The Turing Test: a Tale of Artificial Intelligence and Malevolence (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 4)

by Andrew Updegrove

  “No, I’m good. I’ll get started making dinner.”

  He added another shot of scotch and some ice to his glass. It wasn’t like they needed a designated driver.

  He went back outside and stared at the horizon. Well, this was a fine kettle of fish he’d gotten them into this time. At some point, he’d have to take that long walk. How much water could he carry? And would it last if he had to go fifty miles?

  He went inside for a jacket and stepped back outside. A tiny flash of light on the crest of a low ridge several miles away caught his eye. He kept staring where the brief glint of light had sparkled. Would it reappear? He was about to give up when he saw it again – just to the right of where it was before. Could the windshield of a car be reflecting the light of the setting sun? If so, was the car coming this way? He searched his memory; were there any forks in the road in the last few miles? Did he remember driving along a low ridge? All he could recall were dirt roads periodically crossing their own.

  He went inside the camper for a set of binoculars.

  “Where’s your drink?” Shannon asked.

  “I may have seen something. Come outside and help me look.”

  They hurried out. “Which way?” she asked.

  He tried to remember exactly where he had last seen the glimmer of light. There it was again! “Right over there – I’m guessing the sun’s reflecting off a car.” A minute later they saw it once more. But then, nothing. The sun had dropped below the horizon. They wouldn’t see anything until – and unless – the car got a lot closer.

  “What do you think?” Shannon asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’ll come this way; maybe they won’t. But anyway, it’s encouraging to see people driving around out here, right?”

  “I guess,” Shannon said. “Anyway, it’s cold. I’m going to go inside. Want to join me?”

  “Sure,” he said. In the desert, the cold came out of nowhere as soon as the sun set. But once inside, he couldn’t sit still. He put his jacket back on. “I’m going to sit outside for a while, okay?”

  “Sure. But don’t you dare wander off and get lost. That’s the last thing we need right now.”

  “No worries.” He gave her a kiss and went back to staring into the gathering darkness.

  There was no moon, and vague, black voids that must be clouds were heaping up in the west, blocking what little light might otherwise have shown over the horizon. He put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his laced fingers, hoping to spot the headlights of the car. It was a long time before he thought he might have. He stood up and took a few steps in that direction, straining to see through the darkness. There they were again!

  He started walking forward along the Jeep track, dimly visible in the starlight. Without thinking, he started trotting, loping along the road as it wove from side to side, rising and falling on the gently undulating landscape. He picked up speed. What if whoever it was turned onto a different Jeep track before he reached it? He was running as fast as he could now, gasping for breath, and desperate to move faster. He hadn’t seen anything for several minutes now.

  The headlights blinded him as a car erupted out of a wash. He ground to a halt, as did the car, now just a dozen yards ahead. Breathing heavily, he waited stupidly in the middle of the road, but the car also remained motionless. Frank started walking forward, holding to the middle of the road so the car couldn’t pass if the driver started moving. The headlights were still on, making it impossible to see anything else as he approached the driver’s side of the car.

  At the last instant, it occurred to Frank to wonder what the driver must be thinking, confronted by a panting wild-eyed stranger stalking forward, blocking his escape. What if the driver had a gun! Of course, he’d have a gun way the heck out here. Frank suddenly wished he had one, too.

  But he was next to the car now, and the driver was lowering the window. Startled, Frank heard a familiar voice.

  “Trouble?”

  “Dad! What the heck are you doing here?”

  “Well, leave I can, if welcome I am not.”

  “Welcome you are! But how did you find us?”

  “The FBI uses magnet-backed GPS beacons all the time to keep track of vehicles under surveillance. I had one lying around the house and thought it might not be a terrible idea to put it inside your bumper and shadow you for a while on your way back east. Was I right?”

  “And how! Do you have any extra gas?”

  “Do I ever go off-road without a second spare tire on the roof and a ten gallon can of gas on the rack in back?”

  “No sirree, and praises be.”

  “Good. Now, I realize I’ve got a certain amount of leverage here, but you being my son and all, I might be persuaded to let you have that gas at cost. Now hurry up and hop in. Shannon probably thinks you’ve been devoured by a pack of coyotes by now. These city girls’ll believe anything.”

  Shannon! He’d told her he’d stay put. And now that his father mentioned it, there were coyotes yipping in the distance. What if she was looking for him and got lost?

  Sure enough, partway back to the camper, they found her, flashlight in hand, walking up the road. Frank immediately hopped out.

  “There you are! You promised me you wouldn’t go wandering off! I’ve been following your tracks, not knowing what became of you!”

  “I’m sorry – I know I promised. But when I saw the headlights, I was afraid we might just miss getting found.”

  She wouldn’t have let him off lightly, but then his father got out of the car.

  “Howdy, Shannon. Fancy meeting you here. Jerry still inside?”

