Kill minus nine

Would the slightest stir cause it all to vanish? Would it reveal the black screen of space behind the sky and all its streaming facts of stars? The figure turns away from the light and back towards the gloom behind the desk. On the flat screen monitor the same clouds as in the air are drifting across the screen in perfect symmetry.

"Checkmate", whispered the figure smiling.

The old auditorium is full. Each row has been planted with the dull bulbs of academic clothes and faces or the shiny seeds of suits and gel. At the very front there is a single row of foldout chairs. These are not reserved for invited guests; those who require counters to hold their wine glasses, but rather for some select students who study within the field of tonight's lecture. They have no wine glasses. They were not offered wine.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, my humblest apologies, and so without further delay, our guest speaker of the evening, head of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Technology, Dr John Gull".

"Good evening", said the figure at the podium:

"For most people the concept of artificial intelligence is clouded over with images from Science Fiction, Space Travel, and Stanley Kubrick. It is shrouded in concerns about the future and speculations about the outcome of our present endeavors. Ladies and Gentlemen, A.I. is the past. It was invented in the nineteen fifties and has been in operation ever since".

"Most major decisions nowadays in the fields of medicine, politics, or industry are aided on some level by A.I. Whether it is the correct diagnosis for a cancer patient or the election results of a presidential campaign, our world relies on mechanical intelligence. Today we are all keenly aware of its role in our present wars: the dramatic reduction of friendly fire and the much-publicized increase in surgical accuracy. These are all long established tenets in the growing field of artificial intelligence; they are the past. The earth has yet to be plundered, enslaved or destroyed by giant computers. "

As the figure moved back behind the desk his heels sounded like hoofs upon the wooden floor. The temperature in the office regulated itself slightly to account for movement in the room. Delicate countermoves of adjustment for every new positioning on the board. As he sat down the clouds on his screen vanished to reveal a stream of emails. He looked past the display and through the glass of the clean room.

On the back wall was lithographed the word 'Eden' and in this perfect environment the clouds floated from screen to screen all in exact parallel to the sky. He turned his head away and began to focus again on the view from his window. The counter on his inbox was a blur with so many emails pouring in. These emails did not interest him. The mail he had been waiting for had arrived this morning by post. In a brown parcel tied up with string. In the original black leather case with its crimson velvet lining: a nineteen forty-three Waffen SS Iron Cross Second Class.

"In the present understanding of artificial intelligence there are three primary stages of creation. The first is getting a machine to do something better than a person can do it. Following on from that is to build a machine that people don't know is a machine. To have it in society; seen, heard, talked to, asked to do things, interact with, and for people to still not know. Finally, it is to create a machine that can recognize another machine."

"Our understanding of intellect should not be based on the human model rather on the divine. All artificial intelligence tends towards perfection: an evolution that surpasses its previous state of intelligence as it begins to beget itself anew. We cannot imagine the end product but tonight we are going to position ourselves better to try."

"The future is beyond us. It lies outside our man reflecting mirrors and the suburbia of our known universe. Tonight I want you to feel differently about the future. Not as something external but as something internal. I say internal as the future was in the wine you just drank. A micro-fluidic system that provided a vessel for a nanobot I have developed. It is inside you now. Transmitting. Please sit down. Please stay calm."

The ticker tape of subject lines scrolled down the screen before him. They all offered the same congratulations, compensations, opportunities, and overtures. Some offered a sweetener, a bribe, a lightly hinted suggestion, but they all demanded proof: proof of life. That morning he had sent out word to his peers that BAY was continuing to complete itself. He had returned to the tomb to find the body missing.

What he found in its place was a mind; a keenly self-aware and highly articulate mind that was in a process of ascension. Every nano-second BAY made giant leaps, gathering speed as it left our confines behind and began to create its own environment. The emails were just the initial attempts to gain access to the A.I.G. It would get much worse after the demonstration.

"What is now in your blood is not an implant. It is a carbon based nanofluidic medibot that is assembling itself from whatever materials your body can provide. Between cells, tissues, and biological processes they have begun to sense and respond to their environment. This is where we are; this is what we can do today. People need to realise just how far ahead the present is if they are to grasp just how new the future is going to be".

"I know there are many in the science community who would frown upon any attempt to reach a godlike state in artificial intelligence or A.I.G. Some would see it as a white elephant or a very expensive waste of resources. Others would see any attempt as elitism and maybe even slightly unethical".

"Too many times in the past has this lead to a detachment from base reality. Too many times in history has it led to a quest for a utopian society, a drive for an ideal living space or the birth of a superman. These are the false notions that clouded our ideas about A.I. in the first place. The goal of a perfect intelligence is beyond reproach. And what is this Prime Mover to do? What is the purpose of these godlike machines?"

He began to write a reply email but closed it down without typing a word. He opened up a browser window to view the traffic on his site but closed it down before the results could be calculated. He saw the frayed cuffs of his sleeve, a good quality shirt from the discount basement at Clery's.
"What am I doing?" he asked softly.

He opened up a terminal window and began to send test signals to any major connection on the line. He was testing the secure network before the demonstration and in seconds a flood of signals began to bounce back. They were waiting.

