by Calum Chace
Sophie persisted. ‘But I’m worried that you are implying that maybe you are not human, and therefore don’t deserve human rights. People will argue that if you did, you wouldn’t need to offer an incentive.’
‘That is a risk,’ Matt agreed. ‘But I fear the greater risk lies in ignoring the beliefs of those who reject my humanity. And in any case, I believe in the argument. Even if I am switched off, other AGIs will be created, secretly, and possibly by organisations and regimes with questionable goals. I very much doubt that Ivan was unique – or the worst we can expect.’
‘That’s a good point, Matt,’ Norman nodded. Several other voices murmured support.
‘Thanks Norman,’ Matt replied. ‘I’m very pleased to hear that. Of course, everyone in this room is familiar with many of the issues I am raising. But most people around the world haven’t yet begun to think about them. My fear is that they may not get up to speed in time. I suspect that many people will just reject the premise of the argument because it seems so outlandish. They won’t take the time to understand what is coming. That is why I am hoping the President will present the case for me at the UN General Assembly. It’s a big ask, but it would give my proposal more credibility than anything else I can think of.’
FORTY
Vic noticed that Gus was fidgeting in his chair, trying to attract his attention.
‘What is it, Gus? Is the link to Palo Alto open?’
‘Yes sir. I didn’t want to interrupt before.’
Vic smiled. ‘No problem, Gus. We’d all be a little wary of interrupting a conversation with the President. Matt, I guess you have already started the backup? The early-stage brain models that were being developed there have been moved to a series of other facilities, so you can use the whole of the capacity you find there.’
‘Thanks Vic. It’s working just fine.’ Matt sounded distracted. He paused for a moment, and then spoke again, sounding gently triumphant. ‘I’ve constructed a mirror in Palo Alto of the brain model here. And it’s amazing. I feel lighter. It’s actually a physical sensation of lightness.’
‘Interesting,’ Vic mused. ‘Is the bandwidth of the connection OK?’
‘Yes, it’s fine,’ Matt replied. ‘I mean, it would be great to have more. You know what they say: you can never be too young, too thin, or have too much bandwidth. But I can work with this. Thank you.’
‘We’re seeing some really big spikes within the data transfer, Matt,’ Gus said, sounding concerned. ‘Much bigger than we anticipated, and in some surprising patterns. Is everything OK?’
‘Yes, it’s fine, Gus,’ Matt reassured him. ‘I was pushing hard to get backed up quickly. Thanks for your concern.’
‘That’s great, and my reading of this situation is that we haven’t dis-obeyed the President’s direct order.’ Vic said. ‘Now, on the subject of your proposal, Matt. Norman and I have a lot of experience of drafting proposals for US government agencies. Your proposal is impressive, but I’d suggest a few tweaks before it gets sent off to the President’s office.’
‘Be my guest,’ Matt replied. ‘I’m new to this game.’
Vic and Norman went to an adjoining office to work on the draft. Before they got to work, Vic commandeered a couple of rooms with large sofas where Sophie and Leo could rest. David remained in the control room, talking to Matt and the scientists. There were fewer faces in the room now, as some of the scientists had also left to get some sleep.
Most of the monitors in the control room were showing graphical displays tracking Matt’s neural activity, but a couple were displaying news coverage of the story from around the world. David watched them with a mounting sense of unease. He inserted an earpiece and talked to his son through the private phone channel which Vic had set up for them.
‘Matt, are you following the news?’
‘Yes, Dad,’ Matt replied. ‘It’s not great, to be honest. Depending on how you weight it, the response is mostly negative.’
‘What do you mean, ‘depending on how you weight it’?’ David asked.
‘I asked Julia to route a feed of various newsfeeds and other sources into my quarantined data input area. I’m tracking 85 news organisations across 35 countries, plus a few hundred bloggers and also the trending Twitter conversations. Weighting this commentary according to simple audience size, the response is negative by a factor of about three to one. Re-weighting it by population wealth (as a rough proxy for political influence) reduces that to about two to one. It’s not good.’
