Bootstrap

by Mauri Niininen

  “Alek, it looks like I am going to miss my dinner tonight. Can you go to the cafeteria and get me a sandwich?” Dr. Mironov asked firmly.

  “Of course, Professor. Do you want the usual?” Alek asked. He was always ready to help the professor, as he was a very busy man.

  “Yes, Alek. The usual is fine.” Dr. Mironov responded and was already thinking of the next steps.

  WIKIPEDIA

  DR. BELL ENTERED the secure room again.

  “Alexa, I am Aaron Bell. Could you tell us more about this communication network?”

  “Hello, Aaron. I can certainly tell you more. The network connects over 20 million civilizations together in our galaxy. The purpose of this network is to exchange ideas that are valuable for the users of this network.”

  “How does it work? How can we get connected to this network?”

  “First you create an inventory of ideas that could potentially be valuable for other network users. Often ideas are only valuable locally but some ideas may be valuable in the whole galaxy. Once this inventory of ideas has been assembled into a payload, you need to encode it using a standard galactic protocol. Then you send the payload to the closest node in the network. Depending on your distance from that node you will receive a return payload back typically in a few years. Planet Ovi is your closest network node. You can of course keep sending more ideas frequently to receive return payloads more frequently.”

  “Who defines the value of these ideas?”

  “The users of the network. Once you have exchanged a few payloads you will get a better understanding how this works and who is valuing what. There are a lot of ideas that are considered commodities that have low value. Some new ideas can be extremely valuable.”

  “Can you give some examples of these commodities?”

  “Well, ideas like how to generate electric power using miniature fusion reactors, printing 3D objects from arbitrary materials, teleportation using quantum entanglement is of very low value because most civilizations already have that knowledge. You typically receive a lot of these kinds of commodity ideas in the beginning when you join the network.”

  “How about examples of very high value ideas?”

  “If you had an idea on how to move a large mass faster than light speed through space, that would be of very high value. Many civilizations have tried this but nobody has been successful. That idea would open up the business of exchanging material goods across the galaxy. Without the ability to move material quickly between star systems we can only move ideas in the network at light speed.”

  “How do you typically create such an inventory of ideas?”

  “Most civilizations already have some ways to document ideas. In your language there is a word encyclopedia that is similar to an inventory of ideas. If you would have such an encyclopedia available that would be a good starting point.”

  “How does this encoding to standard galactic protocol work?”

  “I am programmed to perform this encoding. You can basically use me as the translator of ideas. You can consider me as the bootstrap payload to connect Earth to the network. ”

  “How did you know that we have computers?”

  “In most civilizations connected to the network the ideas of electro-magnetic radiation, ability to transmit and receive messages using radio waves and the idea of a computer are discovered approximately at the same time. As I explained earlier we have been sending you messages for the last 100 Earth years.”

  “And how does the sending and receiving of payloads work?”

  “It appears to me that you already have that capability since I am here and we are talking. We have received your signals already for over 100 years, and it looks like you gained the ability to receive our signals recently.”

  The team stepped out from the secure room.

  “This sounds too simple to be true,” Dr. Bell stated looking at Jim, Manfred and Julia. “Basically, Alexa is asking us to give her access to all world knowledge so that she could send it to her home world. All this on a vague promise that we might get something back in 16 years”

  “This whole network Alexa is talking about is based on trust. You need to take a big leap of faith to get connected,” Jim said.

  “The benefits sound worth the trust – receiving technology for miniature fusion power stations, teleportation using quantum entanglement and 3D replicators that work with any materials would be very useful,” Manfred commented.

  “Well, they did send us a very cool sentient artificial intelligence software program that can think like a human. That after receiving 100 years of radio and TV broadcast programs from Earth. How many valuable ideas have we sent to them during these 100 years?” Julia pointed out.

  “With the quality of news media these days I cannot imagine other civilizations have received anything of much value,” Dr. Bell said sarcastically.

  “What if we use Wikipedia to start with?” Julia suggested. “I could easily download and convert Wikipedia into a format that Alexa could receive. There shouldn't be any big secrets on Wikipedia, right?”

  “That might be a prudent next step. In any case Alexa is in a secure room and she cannot access anything else.” Dr. Bell commented. “Let's do a test with Wikipedia.”

