The Good Teacher

Shoutout to Bruh_Vista and Harjas_Sidhu for beta-reading and providing extensive feedback for this chapter!

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The following day, Jean and Shuri arrived at the staff room very early, even before Markus, and virtually cordoned off a corner by setting up two chairs and a bunch of chalkboards.

Jean picked up a chalk and drew a large model of the brain on one of the boards. "The brain learns through an interesting concept called neuroplasticity. It is the ability to reorganise its structure, functions and connections in response to learning, experience and environmental changes."

She started to label the different parts of the diagram while expounding, "There is no standard way in which a brain works. There is just an underlying strategy. By this, I mean that there is no easy way to isolate which set of neurons are responsible for a specific thought, and no two brains can have the same neuron's firing. Heck, they may not even be in the same location!"

"But there has to be some similarity in a broader context, right?" Shuri clarified.

"Of course, which is why you have the following structural classifications in place for the different parts of the brain. The groupings of neurons in handling movement tasks are in the motor cortex, which is right over here," Jean affirmed.

"The synapses, the connections between neurons, change. They either grow stronger as long-term potentiation or weaker as long-term depression based on the frequency with which the neurons are activated. Learning also involves the creation of new connections, synaptogenesis, between neurons and pruning of unused or weak connections, synaptic pruning. This is why they say repetition is key to committing to memory. Furthermore, association is also helpful, so mapping an experience to an action or concept helps recollection," Jean clarified.

"Why is it that I am able to perfectly recollect information without having to repeat it?" Shuri probed.

"That's something I'd like to take a deep dive into, actually. Your cerebral activity would be a perfect case study," Jean commented, before an expression that caused Shuri to shudder in her boots painted Jean's face. Shuri took a few involuntary scoots back. "How would you be interested in having your brain inspected?"

"Umm-"

"Nothing invasive; don't worry, I won't cut you up!" Jean quickly recovered, "Remember, I can't harm anyone knowingly."

"While I'd love to make a contribution in the name of scientific advancement, I don't feel comfortable with someone rifling through my brain," Shuri clarified her hesitance.

"It's not like I can read your memories by inspecting your brain," Jean responded. "Oh, well. The offer is open. Let me know if you ever change your mind."

There was silence as the end of that topic hung in the air awkwardly.

"The brain truly is a natural marvel. It is hard to believe that its mechanism isn't built on magic," Shuri commented finally. "Imagine this, an amalgamation of muscle and flesh the size of two fists together is able to control a complex mechanism like the body. To top it off, it is self-aware, constantly learning and evolving, and able to facilitate the manipulation of magic. The brain is all we need to cultivate!"

"In a way, that's true, isn't it?" Jean said while humming in thought. "Actually, I'm interested to know. You never showed much interest in this field of study. Why the sudden intrigue?"

Shuri pulled her lips into her cheeks and sucked the inside of her lips in contemplation. "I want to replicate the brain, but with Automagy."

"That's... ambitious. Care to elaborate on why?" Jean probed.

"Well, that's the endgame, isn't it?" Shuri started. "A device capable of exhibiting intelligence... That's the dream of every Automage out there."

"I don't see what its use might be," Jean commented, causing Shuri to let out a disdainful scoff.

"Why do everyone hate necromancers? Let's not fool ourselves with the morality rhetoric that floats around in public debates. No, the truth is that necromancy is a gateway to a nigh unbeatable force multiplier. To be able to throw an endless barrage of bodies at a problem is a tempting power to have. This is also what Automage seek to replicate. But as you know, it is much harder because the soul is adaptable, but a will is not. You can program a core to be a servant that does one job perfectly ad infinitum. Protect. Attack. Collect. But it's near impossible to program a core to adapt to a situation and change its behaviour according to the environmental conditions," Shuri elaborated.

"So it's all about having the bigger sword in the end," Jean said with a disappointed sigh.

"For others, sure," Shuri emphasised while shaking her head. "Imagine having an adaptable agent working as an assistant? Do you need someone to manipulate a data set to gain insights into it? Call your intelligent assistant! Want to find the right piece of information over a large repository of data? Recruit your intelligent assistant! Simply want to entertain yourself? Get your intelligent assistant."

