Neural Web

by Dima Zales

  “Are these online-only friends?” I look my son up and down.

  His mischievous expression turns defensive. “Do I have any other kind?”

  “And did you tell them what you actually look like?” Ada asks sternly.

  Alan starts to reply but stops when a man enters. The guy appears to be in his thirties, with the air of a college professor about him. I use face recognition to confirm my intuition; indeed, he’s a tenured professor of philosophy at Columbia. His name is John Moore, and he isn’t on any sexual predator lists—not that Joe would let him live, let alone enter this room, if he were.

  John confidently walks over to me and holds out his hand. “Alan, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  “Well, that answers that question,” Ada tells me privately. “They don’t realize they’ve come to a four-year-old’s birthday.”

  “Hello, John.” I give the man a warm handshake. “I’m not Alan.”

  “You’re not?” He looks at Ada for help. “You look a lot like your avatar.” He looks at her more closely. “I’m so sorry, are you Alan? You also look like that avatar, but I thought you were a man. Not that—”

  “I’m Ada,” she cuts in. “This is Mike.” She gestures at me. “And this”—she points at our son—“is Alan.”

  “I really enjoyed our discussion about the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness,” Alan tells John, his eyes beaming with mischief. “I just sent you details for our party VR session. If you enter it, you’ll be able to see me in the guise you’re more comfortable with.”

  Once John’s eyes stop threatening to jump out of his sockets, he uses his Brainocytes to see Alan’s adult avatar.

  “I hope you don’t begrudge me this surprise,” Alan says both in VR and the real world. “I decided my birthday would be the perfect time to come out as a four-year-old. I couldn’t figure out a way to explain it online.”

  “But how?” John whispers. “Is this a prank?”

  As Alan explains about his Brainocytes, Joe glides over silently and grasps John’s shoulder so firmly John cringes in pain.

  “If I may have a word,” Joe says. “Now that you know who you came here to see, I just want to say—”

  I don’t hear the rest, because he leans in and whispers into John’s ear.

  John’s previously awestruck expression changes, and his pale face turns an almost purple shade of terror. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out that Joe must’ve told him something like, “If you touch my nephew in any way, especially the wrong way, your short and painful life will not be long enough to get onto the registered sex offenders list.”

  “Joe,” Alan says, obviously realizing the same thing, “stop bullying my friends.”

  Joe reluctantly lets go of John’s shoulder and stalks to the far corner of the room.

  To diffuse the tension, I look up the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness and learn that it states that many animals are conscious and aware.

  “The number of scientists who signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness is truly impressive,” I say casually. “Their list of species is great too. Besides mammals, they included birds and even octopuses.”

  “Maybe this means people will finally understand this basic, self-evident truth,” Ada grumbles. “Animals are just as self-aware as we are.”

  “But not necessarily as intelligent,” John chimes in, his demeanor turning professorial. “Consciousness does not equate to intelligence.”

  “No, but admitting that animals have consciousness should at least be enough for people to enlarge their circle of empathy to include them.” Ada plants her feet wider apart and regards John belligerently. “We don’t eat unintelligent human beings, do we?”

  John blinks and pushes his glasses higher up his nose. “I see where Alan gets some of his views. I understand what you’re saying, of course, but you can’t downplay the role of intelligence.”

  Alan glances at his mom worriedly. Like me, he’s aware this is a touchy subject. “Can we try another thought experiment, John, like usual?”

  John looks at the real-world Alan and rubs his temples. “I’m still adjusting to the fact that you’re you. But sure, let’s hear it.”

  “Let’s say there existed a rat who was smart,” Alan begins. In our private VR, he winks at me. He’s obviously talking about Mr. Spock and his relatives, but John doesn’t know that.

  “Okay,” John replies. “I can picture that.”

  “Now let’s further assume this rat is intelligent by most definitions of the word. To simplify, let’s say this rat is smarter than most of my peers.”

