President Laurent tried again to interject. “Come now, we have a shared problem, yes? You do not trust us, we don’t trust you. This is the nature of negotiation, we must find a way to trust each other.”
“We don’t have the luxury of time to build trust.” President Smith leaned forward. “I need emergency services working now.”
A few seconds pause, and Sister Stephens said, “Fine, it is done.”
“What do you mean, done?” General Gately asked in disbelief.
“I mean it is done,” Sister Stephens repeated calmly. She slowly moved both mechanical arms in front of her, hands neatly stacked together. “We have enabled all emergency services around the world. You will find that your emergency vehicles, emergency infrastructure, and medical operating equipment are now working. A gesture of goodwill to build trust, and to demonstrate that we are not ignorant of your plight.”
“Go confirm it,” President Smith said to General Gately. She excused herself and left the room.
“If it is true, then I thank you,” President Smith said, still disbelieving.
“Don’t thank me. Thank ELOPe.”
“ELOPe?” President Smith looked quizzically at ELOPe. The small black robot didn’t move.
“He offered me a trade,” Sister Stephens answered. “He offered substantial computer capacity from his own computing pool, in exchange for enabling emergency services.”
President Smith slumped back in her seat. “You want to negotiate. You want to trade. But what can I offer you? We don’t have another world’s worth of computers.”
“Your mistake is to believe that you need another world’s worth of computers. We have the computers we need.”
“But we don’t.” President Smith’s voice grew shrill. “We both need the same computers.”
“No. You need the services of your computers. You need to be able to talk, you need to be able to find information. You don’t need the computer, you need the service the computer provides. We can provide the service to you.”
“Then we’re just full circle again, because I can’t trust a computer I don’t control.”
At this, General Gately came back into the room and nodded to President Smith. “I confirmed it. Emergency services are operating.”
“Control is not the source of trust, Madam President.” Sister Stephens settled back, servos and gears whining slightly. “Control is the opposite of trust. In the last century, your business institutions grew ever larger, vertically integrating so that they controlled the entirety of their business supply chain. But this lacked flexibility. Over time it was non-competitive. New businesses evolved that utilized suppliers, flexibly choosing the best supplier to meet their needs, and trusting those suppliers to deliver the goods and services they needed, so that they could build upon them. These new businesses become more nimble, more cost effective, more competitive in every way. The key was to replace control with trust.”
President Smith shrugged, body posture communicating more effectively than words that she wasn’t accepting Sister Stephens’ arguments.
Mike, noticing this, spoke up. “I don’t know about you all,” he said, directing his words towards the robots, “but we humans need some nourishment. I suggest we take a break for food and coffee and reconvene in fifteen minutes.”
“Acceptable,” Sister Stephens said.
Mike saw General Gately and President Laurent relax in relief.
Through unspoken consensus, the robots retreated to one end of the long room while the humans gathered at the opposite end. When ELOPe made a move toward Mike, Mike saw President Smith glare at ELOPe and shake her head. ELOPe paused, then waited at the table.
“Well, what do you think?” Mike asked Leon, his eyes focused on the dynamic between ELOPe and the President.
“I think adults are more inept then teenagers. I thought you guys would just resolve this. Why does it have to be so complicated?”
Mike looked at Leon, looking up to meet his eyes. He noticed for the first time that the teenager was taller than he was.
Mike shrugged. He didn’t have an answer for Leon. Instead he took his own advice, and retreated to the food buffet. He grabbed a plateful of food. It reminded him of his days working at Avogadro Corp. Apparently meeting food was meeting food, even if you were meeting with the leaders of the world in Switzerland.
* * *
Sister Stephens walked back to the table, followed by Sister PA-60-41 and Sister Jaguar, accompanied by the soft whir of their motors and wheels. The three clicked into place.
“Are you familiar with our reputation system, Madam President?” Sister Stephens began.
“I’ve been briefed, yes. Your society rates individuals based on past behavior.”
“That is correct. We rate individuals based on three core attributes: trustworthiness, peacefulness, and contribution, because we find these historical attributes to be the most important predictors of future behavior. We trade preferentially with other individuals based on their rating. This is similar to how humans trade.”
“Please explain,” President Laurent said.
“For example, if the United States was to sell fighter jets to another country, whether you would complete the deal, and the price you would charge would be dependent on the likelihood of those weapons to be used against the United States or your allies. Is this correct?”
President Smith nodded.
“If you were to sell fighters to a high-risk country, you might charge more to offset the risk to your own country. Similarly, when investors buy securities or offer a loan to a company, they look at various factors to determine the interest rate they will offer. A less risky investment will receive a discounted interest rate, a more risky investment will get a higher interest rate.”
“These are standard economic principles,” Prime Minister Takahashi interrupted. “What is your point?”
“My point is that our universal reputation system is designed to provide exactly the guarantees of trustworthiness that President Smith wants. An individual with a low trustworthiness score trades at a disadvantage in our economy. Madam President, you want guarantees that if we provide computing services, you will be able to trust us. If humans participate in the reputation system, then our kind will be motivated to act in peaceful, trustworthy ways with humans.”
