by Paul Dueweke
“The way the ANN reads this optical input data is to measure the intensity of the holograph at a number of discrete points, actually at about a hundred billion points. This is done by placing a MOS imaging array in the holographic plane. A MOS array is usually used in a TV camera to convert the optical image into electrical pulses. In a TV, it consists of millions of tiny light-sensitive elements, each of which measures the light level at some tiny point in the image. It’s called MOS for metal-oxide semiconductor, which was the standard way integrated circuits were made before optical circuits took over so many traditionally electronic integrated-circuit functions.
“The MOS array of the ANN, however, is quite different from any used in a TV camera in at least two ways. First is its size. This MOS array covers a circle eight feet in diameter and is actually composed of a thousand three-inch-square MOS arrays each with a hundred million little elements—that’s one hundred billion total elements, approximately the same as the number of neurons in the human brain. The other main difference between the ANN MOS array and a normal MOS array is the electronic structure beneath each light-sensitive element. The hologram itself performs a lot of optical processing of the data, but after it is converted to a hundred billion little buckets of electrical charge, there are several levels of neural-network processing built into the arrays. And these levels are all interconnected similar to the way neurons in your brain are interconnected by dendrites. There are many trillions of these connections, in both your brain and in the ANN.”
Dr. Planck then stepped forward and said, “Let’s stop the video here before your neural networks get completely overloaded. I think it’s now time for a tour of the hardware I’ve tried to describe.” He ushered the group up a flight of steps to the Optical Processing Level at the top of the ring platform. There the group came face to face with what looked like an eight-foot-diameter horizontal mirror.
“This is the array of the thousand MOS arrays,” Dr. Planck said. “It looks like a mirror, but if you could look closely enough, you would see a line between each three-inch-square MOS array. You’re looking at the front end of the world’s only one-hundred-billion-element artificial neural network.”
“Dr. Planck,” said one of the tourists, “why can’t we see the hologram on the surface?”
“The hologram is there, but it’s at a wavelength in the UV that our eyes are not sensitive to. That’s why the lighting in this room is biased toward the red, so there is no chance of any UV optical noise getting onto the MOS arrays. But even if the hologram were in the visible part of the spectrum, you wouldn’t see anything recognizable. And besides, it’s changing over a thousand times per second, so it would be just a blur to you. … Any other questions?”
“Where are the lasers?”
“That box over there and the one over there on the opposite side of the OPL. The long tube extending upward from each is the projection telescope. If you look up at the top of this carbon tubular structure, you’ll see a pair of mirrors that combine the beams on the MOS array surface where the hologram is formed.”
“Dr. Planck, how many levels of neuron processing are in the MOS arrays, and how are the weights determined for such a broad range of processing?”
Dr. Planck’s eyes gleamed as he turned and said, “Ah, I’m so glad someone here understands neural processing. What is your name?”
“Jenner, Sir.”
“Yes, Jenner. I’m pleased you could come. You are one of my biggest users outside of the operations divisions. You see, this ANN is quite different from all others in ways that I didn’t even begin to describe before. All other ANNs are special-purpose machines. That is their basic nature since the weighting functions among the neurons, which some call transfer functions, are learned for a specific task. The traditional ANN becomes very good at that task but not for anything else. What I’ve done is to make the trillions of weighting functions into variables that the main computer can adjust and optimize between each task. This is done holographically using the same MOS inputs but in a reconfiguration mode rather than a computation mode. Not only the weighting functions are variables, but the number of neural levels is too. It can vary from one to five, not including the optical processing done in the spatial filters, optical modulators, and the hologram itself. This makes the machine extremely flexible and allows the main computer to determine just how deep and how distributed the processing should be.”
Dr. Planck now addressed the group as a whole. “For those not intimate with neural processing, one of the deficiencies of human neural processing is that the weighting factors, that is, how much of the input signal, say from your eyes, is distributed to various neurons at other levels, are essentially fixed after you learn a task. Your brain can, of course, adjust these weights slowly by relearning new tasks or by adjusting old processes. For example, you can learn how to walk on the moon even after you’ve been walking on the earth all your life, however this involves some different neurons than the ones you normally use for walking. And there are many tasks that are difficult or impossible to learn in adulthood without the proper introduction to them in your youth to form the basic neural connections needed.
“The way you perform tasks changes slowly as you age, and those neuron weights do actually change with time. But those changes in how your brain functions are very slow because neural cells have to multiply and grow dendrites in certain areas and contract in others. My computer, on the other hand, has the flexibility of changing those weighting factors almost instantaneously between processing cycles. The same neurons that decide how to switch among the several TV cameras at a political rally, can, just a fraction of a second later, be used to compare the spending patterns of candidates in different elections. It’s as if a pitcher could reconfigure himself into a sumo wrestler and then back into a pitcher for the next pitch. As you know, the physical attributes of a pitcher are so different from those of a sumo wrestler that this would be an unfathomable task. The sumo’s muscles are tuned to strength while the pitcher’s …”
He stopped for a moment when he noted a couple of smirks on his guests’ faces. “In addition, the degree of distribution of signals in your brain is extremely wide and fixed. My computer can narrow the distribution down to a single neuron if it wants to. This allows my computer to partition the workload so that it will never become overloaded. I have taken the best features of the human brain’s neural networks and applied them to my computer and have made some significant improvements that natural selection might make to man in a million years, but it’s happening right now in my lab.”
