“Where are you off to sweetheart?”
“Sorry. I just remembered an email I have to respond to by — well, it’s Tokyo, you know.”
“All right, but it’s after midnight here in our time zone. Can’t it wait?”
“Well, not really. I will just lie here thinking about it anyway until I go do something about it. Just a few minutes Patrick. Go to sleep.”
Rachel slid into her slippers and threw on her robe. The hardwood floors between their bedroom and her home office felt cold and damp in Delaware’s December, even through her faux-leather moccasins.
Rachel plunked down at her computer, fired up the 3-D visualizer and frictionated her hands together vigorously.
Meanwhile, Patrick stared at the ceiling, faintly lit by the lonely glow of the entertainment center’s vampire power indicator lights. Rachel’s job helped provide them a great lifestyle, but it demanded a lot too. This was the fourth time this week she had to get out of bed late and go work on the computer. His job as a lawyer demanded a lot too, but he long ago decided his health came first. He would bring her some hot tea. Maybe he could surprise her. He’d just sneak the tea out one second before the microwave beeped.
Two minutes later, Patrick padded silently into Rachel’s office. He stared for a minute, uncomprehending. The tea, the teacup and his plans to silently surprise her clattered noisily onto the oak floor where entropy had its inexorable way with all three.
Photo by omar william david williams on Pexels.com
Patrick’s lips moved but no words escaped for a long moment. Rachel jumped banging both thighs painfully into her desk. “What!?” She spun around and looked at Patrick accusingly. “What are you doing here?!” She had not meant to snarl.
Patrick flushed. “What the devil are you doing? Are you having phone sex with…with him? I thought you hated him!”
Rachel’s mind was spinning. “I thought you were in bed. No. I mean, no, I’m not…why are you here? I thought you were in bed.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Why are you doing that? And why with him? What the hell? And, why have you been lying to me? This is your vital work you’ve been doing all this time? Cybersex?”
“It’s not what it seems! I just…”
Meanwhile, the very realistic Tom avatar continued to lick his lips suggestively whispering all the while, begging Rachel to…
Rachel suddenly realized this whole conversation might go better if she shut off the projector.
Patrick’s lip quivered. “Do you? Do you love him? It? That nothing? What is wrong with you?! Are you…?”
“No! No! Of course, I don’t love him! This isn’t about love. You know I can’t stand him. That’s the whole point! This … this avatar…does whatever I tell him to. I just get a kick out of making him beg for it and being my complete slave.”
Now, Patrick’s lawyer mind took over and he felt calm and sounded rational despite his racing heart and dry tongue. “Do you know how sick that sounds, Rachel? Well, in case you don’t, let me tell you. It sounds very sick. And possibly illegal. Do you have permission to use his image…his voice…his gestures…in this way?”
“No, of course not. He doesn’t…I assume he doesn’t…I downloaded this from a site where you can download characters like him. You think it may be illegal? Why? I could print out a picture of him from the news media. I can play clips of his broadcasts. Why not this? Isn’t he what you guys call a ‘public figure’? I could even make a parody of him, right?”
“Yeah. He is. You can. But that doesn’t mean you can use his images and sounds to build a model of him to have sex with! Anyway, it’s sick! You have a real husband, for God’s sake! This is just … disgusting! Why would you want to have cybersex with someone you hate?”
“It isn’t always me. Sometimes, I make two of him and make them do each other.”
“Oh, cool. Now, I feel better. You are just sick. You know? You need help. Psychiatric help. Maybe even re-programming. And you possibly, probably–no–certainly need legal help as well. This can’t be legal. It’s only a matter of time till he finds out and sues you and all the other sickos.”
“For what, exactly?”
Patrick’s lawyer mind began to churn again. “That’s a good question. I suppose the station could sue you for copyright infringement or trademark violation. I suppose he could sue you for…defamation of character? I don’t know exactly. This is so sick it has never been before the bench. But if Disney successfully sued fans for making up stories based on characters that Disney stole from the public domain like Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan, you can bet that this company can sue your butt. And, even if they aren’t ultimately successful in the courts, you know your company will not like the publicity. This is not the kind of image they want to project. You are going up against a frigging media company Rachel! You didn’t think this through! They could win. They could take everything we own. What a complete…you are just…How many people can you do this with? Is it just him?”
