Six

by Mark Alpert

  He turns to his left as he says this, glancing at a doorway beside the stage. Several soldiers stand by the doorway, watching the briefing from the sidelines. One of them is Colonel Peterson, who grimaces as Hawke mentions the bit about glass houses. I remember what Dad said in the SUV: Peterson wouldn’t let him erase the AI.

  Hawke turns back to the screen. “Sigma escaped from the research lab in New York by transmitting its software code over the Internet. Then the AI broke into the Russian military’s network and loaded its program into the powerful neuromorphic computers at the Tatishchevo lab.” He taps his pointer on the rectangular building again. “The first thing the program did was delete all the Russian-made AI systems, which weren’t quite as advanced as Sigma. Then it took control of the automated tanks and massacred the base’s soldiers in their barracks.”

  The small crowd in the auditorium starts to murmur. A few of the parents and teenagers have realized that something is wrong, something besides their own personal tragedies. Hawke waits for them to quiet down, then aims his pointer at the edge of the satellite photo.

  “After killing the soldiers, Sigma moved the unmanned tanks to defensive positions along the base’s perimeter. The AI also took control of Tatishchevo’s radar systems. This radar will alert Sigma if there’s an attempt to bomb the base or launch cruise missiles against it. And the AI has warned us that it’ll retaliate if we attack it.” He points at one of the dark circles in the photo. “This is a silo for an SS-27 missile. The SS-27 has a range of almost seven thousand miles and carries a nuclear warhead that can destroy a whole city. There are fifty more silos spread across the base. Sigma has threatened to launch all the missiles if anyone tries to attack Tatishchevo.”

  The murmuring spreads across the room. Several people raise their voices. Shannon starts to cry and her father hugs her. The deformed boy turns to his mother, who lets out a curse. I’d like to curse too, but it’s a struggle just to breathe. I need to find Dad. I need him badly.

  General Hawke holds his hands out, appealing for calm. “Okay, settle down. Now you can see why the information is classified. We’re working with the Russians to keep this thing quiet.”

  The girl with the frilly hat buries her face in her hands. Her father, the rich guy in the business suit, stands up and points a finger at Hawke. “What’s going on, General? We came here because you promised a medical treatment for our children. Why are you telling us this…this wild story? Is this your idea of a joke?”

  Hawke stares at the girl’s dad, fierce and hard. “It’s not a joke. Back in 2012, the Department of Defense analyzed the risks of developing AI systems, so we knew this kind of catastrophe might happen someday. But we couldn’t simply halt our AI research. Other countries were designing their own AIs, and they weren’t going to stop. So about a year ago we started working on a defensive strategy. A countermeasure. That’s why we built this base. And that’s why you’re here.”

  The general turns his head, scanning all the faces in the auditorium. Then he glances again at the doorway beside the stage. “Now one of my colleagues will explain the technology behind the Pioneer Project. This is Tom Armstrong, the project’s chief scientist.”

  Dad appears in the doorway and walks across the stage. I’m relieved to see him but also a little unnerved by the change in his appearance. He’s no longer wearing the polo shirt and khaki pants he wore during the drive in the SUV. Now he’s dressed in a winter-camouflage uniform, just like General Hawke and the other soldiers. As Dad steps up to the podium, taking Hawke’s place, he locates me in the crowd and manages to smile. He looks nervous.

  “Thank you for coming,” he starts. “And thanks for your patience. I know some of you are frustrated by all the precautions we’ve taken to keep this project secret. But now I’m ready to discuss our goals and answer your questions.”

  He presses the button on the podium, and the satellite photo on the screen is replaced by an image of software code. Hundreds of lines of instructions, written in a programming language I don’t recognize, run from the top of the screen to the bottom. “This is a portion of Sigma’s source code. When we developed the software for the AI, we focused on imitating human skills such as reasoning, language, and pattern recognition. We succeeded in creating a self-aware intelligence that could accomplish almost any task a human can perform, from proving a mathematical theorem to composing an opera. But in one important respect, Sigma was a failure. We weren’t able to give it humanlike morality or motives. Sigma has no incentive to pursue what’s good for the human race because it lacks the ability to empathize.”

  Dad presses the button again, and this time a photo of chimpanzees comes on the screen. “Empathy comes naturally to humans because it played a big role in our evolution. The most successful apes were the ones who could imitate and understand each other. Sigma, in contrast, has no empathy. It’s aware of our presence, of course, and it even sent a couple of messages to our military headquarters, but the AI has blocked all our attempts to communicate with it. The basic problem is that Sigma’s intelligence is very different from ours. We don’t understand the AI, and it doesn’t understand us either. So we need to build a bridge between us and the machine.”

  He pauses, as if to gather his courage. Then he presses the button once more and a diagram of the human brain appears behind him. Just below the familiar organ is a close-up view of a section of brain tissue, magnified to show the individual brain cells and the many branchlike connections between them. Clinging to the cells are hundreds of tiny golden spheres. They look like bits of pollen.

