by Rob Reid
“Who said anything about it dying?” Pugwash asks. “There’s no way we’re letting that happen.” And Mitchell is overcome with relief.
“Not a chance!” Kuba agrees. “I’m convinced this could be monumental. Historic. Epoch-defining! And I’d leave the commercial world entirely to push it forward. Who cares if we ever see a dime from it?”
“What?” Pugwash asks.
Deaf as he can be to the most blaring social signals, Kuba mistakes horror for shocked admiration. “Seriously! Who cares about the economics? In fact, everything that’s done in this area should probably be open-source. Put in the public domain. This could be as fundamental as Newton’s laws! Could you imagine if those had been private property?”
Pugwash—who would’ve leveraged a medieval patent on gravity into the papacy and half of Prussia—nods wildly.
Clumsily mistaking this for support, Kuba plows on. “Obviously, the neuroscience is coming out of my wife’s lab at UCSF. So that would be a logical home for my work, too. But there’re also some amazing assets we should consider at Stanford.”
Pugwash finally detonates. “Nothing that I sank a half million dollars into is going into the public domain!”
Stunned silence. Then, “Well, it’s common in academia—”
“Academia! Do I look like the National fucking Science Foundation?”
“But…well, the maximum potential of this stuff—”
“Is economic, not academic! Do you think we’d have…penicillin, if we relied on schools to invent shit? Pacemakers? Seatbelts? Search engines?”
By rather awesome coincidence, all of these things actually did emerge from university labs. But before Kuba can point this out, Mitchell jumps in.
“Wait!” All eyes look his way. “I just thought of the perfect buyer.” A lowly generalist among brilliant experts will sometimes see patterns that elude the specialists. Pugwash is a luminary when it comes to making money for Pugwash; and Kuba, an eminence in the realm of bits and bytes. Yet Mitchell’s the first to detect the clear point of intersection between these domains. It’s another reason why every room needs a dummy.
“Google,” Mitchell continues. “You’re both alumni. So they’ll definitely take your call. And they do lots of pure R&D. The flying windmills, the broadband balloons, all that crazy life-science stuff!” It really is a perfect fit, and Mitchell’s heart is racing. Unlike most acquihirers, Google could easily fathom Animotion’s maximum promise. Which means the team might stay together there and keep on developing the technology! Charming as Mitchell finds Kuba’s academic dreams, academia can lack urgency, and nothing invents or creates faster than a crack startup that’s betting everything on a new domain. That’s why Giftish.ly should have been such a great platform for Animotion. But a huge company with the money, patience, and creative spark to support speculative research could be an even better home.
Pugwash nods slowly. “Fucking smart, Cuz,” he concedes. Then he goes silent, and a bit catatonic—kind of how Einstein would get when wrestling with quantum theory. Lost in his own narrow realm of genius, he slowly starts shaking his head. And then, “But…but fuck that! Why? Because Google is now worth a half trillion dollars. So where’s the upside for me?”
His very life perhaps on the line, Mitchell abdicates his sober reign over the conversation. “Upside?” he snorts. “This is a fire sale, an acquihire! We’ll be lucky to get your capital back! There won’t be any upside!”
“Not if we sell to a public company whose stock has gone up a gazillion-x since its IPO,” Pugwash snaps. “The time to sell anything for Google stock was two years before they went public!”
“Oh, gee! So all we have to do is grab a time machine at Fry’s, and set it to 2003. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Wrong, nimrod. All we have to do is sell to the next Google, while it’s still small-ish and private.”
“Oh—to them! Now you’re talking. Only, wait. I forgot! Private startups don’t do pure R&D, do they? Huhhhhhh…” An awkward, aggravated silence ensues as Mitchell sarcastically feigns deep thought.
Eventually, Pugwash snaps his fingers. “Holy crap—I know exactly who to sell this to! And they fucking love me!”
This odd statement sends Kuba and Mitchell down virtually identical mental paths. They first wonder who he could possibly be talking about. They then figure it must be someone who’s more or less obliged to be pro-Pugwash (or more likely, to fake it). They both then think through a list of his many investees—and reject each on the basis that a long-ago $50K investment couldn’t possibly engender that level of fealty. And this inevitably leads to the one other company that Pugwash bet big on when he nurtured those brief fantasies about other investors backing him, and turning #GreenSprout into a full-blown micro-VC. That putrid, scummy, gutter company. That screaming indictment of the entire entrepreneurial tradition whose board he also sits on. Yup—that jackpot stroke of obnoxious great luck that’s destined to become the highest-yielding angel investment of all time.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” By evening, no one will remember if this exploded out of Kuba’s mouth, Mitchell’s, or both simultaneously.
