Code-bot

A robot with a Turing-equivalent intelligence. Contrast with spark-bot.

The term arises because in practice, it's most efficient to implement such intelligences as software upon a simple RISC array. This also allows such intelligences to be copied among compatible hardware. Since all computing in the world of Softwired is parallel, code-bot intelligences are described as "finitely-parallel", to contrast them with infinitely-parallel spark-based intelligences.

A code-bot may or may not be sentient. One with a dedicated program, like the bar dispenser in the River base, is no more sentient than the programs we use today. One with a flexible network on limited hardware, like one of the Third Spark's mass-produced vermbots, has an intelligence comparable to an insect(or, with intermediate hardware, an animal). One with a flexible network on reasonably-powerful hardware, like the dig-bot overseer Twinburrow, is sentient.

Most of the Third Spark's forces are code-bots. Above them are several spark-bots, known as "elites", and above them is the Third Spark herself, a disembodied spark.

River is very uncomfortable with sub-spark intelligence; they have a few, and they consider all sentients nominally equal.