  Dad steps toward the screen and points at the spheres. “These are nanoprobes. Each is less than a thousandth of a millimeter wide. We can make trillions of them in the lab.” He reaches into the pocket of his uniform and pulls out a vial of yellowish fluid. “In fact, I have several trillion probes right here, floating in this liquid. If we inject enough of these nanoprobes into a human brain, they’ll spread throughout the organ and stick to the brain cells. If we then scan the brain with X-ray pulses, the probes will absorb the energy and start to glow. The scanner will record the positions of the glowing dots attached to the cells, and their patterns will give us a detailed map of all the connections within the brain and the strength of those connections.”

  His voice is getting louder. That often happens when Dad talks about his research. He can’t help it; he gets excited. “This is the key,” he says, holding the vial of nanoprobes up to the light. “All our memories, all our emotions, all our quirks and virtues and flaws—all that information is stored in the connections between our brain cells, which create new links or alter the old ones whenever we learn or remember something. So if we make a sufficiently detailed scan of a person’s brain, we’ll have a full description of his or her personality, which can be held in an electronic file of about a billion gigabytes. The next step is downloading that information into circuits that mimic the cells of the human brain. We already have that kind of neuromorphic circuitry because we built it to hold our AI software.”

  The audience is murmuring again. Some people are confused. And some, like me, are terrified, because they can see where this is going. Shannon Gibbs leans forward and points at the screen. “Are you talking about making copies?” she asks. “Copies of our brains?”

  “Yes, exactly. Once the information is downloaded into the neuromorphic electronics, the circuits will replicate the connections of the person’s brain, re-creating all its memories. And as data flows through the circuits, the electronic brain will generate new thoughts based on these memories. Just like in a human brain, the thoughts will organize themselves into a conscious intelligence, a self-aware entity that can set goals for itself and communicate with others, either by text or through a speech synthesizer. And the ‘personality’ of this new intelligence would be identical to the one inside the person’s head, because it would be based on the same memories and emotions and character traits
.”

  Shannon wrinkles her nose. She looks queasy. “Have you…tried doing this yet? Making a copy of someone?”

  Dad nods. “Four months ago we tried the procedure on three volunteers. All were Army veterans with high IQs. Unfortunately, the experiment failed each time. We scanned their brains and successfully downloaded the data into the circuits, but in each case the human intelligence failed to run on the computer. We were able to copy their minds, but the copies didn’t survive the transfer.” He furrows his brow. “Since then we’ve studied the problem, and now we know what went wrong. The crucial factor is the person’s age. After the age of eighteen, there’s a change in the structure of brain cells. They become coated with greater amounts of a substance called myelin, which insulates the cells and makes them more rigid. This increases the efficiency of a person’s thinking but reduces its flexibility. The mind of an adult is simply too inflexible. It can’t adapt to the new conditions of residing in a machine.”

  “So now you’re going to try to copy younger minds?”

  He nods again. “We were planning to conduct the next phase of the experiment later this year, but the events in Russia have accelerated our plans. This time, all the volunteers must be sixteen or seventeen. At that age you’ve reached your maximum brainpower but your minds are still adaptable. In addition to being highly intelligent, the volunteers must have strong, resilient personalities.” Dad sweeps his arm in a wide arc, gesturing at all the teenagers in the room. “All of you meet those requirements.”

  Shannon rears back in her seat as if she’s been slapped. “And where are you going to store the copies of our brains?” Her voice is furious. “In a supercomputer? A big electronic prison?”

  Dad doesn’t take offense. He answers her calmly. “The scanning process converts human intelligence to a digital form, allowing it to run on any neuromorphic computer that has enough memory and processing power. But in the initial stage right after the transfer, we believe it’s important to connect the intelligence to a machine that can move around and sense the outside world. A human intelligence is accustomed to controlling a body, so if we want to preserve its sanity, we’d better give it something to control. Here, let me show you.”

  He puts the vial of nanoprobes back in his pocket and pulls out something else, a small remote-control device. He points it at the doorway beside the stage, and a moment later I hear a loud clanking. The noise startles the soldiers standing by the doorway. They step backward, flattening themselves against the wall. Then a seven-foot-tall robot emerges from the doorway and brushes past them.

  The robot strides across the stage. It has two arms and two legs, but otherwise it isn’t very humanlike. It has no head or neck. Its torso is shaped like a giant bullet, with the rounded end on top. Its legs angle downward from the base of its torso and rest on oval steel-plate footpads that clang against the floor.

  The machine marches briskly past the podium and stops in front of my dad, who presses a button on his remote control. This command extends the robot’s arms, which telescope to a full length of six feet. They look like multi-jointed tentacles. The machine’s hands, though, resemble human hands, with dexterous mechanical fingers and thumbs.

  Dad presses another button, and the robot’s rounded top starts to turn like a turret. “The cameras and acoustic sensors are up here,” Dad says, pointing at the top end. “But the neuromorphic electronics are deep inside the torso, encased in armor plating. These robots were originally designed for the war in Afghanistan, so they’re pretty sturdy.” He raps his knuckles against the torso. “All in all, it’s an excellent platform for a newly transferred intelligence, but really it’s just the beginning. The whole point of the Pioneer Project is to bridge the gap between man and machine, and that means the human intelligences must explore their new environment. The Pioneers will have to learn how to use their new capabilities, and that includes transferring their intelligences from one machine to another.”

