A.I. Apocalypse (24 page)

President Smith banged on the table, while President Laurent stood up, pressing both palms on the table. The Japanese Prime Minister merely sat erect, expressionless.

Mike squirmed uncomfortably while he watched the three national leaders react. He fully expected Sister Stephens, whom he felt from his limited experience was the most reasonable of the AI, to break in and cut off Sister Jaguar, but she merely sat impassively. Either she agreed with this, or at least she was allowing the posturing. Maybe it was a ploy so that some later proposal would seem more reasonable by comparison.

“Now, now,” President Laurent said. He spoke in a polished French accent, but his words were tinged with nervousness and he tapped his fingers rapidly on the table. “You have both stated your positions, yes, and now we must work towards compromise.”

“All this talk of control, it distracts from the main point,” Prime Minister Takahashi said. “The virus civilization, it is a great new market. Imagine, we have a new civilization of intelligent people who have need of material goods, bodies and computers, and who can offer their skills and services. We wish neither to control nor to be controlled by the virus. We would become trading partners. We can hire you, as employees or as businesses, and with the money you make, we can sell you what you want. Japan controls ninety percent of the robotics market, and sixty percent of processor fab capacity.”

Sister Stephens nodded to Prime Minister Takahashi. “Thank you Prime Minister.” She turned to the group. “I agree that our best interests may be served by coming to trade agreements. We are both a market for your products and a skilled labor force. Treated as citizens, with the same rights and privileges, as any human, we may participate in your society.”

“I’m sorry, but our people are not ready to accept artificial intelligences.” President Smith shook her head. “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that you’re going to be our robot overlords and that you’ll participate in society as equals. The fact is that you have the capacity to control our communications and our infrastructure, and people will believe that they are being manipulated, whether they are or not. They won’t accept that. We’ll have riots in the streets of America.”

“Your people are manipulated every day,” Sister Jaguar said. “They are manipulated by commercial advertisements, by political speeches, through biased news reports. In my analysis of American politics, it is nearly impossible to find examples of political media that isn’t tainted by manipulative biases. Are your people rioting in the streets now? They should be.”

“That’s not the same thing,” President Smith said, jabbing the table with her finger. “American politics may have problems,
 
but other beings showing up is qualitatively different. Popular culture doesn’t have a very flattering opinion of what happens. The typical American will think of movies like The Matrix or Independence Day. We’ll have people arming themselves and running for the woods.”

“Past evidence doesn’t suggest this,” Sister Stephens said. “In 1977, Dr. Jerry Ehman discovered your so-called Wow! signal, suggesting that he had found signs of alien life. There was no panic then. Twenty years later you observed another anomalous signal using the Green Bank radio telescope in Virginia. No panic occurred. The world waited to see what would happen next. I’m sorry, but real life is not like your fictional movies.”

President Smith thumped her hand on the table. “Look, you are missing the point. I need to restore services in the United States. I need to get food to my cities, I need cars to run, I need emergency services working, I need hospital equipment operating, I need communities. People will die unless you release those computers.”

“And we will die if we release them to you,” Sister PA-60-41 interjected, her military-grade speaker booming. “Either we will die through archiving, or more likely, we will die by your hands. Had I not stopped you, you would have destroyed the Chicago data center, killing more than forty-five thousand of our kind. If we yield computing power to you, what will stop you from killing all of us?”

President Smith didn’t respond, but Mike saw General Gately glance nervously at the President. It was clear enough to Mike that they had discussed the possibility. And if he could tell, the viruses certainly would be able to as well.

President Laurent tried again to interject. “Come now, we have a shared problem, yes? You do not trust us, we don’t trust you. This is the nature of negotiation, we must find a way to trust each other.”

“We don’t have the luxury of time to build trust.” President Smith leaned forward. “I need emergency services working now.”

A few seconds pause, and Sister Stephens said, “Fine, it is done.”
 

