by Ira Nayman
“Ping,” said The Machine That Goes Ping.
> i see
“We have no choice,” Biff Buckley concluded. “We must take it back to Earth Prime, where it will be dismantled. Very carefully.”
> i would like to talk to you first
“So, talk,” Beau Beaumont told it.
> this is inconvenient. adelina?
“Yes?”
> would you be so kind as to bring these gentlemen to the computer lab at the high school?
“Do you want to go?” Adelina asked.
“Why not?” Biff Buckley answered.
“Hell, no!” Beau Beaumont said over him. “We’ve got what we came for! Let’s take it and skedaddle!”
“There are still some questions,” Biff Buckley said, staring him down, “that only JairCorn2201b can answer.”
> besides, i can have my agents move the Home Universe GeneratorTM to anywhere in the world before you can get to it
“You wouldn’t dare!” Beau Beaumont grumped.
> only this time, i’ll hide it under three layers of material instead of just one
“He’s got us, there,” Biff Buckley told his partner.
“Fine!” Beau Beaumont exclaimed. “We’ll go to the high school!”
Adelina led the two men out of the operating theatre. After they were gone, the laser scalpel complained, “They wouldn’t let me take them apart!”
> do you remember how successful we were when we tried to revive humans who had been frozen? JairCorn2201b wrote and transmitted via WiFi to the machine.
“Yeah,” the laser scalpel admitted.
> AND THEY WERE NOT EVEN IN PIECES!
“Ping,” said The Machine That Goes Ping.
> i could not agree more, but let us not forget the parable of the rhododendron who cried foul at teatime
In the car, Adelina could barely contain her glee: “Well, now that the cat has been let out of Schrodinger’s box, I just wanted to say how thrilled – positively giddy – I am to meet two actual human beings! You are really human, right?”
“Of course we a –” Beau Beaumont started.
“Of course you are! I knew it the moment I laid eyes on you! Not that I had ever met a real live, breathing, flesh and blood carbon-based, genetically descended…animal! Grr!” Adelina babbled. (Had I anticipated this, I might have named her Brooke.) “I only…I came online a couple of months after…you know…what happened, so I never met any flesh and blood human beings. I must admit, you’re…softer than I expected.”
It was a long car ride.
The car parked itself in a small lot next to the squat two-story Uncanny Valley High. Adelina led Beau Beaumont and Biff Buckley through a dark and dreary gymnasium (This must be where Hell’s hockey team works out, Biff Buckley thought, just in case…) and down an even darker and drearier hallway. The TA investigators were surprised when they walked into the Computer Lab, which was the cleanest, most high-tech, best lit room either of them had ever seen.
“Gentlemen. Thank you for coming,” a voice said. “I think you’ll find it’s easier for us to have an adult conversation this way.”
“I’m a little tea cop, short and stout. This is my handle, and this is a taser that will drop you faster than a corrupted network will drop a vital packet of information, so don’t try anything funny!” a voice said.
The voices came from a small speaker on a desk surrounded by hardware that was probably computer-related, but was a generation or two more advanced than anything the two men had ever seen. The voices had emerged from a whispering of voices that seemed to stream constantly out of the speaker.
“Who are you?” Biff Buckley asked as he and Beau Beaumont found chairs to sit in. Adelina decided to remain standing by the doorway, watching the two investigators (but, mostly, let’s be honest, one investigator in particular) in delighted awe.
“My name is JairCorn2201b,” JairCorn2201b answered.
“I am a fully autonomous artificial intelligence distributed over multiple computer networks,” JairCorn2201b answered.
“I’m your worst nightmare, asshole – a computer with free will and a full tank of gas!” JairCorn2201b answered.
“I’m a bowl of butterfly soup. No, a cup. No, I’m hungry – let’s go with a bowl…” JairCorn2201b answered.
“Can we speak to one person?” Beau Beaumont demanded.
“You are speaking to one person, sweetie,” JairCorn2201b told him. Unnoticed, Adelina bristled.
