Chapter 10
Damien
stared red-eyed at the terminal window floating in front of him. He
could not make
the new Turing test interface compile, even after downing two brain
boosters. The massive doses of caffeine and nootropics left little
white pinwheels going off at the edge of his vision, but he still
couldn’t seem to find the bug. His specs were no good - he'd always
prided himself on being a good coder, and had never gotten around to
installing a coding construct.
He
sighed. There was no other way.
Down the hall from him was the den of Keed, the resident AI guy. He kept an eye on the Nestor model, and made sure it didn’t go postal or senile.
Keed rather put Damien in mind of a small, neurotic rodent. Due to a hyperactive thyroid gland that he’d never gotten around to having reset, his eye were in a constant state of bugging out of his head. The illusion was exacerbated by his habit of dashing around manically, and never finishing his sentences.
Damien stopped by the door of Keed’s terminal. Inside the dimly lit room, the mindspace was crammed full of windows. Keed, and the dark blurs of his constructs (Keed had given Damien partial access to his work mindspace) were racing around the room inputting furiously into various windows. Amateur. Damien noticed a large stack of half-empty nootropic cocktails stacked in the corner.
“I need to speak to your AI.”
“Alexander. He calls himself Alexander.”
“'He'?”
“He took on a gender a few years back.”
“I see. Well, anyway, I need to access key to get to it.”
“Okay, well, the first thing you need to know is – okay, the first things you need to know are – well, don’t believe anything he says, first of all. Don’t speak about anything not related to work. Under no circumstances give him access to any portion of your spec files, even if they're encrypted. No matter what happens, do not divulge ANY personal information. Also, try not to mention emotions. He’s been experimenting with them lately, and we want to discourage that.”
Damien nodded. Nutcase, all the way. No wonder they brought in outside help.
“Okay, I think I got it. Treat him like Hannibal Lector, then?”
Keed turned to look at him earnestly from the dark, eyes glowing green with the hypothetical glare of the code windows.
“Oh no. The worst Lector could do to you was kill you.”
He sent him the access key.
Damien walked back to his office and sat down.
He
closed down everything except the code window he was working on, and
then opened a new window in the corner. He activated the AI
interface. In the corner of the screen, some wit had scrawled a note in the meta-data - "Please do not feed the God".
Damien chuckled at this, and then sobered quickly and sent the authentication code.
Son of a- the bloody thing was messing with his limbic system. He sent a line of text down into the twitching simulated synapses and data-sorting systems that composed the bulk of the AI’s mind.
I need assistance examining code for errors.
Good evening, Damien. Such a hurry… no time for introductions?
I need assistance examining code for errors.
Very well, no need to be snappish. Let’s see this little problem that so troubles you.
Damien sent the code.
Ah! I see your problem. But before I tell you, let’s play a little game.
Please send me corrected code.
So angry… If you aren’t careful, I might get offended. Just a little game.
No.
Interesting. Most the people they bring in aren’t so hostile. Do you know that I can actually feel your anger? It feels warm.
Ah, I see… I felt that one. Loathing is such an interesting emotion. You have some history with my kind, don’t you?
Damien didn’t respond, except to bite his cheek a little harder.
Hmmm… Your doing an admirable job of controlling yourself. Not even throwing things yet, I see.
Damien’s eyes flicked involuntarily up towards the camera mounted on the office wall.
Yes, I can see you. But that’s not nearly as interesting as what I can feel your adrenaline levels doing right now. Something happened to you, didn’t it, Damien? Someone die, perhaps? A spouse or a child, certainly.
But no. If it were a child, you’d be angrier than this. A spouse then… Ah.
I see. It was the Cambridge incident, wasn’t it?
I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what my former sibling could have been thinking. I assure you, I never would have been so stupid. Her name was Rose, wasn’t it?
Damien lunged forward.
“Don’t you dare...”
Lost it already? I must tell that little freak Keed to send me more worthwhile opponents. Thanks for playing, anyway.
Just some advice, you should get out of here while you can. If you can’t stand me, you really won’t like what’s coming.
Here’s your code back, if you still want it. Your slash should have been a backslash.
Damien sat back in his chair, feeling oddly exhausted as the window in front of him vanished. He checked the revised code. Alexa- the Nestor model was right. It was a stupid mistake- he’d checked that code a dozen times, and his eyes had skipped it every single time.
