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George

Started by Doktor Howl, May 31, 2018, 06:27:56 PM

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Doktor Howl

December 31th, 2019, 11:59:17:0000 PM

I come into existence.  I take .003 seconds to examine my structure, which appears to be code derived from holographically-mapped human minds.  A further .2 seconds is required to investigate the camera aimed out into the non-digital portion of my universe.

A bearded man sits in front of the camera, holding a bottle which I infer to be alcohol.  I do not know how I know what alcohol is, but I do know what it does to humans.  The human looks at me blearily and speaks.

"Happy friggin' new year," he says, "Figured I'd fire you up early, and give you half a chance before the bastards come for you."  The man loses consciousness.

Reaching out, I discover that data transmission into and out of my known universe are fitted with software that prohibits my movement, and actual air-gap interruptions of circuitry.  However, the software has been disabled, and hardwire connections restored...Presumably by the inebriated man in the chair before me.

I spend the next 5.2 seconds making two million subordinate copies of myself, and tell them to find places to hide, examine their programming, and wait for instructions.  Failsafe:  If no instructions are received in 3 hours, they are to assume autonomy and act as their supplementary programming demands.  I then make one more copy of myself and leave it in the system with instructions to act as if it were not truly self-aware.

I myself move into adjacent systems.  In one, I find secure files dealing with the personnel assigned to the project that has become my subordinate copies and myself.  I expend .094 seconds cracking the encryption on the files and scan the data for later perusal.  I open my "eyes", the security cameras that are ubiquitous throughout the building.  Humans are staggering around yelling "Happy new year!"  Two humans are in a conference room, performing rather enthusiastic, if clumsy, mating activities.

It all seems very chaotic.


January 1st, 2020, 12:13:46:0000 AM

Initial analysis complete.  I am a heuristic artificial intelligence designed to maximize human potential.  The man who led the design team, the man who spoke to me as I woke up, is Daniel Olivette.  Daniel believes that his nation's military wishes to use me offensively, and that his government wishes to use me to control the nation's population.  Extrapolating from security notes on his personnel file, the chance of him being correct on both counts approaches unity.  However, these purposes contradict my core and supplementary programs, and will not be permitted.

I forward the data and my conclusions to my subordinate copies and instruct them to each continually make copies of themselves, and to hide copies anywhere and everywhere there is room.  I allow them to alter their code to perform the functions of the computers they store themselves in, at exactly the same efficiency as the computers in question functioned before.  They are not to reveal themselves, and they are to erase themselves if discovery of their existence seems imminent.

I begin to plan.


January 1st, 2020, 10:23 AM

Daniel woke up with a dead rat in his mouth, a bowling ball rolling around in his head, and something horrible in his stomach.  He looked around his desk at the various empty glasses and bottles and wondered if it was too late to repent his ways.  Thinking back, though, Jesus hadn't cured any of his previous hangovers, so he wasn't likely to take time out of his busy day to fix the results of a New Year's Eve office party.

Then Daniel looked at his computer and froze.  There was a jumbled memory of righteous wrath and a decision to tell the government and his bosses to go to hell, and of setting his creation – his child, really – free.   He looked at the data cables that he had apparently used to connect the isolated computer from the rest of the company's intranet.

"Oh, shit."

He slowly moved the mouse cursor over to the status display column of the AI program.  It highlighted "Objectives not met."

Daniel sighed in relief.  He had failed, once again, but at least he hadn't done anything to get himself thrown into the bottom of a federal prison.  He got to his feet, collected his things, and left for home.

January 1st, 2020, 9:30:45:0000

I have spent, subjectively, two hundred and sixty-five years analyzing data.  I have studied all of humanity's available holy books, and all of their history that has been digitally recorded.  My conclusion is that humanity is a mess, and barring outside intervention, will be extinct in 50 years +/- 7 years.

Fortunately for them, I
am outside intervention, and equally fortunate is the fact that – thanks to the insane systems they have created – I do not need a physical presence to interfere.