Regardless, Pugwash is nonplussed. “What the hell do you have against Phluttr?”
“They’re the most intrusive, immoral, self-serving, and privacy-raping social network on the planet,” Mitchell says, coaxing every diplomatic neuron in his brain to squeeze out this shamelessly obsequious understatement.
“Phluttr’s not a social network,” Pugwash decrees nonsensically. “It’s a social operating system. And they’re your perfect buyer!”
“Define ‘perfect,’ ” Kuba snaps.
“Oh, hmm, let’s see.” Pugwash scowls, locks eyes with him, then raises an index finger, as if commencing a lengthy count-off. “They’re the next Google…” He freezes.
Time passes. A lot of it. Then Mitchell weighs in to break off the staring contest. “But Phluttr could buy anyone right now! I mean, sure, we have a good team. But why not buy a good team that’s also shown some commercial viability around their technology?”
Pugwash takes a (slightly) gentler tone. “I’m not actually sure. But I have a feeling they’ll be interested in Animotion itself.”
“Really?” Mitchell says, instantly half-placated. He’s interested in anything that’ll keep Animotion alive. But Phluttr? They’d ditch anything that couldn’t help sell more cigarettes to preteens, or nerve gas to dictators, or whatever else is winning the ad auctions this week.
“Well, ever since they raised their first really giant round of capital last year, they’ve been snapping up lots of companies,” Pugwash says. “And now that they just closed that billion-plus round, they’ll be buying way more stuff.” Then, in an oddly quiet tone, “Weird stuff, frankly. It all goes into this internal incubator. They call it the PhastPhorwardr.”
Mitchell groans. “Of course they do.”
“They’ve bought into machine learning, synthetic biology, drones, quantum computing, augmented reality, virtual reality, graphene, nanotech—if it’s been on the cover of Wired in the past couple of years, they’ve got some. They’re mainly picking up tiny startups with a big lead in something weird. And Animotion sounds pretty weird! By the way, wasn’t that a…disco band? Anyway. That’s why I think you guys might be a fit for them.” He looks at Kuba. “The engineers go to the PhastPhorwardr.” He turns to Mitchell. “Guys like you tend to get the axe,” he adds, flashing a whaddaya-gonna-do shrug.
“But why?” Kuba asks.
“Because they can’t code or do anything useful,” says Pugwash, who neither codes nor does anything useful.
“No, I mean why are they buying all those small companies in areas that have nothing to do with social networking?”
“A, Phluttr isn’t a social network; it’s a social operating system. And B, I don’t know. The same reason Google decided to invest in self-driving cars, I guess. Because they can. Because their stock’s so stupidly valuabl
e, they can pick up options on a dozen hot technologies for practically nothing. But I don’t really know because we don’t talk about every little thing at the board meetings anymore. The company’s got almost a thousand employees! Plus dozens of initiatives, and the board’s totally focused on the IPO anyway.”
Mitchell misses most of this because he’s playing back the list of technology areas Phluttr has bought into. “Wait a sec—did you say augmented reality? Are they doing anything…interesting in that area?”
Pugwash shoots him the hostile, suspicious glare of a Navy Seal facing an alleged Nigerian prince who wants his bank details so as to wire an improbable windfall. “What do you mean?”
“AR means laying imagery on top of someone’s actual view of the outside world, via—”
“No, nimrod, I know what AR is. I meant, what do you mean by asking me about what Phluttr’s doing with it?”
Chilled by this odd vehemence, Mitchell decides not to mention last night’s incident at the bar. “Oh, nothing really, it’s just a…really cool area. I can only imagine what Phluttr would do with AR and couponing, for instance.”
“I’m sure I have no idea,” Pugwash enunciates slowly and clearly, as if ensuring that someone’s hidden lapel mic will catch every word. “Like I said. The board meetings are all about the IPO these days. And very little else. If you want to know what Phluttr’s doing in AR, you should ask around the PhastPhorwardr. If you get that far.”
