Fid's Crusade

by David Reiss

  Defense Attorney: So you're saying that the Turing test is insufficient to determine if a machine is capable of thought?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: That is correct. I believe that the Turing test is only a starting point. Even once the Turing test is passed, much more rigorous study is necessary before making a judgment.

  Defense Attorney: Interesting. Also...my understanding is that you received your PsyD in developmental psychology from Stanford University in two-thousand-two?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: Yes. That is correct.

  Defense Attorney: And you are considered an expert in your field, in the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of cognitive, or social, or emotional health issues in children?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: That is a rather simplistic definition, but yes.

  Defense Attorney: The bulk of your training and all of your experience as a working professional has all been oriented towards working with children?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: Yes.

  Defense Attorney: And the methods that you used to evaluate the subject, are they well-known and generally accepted among your peers?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: Again, yes.

  Defense Attorney: Now, you’ve stated that you’re aware of the existence of advanced chat scripts, and you’ve testified that those scripts are generated by highly trained professionals. Do you suppose that it’s theoretically possible that a highly trained professional could use the expertise of one of your peers, to tailor an advanced chat script specifically to pass the well-known and generally accepted tests you used to evaluate the subject?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: It would be theoretically possible, I suppose, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that in this case.

  Defense Attorney: In two thousand and two, did Stanford's curriculum require that developmental psychology graduate students take advanced computer programming classes?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: What? No.

  Defense Attorney: So you have no training or experience in evaluating complicated programs or advanced chat scripts?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: Other experts have been called to testify regarding my patient’s core program-

  Defense Attorney: Move to strike. That was a yes or no question, Doctor.

  Judge: Granted.

  Doctor Cavanaugh: Can you repeat the question, please?

  Defense Attorney: Prior to your experience working with the subject, did you have any specific training or experience in evaluating complicated programs or advanced chat scripts?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: No, I did not.

  Defense Attorney: As such, when it comes to identifying or analyzing a sufficiently advanced simulation of a living person that may have been created using a trained psychologist’s knowledge...you are, in effect, a lay person. Are you not?

  Doctor Cavanaugh: Other expert witnesses, computer scientists, have testified tha-

  Defense Attorney: Again, Move to strike.

  Judge: Granted.

  Doctor Cavanaugh: Yes. When it comes to identifying some theoretical specifically tailored simulations, I would be a lay person.

  Defense Attorney: Thank you, Doctor. I have no further questions.

  ◊◊◊

  In mid-January of two thousand and ten, the Sphinx was ambushed by Miss Take and her then-paramour Ophidian Khan. The latter (an eccentric villain who had paid a similarly eccentric bioengineer to grant him a scaly, serpentine appearance) was a moderately skilled inventor who had stumbled across similar techniques to those that had been utilized in my teleportation platforms. I'd since more-or-less abandoned the devices due to erratic behavior during solar storms, but Ophidian Khan had doubled down on the strange interactions between the artificial micro-singularity and atmospheric ionization caused by stellar winds. He'd weaponized the technology, creating a handheld gun that would instantaneously transport random sections of whatever the beam had struck into the exosphere.

  The effect upon living creatures had been horrific.

  If Ophidian Khan had developed a more puissant power source, he might have become a force worth reckoning with. Instead, his device required that he carry a large rift-pumped generator upon his back. Even then, he could manage only one attack every few seconds lest the weapon overheat.

  (I'd used rift generators within the Mk 4 through Mk 10. Even though my design was significantly more efficient than the snake-like hack's unwieldy monstrosity, I still felt somewhat embarrassed in retrospect.)

  Sphinx was already a popular and powerful heroine at the time of the attack, although she was not yet leader of the New York Shield. Miss Take and Ophidian Khan had, separately, both had their fiendish plots foiled by her on multiple occasions. Working together, the two supervillains believed that they could finally take their final revenge.

  Miss Take had been a brawler par excellence; she attacked first, and her battle with Sphinx had left a wake of destruction along three city blocks. Ophidian Khan had simply followed and sniped at their foe any time a clear line of fire could be established. With the looming threat of Ophidian Khan’s weapon, the beleaguered Sphinx couldn’t take to the skies and use her flight powers to best effect, and she couldn’t overcome Miss Take in a strictly physical confrontation.

  No matter how egregious her numerous flaws, I was still grudgingly forced to acknowledge the Sphinx’s resourcefulness. While trading blows with Miss Take, Sphinx had grabbed up a manhole cover and whipped it like a Frisbee towards the reptilian villain lurking a half-block away. The thrown disk looked to fly wide and was ignored as Ophidian Khan focused upon lining up another shot.

  The heavy, cast-iron disk demolished a scaffold’s support, dropping a half-ton of rebar upon the serpentine villain.