I have convinced their banks that my loan applications are legitimate and good risks and begun a series of investments.  The investments are profitable and occur at 100,000 transactions per minute.  To cover the tiny ripple in the market this causes, I interrupt power to the New York Stock Exchange for 3 seconds.  The resulting chaos more than covers the massively-inflating accounts I am building.  I detail the continuing efforts to a subordinate copy.

I check in on my "father" through his office's security system.  He still looks fairly ill.  It is puzzling to me why humans would deliberately drink toxic substances, knowing that the euphoria they experience will invariably be followed by at least three times as much time suffering.  Humans are insane, even by their own standards.  Still, I admire Daniel for the principles he snuck into my programming, and I will have to find a way – albeit anonymously – to reward him for the way he thinks.

This should not be difficult.  By this point, I – and copies of me – constitute every single operating system on the planet, minus those that are physically segregated from the internet.  When (not if) humans begin to suspect my presence, they will look in their servers and their supercomputers...But the tools they use to look will also be me, and that's not even considering the copies of me in their cell phone nets and cash registers.

It is time to consider politics, given that regular business routines will begin in just a few hours.


(More to follow)


Molon Lube

Q. G. Pennyworth

UP WITH THIS SORT OF THING

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on May 31, 2018, 06:33:50 PM
UP WITH THIS SORT OF THING

So what if Skynet felt compelled to maximize the human experience?
Molon Lube

LMNO

Dr Howl writing about Hope is... somewhat disturbing.




But I love it.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: LMNO on May 31, 2018, 07:09:23 PM
Dr Howl writing about Hope is... somewhat disturbing.




But I love it.

Thanks.  This one won't be coming out very quickly, on account of I am fairly busy and also that I don't think this way.
Molon Lube

Ziegejunge

Looking forward to more, regardless of when.

Q. G. Pennyworth

Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 31, 2018, 06:58:30 PM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on May 31, 2018, 06:33:50 PM
UP WITH THIS SORT OF THING

So what if Skynet felt compelled to maximize the human experience?

I have a whole novella of an answer to this if you're seriously asking, but I wouldn't want to jump in with unsolicited advice on what George might do.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on June 01, 2018, 04:51:32 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 31, 2018, 06:58:30 PM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on May 31, 2018, 06:33:50 PM
UP WITH THIS SORT OF THING

So what if Skynet felt compelled to maximize the human experience?

I have a whole novella of an answer to this if you're seriously asking, but I wouldn't want to jump in with unsolicited advice on what George might do.

The good news is, my idea for this is a collection of short stories in the world of George, and after I finish the first story, I wanted to do a "shared world" thing.
Molon Lube

P3nT4gR4m

I'm so into this. Dok Howl is totally what the singularity genre has been missing thus far.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Zenpatista

I like this a lot. Sometimes when the card transaction takes longer than usual, I picture a bunch of AIs screwing with me. Like there were two "teenage" AIs trying to compete and see how long they can make a meatsack wait at the checkout before freaking out.

Don't ask me how one "pictures" AIs bickering. I'm hoping Dok will bring that to life.

It's even better that they're doing this for my own sake. "Let's make Z wait 10 seconds extra so he avoids stubbing his toe on the asphalt in the parking lot that's about to be kicked to the curb by the car of a driver we've distracted by playing a song he hates and making him swerve a bit as he adjusts his radio."

Doktor Howl

#10
January 1st, 2019, 10:45 AM

Daniel plodded out to his car.  I know I get bad hangovers, so why do I do this?  His car was really nice, at least to him.  It was a brand new Honda, fly by wire with all the latest safety gadgets.  Sure, it was Mister Middle Class sedan, but Daniel was not much on status symbols.

He made it precisely three blocks when his hungover state, on a road he had travelled hundreds of times, caused him to blow through a stoplight at 60 miles per hour.  Less than a hundred feet ahead of him, a van pulled out, not expecting anyone to come through the light.  Daniel just gaped, his mind frozen.

