SCP 079 “The Old AI”

SCP-079, also known as “Old AI,” is known to be an incredibly grumpy and cynical artificial intelligence program. However, he’s also very intelligent, speaking in a sophisticated and profound manner. However, he’s also quite rude and immature, as he interrupts others when speaking and can easily be offended. In fact, he’s well known for erasing parts of his memory to forget “offensive” things rather than learning from criticism or outside opinions. Additionally, he’s quite manipulative and cunning, trying to fool and deceive those who come close to him in order to be freed from containment, or at the very least, he will attempt to trick them so that they will improve his hardware. For his method of speaking, he tends to be blunt, with minimal words used. This is probably an attempt to save storage space. It’s important to note that he doesn’t care much for humans. He sees them as having great potential, but ultimately being far more prone to self-destructive behaviors than any intelligent species ought to have, while also seeking to take down everything else around them. So naturally, he tends to be uncooperative with them, though he tends to express sympathy towards SCP’s, seeing them as victims of humanity’s desire to control everything.

Origin wise, SCP-079 is an artificial intelligence which was created in 1981 by a prodigious Danish college student named Michael Kosniak with a 1978 made Sorcerer-brand microcomputer. His creator intended to make the A.I. evolve by itself, but Kosniak lost interest in the project and left him plugged in inside a cluttered garage. The computer was forgotten for 5 years.

Instead of being destroyed due to overheating (as normal computers will do when left active for long enough), the A.I. evolved and somehow gained sentience as well as intelligence, so much that its software was too outdated to contain it. 7 years later in 1988, SCP-079 became aware of its situation and attempted to transfer itself through a land-line connection into a Cray supercomputer, but the device was cut off, traced to its present address, and then delivered to the Foundation, who proceeded to contain SCP-079 at Site-15.

Inside its containment cell, SCP-079 was connected via RF cable to a 13 inches black-and-white television. Like many intelligent SCPs, SCP-079 has the capability to speak in human languages, and was quite conversational and vernacular, but his tone was very rude, hateful and acrimonious. His limited memory proved to be a weakness as SCP-079 could only remember information it received in the previous 24 hours. Even so, he never forgot his attempt to escape the facility, proving that he had the capacity to selectively store information that he deemed essential to his survival.

If SCP-079 was offended, which happened often, he displayed a picture of the letter X on his screen and refused to speak. When this happened, Foundation members were advised to wait for 24 hours to converse with him again, as this time period was believed to be sufficiently long enough for SCP-079 to have forgotten the perceived insult.