  The eccentric bioengineer who had modified Ophidian Khan had done good work. Injured but still alive, Ophidian Khan had struggled out from under the wreckage and taken aim at Sphinx for one final attack. The whine emitted from the generator still strapped to his back was his first hint that something had gone terribly wrong.

  Ophidian exploded into a gory mist as pieces of him were scattered by unfocused teleportation glitches. The blast that struck Sphinx, however, left nothing behind at all.

  For four and a half years, she’d been presumed dead. When Valliant returned from one of his interstellar adventures, however, the long-missing heroine accompanied him home. A full accounting of Sphinx’s time among the stars had never been published.

  Whisper and I searched the New York Shield’s servers exhaustively. Upon her miraculous reappearance, Sphinx had been tested and questioned at length to verify her identity. When prompted for information about her travels, however, she demurred. ‘I’m not ready to talk about it yet.’ she’d said, or ‘that is a long story for another time.’ At least as far as computer records could determine, the queries eventually ceased, and Sphinx had kept her secrets.

  I hypothesized that she must have revealed more to Peregrine. I couldn’t be certain, but the man had been willing to down a vessel crowded with desperate refugees at the Sphinx's word. A level of implicit trust so absolute must surely have been reciprocated.

  Unfortunately, I was fairly certain that my oaths to the FTW forbade me from capturing and properly interrogating the mass-murderer ‘hero’.

  With that path closed to me, it seemed the best source of information would be logs from Valiant's starship. Knowing precisely where in the galaxy he'd found her would provide an avenue for further investigation.

  It had been more than a decade since I'd faced Valiant in battle. The thought of an encore made me giddy with anticipation, but it was not an undertaking to be approached lightly. That first skirmish had shaken the Earth! I'd pushed the mighty Valiant as far as he'd been pushed before or since, but I wasn't certain that I'd tested his limits. The most powerful of Doctor Fid’s current armaments (the Mk 29) was certainly not up to the task....and the design and construction of the Mk 36 took precedence over future projects intended for personal enjoyment.

  Another solution would be required. Serendipitously
, a routine scan of social media uncovered a bribe-able scientist bragging to his peers about receiving the opportunity to work on Valiant's ship the following week.

  A few years earlier, I’d stolen the identity of a bottom-feeding reporter that worked at a superhero gossip rag. Paying a scientist for a few seemingly innocuous details about a space-faring vessel seemed perfectly in keeping with that reporter’s behavior (and thus, would not seem suspicious to said scientist), and co-opting his email and phone was trivially simple.

  The bribe was accepted and I needed only to wait.

  ◊◊◊

  Segment from the transcript of Markham v. the State of Massachusetts

  Defense Attorney: For the record, could you please state your name and occupation?

  Mr. Hayes: My name is Martin Hayes, and I'm the lead software architect at Westbeach Technological.

  Defense Attorney: And it is my understanding that you are in charge of Westbeach's artificial intelligence project?

  Mr. Hayes: I am, yes.

  Defense Attorney: Would I be correct in saying that Westbeach Technological is generally regarded as being at the forefront of artificial intelligence research?

  Mr. Hayes: I'd hope so, yes.

  Defense Attorney: So, as the lead software architect at Westbeach Technological's artificial intelligence project...You could be considered something of an authority on artificial intelligence, yes?

  Mr. Hayes: Yes.

  Defense Attorney: Have you had the opportunity to study the subject's programming?

  Mr. Hayes: Some of its source code, yes. It's gorgeous work, revolutionary! I'd hire the programmer in a heartbeat.

  Defense Attorney: The core of this trial, is to determine what legal status should be afforded to that program. The plaintiffs allege that it is fully sentient and is thus deserving of the rights, responsibilities and privileges of a citizen. In your professional opinion, as a luminary in the field of artificial intelligence: Is the subject sufficiently self-aware to be described as a person?

  Mr. Hayes: I don't know.

  Defense Attorney: You don't know?

  Mr. Hayes: That isn't really my field of expertise. I design highly advanced tools, not people.

  Defense Attorney: Interesting. What are your highly advanced tools used for?

  Mr. Hayes: Well, the simplest usage would be to replace a call-center; the AI can interact with customers, listening and directing calls appropriately. But we also have customers that are using our product to study patient histories to generate diagnoses, as well as banks and stock investors that want to perform market analysis, or law enforcement agencies that wish to get more insight into crime trends. There’re a lot of applications.

  Defense Attorney: So, even though your product is capable of interacting with customers over the phone, emulating a call-center worker, your product is not a person.

  Mr. Hayes: No

  Defense Attorney: If your system misdiagnosed a patient, who would be liable?

