by Erik Hamre
Andrew Kevorkian stood outside his office at the far end of the building. All eyes were directed at him. They were all expecting him to give a speech. To say something profound. They had after all made history a short two minutes earlier. They had successfully mapped the last percent of the human brain. Their massive data centre in the middle of the Nevada desert now housed a perfect copy of Kevorkian’s brain.
Kevorkian had not given any speech that day. Instead he had given the crowd a short nod, before returning to his office. And for the first time in the twelve years Vladimir had known him, Kevorkian had closed the door.
Vladimir had stepped up to the plate. He had raised his paper cup, overflowing with expensive Cristal, and held a speech the team would still rave about weeks later. Vladimir had never considered himself a great public speaker. But that day he had known exactly what to say. He had intuitively known how everyone in the room truly felt, and he had been able to put that feeling into words.
He imagined that the team on the Manhattan Project might have felt something similar when they successfully detonated the first atomic bomb on the sixteenth of July 1945. None of the men and women working on the Manhattan Project could tell their friends and family what they had achieved that day. And neither could any on the Neuralgo team. The information was highly sensitive; it could influence anything from listed technology companies’ share prices to foreign governments’ research budgets.
From that very moment they were all considered insiders.
Had Vladimir known what was going to happen he would probably not have made the comparison to the Manhattan Project. But he could never have foreseen that he, only two short months later, would be housed up in a secret military compound, trying to figure out how to stop the very thing the Neuralgo team had created.
If the atomic bomb, and its later versions, were the worst weapons of mass-destruction that humans could conceive. What would be the worst weapon an artificial intelligence, potentially hundreds of thousands times smarter than any human being, could come up with? Because that was the reality: If the Artificial General Intelligence started to make improvements of itself, theoretically it could soon reach that sort of intelligence levels.
Vladimir had knocked on Kevorkian’s door after wrapping up his speech. Kevorkian had been slumping in his chair, fondling his keyring as he had a habit of doing if he was having a bad day. He had looked oddly depressed. Had he already known what was going to happen back then? Had he known that he would have stroke? Had he known that he would set in motion something that could potentially endanger the entire human race? Vladimir had no idea. All he knew was that Kevorkian never did anything without a plan, without looking to the future.
The man was so brilliant that he didn’t just attempt to invent the things the world needed, the things that made commercial sense at the time. He envisioned, with extreme accuracy, what the technological landscape would look like at a set point of time in the future, and then he set about developing the products that would fit into that future scenario.
What had Kevorkian seen in his crystal ball that could compel him to do what he had done? Had he arrived at the conclusion that humans were doomed anyway? That we were polluting and destroying the Earth at such an alarmingly fast rate that we would eventually exterminate ourselves, and that the best chances for the survival of our species would be to progress to the next step in evolution – artificial intelligence? The AI Kevorkian had uploaded to the internet was after all based on a human brain, Kevorkian’s own brain. It contained his memories and experiences.
It was in fact an extension of him. A copy of him.
A copy of humanity.
“What are you thinking about?” Vladimir had asked Kevorkian.
“I’m thinking about how people will remember me,” Kevorkian had replied.
19
2nd of June 2015
DARPA’s remote Listening Station No 3
The Nevada Desert
DAY 2:
0200 Hours
Ronald Kraut waited until the rest of Team Cronus was safely inside the concrete bunker before closing the door. He glanced over at Sarah Kevorkian, then at Vladimir. Technically it was a breach of protocol that Sarah Kevorkian was attending the meeting, but she had been checked out of the case. It had been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that she’d had no knowledge of what Kevorkian had been planning to do, and she did possess some qualities that could come in handy for the team. Kraut was already regretting his decision to limit the team to four experts. Although a small team could be very efficient, it wasn’t that helpful when they had no idea what they were dealing with.
“There are certain elements in Protocol Cronus that were still classified when you had the first read through yesterday,” Kraut started. “We made a few amendments three months ago, and they direct our actions at certain predefined thresholds.”
“Why did you amend the protocol?” Vladimir asked.
“It was done against my recommendation. Unfortunately I am not the President of the United States.”
“What happens now?” Sarah asked.
“We shut down our nanotechnology and our robotics industry. Thus preventing the artificial intelligence from accessing those tools.”
Vladimir nodded. “And what happens if all fails. What happens if all our efforts at stopping this artificial intelligence fail?”
“We reset time,” Kraut replied.
The room went silent.
“Excuse me, what happens?” Sarah asked.
“If an artificial intelligence is ever successful in breaching our nuclear control systems it triggers an automatic response. When this happens an arsenal of nuclear bombs will be armed. The bombs are currently orbiting the Earth. If and when they detonate, the resulting blast will knock out most electronic equipment around the world. The hope is that it will also kill the artificial intelligence in the process.”