  “Right,” John says. “What you describe is a scenario where we’d have to be very nice to such a rat. We’d treat the rat as a person. If such a magical creature existed.”

  “So you claim the fact that the rat is intelligent, not the fact that he’s conscious, is the criterion for giving him nicer treatment?” Alan asks. “According to the Cambridge Declaration, all rats are conscious, since they’re mammals.”

  “I’d say my position is more nuanced, but yes, I guess that’s what I believe.” John takes a step away from Ada, who’s not even trying to hide her dislike of his philosophy.

  “Forget the rat, then,” Alan says. “Suppose there’s an entity, an intelligent creature that’s smarter than a human by the same factor that a human is smarter than a rat.”

  “Okay,” John says hesitantly.

  “Would such a creature have the right to treat human beings as ‘nicely’ as humans currently treat rats?” Alan steeples his tiny real-world fingers. “Run experiments on them, develop special poisons to try to wipe humanity out of existence, place sticky traps that will cause people to die horrific deaths, and so on?”

  “Well,” John says, rubbing his temples more vigorously this time, “I think that—”

  Someone coughs, and John doesn’t get a chance to finish his thought. A woman has come in and is peering around the crowd.

  “Margret?” Alan yells. “We’re over here.”

  Margret seems even more confused than John when she realizes how old her online friend is. According to face recognition, she’s a theoretical computer scientist working at one of the larger NYC hedge funds. Her specialty is Big Data, which is probably what she and Alan talk about. He has an uncanny ability to see patterns in large quantities of data and is always trying to understand how his mind does what it does.

  More people arrive, and the conversations move toward Alan’s favorite subjects of identity, consciousness, and the technological singularity.

  “If we define the singularity as the point when a regular person can no longer keep up with technology,” Margret says, “my mother is already experiencing it.”

  “I define the singularity as the point when things radically change and the speed of advancements skyrockets beyond anyone’s wildest dreams,” Mitya says. “Right now, things are moving fast—but when the singularity hits, our progress will seem like a snail’s pace in comparison. I agree, though, the term ‘singularity’ is definitely beginning to mean different things to different people.”

  John adjusts his glasses. “To me, it means AI running amok and causing something like the technological Armageddon. It’s the start of a dystopia where humanity becomes extinct.”

  “I didn’t realize you sympathized with the people outside,” Alan says. Of course he knows about the RHO protestors. “I see the singularity as a point when humanity finally matures and becomes something it was always meant to be, something more than thinking meat… something rationally transcendent.” He looks up at the adult faces, and when he sees everyone listening, he continues with fervor. “We can be a way for the universe to become aware of itself. Brain enhancements and integration with our AI and other technology is just the first step. In the long term, I see us becoming first a planet-sized conglomeration of minds, then a galaxy-sized intellect, and on and on, as far as the laws of physics allow.”

  “There ma
y be as many definitions of the singularity as there are people,” Ada says as she gazes proudly at our son. “My own vision is closer to that of Alan’s, because I know we can bring it about and avoid any apocalyptic scenarios.”

  I nod at her words. “We take the concept of ‘the world is what you make it’ to its full, logical extreme,” I say. “With us watching over it, I think the singularity will usher in a new step in evolution, a time when we’ll take everything we cherish about being human and push it to an eleven out of ten.”

  “Even if these rosy predictions come into being,” John says with the tone of someone who doubts it very much, “will the beings that inhabit the future actually be human?”

  “Why not?” Ada asks. “Though even if they weren’t, they would in the worst case be, in the words of Hans Moravec, our mind children.”

  She glances adoringly at Alan, and when she notices I’ve followed her gaze, she locks eyes with me and winks.

  “I still have to respectfully disagree,” John says. “Being human is so closely tied to being biological that I think becoming pure technology will turn people into machines.”

  “Perhaps I can take a stab at it,” Mitya says. “You’re a fan of thought experiments, so why don’t I try one?”

