by Erik Hamre
“OK.”
“What if they don’t lead anywhere? What if it is another dead end?” Vladimir asked.
“Well then at least we’ll know they are not GPS coordinates. But they have to mean something. The numbers have to mean something.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Amanda said. “If Kevorkian created Cronus, he could have just programmed those coordinates directly into its code. Why go to the trouble of playing roulette in the casino? Why show us?”
“The casinos are under constant video surveillance. Kevorkian knew we would find him the moment he set his foot inside the Crown Casino. And he knew we would have footage of all the bets he placed. He wanted us to see this. The only question is why.”
Vladimir closed his eyes as he took a deep breath. It was hard to place Kevorkian in a bracket. Most people would call him a gambler. The way he went all in when developing new technology or managing his own money. But Kevorkian viewed risk differently from most people. Most people as wealthy as Kevorkian spread their risk. They diversified by investing in property and mutual funds. Made sure that their wealth would last for generations. Kevorkian piled everything into his latest venture, into the things he controlled. In Kevorkian’s mind it was always riskier to invest your money in a company over which you had very little influence, compared to in a company where you made all the decisions yourself. He didn’t care about beta, standard deviations or ROIs. He only cared about the things he could control. And roulette was a game of random chance - there was no way of influencing the outcome of the game.
Vladimir knew there was no way Kevorkian would have been wasting a million bucks playing roulette unless there was some deeper meaning behind the act.
And suddenly Vladimir understood that the purpose of the roulette game hadn’t been to send a coded message to Cronus.
It hadn’t even been to send a hidden message to the government.
The purpose had been to send a coded message to Vladimir.
To make Vladimir understand what Kevorkian was attempting to achieve, without spelling it out in plain words for everyone else to see.
It was another one of Kevorkian’s puzzles.
Vladimir studied the numbers again.
45
3rd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 3:
0300 Hours
Major Olokoff placed his hand on Kraut’s left shoulder. “You have to come up with a way to call off Protocol Cronus. It is winter, and Russia is cold, very cold. People won’t survive if the electricity is suddenly turned off. I would rather let the world take its chance on being surpassed by something smarter than us. Maybe it is not such a bad thing after all? If you look at the state of the Earth, it is hard to argue we have been looking after it well.”
“I’m sorry, Olokoff. There is nothing I can do. Protocol Cronus was activated the moment the artificial intelligence attempted to access our nuclear weapons systems. It is out of my hands. Out of the hands of everyone. Even the President.”
“Why on Earth would your government design a system with no failsafe?”
“It had to be that way. We all knew the first Artificial General Intelligence would eventually become smarter than us. By definition it would then win every negotiation it would ever enter into. It would outsmart us in any way it could. And when it officially became an Artificial Super Intelligence it would be able to tempt us with irresistible offers: A cure for cancer. An end to hunger. Immortality. No person alive, not even the President, would have been able to resist the temptation of being offered the opportunity to live forever, or save a loved one from illness. We had to make this an automated response to avoid getting corrupted in the event we actually created an Artificial Super Intelligence.”
“But we don’t even know if this is an Artificial Super Intelligence,” Olokoff barked.
“We know it triggered the Turing Test Tripwires.”
“Which might, at best, make it the equivalent of a human intelligence.”
“The equivalent of a very smart human.”
“Maybe. But there is a big leap from acquiring a human intelligence level to a dangerous super intelligence level. And as far as I understand nothing Cronus has ever done has provided you with any firm evidence this is close to happening. There is not a shred of evidence that Cronus is on the cusp of an intelligence explosion.”
“Olokoff is correct. There is no evidence Cronus has progressed from a human intelligence level, Kraut. None. So why was Protocol Cronus initiated? What triggered it?” Amanda asked.
Kraut studied his old friend, Olokoff. They were almost the same age, but Olokoff looked a good twenty years older. He had lived a rough life in Russia. And he was most likely correct. The survival rate would be much lower in Russia than the US. Because the US would be much better equipped to ride out the storm that was about to hit them.
“It was triggered by Cronus attempting to access our nuclear weapons systems,” Kraut repeated.
“But that is not an indication Cronus has reached higher than human intelligence levels. If anything it is an indication that it still remains on par with human intelligence levels. It’s stupid. It is stupid enough to go to war with humans. It is stupid enough to attempt killing humans when we could live together in peace.”
Kraut shook his head. “It would have been too late to initiate Protocol Cronus when the AI had acquired access to our nuclear weapons systems. It would have been able to shut them down then, thus eliminating our only means of defense against it.”
“What happened to negotiations? What happened to not fearing the worst all the time?”
“We don’t need to fear the worst. We already know what will happen. There is only one end game when humans get surpassed on the food chain. The President just made sure that would never happen. He made sure that God’s creation will still rule, indefinitely.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Is that was this is about? Who is going to be our God? The President couldn’t stomach a world where humans weren’t at the centre of the universe anymore, a world where the almighty God finally got some much needed competition. Unbelievable.”