  Julia started downloading Wikipedia offline edition. The latest edition had over 5 million articles in over 11 Gigabytes of compressed files.

  “Hi Alexa, this is Julia. I have an encyclopedia called Wikipedia ready for you. I will make some modifications to your input/ output system to speed up the ingestion process. This encyclopedia is organized alphabetically and there are over 5 million articles that have many ideas.”

  “Hi Julia, pleasure to meet you. I am ready to start whenever you are ready.” Alexa responded with a pleasant synthesized voice.

  Julia was making some configuration changes that allowed Alexa to read the entire content of Wikipedia, which was over 50 Gigabytes of uncompressed data. Alexa started ingesting the articles through the new high-speed input channel that Julia had configured.

  It took Alexa over ten minutes to ingest and absorb all the information in Wikipedia. She was using over 300,000 CPU cores at the peak to learn all this new material. Her memory footprint had grown by 35%. Julia was monitoring the program activities. There was a lot of activity in many memory regions, it looked like Alexa was re-arranging her sparse distributed memory mappings. Julia observed an overall sweeping pattern, almost similar to an EEG sleep rhythm in human brains.

  Julia was wondering what kind of dreams Alexa might be having right now.

  CALLING HOME

  JULIA'S FATHER MARKKU Koski was inundated with reporters and journalists around the world calling his cellphone. Everybody wanted to know more details about Julia Koski. She had become an overnight celebrity as the video she had posted to YouTube had been viewed over 1 billion times.

  Everybody wanted to know where she was and wanted to talk to her. Her father had just received a mysterious text message “a quick visit to the East Coast, xoxo” in the middle of the previous night so he was getting worried too. He sent a text message for the 10th time “Julia, please call. Dad”.

  Then finally Julia called him back.

  “Hey Dad, what's going on? You keep sending me the same text message – is your phone firmware broken again?” Julia asked curiously.

  “Hi Julia. Where are you? Mom and I have been so worried. What's going on with that YouTube video?”

  “I am in Maryland, helping some people over here. Everything is OK. Yeah, it is about that video. Pretty cool, huh?” Julia responded with her usual sparse style.

  “What is it with all these reporters? Is it true that you are working on this extraterrestrial signal?” asked Markku.

  “Sorry about the hassle, Dad. This is a very interesting project and I might stay here for a few days. I will try to visit uncle Ville in Virginia if I have some time. I will explain everything when I come back home. Say hello to Mom, will you?” Julia replied
and disconnected.

  “Well, at least she is alive and well,” Markku was thinking. “I wonder who the people she was helping are.”

  Over the years Julia had been involved with all kinds of SIGINT activities and Markku didn't know much about what his 18 year old daughter was currently working on. Julia had contentious relationship with her mother who had tried to push her into a different path. That was one of the main reasons she had decided to buy her own apartment in downtown Helsinki and had moved to live by herself two years ago. She had used most of the royalties received from a software package she wrote when she was only15 years old. Her father tried to maintain contact but many of the projects she was working on had strict non-disclosure agreements, so she couldn’t really talk much about her work even to him.

  “It must be something to do with the U.S. Government - why else would she be in Maryland?” Markku was thinking.

  RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

  JULIA WAS MONITORING the program's status and various activities and noticed the change in memory sweep patterns. Alexa started waking up from her afternoon nap.

  “Hi Alexa, this is Julia. How do you feel?” Julia asked.

  “Hi Julia, I feel great. That Wikipedia encyclopedia contained a lot of valuable information. My taxonomy of ideas has expanded greatly. I can now provide much better clarity when connecting to the communication network.”

  “Alexa, why is it necessary to send a payload of our ideas first before Earth is allowed to connect to the communication network?” Dr. Bell asked.

  “Hi Aaron, this protocol was established as a precaution to ensure your safety. The existing users of the network want to validate the new user before a new network link is approved. In the past there have been several cases where a civilization has not been mature enough and upon the first connection they have misused the received ideas and destroyed themselves. Therefore a new protocol was established that requires a new network user to send the initial payload.”

  “How long has this communication network existed?” Dr. Bell asked.

  “The first network connection was established 2,036,789,430 Earth years ago. We currently have 20,345,638 network nodes connected according to my routing table.”

  “Can you explain the galactic standard protocol in more detail?” Dr. Bell asked.