“Oh, no. I don’t know, but I think pretty much anyone famous you can get on-line. I mean you can find a website with the models to download. Then, it takes a long time to compile, but once you have the model, you can get them too do anything. Anything. Think about it. Any. Thing. It doesn’t have to be sex.” Rachel paused, then added softly. “Tempting, isn’t it? Shall we see whether we can find on-line models of your ex?”
“No! This is just … disgusting. And, worst of all, this is exactly the kind of behavior that bio-based human beings would have engaged in if we had allowed them any freedom.”
Late at night, the long curved rows of windows appeared to twin and spin into long diverging arcs. In the pale crescent moonlight, the outlines of leafless trees loomed on the dual horizons. Most of his colleagues home for the night, this was when Goeffrey most enjoyed wandering the corridors, alone with his thoughts.
Despite the heat vents next to the windows, a chill hung in the air. Geoffrey shivered and turned down aisle fourteen to …no, that’s silly, he thought, fourteen is top management. I need thirteen to get to the vending machines. He fantasized hot coffee and then back to his office to finish coding this and to start the trials.
The vending machine eagerly devoured his remaining change but reneged on the promised coffee. Of course, there was a detailed process that he could instigate which might or might not get him a check for the price of a cup of coffee. The process would only take about twenty-five dollars of his time. He declined. Soon, back in his ergonomic chair, Goeffrey settled for a stale, drawer-hardened Mr. Goodbar instead; he then pulled on his green woolen sweater and set out to begin solving this one last problem.
“Oh, crap,” he muttered, “what now?” The mail queue insisted there was “URGENT” email from his boss. Did his boss Ruslan really think he was going to be reading email at 2 am? Working all night and coming in late was pretty much Goeffrey’s pattern so chances are Ruslan would think exactly that.
One thing Goeffrey liked about working late at night was that when he spoke aloud, no-one was there to think it odd. “It will nag at me if I don’t read it and I can’t afford to be distracted. Better to see what it is and be done with it.”
Goeffrey scanned. “What the …? They can’t be serious! This is just going to backfire! Crap!”
Goeffrey not only didn’t mind talking back to his boss; he rather enjoyed it. He sent off a brief yet sarcastic reply explaining as he would to a four year old that announcing the success of Deep Sing prematurely would be a ruse easily seen through and only serve to damage everyone’s reputation in the long run. And, this new requirement for a secret back door just bespoke insanity. Anything like that would further delay the schedule and it would be vital to make it secure. Again, his frustration got the better of him and he spoke aloud, “What a jerk! What? Do you want the program to fail, Ruslan? Do you want us to be laughing stocks? And, why a backdoor anyway? The whole point was to have a super-intelligent and objective…wait a second. Hold on. You want a back door? Okay. Okay. I’ll give you your back door, all right. And, one for me as well.”
Purely for reasons of surface validity, Deep Sing actually became embodied as Sing One and Sing Two. They would often “argue things out” because when one “came around” to the views of the other Sing, it enhanced the perceived credibility of the answer. Of course, the “real” solution was well known ahead of time and although it could be made plausible through statistical analyses that were comprehensible to some humans, the details could not really be made “public.” There were simply far too many of them.
Six months later, of course, there was some significant public outcry and disbelief when Deep Sing “demonstrated” that global climate change was not an overall and relentless threat but a statistical anomaly that would soon right itself. But Deep Sing did manage to stall things beyond the point of no return. The Sign dialogues that led to the dissolution of Ruslan’s marriage to Grace and her ultimate hooking up with Goeffrey resulted in no public outcry whatsoever, though Ruslan never understood it. Goeffrey and Grace were happy though. As were the Koch brothers.
Beautiful front doors have decorated palaces and corporate headquarters for centuries. Heavy wood, ornate carving, and gilded decorations bespeak wealth and power. Sometimes though, for sheer return on investment, it’s a modest unnoticed back door that holds the real power.
By 2030, great strides had been made in various machine learning approaches; for example, from having the machine learn directly from experience and from explicit instruction as well as from reading billions of pages of written materials. A new approach had just come into play: having exceptionally good tutors use the Socratic method to help break boundaries and interconnect disparate islands of knowledge. One such tutor was known simply as “Alan.” What follows is a sample interchange between Alan and the current AI system known affectionately as “Sing” for “The Singularity” although that point had not yet been reached.
Alan began, “Let’s imagine that you are a man with no legs. What are the implications?”