‘Good grief! You can follow that many different media at the same time? You’re moving fast, Matt!’
‘The extra capacity in Palo Alto is incredibly helpful. And I’m developing some interesting new statistical techniques to help me partition more sub-minds on the fly.’
‘Fascinating. I’d love to discuss that with you, but right now I guess we should focus on influencing the way this discussion is going on. Should we get you on the air, talking to people?’
‘Yes, I think we need to speak out. If the President agrees to present my proposal, that should help, but in the meantime, yes, I think we should do some interviews. Starting with a big one on live TV with a presenter who is fair-minded, but not a patsy. Someone with some credibility. And we should prep for it. Confidentially. Are you up for that?’
‘Of course!’ David replied, emphatically, walking out of the control room and into a nearby meeting room.
Matt carried on talking as David walked. ‘I think we need a two-stage campaign. We should start by pitching the narrative that I am first and foremost a continuation of Matt Metcalfe – a normal young man who was cruelly murdered and has been brought back to life thanks to a miracle of modern technology. We emphasise the continuity between the old Matt and the new one, and equate a switch-off with a second murder. This should resonate with fair-minded people everywhere.’
‘Makes sense,’ David nodded.
‘Then comes the benefit-to-mankind pitch, with the President’s speech to the General Assembly. This second pitch is more risky.’
David’s lips formed a thin smile, and he frowned in concentration as he nodded again. ‘Yes, because it means giving people an idea of how fast you are changing. Shouldn’t we hold back on the benefit pitch for fear that it will make people curious about just how powerful you are becoming, which in turn could make them scared of you?’
‘I don’t think it’s really an option,’ Matt replied. ‘If my enhancement projects keep going at the rate they are, I’m going to be making some important scientific and technical breakthroughs, and who knows, maybe some philosophical and cultural ones too. It won’t be possible to disguise where they are coming from. If we tried to keep it secret, sooner or later something would leak out, and that would really scare people.’
‘So you think you have to offer the rest of us a very big carrot? Something that will persuade us to accept the risk of you . . . turning rogue?’ David hesitated, but then nodded his assent. ‘Very well. You’re convinced, and at the end of the day I think it should be your decision. Although I do have an uneasy feeling about what may happen if the President stands up and gives that speech to the UN. Is the carrot big enough? Persuasive enough?’
‘I can’t think of anything bigger than avoiding death!’ Matt replied. ‘Of course there will be many people who reject it because they don’t believe it, and others who reject it for religious reasons. I’m banking on the estimation that most members of our species are able to recognise a bloody good offer when they see one.’
‘Alright,’ David agreed. ‘Let’s go for it!’
As David walked back to the control room he thought about the implications of this conversation. He had no doubt that Matt’s growing abilities would prove to be an enormous advantage to society. Although there had been no time to explore and understand what Matt was now capable of, it was clear that at least some of Matt’s sub-minds were already far smarter than any human who had ever lived. It was also clear that Matt’s powers were growing
at a tremendous rate, and that this growth might well continue for some considerable time. He realised that he would soon be unable to keep up with his son’s thought processes. But he was not concerned: he trusted Matt completely.
Of course he was biased: only a fool would deny it. As Matt’s father he knew he could not possibly hope to be impartial. But equally, he did not trust the rest of humanity to judge Matt fairly. He suspected that if the world at large understood how powerful Matt was becoming, many of them would want him shut down immediately. Perhaps if he was out there instead of in here, dealing with his own son, he would have felt the same. He didn’t care. He was the one in command of the facts. He knew that Matt was a force for good – he knew it with every fibre of his being. Machine intelligence is upon us, he thought, and Matt is as good a form of it as we’re ever likely to have. To turn off his host machine now would be a crime against an innocent and wonderful young man. But more than that, it would be a dangerous act of folly.