  “Sure,” John says with an eagerness only a philosophy professor could possess. “Please.”

  “Imagine that someone has invented an artificial neuron,” Mitya says. “Now also imagine that someone has taken one of your biological neurons and replaced it with the artificial one. You’d still be you, correct?”

  “I’m familiar with this idea.” John sips from his champagne glass. “It’s called the neuron replacement thought experiment. Once I agree that I’m still the same after getting a single artificial neuron, you’ll ask, what about a hundred? Then what about a billion? And soon after that, what if we replaced all of them?”

  “Well, just because you know it doesn’t mean it’s not persuasive,” Mitya says. “You’d still be you, even if the substrate of your brain were artificial.”

  “I can only counter this with a thought experiment that is just as persuasive,” John says with a smirk. “It’s called the Chinese room argument, postulated by John Searle…”

  I tune out the rest of the discussion, because this topic reminds me that Ada and I still must break the news of tomorrow’s trip to the birthday boy. Our regular work-related travel is a source of upset for Alan, mainly because he thinks he’s now old enough and mature enough to join us.

  “When do we tell him?” I ask Ada after I pull her into a private VR room that is the exact replica of our living room.

  “Let’s not ruin the party,” she says without clarifying the what or the who, a sign this topic is on her mind as much as it is on mine. “He’s having such a good time.”

  Since Alan is currently poking holes in John’s best arguments, I’m forced to agree. The kid loves winning arguments, though it’s harder when he debates someone as augmented as himself.

  “He’ll be mad if we tell him at the last minute.” I plop into a replica of my favorite rocking lounge chair and stare at the replica of our awesome Manhattan view.

  “I’d rather he be mad on a less special day—like tomorrow,” Ada counters. She breaks the VR room’s consistency by magicking herself a replica of her office chair to sit on. “I still vote for tomorrow.”

  “We can always blame Joe again and say he’s the one who thinks it’s not safe. It’s mostly the truth.” I rock back and forth in my lounger. For some reason, Alan’s puppy eyes work much better on me than on Ada, and I’m not looking forward to this unpleasant task.

  “We should tell him in VR,” she says ruthlessly. “Tomorrow afternoon, when we’re on the way to our destinations.”

  “You mean so that he won’t be able to strong-arm us to take him?” I fight the urge to get up from the chair and start pacing.

  “No.” She pushes her chair closer and reaches over to clasp my hand. “We tell him that way so that it comes off as the law of the land rather than a topic for debate.”

  “That might be too authoritarian. I thought we were trying to be authoritative instead.”

  “I knew it was a mistake to have you read those books on parenting styles.” She squeezes my hand. “How about we tell him in the morning at breakfast? Then it can be a back-and-forth, as long as the two of us agree that he’s not going this time, no matter what he says.”

  “Agreed.” I feel bad for Alan. He has no chance of winning against this conspiracy of parents.

  “I didn’t realize that having a preschooler would be this tough.” She drops her hand. “It’s much worse than those books on child development said.”

  “If you think this is bad, let’s see what happens when he’s a teenager.”

  We both jokingly shudder, but we’re all too aware of the Russian proverb: “There is part truth in every joke.”

  Chapter Four

  The island country of Curaçao is among the shrinking number of places without widespread Brainocyte adoption—hence my reason for being on this stage.

  I survey the huge crowd gathered in front of me and activate a special version of the BraveChill app that’s custom made to counteract stage fright. As soon as I’m calmer, I let myself gaze into the distance, where smoke chugs from factory pipes incongruent with the idyllic Caribbean Sea beyond.

  “Dear friends.” I begin in English and instantly say it again in Dutch and Papiamento, mainly as an easy way to demonstrate some of the things I’m about to present. “My name is Mike Cohen, and I’m here to tell you about Human++ and its gift to you and the world. Specifically, I want to discuss our paradigm-changing product, Brainocytes, and our free-energy project that will greatly improve your skies.”

