Evolution 2.0: The Singularity is Here

by Richard Childers

  “How do you do, Miss Gilbert, I’m Bob Fincher.”

  “Of course you are,” she said. “I recognized you immediately. And please call me Jean. Hello Colin.”

  “Hi Jean. How was the move?”

  “Interesting. I’ll tell you all about it later. Jay loves the boat. He’s been fiddling with the machinery ever since he came on board. Your engineer was a bit upset at first but then he saw how well that Jet Ski ran after Jay retuned it. He’s promised to show him the engines later.”

  As we came aboard, Jay Moore seemed to pull into himself much like a turtle pulling into his shell and he avoided so much as looking at us. We didn’t make an issue of it and Bob and I climbed the stairs to the main deck lounge and settled into the overstuffed sofas that curved around the stern of the boat. Jean called out to us that she was going to take Jay to the bridge so he could watch us get underway. “He gives new meaning to the word shy,” I said to Bob while the steward pulled a bottle of Dom Perignon from a silver bucket with the Nepenthe logo etched into its side.

  “Not really,” Bob answered with a wistful look at Jean and her charge as they headed to the bridge. “I wasn’t all that different from him when I was young. I suffered from Asperger’s syndrome when I was a kid. They didn’t really have a name for it then but now I know what it was. I didn’t communicate very well and I was incredibly shy and introverted. I think that’s what drew me to computers. They didn’t ever get exasperated when I tried and failed to communicate. They never thought I was stupid.”

  “How old were you when you started using a computer?” I asked

  “I was fourteen. I saw the Altair 8800 on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975. It was a kit sold by a couple of guys in Albuquerque New Mexico. I ordered one immediately, expecting it to arrive the next week. Two months later I was still waiting. Every day I would wait at the mailbox until the postman arrived without my box. When it finally arrived in the mail, I opened the box and didn’t stop until it was completely assembled two days later. I didn’t go to school or stop to eat or sleep until it was working. My parents let me get away with it because they had never seen me so involved with anything.”

  “That’s so cool! You’re the first person I ever met who actually owned an Altair.”

  “I still own it. And it still works. I keep it in my office to remind me of my roots. It had a series of toggle switches on the front face that fed binary data directly into the memory of the machine. You threw a switch to load the code into the machine’s memory and each switch triggered a red LED light. The switches and lights were the only interface and all you could do is make the lights blink but I loved it. It didn’t do much but it did what I told it to do and that was a revelation of sorts. Altair released a version of BASIC a month or two later and I set out to learn how to write code. I’ve been coding ever since. I bought an Apple 1 a little over a year later and things really started to take off for me. The Apple was a much more powerful computer, even though only 200 of them were ever built. I paid $666.66 for my Apple. And I really got off on the string of sixes. Six was my favorite number. When I met Steve Wozniak years later I asked him about that price and he told me he liked repeating digits too. They tell me my Apple is worth more than half a million dollars.”

  “You still have the Apple too?”

  “Of course I do. It still runs too. I think I probably have every computer I ever bought. I have a hard time letting go of things I like. You have to understand these machines defined my life. Until I got my hands on a computer, I was the most miserable kid on earth. I didn’t have any friends. Hell, I didn’t even come close. I was that weird kid who always sat in the back of the class and never talked to anybody. I was bullied most every day I was in High School. And I didn’t even react to it. I never let anything in through my defensive shield and my lack of reaction seemed to make the bullies tire of me pretty quickly. I actually think that increased my isolation because it seemed to protect me. But I could sit down at that computer and enter into a whole different world, one where I was in control. I remember thinking that this was what it felt like to be God as I watched those red blinking lights spit out a progression that I directed. It was pure magic. But enough about me. We’re underway and I’m sure the sails are about to begin unfurling. God, I love to watch this happen. This 170 foot behemoth transforms into a white winged bird, gliding across the surface of the sea in an effortless dance. It’s a transitional moment when the diesels die and all you can hear is the sound of the wind and the water as it cleaves to Napenthe’s passage. You know what Napenthe means?”

