PDWAs are artificial intelligence units camouflaged as writing instruments and provided to edict enforcement field personnel in Goblinopolis, Cladimil, and Dresmak. A few other cities on N’plork such as Woklopen, Aspolia, and Zilond have similar but somewhat less sophisticated models available for edict enforcement use, but none of them mandate their deployment aside from Goblinopolis, where the issue is a political one.
The PDWA was initially developed in a laboratory in Cladimil by gnomes working on the miniaturization of technology. At first it was little more than a dictation device that allowed officers to take verbal notes in the field. Gradually it became something of a test platform for whatever functionality was currently on the workbench. Some of these ideas were, inevitably, better than others. The health monitoring and reporting function that kept track of how much officers were drinking, sleeping, and eating and transmitted that information back to the precinct on a daily basis proved highly unpopular, for example. The number of units ‘accidentally destroyed’ spiked following its release. Equally shunned was the ‘geographic advisor’ that supplied a small shock and an alarm when it detected the officer entering an area designated as ‘morally inadvisable.’ That one resulted in even more ‘inadvertent’ losses.
It wasn’t until two-way radio capability was built into the PDA units that they began to offer real assistance. Initially they could only allow the officer to call for emergency backup, but eventually the communications module was expanded to permit officers to allow eavesdropping on conversations they were having with suspects. Then out of the blue came an unexpected development that changed everything: network-linked databases.
Though goblins were traditionally associated with coding and gnomes with hardware, there was a small but very active community of bugbears working in a private compound in the foothills of the northern Masrons who were keenly interested in the storage and manipulation of datasets. They worked tirelessly for years to digitize and organize every pool of numbers they could find, tying them together and providing access via increasingly powerful transceivers embedded in the PDA units.
Meanwhile, the digital technology mavens in the gnome enclaves of Cladimil and Fenurian were constantly improving their artificial intelligence capabilities. The leading engineers in this field had allied with neuroanatomists and neurologists to map the higher cognitive functions of their brains to a three-dimensional matrix, which they then squeezed down to tiny dimensions by printing the connections onto microscopic superconducting media and removing all wasted space. The result was one impressively brainy pen.
They did not stop there, however. Not content with mere static intelligence, the gnomes continued to advance their art by developing adaptive systems that could learn from experience and synthesize new concepts from both existing and inductively-reasoned information. They kept cramming more and more capability into each new model. By the 36th iteration the AI contained in these units was an instrument of somewhat frightening brilliance.
PDWA/AI Model 36, serial number 409427, (“Petey”) was the unit issued to Tol-u-ol by the Sebacea Precinct quartermaster. During its operational life it received six separate upgrades, two of them unauthorized. There were several sub-models of version 36. Units with serial numbers beginning 4094 were actually not intended to leave the research lab in Cladimil, but at least one got shipped by accident. The 4094 units were trials for a particular combination of advanced experimental predictive and analytical modules layered on top of the standard AI matrix. The modelling runs suggested that this configuration would be unstable and prone to crashing, so it was never approved for production release. Somehow one ended up in Tol’s equipment inventory, however. The historical record is unclear on the details.
At its heart a current generation PDWA is an analytical and communications resource for field operatives. It provides both analog and digitally-synthesized UHF radio, an arcane mode transceiver, and arcane heterodyning capability. It has dedicated hard-coded links to over a hundred and fifty separate data bank gateways, most of which can be accessed from anywhere on N’plork with favorable propagation. It is entirely voice-actuated, with robust multivariate/multifactor vocal recognition security. It provides both aural and bone-induction information exchange interfaces and is capable of low-level localized brainwave resonance as well.
The AI component of the PDWA contains state-of-the-art heuristic cognition circuitry. It can translate among all known N’plorkian languages and is able to formulate simple communication with unknown tongues so long as a minimal baseline of fundamental cognates can be derived or is made available. The AI is able to use both inductive and deductive heuristics to analyze and present potential solutions to a wide variety of problems encountered by EE field personnel.
While the 4094 series performed exceptionally well during heuristics testing, it was never certified for production because several of the testers complained that it exhibited a “disrespectful attitude toward the officer to which it had been issued.” The negative aspects of the after-action reports filed when production was declined centered on the independent learning and higher cognition modules of the AI, concluding that these capabilities needed to be scaled back before the units could be released for field deployment.
In other words, no one likes a smart-aleck pen.