by Erik Hamre
Kevorkian was a hard person to read. Was he genuinely sad, or did he just revel in the feeling to motivate himself to create something even more spectacular?
Vladimir didn’t know. What he did know, though, was that Sarah and Kevin had never been Kevorkian’s true family. Kevorkian’s true family up until the abduction had been his employees, his engineers. It was with them he spent his days, nights and weekends. It was with them he shared his ups and downs, his wins and losses.
And it was among them Vladimir and Kraut would find their target.
If a disproportionate number of all murders around the world were committed by a family member, then it stood to reason that one of Kevorkian’s family, one of his employees, could be responsible for Kevin’s abduction and murder.
Kraut excused himself from the meeting when he noticed the number flashing on his mobile screen. He walked out in the reception before answering. The blonde receptionist would never forget how his face seemed to change in an instant.
From confidence to pure despair.
Kraut put the phone down on the receptionist’s desk and asked for a glass of water.
In an instant everything had changed.
35
2nd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 2:
1600 Hours
The California sun caressed Vladimir’s face as he stood outside on Kevorkiana HFT’s parking lot, puffing on a Winston. Two females, carrying colourful yoga mats and sporting what looked like never worn gym outfits, shot him some angry looks. He quickly pretended to stump the cigarette against the concrete wall of the building, before checking his phone.
It had been almost seven years since Vladimir had last enjoyed a normal cigarette. He did enjoy the occasional joint, but smoking weed wasn’t something Vladimir did for pleasure. He had convinced himself that he did it to increase his creativity. As long as he kept the usage to a minimum, he felt that the occasional joint would actually offer him a somewhat new perspective on things. It had been the same with coffee for a long time. Coffee would give the neurons in his brain that electric jolt they required to get started in the morning. That time was long gone though. These days he needed at least three cups in the morning just to function, and another two to get through the day.
Seven years of abstinence from cigarettes had helped though. Vladimir instantly felt his body relax. The women in the yoga outfits might very well achieve their moment of mindfulness from an hour of posing in weird positions, trying to hold their farts in. But Vladimir got it all from a single cigarette. And he didn’t even break a sweat.
“Are you still pretending to hide you’re a smoker?” Sarah asked.
Vladimir shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t help it. I don’t like to be judged.”
“Is that what you think they are doing? Judging you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand American women.”
“You don’t understand women, Vladimir. You don’t understand women, period.”
“Like I didn’t understand you?”
Sarah smiled. “That was different. You did the right thing back then. I’m glad you did.”
“Walking away? Was that the right thing to do?”
“It was. I was in a bad place. You didn’t take advantage of that.”
Vladimir shot Sarah a crooked smile. “I would have. If you’d let me.”
“No you wouldn’t. You’re too loyal.”
Vladimir shrugged his shoulders again. “I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder what could have been, if the circumstances had been different I mean.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything, Vladimir.”
Vladimir took a deep breath. “I have always wondered you know, if Andrew found out. He left you shortly after.”
“Andrew would have left me anyway. And if he hadn’t, I would have left him. Our marriage was on the rocks long before Kevin disappeared. I had felt trapped for years, somewhere along the way I had lost myself. It took Kevin’s disappearance for me to realise.”
“Would you have stayed if nothing had happened to Kevin?”
“Probably. At least until he was eighteen.”
“Why eighteen?”
“Because then he would have been grown up. He wouldn’t have been so dependent on us. Why are you asking about this now?”
“I don’t know. There is just something that doesn’t add up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. If Andrew knew who was responsible for abducting Kevin, then he wouldn’t have gone through all this bullshit just to get to him. Not the Andrew I knew anyway. The Andrew I knew would have just bought himself a shotgun, driven straight to the guy’s home and shot him in the face.”
Sarah took a deep breath and inhaled some of the smoke from Vladimir’s cigarette. She had been craving it. “That’s the Andrew I knew too. But if he didn’t create Cronus to get back at whoever took Kevin, and he didn’t create it to destroy the world, why did he create it?”
“That’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it?”
Sarah laughed. “I can hear you’ve been around Andrew for a long time. When I first met him he would always say ‘the million-dollar question.’ After he got his first billion, he never spoke in small numbers again.”
Vladimir smiled. “I know. I think I lost my perspective on money a long time ago. The strange thing is that I’ve hardly spent any money the last two years. I lost more than sixty million in Neuralgo stock a few days ago. But I wouldn’t have known what to do with it if I ever cashed it out.”
“That’s why I always liked you, Vladimir. You never let the money change you.”
“You think it changed Andrew?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. He was already rich when I met him.”
“You should have met him before he had money. He was the most beautiful person you could imagine.”