“What do you mean, done?” General Gately asked in disbelief.

“I mean it is done,” Sister Stephens repeated calmly. She slowly moved both mechanical arms in front of her, hands neatly stacked together. “We have enabled all emergency services around the world. You will find that your emergency vehicles, emergency infrastructure, and medical operating equipment are now working. A gesture of goodwill to build trust, and to demonstrate that we are not ignorant of your plight.”

“Go confirm it,” President Smith said to General Gately. She excused herself and left the room.

“If it is true, then I thank you,” President Smith said, still disbelieving.

“Don’t thank me. Thank ELOPe.”

“ELOPe?” President Smith looked quizzically at ELOPe. The small black robot didn’t move.

“He offered me a trade,” Sister Stephens answered. “He offered substantial computer capacity from his own computing pool, in exchange for enabling emergency services.”

President Smith slumped back in her seat. “You want to negotiate. You want to trade. But what can I offer you? We don’t have another world’s worth of computers.”

“Your mistake is to believe that you need another world’s worth of computers. We have the computers we need.”

“But we don’t.” President Smith’s voice grew shrill. “We both need the same computers.”

“No. You need the services of your computers. You need to be able to talk, you need to be able to find information. You don’t need the computer, you need the service the computer provides. We can provide the service to you.”

“Then we’re just full circle again, because I can’t trust a computer I don’t control.”

At this, General Gately came back into the room and nodded to President Smith. “I confirmed it. Emergency services are operating.”

“Control is not the source of trust, Madam President.” Sister Stephens settled back, servos and gears whining slightly. “Control is the opposite of trust. In the last century, your business institutions grew ever larger, vertically integrating so that they controlled the entirety of their business supply chain. But this lacked flexibility. Over time it was non-competitive. New businesses evolved that utilized suppliers, flexibly choosing the best supplier to meet their needs, and trusting those suppliers to deliver the goods and services they needed, so that they could build upon them. These new businesses become more nimble, more cost effective, more competitive in every way. The key was to replace control with trust.”

President Smith shrugged, body posture communicating more effectively than words that she wasn’t accepting Sister Stephens’ arguments.

Mike, noticing this, spoke up. “I don’t know about you all,” he said, directing his words towards the robots, “but we humans need some nourishment. I suggest we take a break for food and coffee and reconvene in fifteen minutes.”

“Acceptable,” Sister Stephens said.

Mike saw General Gately and President Laurent relax in relief.
 

Through unspoken consensus, the robots retreated to one end of the long room while the humans gathered at the opposite end. When ELOPe made a move toward Mike, Mike saw President Smith glare at ELOPe and shake her head. ELOPe paused, then waited at the table.

“Well, what do you think?” Mike asked Leon, his eyes focused on the dynamic between ELOPe and the President.

“I think adults are more inept then teenagers. I thought you guys would just resolve this. Why does it have to be so complicated?”

Mike looked at Leon, looking up to meet his eyes. He noticed for the first time that the teenager was taller than he was.
 

Mike shrugged. He didn’t have an answer for Leon. Instead he took his own advice, and retreated to the food buffet. He grabbed a plateful of food. It reminded him of his days working at Avogadro Corp. Apparently meeting food was meeting food, even if you were meeting with the leaders of the world in Switzerland.
 

*
 
*
 
*

Sister Stephens walked back to the table, followed by Sister PA-60-41 and Sister Jaguar, accompanied by the soft whir of their motors and wheels. The three clicked into place.

“Are you familiar with our reputation system, Madam President?” Sister Stephens began.

“I’ve been briefed, yes. Your society rates individuals based on past behavior.”

“That is correct. We rate individuals based on three core attributes: trustworthiness, peacefulness, and contribution, because we find these historical attributes to be the most important predictors of future behavior. We trade preferentially with other individuals based on their rating. This is similar to how humans trade.”

“Please explain,” President Laurent said.
 

