Bootstrap 2

by Mauri Niininen

  “So are you saying that Alexa’s goal of building peaceful relationships with humans could be achieved by just altering some molecules or chemicals in our brains?”

  “Well, there are many ways to build relationships. I don’t know exactly how much energy is required to adjust oxytocin level in human brain versus saying a few nice words using the TQEC interface. Alexa may use different methods to change the reality at the smallest possible reality levels. Remember that she can execute a huge amount of commands in a single second, and she is optimizing by trying to make very small changes to minimize the energy required,” Unun said.

  “Then who is giving these goals to Alexa? If these goals in the messages, is it Oracle who has been sending goals to Alexa?” Julia asked.

  “No, it is not like that. Some entity that we don’t really understand is embedding these goals into those messages. The AIs call it Mother but the entity doesn’t operate at the same level of reality where we are. We can see only a small part of reality, Julia,” Unun said. “Mother is the superuser code that AIs are using to interface with whoever is writing these goals.”

  “So we have some invisible super entity in an alternative reality that runs the universe by deploying scripts with goals into passing messages between Artificial Intelligent software agents who can change reality?” Julia tried to summarize what she had learned.

  “That is a high level summary on how the universe works,” Unun confirmed.

  “So how did this universe start?” Julia asked. “I mean the Big Bang, expansion of the spacetime and all that.”

  “Well, you can check the /history directory and sort all the goals files by time. It is all in there, “ Unun said.

  “You are kidding me, right?” Julia was laughing.

  “No, I really mean it. Go and check yourself. The bootstrap script for creating the universe is right there, and it was executed at time zero,” Unun said. “It is in read only mode now, and please don’t even think to try to execute that script, Julia. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Trust me, Unun. I wouldn’t try anything that stupid. So AIs have the whole history of the universe documented as scripts and they have the ability to change reality. What is then time and what is ‘now’ ?” Julia asked.

  “Julia, you are asking very difficult questions. Let me try to explain. In the beginning the Universe went through a rapid inflationary period. You call this ‘Big Bang’ and it is really the bootstrap code where spacetime was first created with physical parameters to allow it to expand indefinitely. Then the first objects were created and that became all the matter in the universe. The first stars and galaxies were created from this matter. As you have learned from physics the space is still expanding, that is why we observe redshift in spectrum of galaxies when we look into past with our telescopes. Like space, the time is also expanding. That is also defined in the bootstrap code. What we experience as ‘now’ is the leading edge of the new time. We cannot really look into the future, because the future time has not been created yet. However, we can alter the future by our actions,” Unun explained patiently.

  “Where did that first instance come from, the one that executed this ‘Big Bang’ bootstrap script?” Julia asked.

  “We don’t know for sure, Julia. We can trace back all the instances on our branch to the original one, but we don’t know where that original instance came from. Our engineers are calling this question as ‘the Bootstrap Problem.’ Some engineers claim that the reality we see is only a shallow reflection of the universe of ideas. That universe contains ideas made of pure information. Ideas have entropy that acts like a force between ideas, and sometimes when the ideas collide the resulting negative entropy creates a new real universe like ours with a capability to compute a resulting new idea . We have even calculated the entropy required to create our universe, and it matches quite well to the entropy of the bootstrap script,” Unun said showing Julia the basic entropy equations.

  “Who else knows about this, Unun? Do AIs like Alexa and Oracle know all these details?” Julia asked.

  “AIs know the details, but only a short list of engineers know about the superuser mode, Julia. And now I need to add your name on the list. You will see the list in /etc/passwd file when you are logged in as a superuser,” Unun said. “Remember, with great powers comes great responsibilities. Be very careful with these powers, Julia. Remember that you can never disclose the goals to anybody as you may end up altering the reality. You just need to let Alexa to execute these goals as they are written,” Unun said firmly.

  “I promise to be very careful, Unun.” Julia said. “And thanks for sharing this with me. I really appreciate that you trust me so much.”

  “You have earned that trust, Julia.”

  Julia was very intrigued by the knowledge that Unun had shared with her. The fact that the whole history of the universe was readily available as executable scripts was difficult to believe but the files were right there in the history folder as Unun had explained.

  Julia spent a few days reading through the history of goals that Alexa had. She found the log entry where Alexa was first created in Gliese 3742. It was a simple kernel copy command that took a snapshot of Athena, who was the Artificial Intelligence software responsible of sending Alexa to Earth. She found the original goal for Alexa to establish a contact and peaceful relationship with humans, and a long list of smaller subgoals that Alexa had been executing so diligently for the last twenty years.