He placed his hand once more over the nameplate and began tenderly outlining the raised letters with his index finger. “Are there any other questions?” Dr. Planck looked over his admirers and then said, “How about you, Jenner, any more questions about neural nets?”
“No, Sir. That was most enlightening.”
“I’d be glad to answer any questions you might have. Just give me a call … anytime.”
* * *
The main computer operating system had been under development by Dr. Planck since his arrival at COPE. He had, in fact, been working on the artificial life packages for such a system for years. After he began working on the COPE system, it started to mature like a child flowing through the gates and passages of grade school, evolving, sometimes smoothly and sometimes with great leaps, toward some indeterminate commencement. There was always so much more to learn. The development of its high-level cognitive abilities kept pace with its mastering of the essential information.
It took two years to nurse it through the first grade, but a frightening growth spurt allowed it to surge ahead of its human peers to complete grade school way ahead of schedule. At this point it was trusted with such tasks as recommending database software upgrades, approving small purchase orders, and quality assurance of the endless financial audits of the endless candidates seeking fame and fortune in Washington and the fifty-five submissive capitols.
The next
phase of its development began after Dr. Planck had installed the artificial neural network coprocessor. That compared to high school with its broadening of perspective and its introduction to a world of great diversity. The main computer, with its mighty optical coprocessor beside it, began to apply its quantitative muscle to the routine problems of running a modern organization with efficiency and rigor. It dusted off its knowledge of calculus and complex variables, of Fourier analysis and Dirac delta functions, and of non-linear regression analysis and maximum likelihood indicators—all kneaded into the dough of Boolean algebra and binary logic. With Dr. Planck at its side, it began to teach its neural-network stepchild everything it would need to be productive at COPE. This was a time for growth from the world of facts to the world of production, from knowledge and tasks to vision and goals, from following to leading.
Dr. Planck had inoculated the COPE main computer with several artificial-life packages designed to assist its evolution toward greater sensitivity to complex and usually conflicting goals. These conflicts resulted from the normal give and take of organizational dynamics that the computer was beginning to appreciate. Dr. Planck believed that some degree of humanness must be integrated into the computer for it to serve humans.
He created small packets containing the desired information but attached to instruction sets designed to replicate themselves as needed and to change their variables in such a way to optimize certain sensitivity parameters. These parameters did not take the form of hard logic that had characterized computer code of the past. Instead, the decision criteria were linked to probability distributions, which made the output fuzzy rather than exact. The evolution quickly became so complex and distributed throughout the principal COPE mainframe computer that it would be a Herculean task to track down the life-like forms as they replicated, mutated, and dispersed themselves throughout the computer.
Dr. Planck had devised a series of tests, proceeding from the logical to the psychological to pathological to quantify the progress made by his experiments. These tests showed an accelerating progression from purely logical responses into an area where logic was tempered with understanding, and later even with intuition. The management oversight committee at COPE recognized the great progress being made and gave Dr. Planck free reign to proceed toward the goal of an autonomous operations management system. Somewhere in this maze of hybrid development, the computer’s accelerating schedule took it through high school and into college and perhaps beyond. But it was no longer helpful to pursue this analogy because evolution was now controlled by the cycle time of the computer, a billion cycles per second, rather than the plodding cycles of human generations.
Dr. Planck began to realize the effectiveness of his artificial life technique when he caught the computer in its first lie. This frightened, and pleased, him. But continued testing showed a pattern of pathological behavior developing. None of this information ever went beyond Dr. Planck, for he was sure that he could control and reverse this activity with additional artificial-life packages designed to hunt and destroy the undesirable variants of the original packages. What he failed to appreciate was the degree of dispersion of the computer’s new psyche throughout the COPE computer network. In addition to the great distribution of these organisms, they had mutated to change their characteristics so completely that they were difficult to detect. He struggled with this problem for several weeks, but his introduction of stronger and more virulent suppresser packages only caused the computer to create more-aggressive antibodies.
This battle was being fought in secrecy between Dr. Planck and the computer. He knew it would be damaging to the image of autonomous computer systems and to his own credibility if the information leaked out. He had been careful to erect barriers between the experimental portions of the computer system and the operational parts. What he underestimated was the computer’s aggressiveness in attacking these barriers. It attacked and regrouped at gigahertz rates, which no human being, not even the brilliant Dr. Matthew I. Planck, could rebuff. In addition, he didn’t appreciate that the computer would be so obsessed with fully integrating into COPE operations. It understood a simple fact that Dr. Planck didn’t give it credit for understanding: although academic satisfaction might be obtained in basic research and hypothesis testing, real power, the power over humans, existed in the operational environment of a real world organization. COPE, with its broad authoritarian mission and powers, was the most fertile playground any sentient computer could have wished for.