Kraut shook his head, before turning to leave. “We’re saving humanity, Olokoff. That’s what we are doing.”
“Is there really no way to stop this?” Olokoff asked Vladimir.
Vladimir shrugged his shoulders. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve read Protocol Cronus. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop the nuclear bombs once they have been armed.”
“How is one man allowed to decide the fate of the world? I thought the United States was a democracy, and now you are telling me that the President has just exercised his power to doom us all? How was he able to get this through the Senate?”
“Kraut classified the birth of the first Artificial Super Intelligence as an extinction event for Earth.”
“An extinction event?”
“Yes. There were already extensive protocols in place for the President’s authoritative powers if Earth should ever face an extinction event. If a large asteroid was heading towards Earth, and the resulting collision would mean the extinction of all life on Earth, then the President already had in his possession the power to decide whatever he deemed necessary to ensure the survival of humankind. Bombard the asteroid with nuclear weapons; go ahead. Build a manned space station with an elite selection of people, give them enough food and resources to maybe survive the Earth getting destroyed; No problem. If the Earth ever faced a certain extinction event, the President had the Senate’s backing to avoid the human race dying with it. At all costs.”
“So by simply defining the birth of the first Artificial Super Intelligence a certain extinction event the President acquired the powers to order the EMP blast? Fuck. He acquired the power to send the world two centuries back in time, and kill billions of people, due to a technicality?”
Vladimir nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
“That is
truly fucked up. This country is truly fucked up.”
Vladimir shook his head. “I didn’t expect this either. I didn’t expect it at all. But that’s the thing isn’t it? You don’t look for the things you don’t expect. I guess nobody could imagine the leader of the largest democracy in the world having so much power at his fingertips, and that he would even consider using it.” Vladimir placed a hand on Olokoff’s shoulder. “You should probably make that call to your family. Kraut was right about that too. In a couple of hours you won’t be able to make any calls. And crossing the Atlantic will be impossible for a very long time.”
Vladimir put his arms around Sarah Kevorkian as she started crying. “It’s going to be OK,” he said.
“It’s not,” Sarah sobbed. “It’s not.”
46
3rd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 3:
0400 Hours
About seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, and those vast oceans and lakes contain almost ninety-seven percent of all Earth’s water. So it didn’t come as a huge surprise to Vladimir when it turned out that all the historic coordinates from Kevorkian’s GPS receiver were above water. Amanda had only been able to track down the last three transmissions to the receiver, as the company providing the service didn’t keep records further back in time. It was obvious that the transmissions weren’t caused by a faulty GPS device or other technical issues though. The CEO of the company in question, Travis Ray, remembered Kevorkian well. Travis Ray had been on the receiving end of a fair few abusive phone calls from the company’s founder over the years. And to a certain degree it was understandable.
The company’s engineers hadn’t been able to find any faults with the equipment. For all intents and purposes it appeared that someone turned on the GPS tracker on the date of Kevin’s abduction, every single year. They then left it on for exactly ten seconds, before switching it off again. Just enough time for the GPS signal to be picked up.
Never any more.
Never any less.
But it had always been quite obvious that the signal had never been sent from the locations it appeared to be sent from.
It was always from the middle of an ocean somewhere. Always in a remote place where there were no known boats or ships at the time of the transmission.
When Kevorkian had claimed that someone had been able to hack the system, that someone must have built in a delay or was distorting the signals, Travis Ray had been deeply offended. He couldn’t explain what was happening with Kevorkian’s GPS receiver, and he understood the tragic circumstances surrounding the ordeal had to be stressful for Kevorkian, but in the end he’d had enough. He had banned Kevorkian from contacting the company’s engineers, and gone to court to get a restraining order issued for Kevorkian. For the last twelve months Kevorkian hadn’t been allowed to come within two hundred feet of Travis or his company’s headquarters.
That hadn’t stopped Kevorkian from making phone calls though. Travis Ray had been called up three times last year. Always in the middle of the night. Kevorkian with another outrageous theory of what could have caused the pings to the GPS receiver.
None of the theories had checked out though. Travis had gone to extreme lengths to please Kevorkian. He was after all one of the original inventors of the product they sold, and he was a well-respected man in the Valley.
But one could only do so much.
Some people were impossible to please.
“They’re obviously not GPS coordinates,” Kraut said.
Vladimir nodded. “But what are they?”
“The three sets of digits we obtained from TrakTek correspond perfectly with some of the numbers Kevorkian played at the roulette table. So I think it is safe to assume that the other sequences of numbers are the coordinates that were transmitted to the receiver in the years we don’t have data for.”