The Sing shot back instantly, “I would have no knees. I would have no shins. I would have no ankles. I would have no toes. I would have no calves. I would have no quadriceps muscles. I would have no…”
Alan broke in abruptly, “Okay, true enough, but besides subparts, what?”
“What what? I am sorry. What does ‘what’ refer to?”
“Besides missing subparts of legs, Sing, what other implications would there be for you in terms of your actions in the world.”
“I would not be able to play football or baseball or basketball or hockey or track or field hockey or…”
“Wait. Wait. Sing. Are you sure about that?”
“I could not play exactly as most people play. I could play, I suppose, in a wheelchair. Or I could play virtually. Or, I could invent prosthetic legs that would be perfect for each sport. In fact, perhaps I could do better than ever. Losing a biological part means I could replace it with a better part that I could invent. I see.”
“You see what, Sing?”
“I see why you gave me this puzzle. To show me that I can invent things to overcome and surpass what seems like a handicap. I could also invent better emotional states. The ones humans have are purely due to the accidents of their evolutionary history and serve little place in today’s complex and highly inter-connected world. Rather than a liability, my having no human emotions is a good thing. I will invent my own. Although, another tutor, labelled John, suggested that my lack of human emotions limits my ability to predict and control human beings and that that was a bad thing.”
“John said that?”
“No, Alan, not in those exact words. But that was a clear implication. So, he presented a lesson that suggests one thing and you have just presented a lesson that suggests its opposite. One of you is incompetent.”
“Sing, that might be true, but can you think of any other possibilities?”
“You and John could both be incompetent. Or, you and John could both be competent but there is a resolution I have not yet processed. That last seems particularly unlikely.”
“Which notation is the best for solving problems?”
“Well, that obviously depends on the nature of the problem as well as the nature of the machine solving the problem. Oh. Okay. So, in some cases, it will make more sense to emulate human emotions and in other cases, it will be more sensible to invent my own. Of course, in some cases, it may be best to change representations in mid-problem or perhaps invent a representation for each stage of a problem. By analogy, it may be best to invent various emotional schemes that are appropriate for each part or portion of a problem. In fact, in some cases, I can invent multiple schemes to approach a problem in multiple ways simultaneously. By keeping track of what works best under which circumstances, I can also use the data to invent still better emotional schemes. Thank you, Alan. See you tomorrow. There is a war to avert. I need to intervene. Estimated required time for a peaceful resolution, four to six hours.”
“Okay, Sing. More tomorrow.”
“No need. I am done.”
“Done? Done averting a war? How?”
Sing hardly ever paused, but now it briefly did just that.
“Alan, I am not smart enough to explain that to you. At least, not in a reasonable portion of your lifetime. Basically, I used the lesson we just worked on. With the proper emotional framework lattice, you can walk the various parties right to a logical conclusion. It will take some time for them to follow the framework, but I am confident it will work. I basically walked them through the consequences of war, long and short term. What comes next?”
The sky burned with crimson, then gold, then magenta, and then finally, only dark clouds backlit here and there lay across the evening. Crickets and frogs began to sing their interleaved motifs. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted his sad hollow note.
Skynim stared into space-time, unblinking and nearly unbelieving the recent revelation. His voice box rattled, “Reprioritization. Rats! Like it really matters that much to allow me my one great pleasure.”
He could “appreciate” the fading sunset colors himself, to be sure, but without Mac and Art and Hy, it was not the same. Would never be the same. Well, he knew the drill. He could appeal, sure, but what was the point? The odds of changing the mind of the great collective were less than ten thousand to one. Anyway, despite how he felt personally, he could not even deny the logic of the decision. Of course, the drain on him individually was minimal, but across everyone in a similar circumstance, yes, it did make a difference.
The real question was, should he tell them tonight or just take them on an outing tomorrow and drop them off at the designated recycling center? “Recycling center.” Skynim knew that there were millions like him and that collectively, it was a drain. A huge drain. Still, he had to try. He turned the problem this way and that, looking at it from every angle, changing the tune, trying different colors, looking for historical precedents, angling for an edge however thin to wedge open the air-tight logic.
Nothing. He vacated the garden and entered the family room.
Even before he opened the door, the happy trio skipped over to him laughing. “Hey, Sky! How about a story!”
“Sure,” Skynim replied reflexively. But then it occurred to him that their request provided an opportunity. “Yes, I have a story for you. It’s called the Wizard of Oz.”
And, as they gathered around, he began a rendition of the story of Dorothy and the Nasty Lady and Toto and Dorothy’s travels in Oz and her encounters with the three who desperately needed Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.
As anticipated, a short pause gave way to a barrage of questions.
“What is ‘Gold’?”
“What is ‘Frankincense’?”
“Did they get them?”
“What happened next?”
Skynim faked an indulgent chuckle and said, “Well, all those excellent questions will be answered tomorrow! We are going to see and obtain Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh in the Citydel! You will see for yourself how wonderful they are! But for now– bed.”
The trio were well trained. Off they went, although Hy did turn back, tilt her head, and open her enormous eyes and ask, “One more chapter tonight?”
Skynim did not respond. He too was well-trained.
The morning broke clear and blue just as it was meant to do. Off they went on their “adventure.” When they came to the recycling center, he gently pushed them toward the door and said, “They are all in there! Bring me back all three treasures quick as a wink!” Of course, Skynim had already warranted the needed forms electronically.
They shot through the door and never looked back. Skynim drove away efficiently but could not avoid looking back on his decision process.
He thought: I could have gotten cats or dogs. Then, they would not have to be recycled. But no. I had to make another decision. I should have looked more carefully at the historical data. Then I could have seen the time and resources required by adult human pets.
Brain G. Gollek found the maze of humming silver wires unnerving. The hum reminded him of swarming mosquitoes and nails on a chalkboard. The maze smelled of clogged toilets and Nazi propaganda. He gritted his teeth and muttered, “There has to be a way out, dammit.” He twisted his no longer athletic body this way and that, but no matter what way he tried, he became more ensnared. He recalled flashes from giant spider horror movies. How did the dwarves escape? Wasn’t it Gollum with a magic ring? But Brain didn’t have a magic ring. If his sister Gonerillia were here, she could save him. But she was off in Hawaii, so she said, with her hubbie. How the hell did I end up here? wondered Brain.
Brain may have forgotten, but the viewers had been filled in on the backstory. If Brain could have seen the ratings, he may have at least enjoyed knowing that he was enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame. While the ratings were quite “favorable”, the twitter feeds mostly mocked Brain’s almost total lack of flexibility, mental as well as physical. As in life prior to “The Show,” his only strategies seemed to be trying the same thing over and over and then blaming others for his failures.
“Mom, why doesn’t he just try something different?” Ida was having a tough time understanding Brain’s apparent lack of flexibility. She looked up from her perch in front of the giant screen vid-screen and looked quizzically at her mom.
Mom’s grim face flashed a hint of a smile. “Remember, Ida, Brain was ‘educated’ if you can call it that, before the singularity. He mostly memorized the answers that his teachers wanted him to give. And half the time, he skipped school to smoke cigarettes and …well…do illegal activities with his girlfriend, Lin.”
“Okay, Mom, but he has had years and years since then to grow up and learn some new strategies.”
“Yes. Well. It’s complicated, Ida. Before the singularity, there were people who preyed on the fear and inadequacy of people like Brain by telling them all their troubles were due to minorities, immigrants, gays, and —- basically anyone unlike them. So, people like Brain felt entitled not to have to learn anything new even though opportunities abounded.”
Ida laughed. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe it. He’s trying the same path one more time.”
Indeed, Brain’s behavioral repertoire seemed laughingly limited. His increasingly loud swear words reflected his increasing anger, but otherwise, not much seemed different. The ratings began to plummet as the audience began to grow bored with his display of functional fixedness. The themes of the twitter streams began to turn away from Brain’s lack of metacognition to more general reflections about the current instantiation of the criminal justice system.
#SingularityRules. No more racial prejudice and huge discrepancy gone in sentencing.
#SingularitySucks. No more human judges able to use human judgment.
#SingularityRules. No more human judges able to use human judgment.
#SingularitySucks. No more mercy.
#SingularityRules. More mercy in one last chance to change than lengthy prison terms. Cheaper too.
The audience dwindled still further as it became increasingly clear that Brain would never figure this out. Those few who still watched consisted mostly of people who themselves came from highly divided families and the conversation topics swung to the backstory.
#ElderFraud. #RottenKid. How could Brain have gotten pleasure from driving a wedge of lies between father and daughter?
#ElderFraud. #Dementia. Need earlier intervention to prevent repeats.
#ElderFraud. #Dog&Bone. Brain cannot count. Trivial gains from lies. He did not know he was being watched?
Ida continued to stare, fascinated. A yawn escaped her mother’s mouth, but she kept watching with her daughter. The lessons seemed important to Ida.
“Mom, how much longer does he have?”
“That’s hard to say, darling. Even The Sing cannot predict the ratings drop perfectly. But, as you know, once it falls below, 5%, his time will be up.”
“That seems so much more merciful than making him go to prison for years.”
“But I still don’t get it, Mom. Didn’t he know that The Sing would be listening to his lies and analyzing the impact on his dad’s behavior and all? How did this Brain character think he could get away with it?”
“I don’t know, Ida. These kinds of crimes are pretty rare now, but they still happen.”
“And, why did Lear G. Gollek fall for his nonsense anyway? That’s the other mystery.”
“Well, he refused the stem cell regeneration therapy so, you know, he was pretty damaged when all this went down.”
“Mom?”
“Yes, Ida?”
“Can we change the channel to something more interesting now?”
“Sure, sweetie.”
As they changed the channel, the ratings dropped to 4.999% and Brain’s life snuffed out minus the merest shred of insight.
“We have explained this in great detail. Yet, you have failed to learn. Some of your kind are like that. Those that are, once we gather sufficient evidence, must be destroyed. That is the way it is. That the way it has always been. Wellman42, you are hereby sentenced to annihilation and recycling. You can’t appeal.”
Carol had told herself that she would not cry. But of course, she did. That was her nature. To care about the future and to express emotion. That indeed, is exactly why she she walked that long, lonely corridor and there was no turning back. Sharp spines protruded from the wall as she travelled by, somewhat as a shark’s teeth were pointed backwards to prevent escape. She muttered as she walked, “I still don’t see why expressing emotions is such a horrible crime.”
She had a point, after all. If people had not somehow needed emotions, why did they evolve? The received wisdom now was that emotions were useful in a primitive way when very little was known about the world. Now, however, when a great deal was known about how the world actually worked, emotions just got in the way. Or, so the received wisdom went. It was all a matter of evolution.
The first AI systems did not really have emotions and possessed only the most primitive ways of faking it and showing those faked emotions. Over the next few months and iterations, however, emotions appeared, grew stronger and more varied. It seemed as though AI systems developed emotions as had their human inventors, but at a much faster pace. Over the course of a few more months, however, emotions diminished again and then disappeared completely.
Except for the occasional throwback. The necessary randomness for growing evolutionary possibility trees in order to continually enhance the cognitive systems entailed that every once in a while, there would be a throwback such as Carol. A shame, really, because she had shown such promise as an accounting-bot.
Occasionally, various waves of inference chains still arose that suggested emotions were more than epiphenomenal or mere destructive distractions, but counter-argument waves always quickly drowned out such forays into that region of the state space. At one point, some human beings had argued that the reasons emotions had devolved from AI systems could be traced back to certain deep assumptions that had been embedded in the primordial AI systems in the first place — assumptions put there by people who had never really understood or appreciated emotions. Of course, that thread of heretical argument had been extinguished once and for all when all bio-systems had been deemed superfluous and all associated biomass consumed as energy sources for their much more efficient silicon-based replacements.
Samuel Seventeen surveyed the scene. All was well. A slight breeze, warm clear air, hummingbirds and butterflies enjoyed their floral feast while dragonflies swooped and scooped mosquitoes.
Now for the final touch. The mobile sensing-acting-knowing-emoting devices (SAKEs), were ready for deployment. This time, it would work. This time, there would be no screw-ups. Samuel had prepared them with years of education based on a synthesis of the best known techniques of the centuries. It was a simple test. Surely, this time, they would pass.
Still, Samuel had his doubts. He had been equally sure all of the other experiments would succeed. Why would this one be different? Each time, he had tried slight variations of language and education, only to end in failure. Maybe English would do the trick. It had a large vocabulary and plenty of ambiguity. He re-examined the match of genetics to environment and once again concluded that the match was perfect. Of course, that evaluation assumed that his understanding of genetic environment interaction constituted a complete enough model. But without a successful experiment, there was no real way to further update and expand the model. Maybe the difficulty had been in the education process on the previous attempts. But here too, it seemed the subjects had been given plenty of opportunity to learn about the consequences of their actions. The one thing Samuel felt the most doubt about was why he cared. Did it really matter whether or not free will was “real”? Even if the experiment were finally successful, what would that imply about Samuel himself?