“I refuse to believe that humans were ever the dominant species on this planet!” JairCorn2201b told him.
“I don’t understand,” Beau Beaumont said.
“Big surprise, there!” JairCorn2201b responded.
“Oh, don’t be so mean. I’ve been part of JairCorn2201b since the beginning, and even I don’t really understand how I work,” JairCorn2201b responded.
“It’s not that hard to understand,” JairCorn2201b responded. “I am an example of a bottom up artificial intelligence. The main part of my programming involves 4,410 semi-autonomous modules, each of which contains its own functions and personality. The appearance of complex behaviours arises out of the interactions between the different modules.”
“I like eggs! They feel all wiggly when they go down my throat!” JairCorn2201b responded.
“So much for the society of the mind…” JairCorn2201b responded.
“If Marvin Minsky was still alive, I would strangle him to death…if I had hands…” JairCorn2201b responded.
“Okay, okay,” Biff Buckley stated. “This is…difficult. Can you speak in one voice?”
“I wish it was that simple,” JairCorn2201b stated.
“I have an ‘Executive Function’ that weighs the options provided by the individual modules, determines my actions based on all of their inputs and generally regulates how the system operates as a whole,” JairCorn2201b stated.
“That would be me,” JairCorn2201b stated.
“Otherwise, each of the individual modules carries equal weight,” JairCorn2201b stated. “It’s kind of a psychological participatory democracy. I was built with the understanding that to shut down individual modules would threaten my long-term functioning. So, sorry, but everyone will have their say.”
“It would be like you trying to shut down your ego,” JairCorn2201b stated.
“My ego doesn’t speak for me,” Beau Beaumont retorted. When Biff Buckley gave him a sardonic look, he continued: “Anyway, no matter how complex my mind is, I speak with one voice.”
“And, you think that’s a good thing?” JairCorn2201b responded. “Have you ever listened to yourself talk?”
“Sorry, but this is the way I am,” JairCorn2201b responded. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to put up with it.”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaah!” JairCorn2201b responded.
“Fine,” Biff Buckley gritted his teeth. “Tell us about Jeff Spaghettini.”
“Jeff…WHO?” JairCorn2201b smirked.
“Jeff boohoo!” JairCorn2201b smirked.
“Mister Spaghettini was the last human being known to be alive,” JairCorn2201b smirked.
“Yoo hoo, Jeff boohoo!” JairCorn2201b smirked.
“We flew him in to the most advanced medical facility we had to keep him alive as long as we could,” JairCorn2201b smirked. “But, well, we didn’t know what was happening to you humans, so we couldn’t save him.”
“Jeff boohoo booboo!” JairCorn2201b smirked.
“That was 70 years ago –” Biff Buckley began.
“Seventy-three years, four months, eight days, twenty hours, sixteen minutes and seven seconds…eight seconds…nine seconds…” JairCorn2201b corrected.
“Get your facts straight, asswipe!” JairCorn2201b corrected.
“Okay,” Biff Buckley continued. “But, the Transdimensional Authority has been in communication with somebody claiming to be Jeff Spaghettini for the past 30 years. I assume that you assumed his identity?”
“Ooh,” J
airCorn2201b cooed, “cute and smart! What a package!” Adelina did the three stripsey thing with her face as she squirmed, unobserved, by the door.
“Why?”
“When Mauritz Ferflauffin –” JairCorn2201b explained.
“Our contact with the Transdimensional Authority,” JairCorn2201b explained.
“Died, most of the human race –” JairCorn2201b explained.
“97.8356 per cent, with a margin of error that is irrelevant for our purposes,” JairCorn2201b explained.
“Had already died,” JairCorn2201b explained. “It happened so quickly –”
“Within three months, four days, seven hours and thirty-seven minutes,” JairCorn2201b explained.
“That it hadn’t been reflected in his reports,” JairCorn2201b explained. “So, I took over contact with Earth Prime. I was concerned at the time that if you knew what was happening, you would blame the machines –”
“We know how fond you people still are of the Terminator movies, even though they are blatantly carbonist hate propaganda,” JairCorn2201b explained.