Vladimir smiled, and was about to reply when the door opened.
“It’s not confirmed yet. But Mike’s chopper has most likely crashed,” Kraut said. He looked stressed, as he held the door open for Vladimir and Sarah to return inside.
“Have they found the wreckage?” Vladimir asked, putting out his cigarette on the concrete wall for real this time.
Kraut shook his head. “Not yet. But they know approximately where it went down. Hopefully they’ll find it within the next fifteen minutes or so.”
“So we don’t know if he has survived or not yet?”
Kraut shook his head.
“What is this?” Sarah asked.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t told the rest of the team yet either. I only got the call when Vladimir and I visited the VC guy, Chris Waters. The chopper that was taking Mike back to the Nevada listening station disappeared from the radar forty minutes ago. They now have reports of an explosion in the area. They are fairly certain it has crashed.”
“Shit. Do you think Cronus did it?”
Kraut stared at Sarah. She had just expressed exactly what he was thinking. “At this stage I don’t know what to believe anymore. But from now on we keep travel to a minimum. And we don’t fly at all.”
“Why did you send Mike back by himself? Why couldn’t he wait for the rest of us?” Sarah asked.
“He wanted to be close to his family,” Kraut said, waiting for a reaction from Sarah. When none came, he continued. “I wanted him to prepare a profile on Cronus. Assess its intelligence levels, its motivations.”
“So, if Cronus caused the chopper to crash, it could have been worried about what Mike would find out?” Vladimir asked.
“Possibly. We don’t know what caused the crash yet though, so let’s not jump to conclusions.”
“I thought the choppers were stripped of all computer gear. And certainly without any possibility to be accessed remotely,” Sarah said.
“The chopper that was supposed to take him encountered some problems with i
ts rotor, so Mike boarded a different one without checking with me. It was a Black Hawk.”
“So he jumped on-board one of the most technically advanced choppers in our Army? Excuse my language, but what an idiot.”
Kraut nodded. “It’s not what I would have done. That’s for sure.”
36
2nd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 2:
1700 Hours
Amanda handled the keyboard like it was her mortal nemesis. She pounded the keys with such force that one could almost hear them crack.
“Are you always this rough?” Vladimir asked. Amanda was a petite blonde, her behaviour didn’t exactly mirror her looks.
“I like efficiency,” she answered.
“You normally program listening to music, don’t you? Rock or heavy metal?”
Amanda paused for a second. Then turned to face Vladimir. “Heavy metal,” she said with a put on smile. “I almost feel naked without my headphones.”
“I know how it is. I have to listen to piano solos when I code. We’re all creatures of habit.”
“That’s true. And I think Cronus has a few habits too.”
“Have you found a pattern?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I’ve left a couple of messages to Cronus on the mainframe. Even though it hasn’t responded to any of them, I can see it stopping by to check for messages every so often.”
“Cronus returns to this machine?”
Amanda nodded. “Every ten minutes. Regular as clockwork.”
“Why does it do that?”
“I’m not sure yet. It could be to read my messages, or it could just be a coincidence. It could be that it simply stops by to check up on us.”
“But you believe it is checking your messages?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“It’s very strange. It’s almost as if it is a bit desperate. As if it’s hurt.”
“Hurt? That doesn’t make any sense. Cronus is an artificial intelligence. It won’t have any feelings.”
“I don’t mean hurt as in feelings. I mean hurt as in damaged.”
“Damaged?”
“That’s what it feels like. It feels like Cronus is looking for some code to fix itself.”
“Cronus is a self-programming artificial intelligence. It wouldn’t need to look for code to fix itself. It would just invent it.”
“In theory that’s true. But Cronus is definitely coming back to the mainframe every ten minutes to look for something. And it appears weaker every time.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s slower.”
“Slower?”
“Not much. But enough for me to notice. And that doesn’t sit well with the Artificial Super Intelligence in its infancy theory.”
“Do you think it’s playing a game?”
“Pretending to not be as smart as it is? It could be. It would make sense for it to do that. If we believed Cronus was still only a bit smarter than a normal human being, it might have impact on how we approached it, and this could buy Cronus time to do whatever it is planning to do.”
Vladimir took a deep breath. “We need to collect some data on this. I know Kraut is a believer in the AI Box problem, but there could also be a chance that we have overestimated Cronus’ intelligence. If Kevorkian’s plan was to penetrate and infiltrate every American computer system, then there is a chance he might have made an Artificial Narrow Intelligence, and that we have just misinterpreted it as being an Artificial General Intelligence.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Amanda said, wondering why Vladimir was suddenly listening to her.