"That's... ambitious," Jean admitted. "So you're hypothesising that the pathway to create this 'intelligent assistant' is by understanding how a brain works because logically speaking something that is intelligent has a brain."

"It sounds stupid if you put it that way," Shuri stated with a wry smile.

"Well, anything sounds stupid if you oversimplify it. I'm sure you have a more verbose plan in place," Jean quickly corrected herself.

Shuri sheepishly averted her gaze and murmured, "I wish I had a plan."

"All that aside," Jean continued, "What else would you like to know about the brain?"

"I have a few questions," Shuri responded while unfurling a footlong parchment filled with text.

"A few..." Jean repeated in disbelief while getting herself a chair and sitting down. "Alright, let's begin."

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Shuri thoroughly exhausted Jean with a battery of questions that covered the length and breadth of the girl's knowledge of the human brain. Shuri was certain that the key to understanding how to create artificial intelligence was to crack the code on how actual intelligence worked. And although Jean wasn't the forerunning authority on the subject, Shuri took full advantage of her as a resource. And to an extent, it was effective.

Shuri left the staff room well into the night leaving a deflated Jean inside, though she herself was walking with a light and energetic skip in her steps. Because she had figured out the first problem she needed to tackle in her mission to develop an artificial intelligence - storage. Something is defined as intelligent when it is capable of making informed decisions. However, to be informed, it needs to remember things. To remember, it must have a way to store and recollect data just like how the brain does it.

Cracking the technique to invent a robust storage solution capable of handling a large quantity of data would be the first domino in the long line. Although knowing that this was where she had to start simplified Shuri's work, it in no way made her life any easier. Because, once again, she found herself in a position where she had to build a solution to this problem by herself, from scratch. Actually, there were storage solutions out there already in use. Mages could imprint audio and video data into objects through ritual formations. However, they were permanent in nature, that is once they were imprinted they could not be edited without re-recording the audio or visual data. Furthermore, the capacity of the ritual formation was highly limited and scaled exponentially. To record a second's worth of audio data, a ritual the size of one's palm would be sufficient. A three-minute audio track would be as big as a dinner plate, but a four-minute track would be as large as a small side table. A five minute was as big as a small hut. This was also why all songs were either three minutes or less and distributed on imprinted clay plates.

There was an inherent inefficiency in modern storage solutions that no one thought to address or improve, which irked Shuri to no end.

"Why is it that whenever I want to do something, I find the existing technology extremely lacking?" Shuri said out loud with an annoyed growl. This was a common trouble with prodigies.

Shuri's prodigal mind ran far ahead of the curve. So far, in fact, the prerequisites needed to realise most of her thoughts didn't even exist yet. This meant that Shuri was forced to build the groundwork needed to help realise her own dream, which was often exhausting and detracted from the fun of invention.

"I guess, I have no other choice..." Shuri mumbled in defeat. "Now how do I do this?!"

Shuri harkened back to what she learned about how the brain stored its data. "It's all about potential."

The brain encoded data through electric potentials. A single potential difference across a neuron didn't mean anything, but many chained together in a particular way built up data. A surge of inspiration struck Shuri at that instant.

"It's all about how you abstract the data!"

The brain did it as a combination of potentials. In logic, information is abstracted as zeroes and ones. Any number could be represented as zeros or ones. One could even create a key to abstract letters to zeros and ones.

"Zeros... and ones..." Shuri muttered as she finally reached the mess hall.

"If data can be abstracted to zeros and ones, then I should be able to store it!" She exclaimed. She wanted nothing more than to just rush to her room, her abode of inspiration, and jot down the ideas bubbling in her mind.

But she had already missed her lunch. If she also skipped dinner, then she would have a very angry Matron Reva knocking at her doors.

"Yeah, I can't have that," Shuri admitted before entering the building. It's not like she would forget all the ideas in her mind; after all, she had an eidetic memory.