Cascade failure

A Cascade failure occurs when a 'learning' program is corrupted, either by repeated application to a task it is ill suited to perform or by external influence such as damage to the hardware used to implement it.

In neural net systems, in particular a positronic brain, where most or all sub-programs interact, this can lead to corruption of surrounding algorithms and routines as they attempt to use data generated by the faulty application to perform a task of their own. This may compound the damage to the original sub-program, as neural nets tend to be referential in nature.

If no limiting action is taken by the system's 'manager' programs and the process is allowed to continue unchecked, it may lead to partial or total corruption of the entire system.

Cascade failure can also affect larger systems such as those on starships.

Cascade failure can also be more broadly defined to indicate a systemic failure originating in a specific area and then spreading via corrupted algorithms. In cases such as this the system in question need not be a neural net or even programmatic in nature.