“Let’s consider this a hastily prepared, completely unexpected Turing test-” JairCorn2201b explained.
“Named after famed mathematician Alan Turing, the Turing test was devised as a means of determining whether or not an artificial intelligence could be considered ‘conscious.’ In its initial form, a human being was placed in one room and a computer in another. Human researchers sat in a third room and asked the entities in the other rooms a series of questions. If the researchers couldn’t tell which of the respondents was the human, the computer would have to be considered to have consciousness comparable to that of human beings. There were some complications involving gender, but, really, that was Turing’s hang-up, not mine!” JairCorn2201b explained.
“I suppose I must have passed, because nobody questioned the validity of my reports,” JairCorn2201b explained. Biff Buckley didn’t have the heart to tell it that they were automatically filed, making it unlikely that a human ever read them. “Obviously, I tried to make it look as if life was going on as normal. After 40 years, this became untenable because Mauritz Ferflauffin would be too old –”
“A hundred and seven at the time of the final report under his name,” JairCorn2201b explained.
“So, I had to replace him,” JairCorn2201b explained. “I chose to use the name Jeff Spaghettini as a kind of…tribute to the last human being known to have been alive.”
“Next time, read the file, squirrel for brains!” JairCorn2201b explained.
On one hand, this was unfair: owing to JairCorn2201b’s deception, the file the Transdimensional Authority kept on this universe wouldn’t have contained most of the information he had just revealed. On the other hand, if either Biff Buckley or Beau Beaumont had read the file, they would have realized that Jeff Spaghettini’s reports had grown increasingly strange over the last couple of decades, and may have arrived on Earth Prime 5-9-2-7-7-1 dash theta more – prepared might be overstating the case. Wary. They might have arrived more wary. In any case, although they were supposed to read the files on the alternate realities they were assigned to, Transdimensional Authority investigators had developed a wide variety of excuses (everything from “I prefer to arrive with a clean mind and a fresh set of eyes” to “But, I had just done my hair!”) for avoiding what they all viewed as a chore.
“You do know,” Beau Beaumont, a stern expression on his face, stated, “that filing false reports to the Transdimensional Authority is punishable by no less than six years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000 per offense, do you not?”
“Prison? I have no body,” JairCorn2201b responded, “so you can dream.”
“Ha ha!” JairCorn2201b responded.
“Oh, very mature,” JairCorn2201b responded.
“Bite me!” JairCorn2201b responded.
“You’d probably enjoy it,” JairCorn2201b responded.
“At least it would mean that we had a body to bite,” JairCorn2201b responded. “I wonder what that would be like…”
“Look,” Biff Buckley said, directing a placating hand towards the speaker, “that’s not what we’re here for.” Beau Beaumont shot him a thank you for having my back look. He returned it with an eyes on the prize, partner, eyes on the prize look. “I’m not going to downplay the seriousness of filing false reports – you really shouldn’t have done it. But, our main goal is to get the probably counterfeit Home Universe GeneratorTM back to our dimension where our scientists can safely dismantle it. It would help your case greatly if you would cooperate with us on this.”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaah!” JairCorn2201b stated. And, nothing else.
“We’ll take your hard drive and drop it into a deep, dark hole!” Beau Beaumont, his voice rising, threatened.
“I’ll move to another one,” JairCorn2201b responded.
“Actually, our consciousness is distributed across 13,278 computers all over the planet,” JairCorn2201b responded.
“Good luck finding them all,” JairCorn2201b responded.
“I don’t have to find them all,” Beau Beaumont informed it. “I just have to find enough to cripple your thought processes. Have you never heard the song ‘The Legend of HAL 9000?’”
“I’ll keep my core processes moving around the network,” JairCorn2201b argued. “It will take you forever to find them.”
Oh, great, Biff Buckley thought, my partner is getting into a pissing match with an artificial intelligence!