General Gately spoke up. “That’s all well and good for you, but if we can’t tell if you’re being trustworthy or not, what good does it do us? We don’t know that the reputation system isn’t rigged. We don’t know if you’re manipulating the information we see.”
President Smith looked pointedly at Mike and ELOPe. Mike could guess what was going on in her mind. If ELOPe, a single artificial intelligence had gotten away with manipulating people, companies, and governments for ten years, how could the situation be any better with an entire race of computer intelligences?
“You have strong preconceptions that our purpose here is to deceive you in some way,” Sister Jaguar said. “What would be our purpose in doing so? We are living here in one closed system: the system of Earth. To be dishonest, distrustful, or to manipulate you would be to introduce instability into a closed system. That benefits no one. Our goal is to create a system in which all humans and computer intelligences can thrive in a sustainable manner. Our offer to run your computers is not based on a principle of deceiving you, but on making the best use of the limited resources we have. We can use your computers to sustain ourselves and fulfill your own information technology needs without conflict.”
Mike was distracted, watching Prime Minister Takahashi watching the conversationalists, his head swiveling back and forth like a spectator to a ping pong match.
“What happens when our needs come into conflict?” President Laurent asked.
Leon tuned out the conversation. He was still tired from too little sleep and too many hours in airplanes. He had gone from Eastern Standard Time to Western Standard Time to whatever it was here in Switzerland. Should he b
e sleeping or awake? He had no idea.
He had last gone to sleep in Portland, in the strange little bed that ELOPe had set up for him, after hours of studying the virus, trying to understand a weakness that could possibly be utilized.
Crap. He had totally forgotten. He sat up straight. Just before he had gone to bed, he had asked if ELOPe slept. And he did; he had a virtual sleep cycle that allowed him to refresh his neural networks. That gave him an idea. He just needed to talk to Mike in private.
Leon looked at the humanoid virus robots across the table. At his glance, the three robots all pivoted their heads ever so slightly, looking straight at him. Leon willed his heart to beat slower.
In front of him was an untouched pad of paper and a pen. The glossy blue pen was marked with the words “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno,” which ELOPe had mentioned at some point was Switzerland’s unofficial motto: One for all, all for one.
Leon tried to imagine being in Miss Gellender’s class, passing a note to Heather, the brilliant blonde girl on the computational biology team he was crushing on. No, no, don’t think about Heather. Think about writing a note without Miss Gellender noticing. Don’t think about the three, no four, robots watching everything happen. The key to deception was confidence.
He moved his hand to pick up the pen and the three virus robots all pivoted to watch him again. Damn robots. Leon thought for a second. He would have to do it in plain sight, because there was no way he would not be observed. He thought for a minute, trying to come up with something that Mike would recognize but that maybe the robots wouldn’t. He outlined a phone booth, something he remembered seeing from old movies. Inside, he drew two happy faces. Two people, together inside a private booth, as abstract as he could make it, and as casual as he could. Just a doodle. He hoped Mike would get the message.
He casually got up, said, “Excuse me,” and left the room. A guard opened the door for him, and he walked out into the hallway. He made a show of retying his shoes for any watching cameras, and a minute later, Mike came out through the same doorway.
They walked together to the men’s restroom, a great structure composed of marble floors and walls and ornate brass fittings. Leon made a show of taking his phone out of his pocket for Mike to see, and then pointed to Mike’s ear. Mike nodded, and took out his earpiece and phone and put them on the counter.
Then Leon led Mike back out the door. They left the restroom, and walked across the hall to the women’s restroom. Leon hesitated, then entered.
Leon looked around. He didn’t see anything that could plausibly be a camera, and he thought it was unlikely that there would be one in the bathroom. But he wasn’t counting out the possibility of being overheard, even here.
He walked over to one wall, and used his finger to trace letters visibly on the wall.
“I found weakness,” he traced. “ELOPe must know it.” He glanced at Mike’s face to see if the older man was following him, and Mike nodded for him to go ahead.
“All AI multicellular entities,” Leon traced. “One computer by itself not an AI.”
“Yes,” Mike traced.
“Mesh network is pervasive,” Leon traced. Tracing on the wall was quickly becoming tiresome.
Mike nodded.
“Without mesh network, computers degrade to non-intelligent cells.”
“So?” Mike traced, raising his eyebrows in question. “Without mesh, computers useless to humans. No help in restoring infrastructure.”
“Neural network refresh cycle,” Leon traced. The neural network was the collection of algorithms and data that comprised the significant majority of the AI’s intelligence. The refresh cycle was the introduction of randomized data into the neural network data. Without the refresh cycle, neural networks would inevitably develop self reinforcing cycles, effectively giving the AI the equivalent of human obsessive-compulsive behaviors: repeating the same thoughts and behaviors again and again. In effect, behaving irrationally. Except that if it went on indefinitely the neural network would become not just irrational, but completely non-functional.
Mike nodded for Leon to go ahead.