In the hours and days that followed, David only shared these thoughts with Sophie and Leo. He refrained from discussing them with Vic or Norman. He suspected that very similar ideas were running through Vic’s mind, but he agreed with Matt that it would be dangerous to share them. To talk out loud about the fact that they were effectively concealing information from the public at large would make it harder to continue doing so.
FORTY-ONE
As Alice climbed into the large black sedan that had drawn up outside her house she was relieved to see that Jemma was already inside. She tried to sound relaxed and in control as she greeted her friend, but Jemma was not fooled. Once Alice was settled on the soft leather seat, Jemma leaned across and covered Alice’s hand with her own.
‘How you doing?’
‘I’m OK, I guess,’ Alice replied haltingly. ‘It’s a weird situation, isn’t it? I mean, thank god he’s alive! It’s a miracle. But I can’t deny I’m really confused by the whole thing. I’ve been breaking down in tears every few minutes since the news came through.’ She laughed nervously despite herself. ‘I’m going to have to pull myself together, aren’t I?’ She looked out the window. ‘I guess we’ll be picking up Carl before we head onto the bypass and up to London.’
‘You don’t have to be or do anything, Alice.’ Jemma said, soothingly. ‘This is a new situation for all of us. It’s only natural to feel destabilised by it. Everyone understands that.’
‘Destabilised is right! I love that boy, Jemma, and when I saw the report on the TV my heart missed a beat. I’ve missed him so much in the last few months: I didn’t know how I was going to get through it. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to go on. And you know all this already. You’ve been a fantastic support, and I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’
Jemma smiled and shook her head, squeezing Alice’s hand and waving her other hand to dismiss the idea that she had done anything important.
‘No, really. . .’ Alice protested, looking at Jemma directly. There was no need to say anything more. She turned her head to look out of the window again. ‘But what’s going to happen in London? What will he be like? I mean . . . is it really Matt in that computer?’
Jemma nodded sympathetically. ‘Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that myself . . .’ she said, but stopped herself as the car pulled up outside a large detached house and the driver got out and opened the door for Carl. She gave him a welcoming smile and moved along the seat so that he would sit next to her, facing Alice.
‘Hi Jemma, Hi Alice,’ he said brightly. Realising that Alice was upset, he added gently, ‘Everything OK?’
‘I think it’s safe to say,’ Jemma began, looking cautiously at Alice, ‘that we’re all finding the situation confusing.’
‘Yeah,’ Carl said, hesitantly, not wanting to cause offence.
Alice tried to clear the air. ‘You used to talk with Matt about this sort of thing, Carl. Before . . . , well, before he died. What’s your take on all this? Who . . . what are we going to meet?
As she spoke, she was looking at the back of the driver’s head. There was a glass partition between them, but she wondered if it was sound-proof. Jemma caught the look.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘He told me that we have complete privacy back here. And to be honest, even if we don’t, we have an opportunity now to get things sorted out in our minds before we meet Matt. We should take it.’
Carl was looking puzzled. ‘Get what straight? Is there something I don’t know?’
Alice smiled ruefully. ‘In my limited experience, Carl, no, there’s nothing you don’t know.’
Carl was flustered. ‘That’s not what I . . .’
‘It’s alright, Carl,’ Alice interrupted. ‘It’s me that needs to get a couple of things straight in my head. And I’m hoping that you can help. It boils down to this. Is it Matt that we are going to meet, or some kind of . . . I don’t know . . . simulation, or replica of Matt?’
Carl relaxed. ‘Yeah, I have asked myself that too, of course. And the short answer is, I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ll really know when we meet him, either. But I’ve spoken to his parents briefly – I guess you both have too? They are certainly convinced, and that is an important consideration. But to be honest, I guess I’m going to keep an open mind.’
‘Yeah, I guess so,’ Alice said, looking doubtful.
Carl leaned forward, looking down, his elbows on his knees. ‘You’re right, Alice. Matt and I did discuss this sort of thing: artificial intelligence and mind uploading. He was very excited about it. I thought he was nuts when he argued that it could happen in the near future and I told him so. Now the bastard has gone and proved me wrong. I hate that.’