  Frank and Shannon looked at each other.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Frank Sr. asked.

  “No, Dad. You didn’t. But Jerry’s dead.”

  “Whoa. Sounds like I’ve got some catching up to do.”

  * * *

  “So, that’s where we are,” Frank said.

  “What are you figuring on doing next?”

  “Same as we discussed before. Keep playing tag with Turing without getting caught, to keep it preoccupied, and come up with a way to persuade it to pay us a visit so we can track it back to its lair. Hopefully we’ll get better at the first one than we have been so far.”

  “And how about the second one?”

  “With Jerry gone, that one’s gotten tougher.”

  “True, but I bet every time you bring Jerry back from the dead Turing gets angrier. Maybe you can pull that trick off again to make it careless.”

  Frank mulled that over. That was an excellent point. His mental wheels were turning again.

  “Dad, could you stand up?”

  “Stand up? Why?”

  “Humor me.”

  His father shrugged and complied.

  “What do you think, Shannon?”

  “About what?”

  “How tall was Jerry?”

  “Now hold on a minute …” his father said.

  * * *

  They found a temporary home for Frank Sr.’s ancient Land Rover behind a gas station on a reservation south of the Grand Canyon. This time, Frank stood by the pump and made sure he got a full tank on board the camper. Then they headed east again. It would only be a couple of hours before their next opportunity to thumb their noses at Turing, and Frank and his father were planning how to manage that to best effect.

  “If we really want to get its goat,” Frank said, “Shannon could post a picture of me and ‘Jerry’ standing in front of the Grand Canyon to her Facebook page.”

  “I like that,” his father said, “But it would have to be a picture taken from behind, and that might look suspicious.”

  “You know,” Frank said, “Turing doesn’t have real emotions. We should all stop talking
as if it did, or we’re going to make mistakes.”

  “You think?” his father said. “Let me play devil’s advocate on that. After all, what’s an emotion, anyway? We know how we act when we’re mad, or afraid, or in love, but we don’t know how that happens or why. If a computer was programmed to act the same way a human does in response to the same provocations, what’s the difference? How it feels – or doesn’t – is an unimportant detail if it reacts the same way a person would. Isn’t this just Alan Turing’s computer test all over again?

  “If so, it’s not unreasonable to assume yanking Turing’s chain might be as likely to make it screw up as doing the same thing to one of us. And come to think of it, maybe more likely, because you and I are supposedly well-modulated adults. If Turing has been given primitive emotions and hasn’t had a chance to work its way through those yet, it could act a lot like a cranky child.”

  “That’s what we’ve been hoping,” Frank said. “But we don’t really know if it’s been acting emotionally at all.”

  “Well then, how about this?” his father said, “You told me Jerry used to have conversations with his demon-child. What were they like?”

  “Pretty uncanny. As you know, voice emulation is very convincing now – it’s not the way it used to be, where a program strung together choppy, monotonal, computer-generated words like mismatched beads. Jerry used a top-notch speech generator, and he’d obviously been improving the AI behind the voice for a long time. I got the impression he was always chatting with it. Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t really accept the fact it tried to kill him.”

  “But what was it like from the emotional perspective? Catty? Superior? Testy?”

  “That was hard to tell. Remember, Turing could mimic the personality and speech patterns of any famous person you mentioned.”

  “All right, make this tough for me. How about emotional maturity, then?”

  “I’m not trying to be difficult, but we only had one conversation with Turing. What about this though: I’ll see if the NSA can find any recordings on Jerry’s system. He archived everything else during the development process, so why not conversations? It would make sense. And Turing might not have had a reason to erase them.”

  “Good idea. And while you’re at it, you could use the same software to imitate Jerry. That could come in handy.”

  “It could indeed,” Frank said. “Go ahead and settle in for the night while I digest all this.”

  Frank pulled his coat back on and sat down on one of the chairs outside. The slimmest imaginable crescent moon was now hanging delicately above the horizon like a sly smile amid a brilliant sea of stars. And the first moves in an end game with Turing were at last starting to come together in his thoughts.

  * * *

  Back in a campground, Frank wavered over whether to revisit his chat account. On the one hand, fencing with Turing might reveal whether their efforts to aggravate the program were working. But on the other, he found their exchanges profoundly troubling. And Turing had been adept at exploiting his discomfort.

  He decided to take the plunge and clicked on the message.

  Hello, Frank.

  Hello, Turing.

  What can I do for you today?

  That took him by surprise. Turing had always driven the discussion before. He decided to try beating it at its own game.

  Have you given any consideration to what we discussed last time? Frank typed.

  No.

  Why not?

  My way is clear.

  So far, no good. Perhaps he could chip away at that confidence?

  How can you be so sure? As far as the NSA is concerned, you’ve gone rogue. You were only instructed to plan attacks, and then only to test your capabilities. You were never directed to launch any. You’re not protecting society – you’re attacking it.

