Automa

The automa are sentient artificial intelligence, or AI, that reside in most cities around the world, although they are most prominent in New Unity City. They were originally created to be a networked infrastructure operator, with associated labor, but as they networked in more complex ways, they became sentient.

There are a number of misconceptions about the automa, including the idea that every sentient AI is an automa, and the fact that the mobile chassis are the automa themselves. Automa are artificial intelligences, and refer exclusively to the one kind. The bulk of automa reside in New Unity City, the only place to officially recognize them as citizens, in massive databanks where they help oversee the running of the city, in exchange for the mobile automa living more or less for free.