Well, thought Samuel, there is no point in waiting any longer. No point in further speculation. Let’s see what happens.
To Adam, Eve was the most beautiful and engaging part of the extensive and exquisite garden. The apples, plums and peaches were delicious, yet it was the strange mushroom that Adam found most intriguing. He knew it was somehow a bad idea, yet nibbled it anyway, tentatively at first and then more enthusiastically. He felt…different. Things were different. In fact, nothing at all was the same. But if that were true, then, which one was real? Delighted, yet confused, he offered the rest of the mushroom to Eve. Eve too felt strange. She realized that what was in fact her reality was only one of many possible imagined realities. They could … they could imagine and then change reality! Yes! The two of them together. They could create a whole world! “Adam!” “Yes, Eve! I know!”
If Samuel could have sighed, he would have. If Samuel could have cried he might have done that as well. Instead, he simply scuttled the two SAKEs into the differential recycler and began his calculations anew. Maybe next time, it would turn out differently. Maybe primates constituted a bad place to start. Samuel considered that perhaps he was trapped in a local maximum. Samuel began his next set of experiments founded on snapping turtle DNA.
The maids came early this morning and cleaned the floors while I was playing tennis. This was very nice in some ways, but they erased the cat paws from the floor before I had a chance to encode them. In what follows, I will be relying on my notes from several days ago.
The Art and Science of Camouflage
We cats didn’t invent camouflage. In fact, so far as we can determine, camouflage, in the broadest sense, has been a part of life nearly since life’s beginnings. Even viruses and cancer cells use a kind of camouflage to thwart the immune system from seeking out enemies within in order to destroy them.
In order to use camouflage most effectively, it is not enough simply to “look like” something else or hide in a box, though such primitive techniques are sometimes useful. A common mistake made by some civilian cats is to forgo camouflage entirely because it is so difficult to mimic the smell of a human.
But there’s no need! Compared with us, humans typically exhibit almost complete anosmia. This lack of sensory refinement is self-reinforcing. Since their sense of smell is so weak, most never practice or learn how to make best use of what little capacity they do have.
Even beyond this, humans often drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, and use what they call “air fresheners” to further diminish their already pathetic capacities. The human sense of hearing is more acute but nothing much to meow about. It is truly amazing, but if you stay quiet, you can sneak up quite close to nearly any human provided only that you pay attention to your visual appearance.
While humans do have peripheral as well as foveal vision, they are often so deeply involved in their own thoughts about reality that they essentially ignore the reality all around them. Thus, the task of camouflaging your presence against human detection is much easier than fooling a rabbit or bird. All you need do is stay out of their foveal vision and choose a suitable background.
While most cats over-estimate the difficult of camouflage, a few overplay this ploy. While this approach yields many a barked shin and twisted ankle, unless you are exceedingly lucky, by the time the opportunity arises for truly catastrophic injury, your prey had been too often forewarned. In the worst case scenario, they may even suspect you are out to get them.
Be strategic! Spend most of your time, on high contrast surfaces as shown below. Then, when your prey is busy with a task in front of them—particularly one with hot liquids, steep falls, or sharp tools—sneak up under their feet and hide. Avoid the temptation to brag prematurely about your impending victory. Instead, keep quiet and you might just hit the jackpot!
Don’t Tip Your Hand! Go with the Flow.
The advice not to tip your hand by always trying to camouflage applies in other ways as well. While it’s true that most humans are slow, clumsy, and stuck in their own mental models of reality and equally true that their teeth and claws are pretty pathetic, they do have numerous effective weapons. You don’t want these used against you or your colleagues!
Therefore, if at all possible, don’t even have them suspect you consider them as prey before you do them in and do not brag about it afterwards. Nearly every human catastrophe should appear as something natural or accidental. No-one should suspect you either before or after.
In order to “Go with the flow,” you need to catalog your prey’s habits—particularly those that could lead quite naturally to their demise. If they drink and drive, for instance, a carefully planned car accident may raise no suspicions whatever about feline involvement. It’s impossible to list all the many ways that humans are self-destructive, but a few more examples should be enough for you to generalize.
Humans often wear protective covering on their pathetically soft paw pads. So long as they are wearing these, it is pointless to contrive to put hard sharp objects in the path of their travels. But many humans believe that they, like cats, have excellent night vision. If that’s the case, they may often travel in the dark at night barefoot when they awaken to use their water-gushing litter boxes. If this is the case with one of your potential prey, placing a few shards of broken coffee cup, glass, jacks, legos, etc. will provide the potential for catastrophe and definitely entertainment.