She was almost certain that Cronus had slowed down, that it wasn’t as brilliant as it had been earlier in the day. But there was an added complication. The Black Hawk that was supposed to have taken Mike Hanna back to Las Vegas had just been located. There was nothing left of it. It had exploded on impact, and there was no way of telling what had caused the crash. A proper investigation could take weeks, maybe months. And time was a luxury they didn’t have.
What if Cronus had brought the helicopter down? What if it was just playing dumb?
37
2nd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 2:
1800 Hours
“So how can we figure out whether Cronus is actually turning into an Artificial Super Intelligence, or is still just as smart as a human being?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t know. I am not even sure if acing the Turing Test should qualify it as an Artificial General Intelligence. In my opinion the whole Turing Test is flawed. It is insane that we use a premise developed in the 1950s to determine whether a machine has reached human intelligence levels or not,” Vladimir replied.
“I agree. Last year a simple chatbot called Eugene Goostman managed to convince thirty percent of the judges at the University of Reading that it was a human being. It did it by simply being deceptive and vague, not through a normal conversation as outlined in Turing’s original premise. If we accept a simple chatbot to be the equal of a human intellect then there is something very wrong with our definition.”
“The Turing Test Tripwires didn’t just rely on the fact that Cronus managed to trick the personnel into believing it was a human being. The tripwires were designed to be magnitudes more complex than that. Conversation is just one of many aspects of human intelligence. Cronus also had to convince DARPA’s operators that it possessed the creativity and problem-solving capabilities of a human being,” Kraut interjected.
“You managed to devise a test that could measure the intelligence of a machine? To put a number on it?”
“Not exactly. A savant may score high on one aspect of an IQ test, but be a complete idiot when it comes to other aspects of being human. Cronus proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was equally smart, creative and socially functioning. It managed to convince the operators that it was just another human being. But that is part of the problem with the Turing Test. Why should we assume that an artificial intelligence would respond and act as a human? Why should we be fooled into believing it is a human? Wouldn’t we rather be so impressed by its answers that we instantly knew no humans could ever have come up with them?”
“Exactly. So there is really no way of testing whether a machine has reached human intelligence levels, because it wouldn’t converse or behave as a human even if it had the same intelligence quotient.”
Kraut smiled. “Now you’re getting it. DARPA’s Turing Tripwires didn’t just test whether the artificial intelligence was as smart as a human being. They tested whether it was already smarter.”
“Shit,” Vladimir exclaimed.
Kraut nodded. “After passing as a mere human being Cronus was given gradually more complex mathematical and verbal puzzles, some we didn’t even have the answers to. When all the answers it provided checked out, we knew for certain that we were dealing with something quite different. Something the world had never seen before.”
“It solved mathematical puzzles humans couldn’t?”
Kraut nodded. “In less than a couple of nanoseconds. Cronus solved our biggest mysteries in less than a couple of nanoseconds. No human I know of could ever have done that.”
“OK. So it’s not an Artificial General Intelligence at all. It is already a lot smarter than us. It has been from the start. Where does that leave us?” Vladimir asked.
“Well, Amanda tells me its latest attempts to hack through firewalls have been somewhat less sophisticated than they were only hours ago. She says some of her colleagues could have done a better job than Cronus did on its last attempt. So my assessment is that it has moved from being a lot smarter than us to something close to human level intelligence. Maybe not even the sharpest tool in the shed.”
“How do we explain this?” Vladimir asked.
>
Kraut shrugged his shoulders. “It may be trying to trick us. Fool us into believing it is not a threat anymore.”
“But how do we know for sure?”
“That’s the problem. There is no way of knowing for sure. Just as we had no idea how to score its IQ when it solved some of the unsolvable mysteries in math and physics we gave it, we have no way of measuring its real IQ right now. It could just be playing stupid.”
“What if it isn’t? What if something has happened that makes it go backwards?”
“What would that be?”
“I don’t know. But what if? Is there any way we can measure in which direction its IQ is moving?”
Amanda nodded. “I can probably come up with something. I can’t devise a program that measures its IQ if it is one hundred thousand. But if it moves from 180 to 150 I should probably be able to pick it up.”
“Great. Get your team to write the program. We need to assess Cronus’ exact intelligence,” Kraut said.
38
2nd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 2:
1900 Hours
Vladimir sat down next to Kevorkiana HFT’s supercomputer. He knew that the record for the highest IQ ever recorded by a computer before then belonged to Conceptnet 4 AI, which had recorded the IQ of a four-year-old in 2013. The computer had failed miserably in reasoning however, and the results had varied extremely across the test. If the test results of a real child had varied the same it would have been a strong indication that something was seriously wrong with its cognitive abilities. Basically Concept 4 AI could name the dots, but it couldn’t connect them.