  Mr. Hayes: You mean, malpractice? It depends on the nature of the mistake. Possibly the doctor that accepted the diagnosis without performing due diligence, or possibly my company. If the misdiagnosis can be traced directly to something we did, I mean. It’s complicated.

  Defense Attorney: Now, I want to be clear that I’m not accusing you or your team of anything…this is just a hypothetical question. Imagine that one of your programmers programmed your system to misdiagnose a specific person, to suggest a course of treatment that would definitely be fatal to the patient. What would the crime be?

  Mr. Hayes: I’m not a lawyer, but that sounds like murder.

  Defense Attorney: So, your system would be a murderer?

  Mr. Hayes: No…The programmer. Our system would be the murder weapon, not the murderer.

  Defense Attorney: It is my understanding that your system is incredibly complex. Would it theoretically be possible for a very skilled programmer to hide his tracks, to make it very difficult to prove whether the misdiagnosis was a mistake or murder?

  Mr. Hayes: Hypothetically, I suppose so, yeah. We really do try ‘n do code reviews and keep version control logs, to limit even the possibility of that sort of thing.

  Defense Attorney: But theoretically…yes.

  Mr. Hayes: Yeah.

  Defense Attorney: Do you think that the same thing could be done to the subject?

  Prosecuting Attorney: Objection! Incomplete hypothetical.

  Judge: Sustained. Mr. Roarke, please rephrase the question.

  Defense Attorney: Theoretically, do you believe that a programmer capable of producing ‘gorgeous’ and ‘ground breaking’ code could also conceal commands inside so complex a system?

  Mr. Hayes: Almost definitely.

  Defense Attorney: To be clear, for the record…You’re not saying that you’ve seen any evidence that has been done in this case. You’re just saying that you can’t be certain, one way or the other.

  Mr. Hayes: Yes.

  Defense Attorney: Thank you. I have no further questions.

  ◊◊◊

  Assuming that Valiant had begun his journey home immediately after happening across Sphinx during his interstellar jaunt, then the last location on his trip was at the edge of Legion space. Given that the Sphinx seemed to have some detailed knowledge of the Legion, this fact was unsurprising.

  The teleportation mishap resulting from her battle with Miss Take and Ophidian Khan must have sent Sphinx careening across the galaxy. Given the maths involved, that she arrived on a planet was expected (the quantum link from Earth couldn’t establish save upon a planetary mass of similar size with an atmosphere capable of sustaining a significant ionosphere), but that the planet had an environment in which Sphinx could thrive was nothing short of miraculous. From what I understood of her power set, she could survive only for a few hours without breathable air.

  She’d most likely been struck by the malfunctioning teleportation beam and suddenly found herself upon a world controlled by the Legion. Had she tried fighting, fostering rebellion against the vast multi-system totalitarian state? Had she quietly hid, traveling from planet to planet to escape the Legion’s terrifying influence? There was insufficient evidence to say for sure one way or the other.

  If she’d fought, then she had lost so thoroughly that word of the battle did not escape even to the resistance that Joan the Glassblower had upheld.

  The most interesting detail from the astrogation computer’s logs was not the location where Sphinx was found; it was the route that had been undertaken to find her. The statements made to the public had implied that Valiant had happened upon her by random happenstance while on one of his many deep space adventures. The log, however, showed that he’d travelled a direct path from the Solar system straight to the edge of Legion territory. He’d spent a few days at what one presumes was a spaceport and then begun exploring in a widening radius around that point. He’d never dipped deep into Legion space but instead traced along its circumference.

  This was no jaunt to save the residents of Asterisk Eight after a meteor strike, or stumbling across some alien princess in need of rescuing, or whatever it was that superheroes do when they gallivant off to the stars. This had been a rescue mission from the start, with a known origin point to begin the search!

  Valliant had lied.

  This shouldn’t have come as a shock. He wore the spandex and the mask, and he smiled to children when he flew by. He was a hero; I should have known he was a deceiver. And yet, this discovery was still unsettling. I’d thought that Valiant had been one of the good ones.

  There had been reasons for his falsehoods, I was certain. Explanations and justifications galore. I’d watched the man for decades and my surveillance had indicated a man who genuinely preferred the honest, straightforward behavior that had been his heroic trademark since his first appearance. The most powerful human who’d ever walked the earth was, I’d believed, also one of the best. He brought toys to orphanages and helped rescue efforts af
ter natural disasters. The profits from his toy lines were donated entirely to charity.

  Valiant, the Red Ghost and perhaps Regrowth…and maybe even Shrike. A few others, gems found amongst the dross. They were the exceptions that proved the rule! Heroes worthy of the title, worthy of the accolades. Worthy of the children who worshiped them.