“I think that is a fair assumption. But it doesn’t help us much. None of those coordinates make any sense either. They just point to random places in various oceans around the world.”
“I know. It’s frustrating. The numbers have to mean something. But what?”
“Maybe that’s what Kevorkian wanted Cronus to find out? Kevorkian was a brilliant man, the smartest man I have ever known,” Vladimir said. “Before he hired me twelve years ago, he made me solve all these puzzles. It was his way of making sure I was smart enough to work for him.”
“Don’t most companies do that these days?” Sarah asked.
“They do. I’ve had to answer my share of stupid questions to Google and Facebook during career days at MIT,” Amanda said. “And all I wanted was the free pizza.”
“That’s different though. Those companies are interested in learning how you think, making sure that your head is screwed on right. Kevorkian didn’t care about how I arrived at the answers. He just wanted them to be correct.”
“You think the coordinates may have been sent from someone who knew him well, maybe an old colleague or employee?” Kraut asked.
Vladimir nodded. “We’ve been looking at investors and competitors. People we assumed could have developed a grudge against Kevorkian when he took TrakTek public. What about employees Kevorkian sacked prior to the IPO? What about employees being overlooked for promotions?”
“Are you serious? Do you think someone would have gone to the extent of killing Kevorkian’s son, and then taunting him for years afterwards, just because they got passed over for a promotion?”
“I don’t know. But it’s possible. I don’t know the hard numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is more common for a begrudged employee to kill his boss than for an investor who lost out on a deal to do the same. For investors it is just money. For employees it is a lot of other things as well. Pride, recognition - for many people in the tech industry their job is their life. You take that away, and there’s not that much left.”
“This is not an exact figure. But I just Googled dead bosses, and one of the results says 1 in 10 bosses who die at work is murdered. That’s good enough for me,” Sarah said.
“OK. Let’s start looking into former employees of Kevorkian’s companies. Focus on TrakTek. If the receiver has been tampered with, then it is most likely by someone who has experience with that particular technology.”
47
3rd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 3:
0500 Hours
The various members of the Cronus team remember the day they spent in Kevorkiana High Frequency Trading’s premises very differently. Vladimir remembers his awe when he first entered the premises and witnessed the scope of Andrew Kevorkian’s deception. ‘I looked at that massive computer in the middle of the room and I wasn’t sure whether I should be angry or impressed. That was the first time I realised, without any shadow of a doubt, that Kevorkian had been successful, that he had actually created life. That he had changed history.’
‘I remember this excruciating feeling of loneliness,’ Sarah explained to me. ‘It was different from any other feeling I’ve ever experienced before. I’ve always had my faith, always believed that humans were special, that there would be a life after this. Knowing that my ex-husband had successfully created something that was as complex and beautiful as the human mind was almost incomprehensible. It made me question my faith. I still believe in God. But that day made me really question my faith.’
They all experienced that day differently. But they all had the same experience when General Swartz, unannounced, barged into the control room at five o’clock in the morning.
“We’re shutting you down,” he bellowed to Kraut, who was busy running the GPS coordinates through the supercomputers at DARPA, looking for any connections between the numbers and anything to do with Kevorkian. Several hours earlier DARPA had been granted full access to the databases belonging to Google and all the other
big data companies in the Valley. To say that the big shots at the various tech companies were happily handing over the data would be an exaggeration. But confronted with a directive from the President they had no real options. Most of them stopped balking when they saw Ronald Kraut’s name on the top of the directive anyway. They might not have held much respect for the President, or the Government in general, but they all had immense respect for Ronald Kraut. If there was ever a person they would willingly hand their data over to - it would be Kraut.
“You can’t shut us down. We’re finally making progress.”
“Making progress on what?”
“We’re getting closer to understanding why Kevorkian created this thing.”
“Your job was to stop it. You have failed at that. There is nothing more you can do, Kraut. Protocol Cronus has already been invoked.”
“I was wrong. I don’t think we need to kill it.”
“You were wrong? You made the President sign off on the biggest human mass-killing in history, and now you’re telling me you think you were wrong?”
“I am.”
“Do you want to convey that message to the President?”
“I do. I think it is important that he knows the truth.”
“The truth?”
“We believe the intelligence explosion has stalled.”
“What do you mean stalled?”
“Cronus doesn’t appear to be getting any smarter. If anything he appears to be getting dumber.”
“Cronus? Have you named it?”
“Doesn’t matter. We just needed to call it something,” Kraut said, biting his lip for his mistake – in a moment of thoughtlessness he had referred to Cronus as a person.
“It does matter. You’ve come too close, Kraut. This is what you warned the President about in your report. The AI would use every trick in the book, and every trick that wasn’t in the book, to convince you that it wasn’t a threat. You’ve just been duped. Of course it’s not getting dumber. That doesn’t make any sense. Why would it go backwards? Why would it make a dumber version of itself?”