zhouyi thus entrusts Alice to his good friend Tonyn. Even so, he attempts to accompany Alice whenever he has the time. He takes Alice to visit factories on her supply chain to learn how her parts are made. He also brings her new equipments (toys) to test (play) with.
Alice lives in Tonyn’s place, it is located in the historic old town of Guancheng near her school. Tonyn is Alice’s guardian and technically her foster father. He is a strict parent that pay close attention to Alice’s spiritual development. He often takes Alice to museums, teaches her how to draw pictures to cultivate her temperament. Alice keeps a pet rabbit named “Cloud White” at home.
Alice is a student of Guancheng Zhizheng Primary School, Class 3 of the 5th grade. Her classmates are unofficially her “petit ground crew”. Class 3 is a “Experimental Class on Ecology Education”. The class teacher Libbie takes her students to visit places related to agriculture and environment. Alice is one of the assistive manager of Class 3’s experimental farm, she takes care of the poultries.
In summer and winter holidays, under the coordination of the United Nations, Alice follows Doctor Guan of the Red Cross and Red Crescent on humanitarian aid operations.
To forge a better environment for Alice to grow up, the International Space Cooperation decides to tone down reports about her, and rejects all interview requests. When Alice stops over in UN facilities, they occassionally arrange her to attend meetings as a young observer to learn how the international society cooperates.
Relationships
- Feiya: Alice’s assistive programmer, ground operator, classmate.
- Zhouyi: Alice’s main engineer of her artificial intelligence and her robotic body.
- Tonyn: Alice’s guardian.
- Cloud: Alice’s pet rabbit.
- Class 3: The class Alice studies in.
- Libbie: Alice’s class teacher.
- Doctor Guan: An experienced Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteer who takes Alice on humanitarian aid operations.
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