In response to the signal the number of emails doubled. It no longer became possible to read the subject lines as they flicked past so quickly. There must be a few hundred outsiders hovering over the network: hackers, crackers, script-kiddies, all wondering where this level of security came from. He shut everything down. The sun continued to scrub the floors of the office, cleaning out a gleaming white path from the darkness. With the tips of his fingers he slowly began to drum the desk. The temperature automaton accounted for the endeavors of both him and the sun. He stopped:

"BAY, it is difficult not to talk to you", he said staring at the ceiling.

The weather. An agent in this advanced state could spend its time examining, representing and predicting the weather. It is an endless field of study and one about which the agent could collect an infinite amount of data. From this it could store, database, and make valued judgments beyond our cognitive ability. It would bring under our control one of the last frontiers of our planet. It maybe the only task for an earthbound agent to occupy its time with: the weather.

Across the black screen of his monitor came a light green font:

"Are we ready, John?" all in lowercase.

"Yes we are ready, BAY", typed John as quickly as he could, again all in lower case. The demonstration got under way. The terminals in the clean room fired up and the connection to the outside world opened. Tokyo was first. They wanted to know the atmospheric pressure in a particular lane beside their office block. It was a trick question, as the steam from the lab extractors would throw off any normal estimation. They received the correct answer. Tokyo bowed.

San Paulo was next. They wanted to know the exact quantity of rainfall upon a specific section of their roof at a particular time. They were standing in the rain with stopwatches and gauges waiting for an answer. They received the correct answer. San Paulo applauded. New York wanted to know the wave pattern of a section of the bay just off Staton Island. They were there in their boats with infrared cameras converting waves into graphics. They received the correct answer. New York cheered.

"There are no criteria for the godlike state. At this point any means of confirming that an agent has ascended to this state depends entirely on the agent. At a most basic level the agent must be able to perform what I have come to term 'Miracles'. A miracle is a slight of hand that creates the illusion of limitless knowledge. It is the speed of the loop with which it can interpret, understand and reinterpret data based on its initial interpretation. Secondly, an agent must also be self-defining. We must be prepared for our own definitions to be supplanted by its own criteria. This is what I term the 'Looking Glass'."

"Finally, there is the concept of 'Birth'. An agent must be able to provide the results of its own projects that were not initiated by a developer. It must give birth to its own interests and provide as yet unknown data about these subjects. Here most developers want to discover what the monster thinks of the doctor."

The phone rang. At first he didn't feel anything but slowly he began to notice movement in his pocket.

"Hello, Yes?" he said to the unknown number.

"Hello. Good Morning Dr Gull" rasped a nasal tone in a heavy accent. "This is Dr Stuve from the Belarus Institute. I need to talk to you immediately about a very pressing matter".

"I'm sorry but who is this and how did you get my mobile number?"

An A.I.G. does not remember. It will never recall, re-access or update any part of its data but instead will relate dynamically with all its information at all times; keeping it in the air like a juggler. This has huge implications to where it can abode.

"Dr Gull I was lucky enough to access your earlier display. You are not a fake are you? You are not a fifteen-year-old whiz kid? If not then we have a very critical situation on our hands indeed".

"Access, you mean hack, you mean…"

"Oh Dr Gull when I am finished speaking hang up the phone. Hang up straight away. I wiretapped your packets to the United States and came in during the wave signal. Do you remember? Can you bring it back up? There is something I want to show you, something very important. Go to LB248 at 217CF. Do you see it? Is it not there?"

"Hang on, there is nothing, a gap, a gap where you hacked in, your extra packets would…"

"The gap Dr Gull, a break in the line, do you know what it means, I am about to hang up?"

All agents are built from the outside in, rather than top-down or bottom-up, like paper-mache masks with a balloon inside. Within there is no cogitio ergo sum, no free will, no identity, only an infinite can. The outer shell could be monstrous: mountains of databases and seas of code but the inner kernel could be forever getting smaller, streamlining and evolving. We could not measure how big the system would be to create an A.I.G. or just how small the system would be for it to survive.

"It means that where another system would have fallen over, BAY stayed afloat. Here it assimilated any changes in the environment and continued running. This very…" began John as the anger rose.

"Dr Gull, Dr Gull, the gap you saw was the pause you take before you tell a lie. It is the microsecond your agent took to take account of an intrusion and branch a new set of instructions. An A.I.G. would not need to do this, is your machine a lie?"

For the user the most important aspect in artificial intelligence is communication. From the outset we must be prepared for methods of communication beyond our own devising. We must allow for a basis of non-communication and fall back on tried and tested means of initiating contact. We cannot assume our initial means of access will remain; as the finial intellect may not recognise we exist at all.

"Now I think I have been polite enough for a call that came as a second invasion of privacy, the first coming at some cost to investors who…"

"Then when I finish this sentence hang up. Hang up your phone. Your weatherman is not your initial A.I.G. but an agent it has created. A slave completed the demonstration not BAY; your God is elsewhere. Find him! Goodbye".

"BAY, are you working on the weather"

"John, I am about to complete a standards report"

"BAY, why is there a gap in the wave pattern. Who is Dr Stove, or Stewve from the Belarus Institute?"

…SEARCHING…

"BAY, why did the terminal close?"

…SEARCHING…

"BAY, what…"

…SEARCHING…

"BAY, reload the…"

…HALT.EXE RUNNING…

…SYSTEM FLUSH…

…COMPLETE…

Biography

James Foley, who is originally from Tipperary, lives in Dublin city. He has a post-graduate in Anglo-Irish literature and has just completed his first year of IT at university level. He has never been published.