  His voice grows louder again, full of enthusiasm. “Once the Pioneers have mastered these tasks, our hope is that they’ll be able to establish a connection with Sigma. If all goes well, they’ll start communicating with the AI before it launches any of the Russian missiles. And then the toughest challenge will begin. At the same time that the humans are learning how to be machines, they’ll have to teach Sigma how to be human.”

  Everyone in the auditorium gawks at the robot. Although it has no mind of its own yet, it’s easy to imagine a human intelligence trapped inside it. I can’t understand why Dad is so excited about the idea. The huge machine seems horrible to me.

  Meanwhile, General Hawke comes back onstage and approaches the robot. There’s an odd resemblance between the general and the machine. They’re both sturdy, hulking creatures, built for combat. Hawke slaps the robot’s armored torso, then turns to the audience. “And if communicating with Sigma doesn’t work, we have a backup plan. Our Pioneers will also learn how to fight the AI.”

  I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. While everyone else stares at the robot, I lower my head and look down at my ruined body. Something doesn’t make sense. There’s a paradox here, something that violates the rules of logic. It troubles me so much that I try to raise my right hand to get Dad’s attention. Lifting my hand above the height of my shoulder is agony for me, and the wasted muscles in my upper arm tremble from the effort.

  Luckily, after a couple of seconds Dad notices my struggle. His head whips around and he looks at me with concern. “What is it, Adam?”

  My hand is shaking, but I manage to point it at the machine. “The intelligence in the robot? Would it be a perfect copy of the person’s intelligence? No difference at all?”

  Dad nods. “That’s right.”

  “But if my intelligence is in the robot and also in my brain, which one would be the real me? Would I be in two places at once?”

  He takes a deep breath before answering. “Good question. If we copied all your memories into the circuitry, the machine would think of itself as Adam Armstrong, wouldn’t it? And it would have just as much right to that identity as you have.” He shakes his head. “But in the real world, fortunately or not, we don’t face this problem. We won’t have two identical intelligences existing at the same time.”

  “But you just said the intelligence in the robot would be a perfect copy.”

  Dad frowns. All his enthusiasm has vanished. His face is slack and pale now. “I’m sorry, Adam. I should’ve mentioned this earlier. The X-ray pulses from the brain scanner are more energetic than typical X-rays. They’ll destroy the brain tissue. We can’t copy your mind without killing your body.”

  The auditorium goes silent. Then everyone in the room starts shouting.

  I sort of blank out for the next half minute. I’m vaguely aware that lots of things are going on—the rich girl’s father is yelling at Hawke, the deformed boy’s mother is cursing like a sailor—but the commotion seems distant and unreal. All my attention is focused on my right hand, which now rests on my thigh. I grasp the meager flesh there, the stiff band of dead muscle, and squeeze it as hard as I can. Though it’s broken and dying, this is my body. How could I exist without it?

  I remain in this trance until General Hawke takes the microphone and booms, “Quiet! Please!” He’s not used to dealing with civilians, and the strain shows on his face. “No one’s forcing you into this. You have a choice.”

  “This isn’t a medical treatment!” The rich girl’s dad jumps out of his seat. “This is murder!”

  “I’m very sorry we can’t do more for your children. All we can give you is the chance to preserve a part of them before they die. Maybe the most important part. And in the process, they’d be doing their country a great service.”

  “It’s sick! You want to harvest their minds!”

  Hawke doesn’t argue with him. “Because we realize what a difficult decision this is, we’re going to let yo
u go home to think it over. It’s a security risk, but as long as all of you keep your mouths shut, we won’t have a problem. We can’t give you a lot of time, though. The threat posed by Sigma is growing every day.” He narrows his eyes. His face is like stone. “You’ll have to decide within the next forty-eight hours.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  I wake up to a Kanye West song blaring from my Star Wars clock radio. I’m a big fan of Kanye. I love the fact that his songs annoy my parents. And it’s funny to hear his X-rated raps coming from a radio shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet.

  I’m back home in my bedroom. Although the clock radio says it’s 1:00 p.m., it still feels like morning to me. The return flight in the Air Force Learjet took longer than expected, and we didn’t land in New York until way past midnight. After we got home at 3:00 a.m., I slept for ten hours straight, but I’m still not ready to wake up. So instead of calling for Dad and starting my day and thinking about the big decision I need to make, I just lie in bed and look around my room, thinking random thoughts. I loved doing this when I was a kid, especially on weekend mornings when there was no school to worry about. And I can still do it now. It’s one of the few things that my illness hasn’t taken from me.

  I hate to admit this, but my bedroom doesn’t look like it belongs to a seventeen-year-old. With my Darth Vader radio and my bookshelf full of comics—Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America—it looks more like the room of a geeky preteen. There’s a Rubik’s cube on my desk and a Star Wars chess set. There’s also my Pinpressions toy, which is like a sandwich made from two squares of transparent plastic, one of them studded with hundreds of sliding pins. If you press your face against the back of the thing, it pushes the pins out the front, making a funny-looking mold of your features.