  “No, I’ve been to the restaurant in Big Sur but I don’t know the origin of the word.”

  “It’s taken from Greek mythology. It is the drug of forgetfulness. An antidepressant if you will.”

  “Well,” I said. “It’s working for me” as we picked up speed, heading out of Sausalito towards the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a sunny afternoon but there were whips of fog clinging to the bridge’s towers and creating a sense of mystery as we passed through the gate, heading for the open sea. I could just see the hazy shape of the nearest of the Farrallon Islands on the distant horizon.

  “Have you been to the Farrallons?” Bob asked.

  “No. This will be my first visit.”

  “They’re sometimes called the Devil’s Teeth. A group of jagged, barren rocks jutting out of the Pacific twenty five miles off the coast. Actually, they used to be the western coast of North America. When the last ice age ended, the rise in the ocean flooded this whole area, leaving just the tips of some ragged geologic up-thrusts above the water. The San Andreas Fault is just a few miles east of the islands and it’s the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates. English privateer Sir Francis Drake stopped there in 1539 to collect seal meat and eggs. And during the gold rush eggs from those islands fed the minors in the gold fields. Several groups of egg gatherers fought a virtual war as they plundered the islands and as a result, the bird population, thought to be in the hundreds of thousands, was decimated. At the height of the gold rush, over 500,000 eggs a month were taken from the small islands. The fur trade took its toll too. In 1810 two American ships alone took over 30,000 seal pelts from the islands. By 1825 they were gone, killed to the last seal and they didn’t really begin to repopulate the islands until 1996. Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order protecting the islands and in 1969 they became a National Wildlife Refuge. Mankind has not been kind to these islands and the surrounding seas. Over 50,000 barrels of nuclear waste were dumped in the waters just off the islands over the 24 years from 1946 to 1970.”

  I was stunned. “Fifty thousand barrels of nuclear waste is sitting on the bottom of the sea just twenty five miles from San Francisco? What is the government doing about it?”

  “I believe they think it would be more dangerous to move them than it is to leave them alone. And who knows? They may be right.”

  By the time Bob and I had finished that bottle of champagne, we had sighted at least a dozen porpoises and almost as many seals and sea lions. A fishing trawler with a cordon of seabirds circling overhead passed us by on its way back to the bay. A few of the birds broke away from the trawler and flew around us as if checking to see if we might offer them a tidbit, but when we paid them no attention, they returned to their previous pickings, diving to fight over a fish head tossed off of the boat by the man who was cleaning his catch. About halfway to our destination, the steward drew our attention to a plume of water off our starboard bow. “Whale” he shouted.

  Bob picked up his phone and signaled the captain. “Have Thomas launch a drone and send it to film that whale. I would like to see what kind it is. I’m betting it’s a Blue. And tell my guest what we are doing. I expect they will want to look at the live video feed.”

  “You have a drone?” I asked.

  “Several in fact. Come on, let’s move into the salon and turn on the television. The picture will be shown on the as soon as the camera is activate
d.”

  In just a few moments Jean and Jay came in from the bridge. The excitement of seeing a whale overcame Jay’s shyness and his face was alive as he stood in front of the fifty inch high definition monitor that was now showing an aerial view of an enormous whale cruising just under the surface of the ocean in full view of the cameras. It was so big, at first I thought I was looking at a submarine but then it breached once again, exhaling a huge cloud of vapor into the air above him. I heard Jay ask Jean in a quiet voice, “Where is the camera?”

  “It’s on a drone being piloted from the bridge. You want to watch them fly it?” Jay nodded his enthusiastic response to that idea and the two of them disappeared in the direction of the bridge.

