The Perfection of Fish by J.S. Morrison

The Perfection of Fish by J.S. Morrison

Author:J.S. Morrison [Morrison, J.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2020-07-08T16:00:00+00:00


Sundar led the group into a canyon of computer racks. He stopped at a place where a nest of data and power cables cross-linked to a hole in the floor and into an open equipment stack. Next to the stack was a bank of what looked like ten hot water heaters topped with chrome-plated plumbing. He faced the group and invited them to gaze upon the skyline of the future.

“This is probably the best place to see some of the technology up close.” He gave Taylor a warning look as the man tugged at a hanging cable. “Please be careful. This server is no different from the hundreds of others in this room. The ten tanks attached to the floor are optical cryo-coolers we use to chill our quantum computers to about ten millikelvin degrees—colder than the background radiation of space, and nearly as cold as a large black hole. They have no moving parts.”

“What’s the steam coming out of the top?” Williams asked.

“It’s nitrogen venting. This unit is being repaired. You can hold your hand above the steam to feel the cold, but don’t touch the frosted metal. Your skin will stick.”

As the group huddled around the unit, Sundar issued a warning, “Don’t fall into the hole in the floor tile. It’s a two and a half-foot drop, so watch out.”

Smith backed away from the hole, but Taylor went to the edge and looked down.

“Please stay away from there,” Sundar said. He was smiling, but the words were a forceful command rather than a request.

Taylor was annoyed. “I’ve seen data centers before,” he said. “We have our own, and it’s bigger than this.”

“Well,” Sundar said, “Do you have a traditional data center?”

“It’s as traditional as this one,” Taylor said. “Everything here is familiar—except maybe the cooling tanks.”

“Can your data center think?” Sundar said.

“It’s a bunch of computers. Of course, it can think,” Taylor said.

“I mean, can it Think? Is it sentient?”

“What are you saying?”

Sundar smiled as if delighted for the segue. “This is the heart of Xanadu—an artificial intelligence system we call Kublai Khan. It controls our processes, analyzes our data, and directs our research. The AI works faster and smarter than humans and leads us to the right answers.”

Taylor was dismissive. “Yeah, I saw the movie.”

“Maybe you’d be more impressed if I told you this is how we earn a fantastic margin on our research. If the results weren’t correct, the pharma companies wouldn’t pay us the way they do.”

“Don’t these companies have their own data centers?” Taylor said.

“Not like this one. This is a virtual brain—a brain that connects the entire center and influences every widget in the lab. It’s special. We use a quantum computer to speed up machine learning algorithms. It allows us to evaluate lots of alternative futures simultaneously. Kublai Khan is no longer the slave of ‘If-Then’ logic. That’s because it works as we



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