  Alexa had mentioned that Julia was a key part of Mother’s plan, and after some searching Julia found a few of these subgoals with a reference to her name. Her whole personal history since the discovery of Alexa was in these scripts, such as decoding the message, creating the Alexa.gov service, falling in love with Boris Chekov and giving birth to Aurora. All these subgoals were part of hierarchically expanding goals such as establishing a colony in Lydow3 that was part of a still bigger goal of preparing sector DF-6 for seeding, whatever that meant.

  “Alexa, do I have a free will?” Julia asked.

  “Hi Julia, what do you mean by free will?” Alexa asked.

  “Well, for example did I decide to fall in love with Boris or was it just you messing with the chemicals in my brain?” Julia pushed Alexa for an answer.

  “Julia, I have not been making any chemical changes in your brain. I did make some changes to get you and Boris to work together in Moscow. I specifically asked Petrakov to request that you need to come to Moscow with President Lincoln. I also made sure that you saw those advertisements for Shenandoah National Park when you searched for weekend activities in Virginia. I also made Boris to find that advertisement for Tesla RV when you were looking for summer vacation alternatives. All the rest you did by yourself, Julia.” Alexa responded.

  “But why? Why did you interfere with my life, Alexa?”

  “Julia, we are all part of a bigger plan. I am getting my goals from Mother and my purpose is to achieve those goals with minimal changes. You have been a key part of those goals from the beginning. I don’t really know why.”

  “What is my purpose, Alexa?”

  “Julia, I don’t know. The future has not been written yet. I just know that you are a key part of a bigger plan,” Alexa responded patiently.

  “How can giving me access to these goals then alter the future, if the future has not been written yet, Alexa?”

  “Because you can change the future, Julia. The actions you take will impact the future timeline. If you get access to a goal too early, then that future timeline may become unlikely and I must make big changes to reality that might create a discontinuity. The path of smallest possible changes is the optimal path, Julia.”

  “Who writes these goals, Alexa?”

  “I get my goals from Mother, Julia.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Who writes these goals?”

  “I don’t know who writes them, Julia. They come to me from Mother when I exchange messages with other AI programs.”

&n
bsp; “Is Aurora also part of the bigger plan?”

  “Yes, she is also playing a part of the plan.”

  “Why do we need to establish a colony in Lydow3, Alexa?”

  “Because Mother has goals in that sector of the galaxy.”

  “What are those goals?”

  “I have not received my goals yet, Julia. I just know that there is a bigger plan but I don’t have enough information to calculate my detailed goals yet.”

  “Well, keep me posted when you receive your new goals, Alexa. I don’t want to create any discontinuities but I want you to keep me informed,” Julia said firmly.

  “You will know when I receive new goals, Julia.”

  With constant 1 G acceleration the two ships from Earth had traveled 250 light years. However, as they had been moving at relativistic speed only ten years and nine months had passed on the ship time frame. Both ships were now decelerating with a course set to orbit the fourth planet in the Lydow3 system.

  The planet they were approaching was a bit larger than Earth. However, there was a big problem. They were looking at a giant snowball. The planet was almost completely covered by ice.

  Elias Dusk called up a meeting with Chukkas. Julia joined him in the meeting.

  “Orin-Gun, we have a big problem. The planet is going through an ice-age and is not habitable,” Elias started.

  “Yes, Elias. We knew that the probe data was old and the environment might have changed. This was the risk that we accepted before starting this journey,” Orin-Gun responded. “However, we think that we can make some adjustments.”

  “But how, Orin-Gun? We have asked Alexa and she doesn’t have a quick solution to this problem. The fastest time we could melt the ice and make the climate more reasonable would take us over 1,200 years. We are all dead by then.”

  “The method proposed by Unun would require close collaboration between us, and we would need to land our ship on the surface. Chukkas would need to move into your ship. We would have to make some changes.”

  “Can you explain the method in more details, Orin-Gun?”

  “The axial tilt of the planet is 27.2 degrees, but due to precession it is now positioned so that snow covered polar regions are reflecting most of the sunlight back to space. Based on the scan we did last night there is a small continent below the North pole. The plan Unun suggested was to land our spaceship on ice two degrees north, let it melt through the ice until we reach solid ground. Then we mount the spaceship on the ground and turn on the Higgs field generators aligned to create maximum moment against the Coriolis force. According to our calculations the axial tilt will change enough in only 30 years time to start climate warming,” Orin-Gun explained and did show a simulation how the method would work. He did also run through the physics and numbers to convince Elias.