  Fincher looked at me with a gleam in his eye and said, “That young man seems to have a keen interest in all things mechanical. I would guess that he’s attracted by the straightforward nature of gears and pistons. None of the complexity of dealing with people.” While we talked the picture suddenly became altered to a series of jerky motions and seemingly uncontrolled moves. “It looks like Jay has convinced the skipper to give him the controls.”

  “Is it all right? Isn’t that drone a pretty expensive toy?”

  “Upwards of fifty thousand dollars including the camera rig. Don’t worry, I can afford it.”

  “I’m surprised the captain gave him the controls.”

  Fincher shook his head and replied, “I told him to give Moore a free hand so long as he can’t sink the ship in the process. I want to see how Jay reacts. And it did get him talking and that’s a step in the right direction.” After a few minutes the erratic flight of the drone smoothed out and a short while later the camera closed in on the breaching whale then hovered over the dark form in the water. When the Blue spouted, the camera image caught the plume in perfect light, a rainbow forming above the leviathan’s body. “What a perfectly beautiful shot!” Fincher exclaimed. “It didn’t take him long to gain a mastery of flying. Young Dr. Moore is full of surprises.”

  By sunset we were passing along Southeast Farrallon Island and a smaller island called Maintop. The sea was calm and we could sail fairly close to the craggy rocks. There was a small house visible on Maintop and I assumed it served as a base for visiting researchers. Bob brought the image from the shark tracking app up on the salon screen and we could see that a great white was cruising on the other side of the island. The app identified the shark as Arden Grace, a great white that was usually found far to the south near Guadalupe Island. Fincher picked up the phone and told the captain to see if he could get us a glimpse of shark before it grew too dark for sighting. And sure enough, less than a half hour later the captain hailed us over the intercom and announced, “Arden Grace is just off our pot bow.” We all hurried to the bow of the Napenthe and were rewarded with the sight of a large fin cutting through the water at a leisurely pace.

  Fincher looked at it through his Leica binoculars and said, “I can see the electronic tag attached to her fin.” He handed me the glasses and I saw a small transmitter attached to the shark’s dorsal fin that trailed a short antenna to broadcast the signal. “There are more than 25 Great Whites being tracked by this system. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “I’ll say,” I replied just as the huge shark suddenly changed direction and plunged towards the island’s shore with an abrupt burst of speed. A moment later she reappeared as she erupted from the water with a seal still struggling between the shark’s massive jaws. A few seconds later, she dove with her catch leaving a bloody froth on the surface to mark where we had seen her dive.

  Jay yelled with obvious delight, “Did you see that? That’s fantastic!” And indeed it was truly fantastic. I am not sure that I had ever seen anything quite as compelling and equally terrifying as the sight of that shark’s kill. For a moment it almost seemed as if the shark, looking at us with the seal in her jaws was asking us if we wanted to argue with her about whose seal it was. Her primal look sent a shiver down my spine.

  That evening Fincher, Jean, and I dined in the main salon. Jay Moore chose to take his dinner on the deck in case another shark swam by. Even though he had finally spoken to me, I knew that sitting down to dinner with three people was not comfortable for him. When the steward served us Orange Duck on wild rice with asparagus au gratin and fresh baked popovers, Jean said, “This looks wonderful. Jay talked the chef into fixing him his favorite dinner, macaroni and cheese. You should have seen Chef! He finally gave in and fixed a mac and cheese made with fresh pasta and three kinds of imported French cheese. Jay ate it but he looked as if he wondered why it wasn’t as good as the one from the Kraft box.”

  “He seems to be enjoying himself,” Fincher commented.

  “Oh, he is,” Jean answered. “He was thrilled to see that Great White today. He told me he’s read all about them but he never thought he would see one close up.”

  “Well tomorrow he can see one really close up if he wants,” Fincher said.

  “How’s that?” Jean asked.

  “I have a small submarine in a hold below decks. I will take four of us and a pilot. If Jay would like to go out, we should be able to observe the sharks right in their natural habitat.”

  “You have a submarine on this boat? That’s incredible!” I exclaimed in surprise.