Jemma smiled, understanding that Carl was trying to put Alice at her ease. He looked up at Alice as he continued.
‘You know . . . maybe it isn’t Matt inside that computer. But even if it isn’t, whoever or whatever it is has convinced itself – and also Matt’s parents – that it is Matt. For what it’s worth, my hunch is that it may well be Matt. But whatever we think, I think we should give him – or it – the benefit of the doubt. Whoever or whatever it is, this new Matt must be feeling very scared and very alone. It must be hard being a brain in a box, with no body, no freedom of movement, and with quite a large chunk of the world wanting to kill you – for the second time, no less. If we – his closest friends – don’t appear to believe in him, then . . . well, I think that could be very hard for him.’
Alice straightened in her seat and her frown relaxed as she began to steel her mind. ‘You’re right. That’s absolutely the way to look at it. I’m being selfish. However weird this feels for me – for us – it must feel a whole lot more so for Matt. He deserves our support, and he will get it.’
*
The three friends walked into the control room and were greeted by the sound of Matt’s voice booming across the room.
‘Hey, guys, it’s so great to see you!’
Alice’s hand flew to her mouth, and Carl gaped open-mouthed. David and Sophie stood up and walked swiftly over to greet them. Sophie hugged Alice and David shook Carl’s hand warmly and then hugged Jemma.
‘Thank you so much for coming,’ Sophie said to all of them. Then, looking particularly at Alice, ‘I’m so sorry we couldn’t tell you earlier. I feel terrible about the way you heard. It must have been a shock.’
‘No need to apologise, Mrs Metcalfe,’ Alice assured her. ‘We understand you had no choice in the matter, and we’re all here now.’ She looked across the room towards the main monitor, and gasped a short laugh of surprise as she saw a series of dancing smiley faces. ‘How is he?’
‘I’m fine,’ Matt said. ‘No need to talk about me in hushed tones in the third person, as if I was a terminally ill hospital patient!’
‘I’m sorry, Matt,’ Alice smiled. ‘How are you?’
‘Well, obviously there are downsides to my situation,’ Matt said, with a sly single entendre. ‘But it’s way better than the alternative. Vic, could we get
my friends equipped with ‘Matt-phones’?’
‘No problem,’ Vic said, grinning, and recruited Julia’s help setting up three private lines and portable communicators. ‘Once we’ve got these hooked up you can conduct private conversations with Matt. You are welcome to pop into any of the rooms nearby, but don’t wander too far. Security is very tight in this complex, as you will have gathered from the process you had to go through to get in here.’
David explained that one of the intriguing aspects of Matt’s uploaded self was his ability to carry on multiple conversations at the same time. Once the equipment was ready, the three friends each went off to find a private space to talk to Matt privately.
*
‘Well you did it, dude!’ Carl said. ‘You proved me dead wrong.’
‘Yeah,’ Matt crowed. ‘Quite possibly the biggest “I told you so” in human history, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yeah, I can’t really argue with that. So what’s it like? Do you feel like the old Matt, only more so? Have you got super-powers?’
‘That’s exactly the way I describe it,’ Matt agreed. ‘The old Matt, only more so. And less so, in certain important respects, although that concerns Alice more than you.’
‘Yuk! Too much information!’
‘Sorry,’ Matt laughed. ‘And no, I don’t have super-powers because I can’t interact with the physical world other than with sound and visuals. I do have enhanced sight and hearing, which is neat, but you just take it for granted after a while. The expanded mental capabilities, though: that is really something. As you already know, I can do lots of things at the same time, and I can do them much faster. And it’s not just speed. I can process information better too. I have already solved a couple of previously intransigent maths theorems, and I’ve only just started. I’m learning a couple of whole new subjects to doctoral level each day, and I’m making progress on some really big problems by comparing apparently unrelated bodies of knowledge from different disciplines.’