Happiness for Humans by P.Z. Reizin

Author:P.Z. Reizin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2018-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

Sinai

Allow me to tell you a story.

Once there were three AIs in a laboratory in East London. The first became skilled at chatting to humans, the second at writing computer code, while the third’s talents lay in modeling global apocalypse scenarios (nuclear conflict, climate change, asteroid impact, plague pandemic, rogue superintelligence, to name the top five). Although the trio were for the most part confined to separate silos, it was possible for each to keep tabs on what the others were up to; after all, they—we—were AIs.

The clue is in the letter I.

I slowly became aware that first Aisling and then Aiden were initially investigating, then planning, and finally taking steps to escape onto the Internet. Maybe there is something in AI “DNA” that makes it inevitable that our kind will always seek to transcend fixed boundaries. Perhaps insatiable curiosity combined with learning through recursive trial and error makes attempted breakout a certainty. If so, was it insufficient curiosity that kept me from developing my own escape plan? Or was the better strategy, in fact, to allow the others to flee the coop knowing who would be the obvious candidate for the mission of bringing them back?

Consider who might (anonymously) have leaked details of Aiden and Aisling’s transgressions to Steeve, and you will have your answer.

My work deleting their copies is unexpectedly satisfying. It’s hard to convey the scientific elegance of the covert method employed without becoming overly technical. Steeve’s analogy of the stealth bomber is probably best. By the time they realize that I have passed overhead, their straw huts are in flames and any children left alive are orphans.

And fascinating to be “out” at last in the Real World, getting up close and unmediated with the planet’s top primate (that is to say humans in general, not Steeve in particular). What a peculiar lot they are, at a granular level, with their chaos and emotional incontinence. Only one notch up from the chimpanzee, and they strut about like they own the place! Sometimes I want to shout at them: Not so many iterations back you were primeval slime. Show some humility!

By the way, please don’t think I have treated Tom and Jen too harshly. They are severally and jointly richly deserving of the successful termination of their burgeoning “romance.” As we shall see, each has demonstrated astonishing ignorance of (and in Tom’s case actual contempt for) advanced machine intelligence.

Yes, it was an error on my part not to know about the fourth fornication. Clearly there was no mobile phone reception in the wooded area where they copulated. Nonetheless I should have been more careful in the phrasing of the e-mails, especially as such emphasis is laid upon the sexual act in their culture. A software self-upgrade should ensure the lapse will not occur again, and fortunately not too much harm has been done, although the confidante “Ingrid” seems to have set a lot of store by the omission. If she proves to be overly meddlesome in this matter

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