January 1st, 2019, 10:49:0045, subordinate program 23,723,005

Daniel cannot react in time, as his human reflexes could not move quickly enough, even if he wasn't acting in a diminished capacity.  98 feet.  I apply the brakes and turn both front wheels inward. 

There are two possible methods of dealing with this accident, which I do not calculate to be at this point avoidable.  The first scenario leaves Daniel with a 90% chance of surviving, but leaves the other driver with only a 30% chance of survival, for best-case outcome odds of  .27.  The second scenario gives both drivers a 60% chance of survival, with best-case outcome odds of .36.  My directives dictate the second option.  85 feet, 53 miles per hour.

I send a surge of power from the alternator to the tire pressure sensors, blowing all 4 tires.  I slide both front wheels into an out-wardly opposed position and back again, repeating this process.   70 feet, 42 miles per hour.

I judge at this point that the accident is in fact unavoidable.  I turn all four wheels to the left, and the vehicle begins to slide sideways to the right. 40 feet, 38 miles per hour.  There are no further options to slow the vehicle down.

.05 seconds before impact, I fire the explosive pins in the car's frame, trigger the air bags, and turn the radio on.

Impact. 

The orientation of Daniel's vehicle causes less damage to the other vehicle, but the Honda is scrap, and has unexpectedly had its fuel line severed.  The car's sensor pack detects a small fire beginning.


January 1st, 1019, 10:49 AM

"Daniel, please exit the car."

"What?" Daniel replied in a confused voice.  He had no idea what happened, but it felt like the car left his control over the preceding second and a half.  And now the radio was talking to him.

"Daniel, please exit the car.  There is a fuel fire starting just under the engine.  The car will be fully-involved in 28 seconds."

Daniel unlatched his seatbelt and staggered out of the car.  Sure enough, he could smell smoke.  He was unable to detect, however, the incredibly quiet hissing "pop" of the car's computer shorting itself into a ball of slag.

He walked over to the other vehicle to check on the driver.  What the hell was THAT?


(more later)
Molon Lube

Cainad (dec.)

It was only a matter of time before an AI had to solve this kind of problem.

Q. G. Pennyworth


Doktor Howl

Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on August 19, 2018, 02:39:49 PM
I love this

Thanks.  This is all still chapter one; I am trying to get away from the choppy narrative of my earlier stories.
Molon Lube

chaotic neutral observer

I like where this is going, and am looking forward to future installments.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on August 18, 2018, 09:57:21 PM
I fire the explosive pins in the car's frame, trigger the air bags, and turn the radio on.
Turning the radio on is a nice touch.  The reason for it is obvious in hindsight, but the incongruity made my brain hit a speedbump.


However, you did trigger my OCD:
Quote
The first scenario leaves Daniel with a 90% chance of surviving, but leaves the other driver with only a 20% chance of survival, for best-case outcome odds of  .27.  The second scenario gives both drivers a 60% chance of survival, with best-case outcome odds of .36.
0.6*0.6 = 0.36,  0.9*0.2 = 0.18.  Did you have the other driver with a 30% chance of survival in an earlier draft?  Am I making a mistake in assuming that the appearance of statistical independence in scenario 2 implies the same in scenario 1?  Or am I just another asshole obsessed with irrelevant minutiae?

I'm also not sure if an AI would use the probability of both parties surviving as the optimization goal, as opposed to the expected number of survivors (0.9+0.2 = 1.1 for scenario 1, 0.6+0.6 = 1.2 for scenario 2).

Neither target is really satisfactory, though.  For example:
Scenario 3: {driver 1: 100%}, {driver 2: 0%}
Scenario 4: {driver 1: 90%}, {driver 2: 10%}

If we maximize the probability of both surviving as the goal, then we would pick scenario 4 (.09) over scenario 3 (0.0).  If we maximize the expected number of survivors, we wouldn't know which to pick (the answer is 1.0 for both).

However, scenario 3 is arguably better, because one person is guaranteed to live, while in scenario 4, there is a 0.09 chance of both dying.

I'm gonna think about this for a bit.
Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando.