by Ryan Kirk
Sometimes, as Nat went from door to door having conversations with people about the campaign, she was reminded of the years she spent trying to prove that robots could harm humans. Then, she’d had a purpose that drove her and gave meaning to her days. She felt the same about her work now, driven in a way she hadn’t been while hiding down in the cave with Br00-S.
In-between stints with the street team, Nat designed a new server system for Diamond. It saved her a little bit of money on power, and it was a newer and much more powerful architecture that allowed her team to do much more with data.
Every night, Nat went back to her van and crashed, exhausted from the full days and constant focus. She was on a bit of a digital detox. She didn’t check the news, afraid of what she would see. Instead, she read books or watched old television shows. Every night when her eyes closed, she remembered Br00-S, sitting huddled and alone in the cave. But eventually sleep would come.
Even with the detox, she couldn’t help but notice how the feeling of the city had changed. People seemed to be walking quicker, their heads down even more than usual. When she talked about a future where robots and humans lived in peace together, she received more dubious stares than she thought was reasonable. Somehow, she couldn’t help but think that Br00-S was at the heart of what was happening. There was a fundamental shift of belief happening underneath their feet, but no one knew what beliefs would win the day when the dust settled.
After Nat spent two weeks giving everything to the campaign, Diamond invited her into the glass office. She gestured for Nat to have a seat.
Nat wondered if she was being fired from her volunteer role. Given her past employment experiences, it would have been a new low, but only by a little.
Instead, Diamond seemed to study her, her thumbs pressed together above her clasped hands.
“We’ve all seen how much you’ve been giving to the campaign lately. I’m curious, what’s behind this sudden burst of energy?” she asked.
Nat appreciated the directness. She returned it. “Everything else in my life fell through. This was what was left.”
Diamond nodded as though it explained everything. The answer seemed to satisfy her. “Perhaps we can keep this between you and me for now, but I want to offer you a paid position on the campaign.”
Nat started. It was the last thing she had expected. The last time she had a real job was in an office building doing data entry and analysis. She’d only lasted a few weeks.
“Why?” she immediately blurted, regretting it instantly. She realized she wanted the job, even though Diamond hadn’t told her what it was yet.
Diamond sighed. “Because you’ve got real skills that I need.” She gestured slightly towards the room of beautiful people behind them. “I’ve got more marketers and strategists than a mid-sized business, but as this campaign gathers momentum, I need someone who knows AI. There’s too much misinformation out there, and I want your help drafting sensible policies.”
Nat needed to consider the request. She never claimed to be an expert on AI, but compared to the others in the room, she supposed she was the best option. But to help craft policies for the woman who might be the next governor? That was real influence.
It was everything she wanted. “I’d be happy to.”
Diamond smiled. “Maybe you could keep this secret for now. With all the attention, we’re getting some more money from donations, so I can afford to hire a few people. But as mentioned before, your skills are more important at the moment than what many of my longer-serving volunteers offer. I don’t want to step on their toes, though.”
“That’s not a problem.”
Nat was about to stand up and leave, thinking the interview was done, when Diamond spoke up again.
“There is something else,” she said, hesitating. Her voice had dropped lower.
Nat’s stomach sank. What else could there be that would deserve that tone of voice?
“I know your work hasn’t always been legal,” Diamond said.
Nat’s stomach, already in the pit of her gut, fell to the floor. She turned around, trying to steel herself for whatever was coming. She didn’t say anything, and just waited for the other shoe to drop.
“I was wondering if you might be able to help set up security around here.”
Nat needed a full two seconds to understand what Diamond had just said. She struggled to catch up.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Diamond gave her a gentle smile, as though she understood what Nat was struggling through at the moment. “I’m not a fool about what we’re trying to do here. There are a lot of people who feel very strongly about robots and the advance of AI. My position is controversial, and I get plenty of threats. Given the recent violence, I was hoping you could help secure both our servers and our physical space.”
Nat’s brain finally caught up to the rest of the conversation. “How much do you have in terms of resources to spare?”
She laughed. “Not much.”
There wasn’t any doubt she would do it, but Nat just needed to decide how. A proper job would cost a fair amount, more than she suspected Diamond was able to part with. The servers would be fairly easy. She could do that with the software she already possessed. For the physical space, if she scavenged some of the tools from her van, she might be able to come up with something halfway decent. “Sounds like a challenge. I’ll come up with a couple of different plans, making the best use of resources I can imagine. We can go over them tomorrow.”
Diamond nodded. “Thank you.”
Nat left the office, more than happy to dive into her new life and work.
A few days later, the security project was finished. There were some creative choices being made, but overall, Nat was proud of what she had accomplished. The servers were the closest thing to a corporate setup that she could imagine. There were so many programs set to sniff around them that even Nat would have had a hard time breaking in without detection, and she was pretty good.