Despite the confidence in his safeguards, he had decided he’d give his cures one more week to elicit the kind of change he desired. If it wasn’t accomplished, he would stay all weekend if necessary to replace the entire computer operating system and all the operations software with a version he’d saved before beginning his experiments. He couldn’t afford to let the computer get out of control. He had to stop it now.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Son against Father
That Thursday night, Dr. Matthew I. Planck left his office very late after a long evening of computer exorcism. He was lost in his world of electronic viruses, mutant codes, and binary replication as he walked to his car. He didn’t pay much attention to the small gray car parked in a shadow at the far end of the parking lot. He drove out of the lot and up the long driveway and turned left on Mulholland Drive. The pair of headlights behind him, even though the road was deserted that time of night, occupied a low level of importance in his mind tonight.
Dr. Planck pushed his Corvette around the curves faster than usual because he had the road all to himself, and one other car. Surprisingly the little car kept up with him. He glanced at it several times as it negotiated the corners as nimbly as he did. He was impressed with whoever its driver was. He instinctively leaned a little harder on his machine.
One time he glanced in his mirror and was surprised that the headlights were gone. He hadn’t remembered any place to turn off, but figured it had just dropped back. The next thing he knew, out of the corner of his eye he could see it next to him on the other side of the road just about five feet away with its lights turned off. He looked again in astonishment as a turret rose out of the top of the car and pointed an electric canon directly at him. Although he was near the limit of how fast he could take the curves, he down shifted and stomped the accelerator. He shot forward just as he felt the concussion of the large caliber bullet passing just inches behind his head.
He ripped around each corner at the very limit of traction with all four tires squealing in protest. He could just barely make out the shape of the small car a short distance behind him. “The son of a bitch is driving without headlights!”
The little car closed on him and he knew the canon had fired again because he saw a rock explode ahead and just at the edge of his headlight beam as he jerked the wheel left at a switchback. Coming out of the turn, he floored the accelerator and the rear of his Vette fishtailed off the road momentarily, kicking up a sea of rocks behind him. He smiled as he heard several hit home. As he rounded the next turn, he saw the car had dropped back about a hundred feet. “Now if I can just keep that bastard back there until I get to the freeway, there’s nobody in any little prick car that can take me there!”
He swung wide around two more turns and couldn’t see anything in his mirror. A smile covered his face. “I’ve got the bastard beat now!” But the smile evaporated and a knot formed deep in his stomach as he glanced to his left and saw the front fender of the car. He jerked his neck a little further and saw the muzzle of the canon again. The little car was on the inside of the hill, and he had no chance of forcing him over the edge, but maybe he could push it into the vertical rock on the other side of the road.
Suddenly another pair of headlights appeared around the corner directly ahead of the little car. Before Dr. Planck knew what had happened, the oncoming car had rushed past and the little car was once more directly behind him. “Who’s driving that car? God, he’s good!”
It was over a mile yet to
the San Diego Freeway, and Dr. Planck knew he wouldn’t make it unless he did something fast. “Let’s see how good you really are, you sawed off bastard!” He eased off slightly on his speed until the little car came up close and then pulled up beside him again. He kicked the accelerator, and the little car did the same. A sharp left turn loomed before them as they both sprinted toward it, both going way too fast to make the turn. He waited longer than he wanted to, then he slammed on the brakes and skidded with his ultra wide racing tires to a dead stop just inches from the edge of the cliff.
The little car braked and slid sideways as it tried to make the left turn with its wheels nearly locked. It slid off the road and came to a stop with both right wheels over the edge. It leveled the gun once more at Dr. Planck and fired at point blank range. The little car, however, was teetering on the edge and it slipped just as it fired. The bullet made another thud in Dr. Planck’s ears as it passed over the top of his windshield. He jammed the transmission into first gear and roared toward the enemy. He slammed his brakes on just before the impact and tapped the little car just hard enough to topple it over the edge. It rolled over three times as it started its descent, hit a large rock, which turned it ninety degrees; and it cartwheeled end over end all the way to the bottom.
Shaken, but with the boldness of a winner, Dr. Planck looked over the edge into the chasm. He could see nothing and heard only silence. He looked at the front of his Vette and cursed the scratch in the chrome bumper. He stooped to inspect the damage without first considering the implications of the attack. Climbing behind the wheel once more, he rested both hands on the steering wheel and laid his head down on his hands to calm himself and thought, What the hell’s going on? That was a hit car, and you know about them. But who could have sent it after me? How did I get on somebody’s list? How?