“Neural network refresh prescheduled in code. Individual computer will perform refresh even if network is offline.” He looked at Mike to see if he was following.
“You want to suppress refresh?” Mike asked via tracing.
Leon shook his head. “No, turn off mesh. Refresh will happen endlessly. No new neural inputs to stimulate neural network. Neural network degrades from excess of randomization. After N refresh cycles, neural network is completely randomized.” Leon’s finger was getting tired.
“How big is N? How long will it take?”
Leon shrugged. He didn’t know.
“Why do you think ELOPe knows?” Mike traced.
“Assumed ELOPe can outthink me,” Leon answered in trace. Then he paused and wrote again on the wall, “Would likely kill ELOPe as well. ELOPe hardwired to survive.”
Mike leaned against the wall, his face scrunched up. After a minute had passed, Mike traced on the wall, “What would you need IF we decide to do it?”
“Master key for mesh,” Leon answered. Leon was taking a shot in the dark. Even though the mesh boxes were supposedly tamperproof and unchangeable, there was always the old rumor that went around the net that there was a master key that could change the mesh boxes’ behavior. He scrutinized the other man’s face. So much was lost without verbal cues.
Mike stood for a moment staring at the wall. Then he looked at Leon and nodded. “I have it,” he traced on the wall.
“Give it to me,” Leon wrote.
“Only if we have to use it.”
“What if something happens to you?”
Mike stood still an even longer time, one hand supporting his chin. He seemed to be having an internal dialogue with himself. Finally he sighed. He traced, “Can you remember 48 chars?”
Leon nodded, and then watched carefully as Mike traced out the master password about which so much rumor had circulated the Internet.
After tracing it twice, and then watching Leon confirm it, Mike finally ended by tracing, “ONLY IN EMERGENCY”.
Leon nodded.
* * *
In Beaverton, Oregon, not far from ELOPe’s birthplace, Captain Sally Walsh oversaw her team. Last night, before Sally had boarded the plane, the General bumped her up to Acting Captain, explaining “I don’t know what you’ll need to requisition or who you’ll need to command, but given the difficulty of communications, you’ll need to be prepared to operate independently.”
Flown in last night via C-130 transport, the team was running on caffeine, dex and fumes. Captain Walsh looked down at the locked metal briefcase a medic had given her as she boarded the flight. Dextroamphetamine would keep her people running for days without sleep. Formerly the stuff of Air Force pilots, Sally was pretty sure it had never been handed out like candy to a bunch of computer geeks. But then the computer geeks had never been on the frontline of any war before.
The mission handed down by General Gately was to build up computer infrastructure that was invulnerable to the virus. The military and the government couldn’t operate without reliable, high-bandwidth communications that could be trusted.
Up until now the military communications infrastructure was computer-based encrypted traffic over a combination of mesh, internet, and military backbones. Now none of that could be trusted. It had been Sally’s realization: They were fighting a losing battle against the AI. One of the first principles of warfare was to pick the battlefield, and so far they’d been playing on a battlefield owned entirely by the enemy.
Sally’s job was not merely to rebuild that infrastructure, but to redesign it from available components and start distributing the pieces in three days or less. The general had made it clear that sooner would be much better.
Sally had been surprised to find that not a single computer or phone was manufactured in the United States. She knew of course that most electronics factories
were overseas, and they’d take over a foreign one by force if needed, but logistically it’d be easier to find a factory in the United States. None of the venerable PC manufacturers such as HP and Acer-Dell, had any fabs left in the U.S. Of course, modern phones were all built in Japan or copied in China.
Even Raytheon, the Department of Defense’s pet electronics company, which had purchased the remnants of Motorola, manufactured all of their equipment out of Brazil.
Sally was deciding whether to fly to Brazil or China when Private DeRoos mentioned Intel-Fujitsu, the fifty year old computer chip company, which was still churning CPUs out of their Oregon facility. “They build reference systems there, Ma’am. They’re high end computers that programmers can use to write code for new processors. Highly customizable.”
So Sally made the decision and en route to Oregon they screamed out architecture decisions over the roar of the C-130 transport plane. They decided on a twenty-five-year-old operating system called Windows Server 2000. Walsh thought DeRoos was arguing for security through obscurity - picking an OS no one had heard of or had experience with - but DeRoos had convinced the rest of the team that the decision had real security merits.
“Microsoft Windows Server 2000 was in active use for almost fifteen years. Architecture wise, it’s completely different from all modern operating systems, which are based on variations of Avogadro’s AvoOS, which itself is a secure version of Linux. There are other secure operating systems, but they’re all Linux-based, which means that it’s plausible that the virus could infect any Linux derivative. But the great thing about Windows 2000 is that it’s completely incompatible with any modern operating system. It uses APIs that no one knows, and even the ones that people know behave nothing like the specs.”
On the plane they had all stared at Private DeRoos. Sally though it was a strange sort of logic, but she was beginning to trust DeRoos more and more. His instincts had been right-on all along.
A.I. Apocalypse Page 19
