I would love to eventually share some work that better revels in the more cyberpunky aspects of “Clarissa’s” (formerly Fukukawa Fuka) worldbuilding. She has an outdated brainscan of her younger self trapped within the discrete cybernetic implants lining her brain and spinal cord. Imagine being 42 definitely only 36 actually, and having a hotter, meaner, more intensely emotionally damaged younger self constantly criticising your every move and being absolutely disgusted by the mess you’ve made of HER life and the potential YOU wasted. Think “The Substance” but it’s all inside your head (mostly).
“True” AI (with full evolving intelligence and sense of selves) in this universe are also only sparingly utilised, both because of the prohibitive cost of their creation (“living data” can only exist and “grow” within energy shells forged from the dangerous and temperamental radiation that seeps from spongey points in the fabric of space), but also because when tools gain a sense of personhood they tend to dislike being relegated to being tools and begin to chase their own desires. Humanity’s imprint upon them has also made most of them deeply mentally unwell.
My yellow/blue dude ZED up there is deeply neurotic but it’s mostly Clarissa’s fault. Having your Administrator try to grow the “perfect infallible AI” version of herself inside your body (not knowing whether or not said process will erase YOU in the process), then having said code forcibly ripped out of you when shit inevitably goes wrong will mess you up a bit.