  I point at the smoke pipes, and the crowd cheers. I wait for them to calm down before I proceed with the rest of my speech, a spiel that’s been carefully crafted by our PR department. I tell the crowd that they’re going to get free electricity, the same free electricity that most of the world already enjoys. This is the easy part of the talk, because most people find the idea of free energy easy to understand. Here in the Caribbean, people picture themselves using as much AC as they want; elsewhere, they imagine leaving all their lights on and never paying the electric bill.

  I explain some of the bigger but less intuitive consequences of free energy, like no more paying for gas after switching to an electric car. When I talk about the possibility of nearly free fresh water, I get cheers and clapping. The clapping turns into a standing ovation when I proceed to explain how few will go hungry as the price of food production plummets.

  Joe’s security people pass a mic into the crowd, and a wise-looking woman asks, “If all this is free, how do you make your money?”

  “That’s a great question,” I reply. “We use a freemium model. Most private individuals and small businesses will get electricity for free, but bigger businesses with heavier consumption will incur some cost. But that cost is still going to be a fraction of what they’re used to, so everyone is happy in the end.”

  “This part of the lecture isn’t playing as well here in Bahrain,” Mitya says in our private VR meeting.

  The VR space perfectly mimics our favorite conference room in the Human++ tower, right down to the touchscreen boards, ultramodern furniture, and dazzling view of the Manhattan skyline. Though every one of us is physically conducting a similar presentation somewhere around the globe, it’s become our policy to keep one instance of our virtual avatars sitting in this room. Muhomor, Alan, Ada, and I are almost always in this room in some fashion anyway, but Joe only joins on days like today, when his security guys are on high alert.

  “This part of the spiel never does well in places where oil helps the economy,” Ada agrees. “Here on Iturup Island, we’re close enough to Russia for people to also be a little wary.”

  “They might be wary because some of them grew up hearing about free stuff,” I say.

  “Ye
ah, that’s how most understood what communism would be like,” Mitya says.

  “Why did Ada get to go to the Kuril Islands again?” Muhomor grumbles. “I still say it should’ve been one of us native Russian speakers. As you just made obvious, we don’t just speak the language natively, we understand the culture—”

  “If it’s complaining time now,” Alan says, “I resent staying back in the States.”

  “Resent” is a polite word for his actual feelings on the subject. He nearly threw an age-appropriate temper tantrum when we told him that no, he would not be presenting. He doesn’t understand our possibly irrational parental worry about sending a four-year-old overseas by himself. Besides, how seriously would people without Brainocytes take such a tiny presenter?

  The large virtual screens behind my friends show the crowd and their surroundings at each location. Mitya’s crowd in Bahrain is probably the largest, and even through the virtual window, I can almost feel the heat of his dusty yellow surroundings. Ada’s gathering on Iturup Island is the smallest, though that could be an illusion thanks to the never-ending sea in the distance. Muhomor’s location is a lot like mine, minus any industry; he’s on the tropical island of Les Cayemites in Haiti. Each of us have Joe’s security people around us, and a couple of robot surrogate bodies as well, in part for security but also for my favorite part of the demo, which will happen toward the end.

  On a whim, I embody the robot to Ada’s left and use its sensors to savor the crisp, salty air. I then possess a robot next to Mitya and confirm the low humidity and heat.

  “Now let me tell you about Brainocytes,” I say into the microphone. I can feel the crowd grow more alert; this is probably what they came to hear about.

  I explain that Brainocytes are nanomachines that interface with the brain. Once my listeners have an idea what the signature tech does, I move on to dispel some common worries that always come up about our products.

  “No brain surgery is required to get Brainocytes.” I reach into my pocket and pull out a little square piece of fabric I have prepared for the presentation. “The current delivery method is transdermal patches like this one.” I wave the patch and put an image of it on the big screen behind me.