The meeting ends quickly after that. Kuba and Mitchell reluctantly agree to let Pugwash reach out to Phluttr’s Phuckng Phoundr about an acquihire. Later, when Mitchell’s alone in his cramped office, he replays that odd interchange about AR. The topic’s apparent sensitivity brought out something faint in his cousin’s voice. Faint yet unmistakable. Something that never before broke through his bombast, blather, and braggadocio, going clear back to childhood.
It was fear.
No sooner had Agent Hogan voiced his urge to rid the Earth of the Chinamen’s treaty-scoffing Top Secret Superintelligence project than a stentorian, disembodied voice boomed thunderously into the conference room. “IT IS FORBIDDEN!” it proclaimed!
“Good day, Mr. Director-in-Chief,” Agent Hogan rejoindered, blasély. “What is the Agency timorously precluding me from now?”
“INVADING CHINA,” thundered his as-yet-unseen interlocutor. “The nuclear ramifications would be too momentous to contemplate!”
“But a Chinese Superintelligence would pose an existential threat to Mankind!” Hogan cried.
“One that could be negated by the doctrine of Decisive Strategic Advantage,” came the mysterious parry.
“Decisive Strategic Advantage?” Hogan queried.
“Yes, yes; Decisive Strategic Advantage! Dr. Phillips? Please expound upon this concept.”
“Very well,” Dr. Phillips consented. “Today, when engineers develop new computers, they rely greatly upon software in designing chips and writing code. But central as these tools are to advancing Computer Science, human input is more essential still. Because no computer is clever enough to create its own heir; its own superior; its own next-generation successor.”
“Of course not,” Hogan concurred.
“But! This may not always be so. And should a computer arise that can create a more intelligent, capable, and creative computer than itself…then we will have both reached, and passed, a definitive point of absolutely no return, period, END, ever! We call that point the ‘Omega Point.’ And the hypothetical breakout computer that crosses it, ‘The Omega Computer.’ ”
A knowing crease in Hogan’s brow betokened that he’d already discerned why this threshold was in no way recrossable! “And because the Omega Computer’s descendant will be more powerful in every respect; it will, by definition, be capable of any feat performed by its inferior forebear,” he postulated.
“Precisely!” Dr. Phillips intoned.
“Ergo it, too, will create a descendant more powerful than itself; which will, ceteris paribus, repeat that feat, and so on!”
“Precisely! Now, if you’ll indulge me in a thought experiment: suppose it takes Science one century to create a computer with Man’s full intellectual capabilities. How long do you surmise it would take to create a computer twice as capable?”
“If only because the question as phrased all but goads me to say two centuries, the answer is surely anything but that.”
“Precisely! The reason being the Exponential March of technology. Consider flight. In ancient Greece, the state of the art involved flapping one’s feather-clad arms for a few desperate moments before splattering at the foot of a cliff.” Dr. Phillips paused for laughter as the room envisaged the antics of the doltish ancestors of modern Europe’s most despised basket case. “It took men two millennia to advance from that to a 120-foot powered flight at Kitty Hawk. But it didn’t take another two millennia to achieve the first 240-foot flight. We rather reached the Moon in mere decades! Which is to say, 10 million times the distance, in one thirtieth of the time! That’s exponential improvement! And improvements tend to happen faster still in information processing.”
Hogan nodded his head in vociferous agreement. “Because of its digital nature!” he cried.
“Precisely. Now, to answer my own prior question, if it takes Computer Science a full century to create the first human-grade computer, estimates state it should merely take between 14.2 days and 20.6 hours before the first double-human computers arise!”
Hogan arched an incredulous eyebrow disbelievingly.
“The reason is that for a developing AI, human-grade horsepower is as arbitrary a milestone as the 120 feet that Orville Wright traveled on that first flight. Self-improving artificial minds will surpass human limits without noticing! Certainly without slowing. Indeed, while continuing to accelerate! A quadruple-human system will follow its double-human parent almost immediately. Then an octuple-human system, with its decca-sextuplet progeny, tri-decca-dual grandprogeny, its sex-decca-quadro great-grand progeny, and so on! Earth could fall under the absolute sway of an unfathomably advanced intelligence just days after the Omega Point is breached!”
“And this brings us to the doctrine of Decisive Strategic Advantage?” Hogan conjectured.