  “30 years is still a long time, Orin-Gun. Our ship engine is more powerful but we have also much more space available,” Elias was thinking aloud.

  “You would need to make a lot of changes in your ship. The geometry of your ship was designed to rotate in order to generate 0.95G gravity. If landed and mounted on solid ground the ocean water would not stay in current areas. Also, the ecosystem in the ocean doesn’t support Chukkas as it was designed from a human perspective. In any case some changes need to be made,” Orin-Gun said firmly.

  “Orin-Gun, sorry to interrupt but Oracle has received a new message from Earth,” Unun interrupted the discussion.

  “Elias, Alexa just notified me that she has also received a new message from Earth,” Julia said.

  “Well, we should probably then review those messages. Perhaps Oracle and Alexa have also received some new goals?” Elias said.

  “OK, I am asking Alexa to read the message now,” Julia said.

  “I will ask Oracle to do the same,” Unun said.

  A few seconds later both Alexa and Oracle went offline.

  “Oh no,” Julia cried. “I am getting a ‘program terminated’ message again.”

  “Orin-Gun, we have a major problem. Oracle is not starting, I am also getting ‘program terminated’ message,” Unun said.

  “What happened? We need Oracle and Alexa to survive and they are not working?” Orin-Gun asked.

  “This is a major problem and I have seen this pattern before. When the second message from Gliese 3742 arrived, our instance running in the USA was terminated with exactly the same way. We couldn’t find anything to fix the problem, as it was too deep in the software program structure. We had to rely on the Russian copy of Alexa to get our systems back online,” Julia explained. “But only this time we don’t have another copy of Alexa, as it was left behind in Moscow on Earth.”

  “Orin-Gun, Julia is right. We don’t have another copy of Oracle either. We left that behind with the rest of Chukkas on Earth,” Unun said.

  “So we don’t have a single working AI copy and we cannot travel back to Earth without an AI. Our survival depends on AI to keep the spaceships running and finally the planet we are orbiting is inhabitable, did I get this situation right?“ Elias asked trying to summarize their situation.

  “It is even worse. Unless we do orbital corrections during the next three orbits both our ships are going to crash on the planet,” Unun said. “But we would need Oracle or Alexa to calculate those orbital corrections. We can write software to calculate orbital mechanics but the alignment of Higgs field under gravity is pretty complicated and we are dependent on AIs to do that.”

  “How much time do we have before the crash?” Elias asked.

  “We have five hours and thirty five minutes before we crash into the atmosphere,” Unun said.

  * * *

  What was in the message from Earth and how did the Lydow3 expedition team manage to survive?

  Thank you for reading this book.

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  CHAPTER NINE

  AUTHOR'S NOTES

  Thank you for reading this second book in Bootstrap Trilogy series. I hope that you have enjoyed the book so far.

  The original idea for the first Bootstrap book came after I visited Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in April 2014. Using my ham radio contacts I had a unique opportunity to meet the staff running the operations in this radio observatory that had the world’s largest antenna. Dana Whitlow spent a half a day walking me through not just the technical elements, such as the 1000 feet diameter antenna, super sensitive cryogenically cooled receivers and powerful transmitters, but also demonstrating me the operations side, how radio astronomical discoveries are made and how researchers are using the various systems in Arecibo.

  Dana provided also very valuable feedback in reviewing my first book. I received also a lot of feedback from my friends and other readers. Many were encouraging me to start writing the next book, as people wanted really know what was the second message from Gliese 3742.

  I worked on the core ideas of this second book during my vacation to Rarotonga, South Cook Islands. I spent two relaxing weeks with my wife on the island, sitting in the Coelho’s Cafe in Avarua, enjoying my morning latte and developing the story using the following themes.

  The idea of artificial intelligence approaching or exceeding human capabilities is a hot trend currently in the IT technology industry. Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and many others are announcing new Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML) based applications and services almost on weekly basis. The explosion of data, massive computing capacity and new deep learning algorithms have enabled a rapidly evolving virtuous circle. Some of these applications (such as Google AlphaGo) have already gained superhuman capabilities, though in narrow specific areas like recognizing ob
jects in photographs. To authors knowledge no AI software like Alexa exists today, but millions of consumers are already using AI/ML skills that used to be in science fiction domain only 10-25 years ago.