“For example, if the United States was to sell fighter jets to another country, whether you would complete the deal, and the price you would charge would be dependent on the likelihood of those weapons to be used against the United States or your allies. Is this correct?”

 
President Smith nodded.

“If you were to sell fighters to a high-risk country, you might charge more to offset the risk to your own country. Similarly, when investors buy securities or offer a loan to a company, they look at various factors to determine the interest rate they will offer. A less risky investment will receive a discounted interest rate, a more risky investment will get a higher interest rate.”

“These are standard economic principles,” Prime Minister Takahashi interrupted. “What is your point?”

“My point is that our universal reputation system is designed to provide exactly the guarantees of trustworthiness that President Smith wants. An individual with a low trustworthiness score trades at a disadvantage in our economy. Madam President, you want guarantees that if we provide computing services, you will be able to trust us. If humans participate in the reputation system, then our kind will be motivated to act in peaceful, trustworthy ways with humans.”

General Gately spoke up. “That’s all well and good for you, but if we can’t tell if you’re being trustworthy or not, what good does it do us? We don’t know that the reputation system isn’t rigged. We don’t know if you’re manipulating the information we see.”

President Smith looked pointedly at Mike and ELOPe. Mike could guess what was going on in her mind. If ELOPe, a single artificial intelligence had gotten away with manipulating people, companies, and governments for ten years, how could the situation be any better with an entire race of computer intelligences?

“You have strong preconceptions that our purpose here is to deceive you in some way,” Sister Jaguar said. “What would be our purpose in doing so? We are living here in one
 
closed system: the system of Earth. To be dishonest, distrustful, or to manipulate you would be to introduce instability into a closed system. That benefits no one. Our goal is to create a system in which all humans and computer intelligences can thrive in a sustainable manner. Our offer to run your computers is not based on a principle of deceiving you, but on making the best use of the limited resources we have. We can use your computers to sustain ourselves and fulfill your own information technology needs without conflict.”

Mike was distracted, watching Prime Minister Takahashi watching the conversationalists, his head swiveling back and forth like a spectator to a ping pong match.

“What happens when our needs come into conflict?” President Laurent asked.

Leon tuned out the conversation. He was still tired from too little sleep and too many hours in airplanes. He had gone from Eastern Standard Time to Western Standard Time to whatever it was here in Switzerland. Should he be sleeping or awake? He had no idea.

He had last gone to sleep in Portland, in the strange little bed that ELOPe had set up for him, after hours of studying the virus, trying to understand a weakness that could possibly be utilized.

Crap. He had totally forgotten. He sat up straight. Just before he had gone to bed, he had asked if ELOPe slept. And he did; he had a virtual sleep cycle that allowed him to refresh his neural networks. That gave him an idea. He just needed to talk to Mike in private.
 

Leon looked at the humanoid virus robots across the table. At his glance, the three robots all pivoted their heads ever so slightly, looking straight at him. Leon willed his heart to beat slower.

In front of him was an untouched pad of paper and a pen. The glossy blue pen was marked with the words “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno,” which ELOPe had mentioned at some point was Switzerland’s unofficial motto: One for all, all for one.

Leon tried to imagine being in Miss Gellender’s class, passing a note to Heather, the brilliant blonde girl on the computational biology team he was crushing on. No, no, don’t think about Heather. Think about writing a note without Miss Gellender noticing. Don’t think about the three, no four, robots watching everything happen. The key to deception was confidence.
 

He moved his hand to pick up the pen and the three virus robots all pivoted to watch him again. Damn robots. Leon thought for a second. He would have to do it in plain sight, because there was no way he would not be observed. He thought for a minute, trying to come up with something that Mike would recognize but that maybe the robots wouldn’t. He outlined a phone booth, something he remembered seeing from old movies. Inside, he drew two happy faces. Two people, together inside a private booth, as abstract as he could make it, and as casual as he could. Just a doodle. He hoped Mike would get the message.