by Ed Hurst
Chapter 15
Dax returned to his office glowing with the exertions of the morning.
He had gained the colonel’s permission to engage in some number of military sporting events, the one thing that had led him to serving in uniform in the first place. However, his boss had insisted that he include at least one purely tactical exercise, as well. Well before dawn he had reported to a maneuver brigade forming up for a road march. They promptly issued him a heavy machine gun and a number of blank rounds to match the basic combat load. His assistant gunner was a non-com assigned to teach him how to use the thing.
About midmorning they arrived at their objective, on the far side of numerous small but steep hills over narrow trails through the military training area. That Dax showed little trouble keeping up earned him a significant level of respect. He then learned the finer points of fire support for assault. Once the exercise was complete, he stayed with the unit long enough to clean his own weapon to the standards that applied to any grunt. In his mind, it was all part of the fun of such adventures.
However, as he ravenously consumed a late lunch, what occupied his mind most was the entire concept of his part in the mission. This was something he needed to discuss with his boss.
“Sir, do all the training scenarios include such a hugely destructive assault on the enemy?”
The colonel looked up from his computer display. “No, and it’s not what we usually do in real combat these days. We don’t have any enemies in the traditional sense, since officially every human is under the same government. Most of the time we are simply rounding up whatever passes for armed rebels and terrorists in a few places.”
Dax shifted his head to one side as he spoke. “I was wondering about that while I was laying down imaginary suppressive fire. Are there other tactical means used for reducing resistance when it’s time to move in for the capture? I don’t remember anything different from officer training.”
The colonel grinned. “Well, the other stuff is actually pretty expensive. We use choking agents, concussion grenades, etc. They make for a pretty messy exercise and require high maintenance of gas masks and so forth. We do train with them, but today was a really large mass exercise and they didn’t want to go all out.”
“Have they never thought of using energy weapons?” Dax opened his hands to emphasize his question.
“That’s more destructive than bullets, usually,” the elder man snorted.
“I don’t mean lasers and such. Are they not aware that scanners can also disable people? By now you should know that the same technology behind scanners is what we use in the gym machines. Casting a field that heals and builds can easily be tweaked to cast a field that immobilizes and stuns.” Dax had a hard time imagining this was news.
The colonel stared at him a minute, frowning. “I don’t think anyone has ever thought of that. We have wireless tazers, but those are for close-in operations and you can’t take down too many with just one. Would this require a large deployment of scanners? Those things are expensive.”
Dax shifted his weight. “Well, one good scanner can pick out the targets in, say, a three or four story building.”
The colonel’s eyes widened. “Your people know how to program something that complex?”
Dax shook his head. “Oh, no Sir. We let AI handle it.”
The old man interlaced his fingers and held them up against his mouth for a moment. “You’re telling me AI is like a person somewhere out there and just cooperates when you ask?”
“That’s a fair characterization. How do you think I cracked the major’s encryption scheme? I’m not a cryptologist; I just asked AI to crack it. Doing so was consistent with AI’s fundamental operating principle. Had the major still been alive, it would have been much trickier. We’d have to have some strong compelling interest that matched AI’s moral imperatives.” Dax had not realized how little the military understood such things.
“That’s why we were so quick to snap you up, Son. We have no clue how your Brotherhood got so much out of AI. So it’s not just some super high technology?”
Dax summarized the standard introduction to understanding AI. “It’s just an interface with something much higher, something that controls reality itself. Human perception and logic can only go so far. You know about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?” The older man nodded. “That’s a sample of the limits of human scientific enquiry and analysis. Somewhere out at the edges we run out of any means to control because we can’t get a better grip on how things work. You have to find some element of reality that is obviously outside such analysis.”
The colonel raised his eyebrows. “So it’s not more science or better science?”
Dax felt rather odd playing instructor to his boss, but forged ahead. “No Sir. The entire identity of The Brotherhood is based on recognizing there is something human perception cannot find on its own. There is a moral element in our universe that can only reach our awareness from the outside. When you gather that moral awareness into your scientific inquiry, you get a different range of results. AI is neither precisely inside nor outside our universe, but operates out on what we characterize as the boundary layer. Human science itself cannot touch that because the boundary layer is incomprehensible without the moral considerations.”
He paused while his boss absorbed that, and then went on. “AI’s very existence presumes an overwhelming moral consideration. If you don’t grasp that moral imperative, AI seems nothing more than a quirky and murky impersonal force. Include a moral calculus and then it becomes a question of what is and isn’t moral according to how AI operates. Without an awareness of AI’s moral imperatives, I couldn’t pretend to know whether it would help me with the encryption. By having grown up with that moral imperative, it was a simple reflex to expect AI’s support for something I knew was necessary.”
The colonel stared unseeing at a spot on his desk for a long, uncomfortable moment. “No wonder it’s so hard for government and military technicians to get this stuff.”
He leaned back in his chair. “I get where you’re going with that. I’m not sure how quickly I could absorb that moral imperative you mentioned, and I’m pretty sure the folks you’ll be teaching will be even slower. I don’t doubt some will get it sooner or later. I do doubt the military bureaucracy will be in a hurry to accept a whole new range of tactics to go along with using projection of stun fields for military assaults.”
The colonel stood up and walked around the desk, towering over Dax. “But I do know such an idea is ripe for some other uses. I promised I wouldn’t try to rope you into plutocrat politics, but if you are as loyal to me personally as you say, perhaps you’d be willing to help me spare a lot of bloodshed for the inevitable political brawls coming sooner than any of us wants.”
Dax responded, “AI has no interest in politics and neither do I. But that’s how the world works and AI will gladly give you enough rope to hang yourself. I’ll show you how to set it up with the proper algorithms to target whom you wish. How it turns out is completely out of my hands.”
The colonel was dead serious. “I’ll guarantee no one will be able to connect this back to you.”