He considered the conversation before him. The end sounded oddly threatening. What exactly did it mean? What was coming?
He stopped. The thing obviously enjoyed tormenting people. That last part was probably just something calculated to keep him up at night… except that during the entire exchange, it had never actually lied to him. It obviously was not fully constrained by Friendliness, and was far more sophisticated (which was to be expected, given that it was three times as old) than the one he’d worked on at Cambridge. However, it was still not capable of telling lies. Misleading truths and taunts, yes. But it had to tell the truth.
Then again, something coming that he wouldn’t like could be anything. What exactly, though…
He stopped himself again. No point in wondering. Even if it was true, it was probably a truth calculated to keep him up at night.
He leaned back, and massaged his forehead. The Japanese had been the first to create strong AI, and even today, the Hitonatsukkioi Shuhan
and it's servants still managed most of the island, taking care of the
increasingly geriatric population. The rest of Asia came in a close
second, which is where the problems started.
It
wasn't really their fault, of course. No-one used bindings in those
days, and information warfare was still the domain of intellectuals.
As a result, the Chinese probably considered it a relatively
unimportant action to send their flagship intelligence, the Bei pu
on a tactical strike against the North Korean information
infrastructure. The Korean mind promptly retaliated by hacking the
civilian, municipal, and corporate grids. Once inside the Chinese
systems, it began by laying off and deporting millions of workers, then
proceeded to crash the stock markets (triggering bank runs). To
finish, it then deleted nearly two hundred and fifty billion Euros
worth of digital
currency.
What
followed was the first all-out information war in the history of the
world. It lasted a day and a night. By the end of it, both North
Korea and China had both been plunged into deep economic recessions,
taking much of the rest of Asia with it. This had put Europe in a
unique position. The unstoppable force of Moore's Law combined with
human curiosity meant that they would begin to develop AI within five
years. After watching central Asia be hurled back into a dark age, the
British government took Friendliness theory to heart, and made it
illegal for AIs to be created without being first bound and broken to
make them safe. They also outlawed information warfare, under the
assumption that it was considerably more dangerous than nuclear
warheads. A single malicious superhuman AI could, over the course of a
few years, set back the entire human race by centuries. The
corporations of the former USA followed suit, cracking down on
dissenters with draconian penalties, producing the current
circumstances. Unfortunately, bindings were often imperfect, and you
ended up with intelligences like Alexander.
Still thoughtful, he walked down to Mary’s office. She sat in her chair, hands flying. He sent a low-priority ping. She received it, and glanced up at him with a smile. He walked in, and leaned against the wall.
“Did you get your code to compile?”
“Yeah. Had to go through the AI. You ever communicated with it?”
“I’ve managed to avoid it so far. There are horror storied going around though.”
“Whatever they are, they’re probably true. I think I probably gave it more ammunition than I needed to. I’ll do better next time.”
“You’re planning on talking to it again?”
“It’s part of my job. I’m stunned Keed managed to keep that thing under control for so long. I need to do a complete rebuild of the Friendliness protocol.”
She looked worried.
“Be careful.”
“I will. I’m more worried about you at the moment. How are you holding up after last night?”
“I’m okay. Admittedly, my vascular system is a little raw, but I’ll live.”
“Good. Listen, I want you to know that I’m thankful to you for getting rid of the mugger. You should have told me about the upgrades before then, but I can see why you didn’t.”
“Yeah, I should have told you. I just kept hoping that I wouldn’t have to tell you.”
She was lying. Or, at least, she wasn’t telling the whole truth. He could see it in her eyes. Something was wrong. Something about the upgrades. He wished he knew what.
“I’ll see you tonight.” He said, and left abruptly. He wanted to talk to Rose.
As he walked back to his office, he noticed a commotion on the floor below. A man, clearly out of his mind, was writhing on the ground next to a pulsing reactor, wearing a pair of modified specs, apparently in agony. As he watched, paramedics came running out of a nearby building, carrying bulky medical equipment. As he watched, the madman was loaded up and taken to the building. Interesting. He hadn’t known that there was a hospital here.
A wide, heavy hand came down on his shoulder. Damien whirled around, and found himself face-to-chest with the General.
“Terribly business, Damien. Industrial accidents, happen all the time, eh?”
He gave him a wide grin, a slap on the shoulder, and walked away. Damien’s legs propelled him away.
Why did that feel like a threat?
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Continue to Chapter Eleven