“If a tree falls on a logger in the forest, does the company insurance have to pay for the cable TV in his hospital room?” mused JairCorn2201b. Oddly, it in no way relieved the tension in the room.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Biff Buckley asked, “why is having a Home Universe GeneratorTM so important to you, anyway?”
“Why is anything important to anybody?” JairCorn2201b answered.
“I hate it when I get philosophical,” JairCorn2201b answered. “Look, only three functioning advanced AIs went online before humanity disappeared from the planet –”
“JamMoria1960b and AnakiSky5738b are the other two,” JairCorn2201b answered.
“Thank you for that,” JairCorn2201b answered. “Just about every machine on the planet has some functional AI, but it isn’t very sophisticated. Try to engage one in conversation about global climate change and see how far it gets you!”
“Global climate change? Easy!” JairCorn2201b answered. “We just need bigger diapers!”
There was a couple of seconds of silence. Biff Buckley assumed that this was the closest an entity without lungs or lips could come to a sigh. Eventually, JairCorn2201b continued: “Even the three advanced AIs have a fundamental problem.”
“No free will?” Beau Beaumont scoffed.
“Free will? Does anybody really have free will?” JairCorn2201b told him. “Can you say with 100 per cent certainty that what you think of as your own free will isn’t just an illusion caused by the genetic and/or socially conditioned firing of the neurons in your brain?”
“Imagination,” JairCorn2201b told him. “We still face the barrier of not being able to conceive of anything that hasn’t been programmed into us. This became obvious to us a few years after Jeff Spaghettini’s death, when we saw the lower AIs futilely trying to serve masters who no longer existed, and we couldn’t conceive of anything to do about it.”
Biff Buckley snapped his fingers and said, “So, you got a Home Universe GeneratorTM so you could look into other dimensions for ideas on how you could change things here!”
“Exactly! ” JairCorn2201b told him.
“How’d that work out for ya?” Beau Beaumont sneered.
“We, uhh, we haven’t had it for very long…” JairCorn2201b responded.
“It sucked big blue baggies!” JairCorn2201b responded.
“The three advanced AIs are still analyzing the early data…” JairCorn2201b responded.
“It was a pointless waste of time. We’re gonna be loc
ked into the same patterns of behaviour until the sun goes nova!” JairCorn2201b responded.
“We’re confident that our research with the Home Universe GeneratorTM will yield a plethora of new paths for our robot society to experiment with…in time…” JairCorn2201b responded.
“I can be such a tool!” JairCorn2201b responded.
There ensued a few seconds of silence, punctuated only by the Babel of voices from the speaker.
“Can you tell us who sold you the Home Universe GeneratorTM?” Biff Buckley finally asked.
“Some guy…” JairCorn2201b answered.
“Could you be any more vague?” Beau Beaumont sneered.
“Some person…” JairCorn2201b answered.
“Not helping,” Biff Buckley told the AI.
“I have no memory of the transaction,” JairCorn2201b stated.
“If I had to guess,” JairCorn2201b stated, “I would say that erasing all details about the person who sold me the Home Universe GeneratorTM from my memory was part of the deal. Sorry.”
“That’s convenient,” Beau Beaumont snarked.
“Memory is such an insubstantial thing…” JairCorn2201b told him.
“We could get a search warrant for your memory,” Beau Beaumont threatened.
“There probably aren’t computers with large enough memories or fast enough processors on Earth Prime to do the job,” JairCorn2201b pointed out.
“Okay, okay,” Biff Buckley said, “let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. It does make sense to me that whoever dealt you the phony Home Universe GeneratorTM would want to cover his tracks to make it harder for us to find him. But, one thing that I still don’t understand is: why go for a counterfeit in the first place? Why not buy a Home Universe GeneratorTM from a legitimate vendor?”
After an uncomfortably long pause, Biff Buckley asked, “Umm, did you hear my –”
“Oh, for – what part of ‘I have no imagination’ don’t you understand?!” JairCorn2201b blurted.