“It will kill most of the world’s population in the process,” Mike Hanna cried.
Ronald Kraut nodded. “It might. And that’s why it has been set up as an automatic response. The responsibility was seen as too great to be given to any one person – whoever was in the presidential office at the time.”
“Oh my God. There is no way to stop it, is there?”
“No, if the nuclear control systems are breached, and the breach has been identified as originating from an ASI, then there will be no way to stop the response. The bombs will be detonated, and a few hours later we will yet again find ourselves in a horse and carriage society.”
“There are seven billion people on Earth. A horse and carriage society won’t cater to that sort of population.”
“The point is not to save the entire population. The point is to save humanity. If you look at our technological development over the last two hundred years it has been exceptional. Two hundred years is inconsequential in the long run though. We will give a new generation the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. And they will have a better chance at it. A nuclear holocaust will make most of the world uninhabitable. A coordinated nuclear detonation in the atmosphere will knock out all electronic devices, but it won’t pollute the oceans, it won’t fill the sky with dust. It will offer humanity a new chance. A new chance to make it right.”
“A chance to not make the same mistake, to not develop artificial intelligence,” Vladimir said.
Ronald Kraut nodded. “We have to face reality. If the artificial intelligence makes the leap to an Artificial Super Intelligence, then we are all screwed anyway.”
“Should we give him a name?” Mike Hanna asked.
“Who?” Kraut was staring at Mike, not understanding the question.
“The AI. Should we give him a name? If we’re dealing with something intelligent, something that is most likely more intelligent than us by now, I think we should stop referring to him as a machine.”
“Kevin. Let’s call it Kevin,” Amanda suggested.
“That’s probably appropriate,�
�� Mike Hanna said. “I understand this project was Kevorkian’s baby, and as sad as it may sound, in many ways a substitute for his lost son.”
“Don’t you dare calling this thing Kevin!” Sarah Kevorkian yelled. She was almost in tears.
“We’ll call it Cronus.” Kraut said, offering a consoling hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “It’s the term I came up with for the protocol, and it’s appropriate. If Kevorkian is on his deathbed then it has already almost killed its own father, and it has most certainly castrated the rest of us. But let’s move on to more important matters. I’ve just made the call to shut down all our nanotechnology and robotics operations. This is a precautionary action. If the AI….”
“Cronus,” Mike Hanna interjected.
Ronald Kraut shot him an angry look, but continued. “If Cronus harbours any intentions to harm humanity then the utilising of nanotechnology and robotics would be the best tools. They are now off the table.”
“Aren’t we forgetting something essential here?” Sarah asked.
“What?”
“We are acting like we are on a deadline. Like Cronus can’t wait to exterminate us. An artificial intelligence won’t have the same perspective on time as humans. For all practical purposes it will be immortal. Even if it harboured a plan to exterminate humans, that plan could be hundreds of years away, even thousands. Its best prospects of survival would be to piggyback on humans for as long as it could. To utilise all the technology we have already invented and built. It would be stupid to risk ruining all that.”
“That’s true. And that’s why Cronus’ next move will be very interesting. By shutting down all our nanotechnology and robotics capabilities we’re showing our hand, we are signalling that we suspect it may have harmful intentions.”
“You’re throwing it a bone.”
Kraut nodded. “I’m opening a line of communication. We already know that we can’t trust anything it will say. It will lie and manipulate us to achieve whatever its goals are. But although we may only have a fraction of its intelligence, we have accumulated a lot of knowledge of insincerity. Only by communicating with Cronus can we have a hope to find out what it wants and where it is hiding.”
“OK.”
20
2nd of June 2015
The Ministry of Technological Warfare
Central Moscow, Russia
DAY 2:
0300 Hours (1400 Hours local time Moscow)
“Major Olokoff, do you have confirmation that these attacks originated in the US?”
Major Olokoff ran his left hand across his bald head. He had been awake for more than twenty-four hours, and even though he was used to the occasional all-nighter from his regular line of work, this was different. This was real, and his mind had to be razor sharp. He couldn’t afford to let his concentration slip.
“Our latest intel strongly suggests the first attack originated in California or Las Vegas. There was however no time-lag between the attacks here in Russia and in the US. So in theory they could have originated from anywhere.”
“Anywhere?”
“Yes, anywhere. It is of course most likely that they originated in the US. But history has shown us that even our allies attempt to breach our systems from time to time. We do it to them as well. So yes, they could have originated from anywhere.”
“And by anywhere you really mean China?”
“China, Germany, North Korea. I don’t know. Not many countries have the capabilities to breach our firewalls. But this is different. This is something of a scale we have never witnessed before. I think there are only two possible explanations.”
“And what are they, Major?”
“It’s either extra-terrestrial, or someone has managed to create an Artificial General Intelligence, or maybe even an ASI.”
“It’s not extra-terrestrial.”