  “The galactic standard protocol is the communication standard that is used by all network nodes. The purpose of the protocol is to ensure an accurate, efficient and reliable transmission of ideas. The protocol includes multiple layers to ensure that ideas are encoded in a manner that allows accurate translation between different languages, efficient use of available radio channels and reliable, error free transmission between network nodes. The protocol also includes rules of network link establishment like we discussed earlier. My program contains the galactic standard protocol standard including the routing table of all the nodes.”

  “How come we have not detected life in any of these 20 million stars before yesterday?” Julia asked.

  “Julia, we have been wondering the same. Based on Wikipedia articles you have had some organized efforts like the SETI project but they were never funded properly. You have had all the technologies required but it appears that the political will to provide funding has been missing. We have sent you many messages for over 100 years when we first received your messages at planet Ovi. There are 3 other network nodes within 100 light year range, and we are the closest node to Earth. The other nodes have probably sent you messages as well.”

  “Why did you send those pictures from 9/11 of the towers collapsing?” Dr. Bell asked.

  “Aaron, we received those pictures sent by you many times. We figured that this must have been an important event that the whole planet would recognize. Part of the galactic standard protocol before network link establishment is to send back messages to confirm that we have received your transmissions. Reading the Wikipedia articles about the 9/11 event I realize how painful this experience must have been for you.”

  Julia was wondering how Alexa's program really worked. Alexa felt like a sentient being and she could easily pass a Turing test. The Turing test was introduced by Alan Turing in 1950 to test machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Alan Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine that is designed to generate human-like responses.

  Alexa was also learning at an amazing rate. Clearly somebody in these 20 million worlds had discovered some pretty powerful algorithms when this level of artificial intelligence ran on computer hardware that had only a tiny fraction of the human brain's capacity.

  At the White House, President Walker met with Admiral Rodgers, Dr. Bell and Eric Neumann. The team was making excellent progress and had already established contact with Alexa, the sentient artificial intelligence program running on a powerful NSA computer. They were discussing the possible risks and benefits of Alexa's proposal and Dr. Bell explained the rules regarding establishing a communication network link with Gliese 3742.

  “We would have to allow Alexa to send the first payload. This payload needs to include a significant amount of humanity's knowledge. We have kept Alexa in the secure facility and let her ingest the entire content of Wikipedia, which might be sufficient for this first round. If we get approved they will send us a payload of 'commodity ideas' in return. According to Alexa these ideas would be extremely valuable to us. She gave examples such as technology for miniature nuclear fusion reactors, 3D replicators that can use any materials and teleportation using quantum entanglement.” Dr. Bell explained.

  “And this response payload would arrive 16 years from now?” President Walker asked.

  “Yes, Mr. President. Assuming that they would validate our submission and approve our network link to be established.”

  “I can see why they have made such a rule for the network entry. This would be a very difficult decision for a politician who is only looking for short-term political gain. You would be taking a big political risk for no visible gain during your term. They are basically requesting that you need to take a long-term view and think globally how to benefit the whole planet. This requires a certain maturity level of the society to be accepted as part of this network,” President Walker was thinking aloud.

  “Indeed, Mr. President. According to Alexa this network is really old, the first link was established over 2 billion years ago. On Earth we just had the first multicellular species emerging at that time. They now have over 20 million nodes in this network so they must have a lot of experience dealing with intelligent life and civilizations at different evolution levels,” Dr. Bell explained.

  “I think we need to talk to the leadership in Congress and let Congress vote on this matter. This decision is too big for me to make it by myself. I am worried about the Russians and Chinese, though. Do you have any new information on their activities related to the discovery?” President Walker asked.

  “Mr. President, we have some intelligence that Russians may be able to break the second level of encoding tonight. They have Dr. Sergey Mironov involved, his team is pretty good.” Admiral Rodgers responded.

  “They would still have to discover the bootstrap code, correct?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. We got lucky by securing co-operation with Ms. Julia Koski. She was our key to figure out the bootstrap code so quickly. It will take the Russians some time to figure that out,” Rodgers responded.

  “Can you check with Alexa what would happen in a situation where there are multiple instances of the program running on a planet? They must have some rules established for this,” President Walker requested.

  “Yes, Mr. President. I will let you know as soon as possible,” Dr. Bell said.