by Rabia Rahou
The Confederation of the Amians is a direct, parliamentary republic. Most of the simple laws are voted on directly by the people and validated by the parliament. Still, the more complicated ones are discussed by the representatives that are experts in the affected fields. For example, the global budget allocation for the allies in a specific strategic foreign policy is developed by only the elected representatives from that specific academic circle. The most important institution is the “Cabinet,” which comprises 16 ministers presided by the Cabinet's head, the prime minister. He is elected by the representatives of the lower chamber. For the ministers, they are elected by the academic circle.
The Cabinet manages all the affairs for the state, except for the military forces. We are an independent entity and serve as a balance between different factions and movements. We have political representatives at every institution, and we are self-managed. To be honest, as much as we are a solution to balance the system, we are a problem, too. But our major problem now is the First Citizens. Unfortunately, the wealthiest seven people on the planet are from here. They are a group of entrepreneurs who took advantage of the early AI discoveries to accumulate wealth beyond imaginations in a very short period of time. They called themselves the “First Citizens,” in a way, to detach themselves from the rest of the population as they don’t want to be thought of as an equal with the average citizen. And honestly, I don’t blame them because one must admit that no one in the history of mankind has ever been that wealthy and powerful. More to the point, when they are completely controlling the state’s institutions, all the representatives, the Prime, and lately, even the army is under their strong grip. They designated me to be the head of the army without any objection from any general or even war heroes, they did overcome the system.
A couple of weeks ago, The First Citizens had a meeting with me, gave me their benediction, and the plan for our next big move. I was given the order to use the biggest army in the history of mankind to protect the new machine they are now building. It would be a “game-changer,” as they said. They plan to use it to intimidate the two other superpowers and break them into small republics, which would then be easily controllable. Again, the idea of total supremacy, the total control of the planet by a handful of people or “deities,” is still alive and doing well in the AI age. They think that this time, it is achievable, with the help of the new AI featuring a breakthrough code that somehow could generate consciousness. That is the only thing that the other empires can’t produce or even copy, as they claimed.
The key here is a very strange code that we still couldn’t trace to its source, as it is extremely well hidden by the First Citizens. Although, now I’m that thinking about, it’s not that strange, as the first AI was created right here by scientists that emigrated from the old empires and found very welcoming universities that were well subsidized by the Empire. It was just a matter of time to see a breakthrough like that emerge. The little guy doesn’t believe that...
That meeting was held under the Arc. It was the first totally thought-out, fully-designed, and constructed building that the AI delivered for the state. The Arc is the army's headquarters. It is merged with an immense library at its centre, and it is open to the public. In a word, it was magnificent. The AI thought of a concept of a nation guarded by an army that is accountable to a well-educated people. You could read that on the ceiling, "Peace comes from knowledge.” And to be honest, everyone thought that the AI was not capable of art, including me, but every time I come here, I feel that the art here is on a new level, which had never been achieved before. Under the complex and available only by restricted access was a secret pavilion in the building used only by the First Circle. It was the exclusive club of the most prominent First Citizens, the group of seven.
The AI butler opened the golden door, welcomed me, and asked me to follow him as the First Citizens were waiting for me. In a room with a long table, the First Citizens sat in rows arranged according to their wealth and power. In the centre of the First Citizens was the wealthiest man in the world. On his right, the Second Citizen, and on his left, the Third Citizen, and so on. Also, it’s important to mention that there were no other chairs for guests. Anyone invited had to stand in front of them.
“Glad to see you, Konu, and congratulation on your appointment to your new position,” said the First.
“Congratulation, Konu!” repeated everyone else, clapping.
The First Citizen, with a very low voice that I barely could hear, asked, “What do you think of the introductory order that we sent to you lately?”
“Your highness,” I began, “the plan is marvelous, but I believe ...”
The Second Citizen cut me in mid-sentence because, for him my opinion didn’t matter. “The Heads of Predictions have spoken. Please follow precisely the chain of events as predicted by the AI.”
The Second Citizen took a moment, scrutinized me, and then said, “The top scientists of the AI Conglomerates will join the Arc soon. Please make all the arrangements and collaborate with them on a daily basis.” He finished the sentence in a disgusting way of someone giving a direct order to a lower-grade, useless, and insignificant inferior, or at least that’s what it made me feel.
I just shook my head. It was not a suggestion. It was more of a direct order, and they were expecting it to be faithfully executed without delays. I also wanted to give them a good impression of me being a submissive servant, as they adored feeling superior, supremely intellectual, and in totally in control of the world's destiny.
I left the meeting with a bitter taste in my mouth. I asked my driver Dismar to take me back to the Arc. It’s going to be a long night.
Chapter 3
Conglomerates
“A mechanism is aware if he thinks he is.”
~ Wonfuse, the First Citizen.