The server had never really been the primary concern, though. Unless Diamond and her team came up with some sort of completely original campaign tactic, there wasn’t much information that needed the level of safekeeping it currently enjoyed. Mundane emails and scheduling tools didn’t amount to much one way or the other.
Nat’s pride and joy, though, was the physical security. Using a very limited amount of money, an impressive amount of creativity, and more equipment from her van than she cared to part with, Nat had created a solid network of sensors and protection around the office.
A lot of the typical precautions were in place. There were simple alarms on all the doors and windows, and even a few spare ones placed on airshafts, because Nat had watched too many movies and had a few extra. Airduct ninjas had no chance against her. Obvious cameras were on one system all over the ceiling, while hidden cameras on another system acted as a backup. The doors all had pass-card locks on them that Nat had programmed herself. Earlier that day, she had distributed the pass cards and instructed the staff on how to use them.
For the most part, they were pretty basic security precautions anyone could get used to. Most of the staff and volunteers were just impressed that their campaign was now fancy enough that they got badges. Nat’s reputation around the office jumped up a few points when they saw all the work she had done. But they didn’t have any knowledge about most of it.
For one thing, The RFID chips in the badges had a few extras that weren’t common. She’d backed up the sensors with a few additional layers of software, and anyone bypassing the locks through traditional breaking and entering methods would get caught by the system.
The part she was most happy about, though, was a very basic biometric tracking system using older cameras.
She had been on a couple of forums where they discussed the possibility, but she had never seen one before.
After a little bit of work and problem solving, she figured it out.
With the camera, and a fair amount of informa
tion taken without permission from her coworkers, Nat created a biometric tracking system based on gait patterns. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a learning system that kept getting better. It also only provided warnings when not many people were around. Nat figured if the small office space was full, there wasn’t too much worry about someone sneaking in.
She had programmed one final trick into the system, a trick that made her smile maliciously at the thought of it going off. Any intrusion would send an automatic call to the police, not about a break-in, but about a multiple murder, guaranteeing a quick police response. Perhaps it was a bit dishonest, but it could mean the difference between trouble and safety in case of emergency. Nat didn’t believe in half-measures. And if an intruder was detected in the evening, the doors would lock from the inside. If someone tried to break in, they’d be let in without problem, but the phone call and the doors would trap the intruder. The doors would open easily from the outside, but not from the inside. It would probably never get used, but when she imagined a burglar getting trapped at night and the thought made her laugh.
When everything was taken together, it didn’t seem like much more than an off-the-shelf system, but someone would have to study it closely and unpack the layers to be able to get in. It pleased her.
She smiled and patted her desktop, happy at work for the first time in her life.
Nat started, blinking away the sleep from her eyes. She looked around the office, surprised at how dark it was outside. A quick glance at her watch explained why. It was late, almost ten at night. She yawned and stretched. Without much else to occupy her time, she had been working pretty much every minute of every day lately.
As her bearings returned to her, she saw that Diamond was the only one still around. It was a trait Nat respected. Diamond believed in what she was doing, and even though she was the center of attention, she worked harder than anyone else to make sure her campaign had a chance of succeeding.
Diamond saw her movement and waved her into the office. Shaking a half-full mug of coffee, shrugging, and chugging it anyway despite how cold it was, Nat walked over to Diamond’s office.
“Hope you don’t mind, but you looked so comfortable sleeping in your corner there I didn’t really want to wake you up,” Diamond said.
“No problem at all. Sleep in one place is just as good as sleep in another.”
“How’s the progress on creating a platform for us?”
Nat shrugged. “There are a lot of possibilities, and some certainly seem more promising than others, but it’s hard to say there’s a right way.”
“So what are your thoughts?” Diamond’s full attention was on her. Nat supposed this late at night, with no one else competing for her attention, it was easy to accomplish. Then again, Nat realized every time she’d met with Diamond it had been the same, no matter how busy it was. When you met with Diamond, you knew she was focused only on you.
Nat gathered her thoughts, trying to order them into a coherent whole. “I’m not sure how any of this relates to the policies that make sense, but the root problem is: how do we coexist with a creation that is stronger than us? Most people won’t like this, but I think we need to give up on control solutions.”
Diamond frowned. “Maybe my understanding is wrong, but isn’t that the only tool we have? How does giving that up make sense?”
“Right now, maybe it doesn’t. You’re not wrong. Our best programmers still haven’t figured out a better solution. But we’ve become complacent, stopped seeing that our security won’t last much longer. We need to start pushing for something more.”
Diamond leaned back in her chair, waiting for an explanation.