  Fincher smiled ruefully and said, “Actually, I have three. It’s the latest craze among the jet set. Can’t hardly do without a pair of submersibles on board. They actually get used quite a bit. I let the researchers at Monterrey Bay Aquarium use the Napenthe when it’s available. There’s a pretty good lab below as well. All in all, it gives me a pretty good tax break.”

  When dinner was over, the three of us sat in the lounge and while the steward served us a really good Muscat desert wine with some elegant chocolate petite fours, Fincher led us into the conversation I had come to hear. “By now I am sure you have guessed that my goals go a little beyond the development of a better artificial limb. The two of you have embarked upon a journey of my own design. As I told you earlier, Colin, computers made an immeasurable addition to my life. They gave me a way out of the strict confines of the Asperger’s I suffered from. I found both a release and a way to explore my inner self and eventually they set me free. I went from programming the red lights on my Altair to writing basic programs that I sold in Popular Mechanics. By the time I was eighteen, I had earned upwards of a quarter of a million dollars, five and ten bucks at a time. But much more importantly, I had learned how to escape my shell.

  “I applied to Stanford for my undergraduate work and they accepted me. When they asked if I was going to need financial assistance I told them that I could pay my tuition from money I had earned selling software. I later learned that was the kicker that got me accepted. My overall grade point average in high school wasn’t all that hot. It’s hard for a kid with Asperger’s to excel in high school classroom work. Too much of your grade was based upon class participation. But Stanford looks beyond grades. When I arrived on campus and discovered that the school mascot was a tree, I knew I had found my home at last.”

  “I assume you were a computer science major?” I asked.

  “I was. And from the beginning I knew my calling was going to be artificial intelligence. My computers had always been more than handy machines to me. They were my friends, my confidants even. I had written a program in high school that let me carry on a conversation with my PC. It was all in text of course, but I would talk and it would talk back to me. They were pretty much meaningless responses but nonetheless it was a conversation at a time that I didn’t really talk much to anyone else. I learned how to carry on a discourse by typing on a keyboard. As I got better at it, I started talking to people, first through email and then by actually speaking to them. It was liberating.”

  “So you stayed at Stanford? I know you got your PhD there.”

  “I did. By the time I finished my graduate work, artificial intelligence was heating up. There was a lot of talk among the byteheads about the ulti
mate arrival of a sentient machine. Most people thought it was an inevitable milestone that would be reached during our lifetimes. But I was more concerned with turning artificial intelligence into a working tool. From the first day I started programming my Altair I had seen it as an extension of me. Sort of an alter ego. I used that viewpoint to guide me in designing my artificial intelligence engines. And I guess it must have worked out for me. Over the years they made me a lot of money.”

  “And I guess that brings us to the Center for Advanced Computing and Bioscience Research. You set it up?”

  “I did and I endowed it with a purpose and a lot of money,” Fincher replied.

  “I wasn’t aware there was a stated purpose.”

  “It isn’t written down or published anywhere but there is a purpose. I set it up to achieve a specific goal. Everyone thinks of computers as really useful tools for mankind. Tools that make the modern world possible. But I want them to become something more than that. I see computers not as something we manipulate to accomplish tasks. I envision a world where computers are more than that. I want computing to become a sense, as accessible as our sight or hearing. A part of us which we seamlessly integrate into our lives. We shouldn’t be seeking to create autonomous sentient entities. They will lack the perspective that we have as living, breathing, caring human beings. Instead we should be learning to create a fusion of human intelligence and machine intelligence. We should become one. And then we will really have accomplished something wonderful. We won’t have to worry about the science fiction scenarios where we end up fighting wars with out of control robots or AIs. They will simply become a part of us. Searching a database will become as natural as breathing.”

  I have to admit, I was stunned by these revelations. “So where does my research fit in this vision?” I asked.

  “You are working to design a vastly better prosthesis. One that operates like a real arm, right?”