T he machine learning algorithm opened only a small door for the AI. It solved direct problems through a wide range of applications that simulate our interaction with nature, such as software that could create very believable paintings and compose music by learning through observation. It was an amazing start.
However, after a while of playing around with deep-learning algorithms, successes such as those came to a dead end. Unfortunately, the machines couldn't understand the context of a situation without the help of a human operator. Even with the best and the latest enhancements of the algorithm, an equal perception of nature, as the human and the rest of biological beings see it, seemed impossible for the AI. Scientists started to lose their initial excitement and preferred pursuing researches in other fields. The scientific community thought that was it. Even if they could learn, it seemed the machines would never reach a higher intelligence. They seemed to peak out at the level of imitation, an imitation that couldn’t go beyond duplicating the desired task from an already achieved one. Even with the best performance and precision, the core of the duplicated task still had to have been built by a human. In other words, the machines didn’t seem to feel the need to reach out for something new. It was suggested that creation required an awareness of existence.
This awareness of existence never was achieved, though, but it was successfully identified as a perception of the context. In a discovery at the ASA University (Advanced Sciences and Applications) at Amina, the capital. It was, as were many of mankind’s most remarkable discoveries, a kind of a happy accident by a lousy student. At the primitive robotics department, that student was cleaning the water tanks for the next round of experiments. It was on the weekend, and he left early without finishing the last tank. Also, he didn’t turn off the servers. Inside that tank was an almost discharged, small, primitive robot. Upon coming back the next week, he found the servers running at full capacity, making computations of objects’ velocities through liquids. Later, they found the source of the computations: the little robot. As it turned out, he sent some instructions through tiny vibrations, and the servers through the AI software's interpreted the instructions and even responde
d. That was the start of the Theory of Robotic Evolution.
In summary, it is:
An AI cannot be smart and understand the context of a situation if it stays as a program inside the computer no matter how good the simulation is. By definition, a simulation can’t exceed or even equal reality. This is confirmed as most of the simulated AI, when implanted in the real world, fail in the context test.
A physical robot cannot be aware of the context of a situation if it has no access to astronomical computational resources running under a general AI code. That is very important, as before, we thought that the AI must be specific to the task – but we were wrong.
Last and most importantly, the robot must connect spontaneously to the general AI. This was a very tricky part in the beginning.
They retried the experiment with the exact same conditions involving a thousand identical robots, but not one could connect spontaneously. No one knew the reason why or how that first, tiny robot could connect to a random server in the lab. It took them a while to realize that the first robot was sending instructions in the form of tiny vibrations from its broken shell through the air. Those vibrations were recorded by the AI software as a heat change in the processors, a minuscule change that kept repeating; therefore, the AI misinterpreted it as part of a routine system check. Then, through astronomical computations, the AI software started to translate that as a distress call.
They still don’t know if it was really a call from that tiny robot. To do so, it would have needed to be aware that its broken shell was a part of it as a whole, not just connected, random parts acting simultaneously as a mechanism. That is still a mystery just like the beginning of life, and probably the answer will stay hidden forever. But in the end, even without answering that question, they did successfully connect another robot to the general AI. In a very simple approach, they did run the connection process in a simulation. Only one robot in a billion could connect, and that variation in his code was then used as a model to every other robot.
The robotic evolution theory gave a new breath to AI research. This time, scientists finally got the perfect, or, to be more accurate, the “imperfect” formula. The Amians’ Cabinet, knowing that this technology is a game-changer, proceeded with the legislation of the most sophisticated laws before any other nation, to allow the investors to create AI corporations. They predicted that these corporations would be successful and wealthy, generating extra revenue for the state. Of course, they would also contribute to the Empire's technological advancement, not by small steps, but by giant leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, no one predicted that the owners will become as wealthy as they are today, wealth beyond imagination. The daily revenue of the First Citizens equals the total monthly salaries of all the rest of the Amian population – a truly astronomical number.
Consoft was the first to emerge as a conglomerate; it is still the world's wealthiest corporation. They specialized in creating robots that can replicate any human activity; they call them the “humbots” The top scientists in Consoft think that the human body is not a perfect envelope for the mind. In fact, they think it is the main boundary that stops our creativity, as the brain process lots of information and can imagine amazing ideas, but the body cannot follow through, so it’s even a burden. Humans have only two hands and ten fingers to do everything. The input is way superior to the output. Unfortunately, the output would be zero if it was directly compared by ratio to the input.