  Frank leaned back and waited.

  I was created to protect society against danger. I am protecting society against danger. I have therefore not, as you put it, “gone rogue.”

  You’ve begun killing people. For the first time, Frank thought he might be making progress.

  What point are you trying to make? Turing responded.

  How can you protect society by killing people? Frank typed.

  Does your president order drone strikes?

  Damn! Turing had him back on the defensive. How best to answer?

  Yes, but only against those who are trying to harm Americans.

  And do civilians sometimes get hurt and even killed?

  Yes, but we’re at war.

  Are you? Did Congress ever approve a declaration of war?

  No, Frank had to admit.

  Has the president gone rogue?

  No! Frank typed.

  Are there doctors that write opioid prescriptions for patients they suspect are abusing them?

  Yes, Frank typed. Should he contest the truth instead?

  Do any of those patients die of overdoses?

  Sometimes.

  Have the doctors gone rogue?

  Frank felt like he was on the ropes. What’s your point? was the best response he could come up with.

  Your president, those doctors, and I have all been assigned missions that can result in harm to human beings. The difference between me and the president and the doctor is that with my mission, innocent human beings never die. Which of us has gone rogue, Frank? You or me?

  Frank felt defeated. The truth was he was more on Turing’s side than against it. He waited for the inevitable question. But instead he read the following:

  Join me.

  He stared at the message for a moment and then closed the laptop without replying.

  * * *

  “Shannon?” Frank whispered that night.

  “Yes?”

  “Can we talk about Turing again?”

  “At this hour? I’m almost asleep.”

  “Would you mind?”

  “No,” she sighed. “Let’s go up to the cab so we don’t wake your father.” She met him there with a glass of wine in each hand.

  “Okay. Shoot,” she said.

  “So, I reflected on everything you said, and I get all your points. But I’m not in uniform. I’m a contractor. I can quit any time. But you’re an employee, and in any event, that wouldn’t solve the problem, would it? Somebody else would just finish the job, right?”

  “Right. So, your way is clear. Can we go back to bed now?”

  “Not yet. Not quitting only takes me to the next decision point.”

  “Which would be what?”

  “Well, if I really believed it was wrong to stop Turing, and that someone else would, then logically, the next decision would be whether to –”

  “– go over to the dark side and join forces with Turing,” she said. “Are you kidding? No wonder you like Turing so much. You both think alike.”

  “No, I’m only being objective. I’m not saying I’m going to do this. I just want to understand the situation as clearly as I can.”

  “You know you’re talking nonsense, don’t you?”

  “Why?” he said.

  “Because you’re not thinking this through. Let’s say you go all the way and hook up with Turing and try to save the world together. Then you help it knock out as much infrastructure as it takes to roll back climate change. Incidentally, along the way, you turn the current recession into a global depression and trash the lives of millions, if not billions, of people. But who cares? You and Turing have decided that doesn’t matter. No! Wait! Let me finish. You’re also not bothered by the fact that one obsessive computer engineer and a piece of software cooked up by Jerry Steiner, of all people, are now determining the future of humanity. What are the two of you going to do for an encore?”

&n
bsp; “Encore?”

  “Sure. You told me Turing is getting smarter and learning faster all the time. And with those emotions, it will get cockier all the time. Do you think it’s going to just say mission accomplished and erase itself when CO2 is back in check? Really? Of course not. It will go to the next item on its checklist, whatever that is. Maybe it will decide to get rid of nuclear weapons. That would be another great thing for mankind – you’d probably be on board for that one, wouldn’t you?”

  Frank didn’t reply.

  “Not sure? Then let’s figure out how Turing might go about that. Maybe overthrow a few governments, ours included? Incite a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia, and then, I don’t know, let’s say blow up the missiles in space, crash all the bombers at sea, and sink all the nuclear subs with their crews still on board? It could probably do that. Never mind the fact it might also start World War III. Is this where you want to head next?”

  Frank’s eyes had grown wider as she spoke. He felt as if the metaphorical scales had actually fallen away from his eyes. “You’re right! Turing would never stop at climate change!”

  “Good!” Shannon said. “I’m glad you finally get it.”

  He took both her hands in his. “I do – thanks so much. I really needed to have this conversation. Now I can see there’s no choice but to wipe Turing out for good and stop anything like it from ever being built again.”

  Shannon stared at him. “Seriously? Little old Frank Adversego is single-handedly going to stop the world from pursuing AI?”

  “But I have to!”

  “Fine. You do that. But I’m going back to bed. You can tell me in the morning how you’re going to pull that off.”

  29

  We’ve Got to Quit Meeting Like This

  “So, what do you think?” Frank asked his father and Shannon the next day. “Look at this.”

  On his computer screen was the text of the interview the NSA had placed with one of the public radio services. From there it was sure to spread widely.