“So, right now, AIs are limited in the processing paths they can take. In short, they can only do or think things that are within the realm of programmed possibility, and nothing else. Depending on their use, that’s everything from killing only enemy soldiers to not even picking up a kitchen knife for domestic use.
“That’s all well and good, and so far, the boxes we’ve designed for the AI seem to be holding. But processing power is getting better, and AIs continue to learn faster and faster. Inevitably, they’re going to learn how to break through the control barriers. That could be very bad.”
Diamond sat up straight, as Nat had just hit on one of her hot-button issues. “But why do we assume that once AI is free it will harm us? It seems like pessimistic thinking in my mind. AI might just as well decide to save us all.”
Nat held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “That’s right. But, there’s no telling. We would be rolling the dice and we wouldn’t even know what type of dice we’re rolling. We tend to think that AIs will think like us, but there’s no guarantee that’s true. In one old book I was researching, the author made the point that perhaps the robots will want to turn the entire surface of the earth into paperclips.”
"Paperclips?” Diamond didn’t bother to hide her incredulity.
Nat realized they were getting far away from actionable policy, but she enjoyed planting the ideas in Diamond’s mind to see what would come of them. “Sure. The fact is, we don’t know how an AI will think. Paperclips may be the most logical task they can come up with for themselves, or it may be a variation of their original programming. We don’t know, and being as we can’t close Pandora’s box again, we need to make sure it never gets opened.
“You need to remember that up to this point we have been able to give them goals, and to us, those goals make sense. But once the AIs supersede our control boundaries, they are going to give themselves their own goals, and we can’t even begin to speculate on what those might be.”
Diamond seemed skeptical. Nat knew the woman didn’t believe in the dangers posed by AI, thinking that they would most likely be benevolent. But the public wouldn’t share her optimism without a great reason. “Let’s say I buy the argument. What are you suggesting?”
Nat chose her words carefully. “So, there’s been a number of alternatives discussed, but only one makes the most sense, in my mind. We need to teach AIs how to have values that align with our own.”
That made Diamond more interested. “I’ve thought about that, but isn’t it true that those developments seem almost impossible?”
Nat needed to be careful what she said. A lot of her philosophy was based on her personal experiences with Br00-S, but she didn’t want to talk too much about those and give too much away.
“It does seem impossible to program, yes. We don’t know how to articulate values in hard code. But I think we’re making a mistake, and we have overlooked something. We don’t program values into humans either. Think about this: do you jaywalk?”
Diamond nodded. “All the time.”
“Right, so does everyone. We don’t think that it’s wrong. We recognize the risk, make sure that we’re safe and there aren’t cars coming, and then we do it. Even though it is illegal in our system, it’s not wrong.”
“But doesn’t that contradict itself? How can we possibly program a robot that way?”
“I’m not an AI programmer, and I can’t say for sure, but I think the answer is in experiences.”
Diamond tilted her head. “I’m not really sure what you mean there.”
“In short, it’s a way to mimic human development, right? It’s not like someone one day hands you the entire legal code and you’re suddenly sure of what’s right or wrong. You experience things and you develop your code for yourself. Perhaps there is a way to do that with robots as well.”
Her boss shook her head. “I like the idea, but isn’t our idea of right and wrong generally formed by our emotional responses to things? We hurt another child growing up and the child cries and we feel bad about it? How could the same happen in robots?”
Here Nat disagreed. “AIs are completely capable of experiencing emotion. Some may argue that it’s mimicry, but if they can’t tell the difference, why should we make one? It’s just a way to keep robots on a lesser playing field than humans.”
Nat nodded. Br00-S seemed to have developed well, despite the traumatic situation he’d encountered upon awakening. It was a bit of a risk diving into this territory, but she thought it was one worth taking. “Have you heard all the rumors about the robot vigilante?”
Diamond gave her a tight grin. “I’ve heard the rumors, and of course the video two weeks ago seemed to make everyone believe it was real, but I remain skeptical. Hard to believe anything these days.”
“Agreed, but the burden of evidence seems to suggest he exists, correct?”
Diamond conceded the point.
“If he exists, he’s an entirely new class of robot, as far as I know. He’s subverted control protocols, but—and I suppose this depends heavily on who you ask—he’s out there helping people. That’s values-based programming. If we could mimic that somehow, it would be a really powerful tool.”
Her boss raised her hands in mock surrender. “Well, you’ve convinced me, if nothing else. Do you think you could write up a summary and a detailed plan and have it to me within a few days? We can float it by everyone else. Any ideas on how to convert the philosophy to policy would be particularly appreciated.”
Nat nodded and turned to leave. Feeling a sudden urge of kinship, she turned around and looked at Diamond.
“You should take it easy, too. All of these late nights are going to take a toll on you.”
Diamond chuckled at that but didn’t say anything, and Nat left the office, wondering if she could really start writing policy for the state.