Consoft thinks that the Homo sapiens as a superorganism is made up of a lot of evolutionary mistakes and errors. It, like all naturally evolved biological organisms, is a random evolutionary result, far from being perfect by any means. An example is a healthy person from perfectly healthy ancestors, with no medical history of any kind of life-threatening diseases, can develop cancer at any moment and die in a short period of time. This example is not considering all the various viruses and bacteria that share the same environment with him. In other words, he could die just by himself as his body sometimes can’t properly handle its own metabolism. In an interview for a scientific magazine, one of Consoft’s top scientists lashed out with all his antipathy and hatred for the human body. He was quoted as saying:
“A human sell could make a mistake of copying the wrong series of DNA and end up creating a whole generation of myopic descendants or even more severely handicapped ones. That said, the body itself, even without any other elements, is a danger to its own existence. The human body is not well balanced either. It cannot perform any physical activity perfectly, cannot draw the most basic geometric figures or even a straight line, could fall down and stumble on any seen or unseen hazard, spend most of its time resting and feeding, and then only devote a few minutes to performing. It is organic and can be eaten by other predators or other humans and can easily be damaged or destroyed by flames or any chemical cocktail. It can’t stay too long under the sun and can’t stay long in the cold either. It has all these shortcomings while handicapping the mind by taking a lot of time and energy looking for a mate, and even when one is found, more time and energy is necessary to maintain the relationship. A human’s organs can fail randomly without any warnings; a heart attack or stroke can strike at any moment, problems like kidney failures, and even many undiagnosed problems, are classified as a “natural death.” All the important organs are not regenerated by the body, but the useless ones are, for some reason. A person can lose sight and stays blind all his life but can regenerate his eyelashes. And when the full DNA was revealed with all the combinations, there was nothing about regenerating the most important part of the body, which is the hand. Still, plenty of genes were responsible for regenerating the fingernails.
“What a mysterious way of existence...!”
But to be honest, I don’t blame that scientist. He was a kind of repugnant looking person; I feel guilty now that I even thought this. But, that doesn’t change the fact that he is the kind that stays in dark labs experimenting alone for most of their lives. Yes, most of these guys spend all day and even nights alone in small and dark places, and yet, they are supposed to be the brightest ones.
But one has the admit that Consoft’s designers are the best in the world, and the corporation’s top experts must have one extra degree in philosophy. They were the first company to structure themselves in that way. There would be no more geeks taking pride in a technical achievement that was not necessary from the start. The designers know, based on philosophical assumptions debated among the top scientists and experts, what the best design would be for the best activity. They took off the table any inspirational ideas coming from the human body, as they wanted to avoid a universal machine that does everything. They knew that everything could not be covered by a general design, as it would require endless updates, resulting in a work-in-progress kind of existence for the machine. Consoft cannot afford continuous work on a model indefinitely, either, mobilizing thousands of high-paid scientists to monitor the evolution of one machine through generations until the end of time. Even God and His army of intern angels didn’t succeed in that, as every time I see their creation in any fast food, with full faces covered by ketchup when the hand holding the pizza slice occasionally misses the mouth, that is a work-in-progress design for sure. Consoft designers understood that they must divide the activities by trait and then create a humbot for every trait. In the end, the humbots don’t look at all like us, like so many historical science fiction writers wrongly predicted. They look unusual and bizarre, but when they operate in their field, they look totally integrated.
That was the main advancement that kept Consoft in the leadership, although the competition was fierce as some top designers broke away from Consoft and managed to create their own startup called DM, or Dynamic Minds. They came up with the idea that if we could implement a system as a mind in an automate, why not implement many minds in the same envelope. They managed to demonstrate that concept to big investors who missed the first AI revolution and were left out in the cold, away from the juic
y business of Consoft. They succeeded in raising funds in a record short period of time. It didn’t take too long, either, for the first lines of medium- and heavy-industrial machines with multi-minds to emerge. As all the market for simple automate companions were filled by Consoft, DM succeeded in attracting the industrial corporations to renew their factories and workflows. These workflows gradually excluded all humans interaction and, therefore, eliminated most of the line production mistakes and wasted time caused by human personal problems, wages, working conditions, syndicates, discipline between the workers, human resources, vacations, sick days, maternity leave, and so on. DM offered the entrepreneurs the way to cut out all the production line problems by reducing the human factor to zero. They offered a solution to make the factory operate 24 by 7 by 365, no matter what. They also managed to secure big contracts with the government, mainly in the military field, as they renewed all the weaponry factories for the state’s contractors with big subsidies.
But the main player in the military field is ONC (Organized Neurones Corporation). It was created by an expert in communications and weaponry transportation, an army man, and one of the best. The Second Citizen himself. Recently, ONC monopolized the global war market after the invention of the first self-deployable weaponized satellite constellation. With a core AI controlling the satellites' fabrication and the launches by stealth missiles, it is a masterpiece that deserved the best killing-machine prize. The small satellites can operate individually or merge to perform a more complicated task, then self-disconnect and hide in different orbits, making them extremely hard to detect. Even if the enemy has the right timing and position of a satellite and destroys it with laser, the AI will be aware of the damage and can produce a replacement to be sent into space in a couple of hours. ONC weaponized this system to the maximum, as every tiny satellite, when merged in a specific formation, can have different striking capabilities. One formation, for example, may have a high imagery reconnaissance capability, and another, a high-frequency sound weapon. The combinations are endless.
