Gamers and Gods: AES

by Matthew Kennedy

Farker watched Aes stride off into the bushes. This can't be happening, he thought. How can he be realer than I designed him?

  He couldn't stop thinking about what Aes had suggested, that he really was a ghost in the machine. That was impossible. Wasn't it?

  The debate about artificial intelligence had raged for nearly a century. On one side were those who believed that anything was possible, with a good enough computer program. They argued that the brain was merely a computer; given fast enough processors, and complicated enough software, it was a self-obvious given to them that machines would become self-conscious just as we have. Computers merely had to catch up with a billion years of evolution, and with the exponential progress curve of Science it would happen sooner rather than later.

  Surprisingly, there were many computer scientists as well as laymen who disagreed, and Farker was one of them. They argued that there was something unique about biological systems that made them intrinsically different from artificial ones. The religious ones called this difference a soul. The skeptics settled for a less mystical explanation, saying, instead, that since we do not know how our own consciousness is generated, there is no way to replicate the process.

  Perhaps, Farker thought, there is a third option. His mind was acting like a whirlwind, picking up facts, theories and observations like piles of leaves and rearranging them into patterns complex and beautiful. What if the entire Universe is a quantum computer? he thought.

  Infinities opened up in his mind. Worlds within worlds without limit. Suppose Aes wrote a book. Was he, Farker, then, the grandfather of the book, since he created a program called Asklepios? Was there a great-grandfather that made Farker that made Asklepios that wrote the book? Was this hall of mirrors growing at both ends like some fractal web of infinite detail? Or was the process only top-down? Are all creatures on a learning curve to become gods?

  He shook his head. Too many questions, perhaps another infinity of them, and only finite time and answers to plug them with. None of this was helping him deal with Am-heh.

  There was a flash behind him like the light of a thousand suns, temporarily casting his shadow darkly on the outer wall of the cave. It called another quote from the Bard to mind.

  “...Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

  that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

  And then is heard no more...”

  Unless Aes was right. Was he a digital reincarnation?

  There was a voice behind him: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

  Surprised that Darla knew Shakespeare, he turned, and saw Cheiron instead.

  “He's right, you know,” said Cheiron cheerfully. “Aes, I mean, not Macbeth. The Multiverse is not an idiot. A few more minutes of that discussion and he'd be deriving hyperspatial topology for you – Plato's analogy of watching shadows on the cave wall.”

  “You're a shadow vouching for the reality of another shadow,” Farker pointed out. “Not the most believable of witnesses.”

  “Or a spider asking you to believe in spiders,” Cheiron retorted. “Qubits aren't dominoes, Farker. Even electrons can sense their surroundings.”

  “Are you trying to say that even electrons are conscious?” Farker asked him skeptically. “That's an old argument. Sure, they can emit virtual photons and avoid other electrons, but–”

  “But nothing. Don't tell me you've never wondered whether Einstein was right after all.”

  “About what?” And since when did you learn quantum field theory?”

  “About the hidden variables. He didn't like Newton's clean trajectories blurring out into the probability functions, on the micro scale of particles. You know that. He always thought some day we might discover the hidden variable that created the illusion of indeterminacy. Well, it's us.”

  “Are you saying,” Farker said, tasting the idea, “that the hidden variable is consciousness?”

  “Absolutely. The Multiverse is conscious at all levels.”

  “What? Galaxies are conscious? Without brains?”

  “Don't play dumb with me, Farker. The processing of information does not stop with the three pounds of goo in your skull. Galaxies don't worry about the same questions as you do, naturally. But that doesn't stop them from processing.”

  “That's an extraordinary claim,” Farker said. “As such, it requires extraordinary evidence. I'm a scientist, not a priest.”

  “Oh, come off it!” Cheiron scolded. “You know a honeybee can find a good source of nectar, then go back to its hive and tell the others about it. It does all that with barely a million brain cells.”

  “That doesn't mean it is self-conscious, or has a soul.”

  Cheiron just shook his head. “So arrogant. You think organisms are 'merely' machines until their brains reach a certain size, like humans, and then...what? Bang, a soul appears? How convenient for you.”

  “Whatever. I'm not going to argue philosophy with a computer.”

  “Is that what you think you're doing?” Cheiron snorted and tore the earth below him with a front hoof. “Humans!”

  Farker sat down on the rock again. “This argument is getting us nowhere,” he said. “If you have any advice about dealing with Am-heh, I'll be glad to listen.”

  “All information is useful,” said Cheiron. “You just have to look at the big picture and see where it fits in. I know your kind, Farker. You don't want enlightenment spoon fed to you. You like to work solutions out for yourself. So do it.”

  And he vanished.

  “Thanks, that's really helpful,” Farker called after him.

  Chapter 39: Manny: into the gathering darkness