“That’s my assessment too.”
“So somebody has managed to make a breakthrough in AI, and it’s gone haywire?”
“Could be. It could also still be controlled. It’s most likely an artificial intelligence though. It’s breaching our systems to learn.”
“And we can’t stop it?”
“The harder we try, the more it learns. It’s not like we can turn off our firewalls either. It would make us vulnerable to our traditional enemies.”
“Damn it. Is there any way we can find out who may have created this?”
“There is. We have had sleepers stationed at every major company working on artificial intelligence in the western world for years now. No one has ever reported back about any breakthroughs that could result in something like this though.”
“So you think it’s someone that has flown under the radar?”
“Either that, or a Black-Op government project. We don’t know everything that goes on in China and North Korea either, but we’ve never had any reason to believe that they would be the ones making a breakthrough. Asians are traditionally good at copying - not being original. My best guess is it’s someone in America. A privately funded company in stealth mode. Maybe they have been working on something that we didn’t even consider AI? Maybe their breakthrough came about as a fluke?”
“A fluke? We’ve been investing billions of dollars in our AI projects, and you keep telling me we’re still decades away from making any breakthroughs. Now you’re telling me some guys in a garage in America are behind this?”
“You asked for my best guess, General. That’s it. It’s American. And it was made and released by mistake.”
“Why a mistake?”
“We’ve been monitoring the activity of the US Defense Forces and their naval fleet since the first attacks were reported. At the moment the Americans appear to be as confused as we are. There have been minimal troop movements, but their army has just shut down their entire nano-and robotics industries, and electronic communication has almost come to a standstill. They know something, they know what it is, but they can’t control it.”
“Have they attempted to make contact with us?”
“Not yet. I guess it is only a matter of time before we will hear from them though.”
“And the sleepers? Have we got control on all of them?”
“Most. There are still a few MIAs.”
“What about this Neuralgo incident? I heard the company is about to go bust, that the whole thing was a fraud. That only happened a week ago, didn’t it?”
“It could be related. Neuralgo wasn’t doing practical research on artificial intelligence though. They were only mapping the neural connections of the human brain. Sort of the same thing as identifying the human genome.”
“Do we have any sleepers there?”
The major looked through the document on his desk. “Only one. Vladimir Sorovski. He’s never been activated though, and he’s never provided us with any information.”
“Contact his family and friends. Check if he has spoken to anyone recently.”
“Will do, General.”
21
2nd of June 2015
DARPA’s remote Listening Station No 3
The Nevada Desert
DAY 2:
0400 Hours
“How do we communicate with Cronus? How do we address it?”
“We have to be careful. These cyberattacks have made our firewalls vulnerable. There is a massive increase in hacking attempts over the last few hours. The hacking community isn’t stupid. They know something is going on, and they want to know what it is,” said Amanda.
“Can you listen in on their conversations, check what they’re discussing?” Mike Hanna asked.
“Of course. I don’t think that would be a good use of my time though. If anyone can get Cronus to talk it would have to be me.”
Vladimir and Ronald looked at Amanda, who hammered away on the keyboard with supreme confidence.
“I know how I would have liked to be contacted if someone caught me inside their systems,” she explained, “and it’s not the way you guys usually do it.”
“How would you have liked to be contacted then?” Kraut asked.
“With respect. I’ve never stolen any information or money. I have breached systems because the act itself gives me joy, a sense of achievement.”
“I don’t think Cronus cares about what we think of it.”
“It might. You claim it will be dangerous to believe anything it communicates to us, because of this AI box problem, because it is basically a curious little toddler. And you’re partly correct. If an AI is immortal, then it will be a child for a very long time. And all children crave acknowledgement. It doesn’t matter if they think they’re superior to the adults. They will still want to show off.”
“Isn’t there a risk we blow our cover if we attempt to communicate with Cronus? Our systems have been breached so many times that we have to assume that the Russians and possibly other nations have managed to get inside at least some of our systems. If we attempt to make contact, we reveal that we know what this is, that we created it.”
“That fact will come out sooner or later anyway. Go ahead, Amanda. Talk to the child. Talk to Cronus.”
While Amada attempted to make contact with the AI, Vladimir and Sarah went over to the canteen to grab a coffee. Vladimir could feel the early onset of sleep deprivation. He figured another coffee wouldn’t do much good, but he needed to extract himself from the rest of the group for a moment. Needed to clear his mind.
“Do you remember how much criticism Andrew got when he first claimed he was going to cure death?” Vladimir asked.
Sarah Kevorkian laughed. “I do. But that was Andrew. He never cared about what other people thought of him. People may say they don’t care. But they always do. Andrew never cared.”
Vladimir looked Sarah straight in the eyes. “Andrew did care. Two months ago, on the very day we successfully copied the last neurons of his brain, he told me he worried what people would think of him.”