In all cases, it is a government-run computer that answers questions posed using natural language,[1] and it is usually buried deep underground for security purposes.
Unlike the artificial intelligences portrayed in his Robot series, Multivac's early interface is mechanized and impersonal, consisting of complex command consoles few humans can operate.
[4]:20 Multivac appeared in over a dozen science fiction stories by American writer Isaac Asimov, some of which have entered the popular imagination.
Asimov wrote this story as the logical culmination – and/or possibly the reductio ad absurdum – of UNIVAC's ability to forecast election results from small samples.
At that point Multivac's final successor, the Cosmic AC (which exists entirely in hyperspace) has collected all the data it can, and so poses the question to itself.
[12] Though the technology initially depended on bulky vacuum tubes, the concept – that all information could be contained on computer(s) and accessed from a domestic terminal – constitutes an early reference to the possibility of the Internet (as in "Anniversary").