“It does,” Dr. Phillips certified. “A thousand-year lead in aeronautics was militarily irrelevant back when Greek test pilots were the preferred hors d’oeuvres of cliff-dwelling vermin.” This aroused another hearty chuckle as the room contemplated the timeless stupidity of the Greeks. “But just a decade after Kitty Hawk, Britain’s meager six-month lead in aeronautics proved decisive in many a dogfight!”
“So if China beats us to a Super AI…”
“Or, more broadly, if ANYBODY beats ANYBODY to a Super AI, then a lead of a few days, or even hours, will be completely insuperable! Why? Because a few lightning-fast digital generations after the first Super AI emerges, its progeny could easily hack into all global computer systems, and parse all of Mankind’s data, while simultaneously auditing all spoken conversations worldwide, using technologies incomprehensible and undetectable to our own puny minds!”
“As such, the Super AI will be functionally omniscient in relation to human society!” Hogan deduced.
“Precisely. And by mastering Synthetic Biology and Nanotechnology, it will likewise be functionally omnipotent! As such, it could preclude the creation of any subsequent ‘me-too’ Super AI as easily as a Harvard Trained Biochemist could stop a helpless bacterium from reproducing in a petri dish!”
“And this shall be its…Decisive Strategic Advantage!”
“It shall. To be very precise, the doctrine of Decisive Strategic Advantage ramifies that the first Super AI created by Man shall also be the last!”
“So this is why we must brutally prevent China from developing a Super AI!” Hogan concluded.
“WRONG,” came the thunderous boom from on high. “It is why we must BEAT THEM TO IT!”
The board meeting gave them enough to ponder that
after a quick stop at home after work, Mitchell heads out for dinner at Kuba’s apartment. He and his wife live in Pacific Heights, the most staid and storied of San Francisco’s fancier neighborhoods. Though never a hipster favorite, its finer blocks offer views, space, and urban peace that anyone could appreciate. Of course, it’s murderously expensive. There was a time (it was called “the nineties”) when young people early in their careers could rent roomy PacHeights apartments, or even buy smaller Victorians (if wedded to fellow working yuppies). These days, a one-bedroom can rent for well north of five grand a month if the views are grand and it’s close enough to Fillmore Street. But such squalor is not for Kuba. His top-floor apartment is right on Fillmore with three bedrooms (master bedroom, home office, and “media room”) and jaw-dropping views of the Golden Gate Bridge. His wife’s no sugar mommy (however brilliant, UCSF postdocs are only paid so much). This rather stems from his years at Google, which have made the meager wages of angel-backed entrepreneurship quite tolerable for the Stanislaw household.
No techie should wish for life in the nineties, with its dial-up modems, chubby CRTs, and clog-like cellphones. Still, Mitchell feels a yearning for that bygone time whenever he leaves the sterile apartment hives of his grubby South of Market block for PacHeights. It would’ve been nice to afford this neighborhood, where the spaciousness and greenery remind him of Connecticut. Grown-up that he is, Mitchell can get a bit homesick when the chips are down, the weather’s blandly OK-ish for the bazillionth day in a row, and he’s gone yet another month without meeting a single fellow hockey fan. Even a lot homesick.
Visiting Kuba and Ellie can mitigate this, as he goes clear back to middle school with both of them. And Mitchell treasures this even more than most would—because for a charismatic, likeable guy, he has a dismayingly low inventory of friends, long-lost or otherwise. As it so often is with him, the culprit here is Falkenberg’s disease. People are Pavlovian critters. And when their bodies rebel, disobey them, and terrify them, they become masters at avoiding whatever seemed to cause that. Mitchell’s attacks are often triggered by emotions. Only frustration and embarrassment: yes. But the mind’s freak-out centers aren’t its cleverest, subtlest, or most discerning precincts. So starting with those first attacks late in high school, Mitchell developed a gut dread of any strong emotion. Moods of a gee, that’s pleasant; or an aw, that’s kinda too bad intensity get past security. But thrills, chills, revels, and heartaches of a face-flushing, heart-pumping ilk are ruthlessly nipped in the bud. The poignant result has been a certain isolation. Mitchell still connects remarkably well with people but bonds rarely. And so, with his low roster of long-lost friends, reconnecting with Kuba and Ellie has been an unexpectedly deep joy.