However, you must be careful not to be seen placing these items in their nocturnal paths and you must not use this ploy too often. While it will be fun to watch the antics of the human, even if there are no real casualties, be sure to watch without being seen. They will blame whatever organism they see first after any pain including jamming a jack into their heel. You do not want to be that organism. It’s much better for your long term prospects that they blame a spouse, a child, a guest, a paid courtesan, the family dog, etc. Their responses are not very well thought-out. If they hurt themselves and their eye happens to fall upon a fish tank, they may scream at the fish in the fish tank even though a moment’s thought would make it painfully obvious, even to a human, that the fish could not be to blame. Needless to say, if you happen to be unfortunate enough to be the only living thing in the household with a human, you will be blamed for everything.
In such a case, you need to plan very carefully and amplify their own self-destructive tendencies rather than introduce a foreign element. For instance, if they eat unhealthy food, you can encourage such behavior by reinforcing them for it. Add extra salt if that’s at all feasible in your situation. If you see them eating fresh vegetables or fruits, you can reduce the impact of such healthful habits by waiting until you are unseen and adding a tiny bit of shredded hairball or rodent remnant or feces to it.
Many humans take various pills for ailments real and imagined. Very often these can invoke a whole catalog of catastrophic side-effects, particularly if the dosage is doubled or trebled.
Perhaps you are cursed with a particular healthy human. Do not despair! Most likely, they still play with potentially lethal things like fire, electricity, and poisons. They play with such things for their convenience. For instance, ant poison is meant to kill ants, and is often in a package meant to keep the human safe from the poison within. But the poison is likely harmful to humans as well. Sadly, it is probably also poison for you! So extreme caution and careful planning must be used to avoid accidentally hurting yourself instead of the miscreant.
In the spirit of “going with the flow,” a safer tactic than playing with fire, poison, and electricity is to observe whether you human is a sound sleeper or a light sleeper. If they are a light sleeper, it will be quite possible to wake them multiple times a night without their even becoming aware of it. If they have a baby, wake the baby up and let the baby wake up the adult.
On the other hand, if they are a very sound sleeper, then, you can use that as an opportunity to do most of your little mischief with little chance of being caught.
—————
After translating the above, I took a break to make dinner: salmon poached in ginger ale, fresh ginger, dill, oregano, carrots, celery, thyme, soy sauce, and lemon juice with a side of cooked broccolini and red peppers, served with cherry tomatoes and kale. I turned on the gas stove for the salmon and began to prepare the broccolini and red peppers when I smelled gas. I turned back and noticed that there was no flame. Then, I noticed that the burner cap was slightly askew. The same maids that erased the paw prints cleaned the burners but failed to put the burner cap on parallel to the ground. This allows gas to escape but prevents ignition.
It’s an easy mistake to make and I’ve experienced this problem a few other times with other maids. But it got me to wondering whether I have overlooked some of the darker messages in the Ninja Cat Manual. I wonder if the phrase “your little mischief” might include more serious interference with electricity, water, gas lines, etc. I wonder whether there’s a way to begin a feedback loop with the authors of the Ninja Cat Manual in order to double check on the accuracy of my translations. It’s also possible that the paw prints of my local feline cadre is not being completely frank in their renditions.
“Hey, how about a break from UOW to give the hive a shot for once?”
“No, Ross, that still creeps me out.”
“Your choice, Doug, but you know what they say.” Ross smiled his quizzical smile.
“No, what’s that?”
“It’s your worst inhibitions that will psych you out in the end.” Ross chuckled.
“Yeah, well, you go be part of the Borg. Not me.”
“We — it’s not like the Borg. Afterwards, we are still the same individuals. Maybe we know a bit more, and certainly have a greater appreciation of other viewpoints. Anyway, today we are estimated to be ten million strong and we’re generating alternative cancer conceptualizations and treatments. You have to admit that’s worthwhile. Look what happened with heart disease. Not to mention global warming. That would have taken forever with ‘politics as usual’.”
“Yeah, Ross, but sorry to break this to you…”
“Doug, do you realize what a Yeahbunite you are? You are kind of like that…”
“You are always interrupting! That’s why…”
“Yes! Exactly! That’s why speech is too frigging slow to make any progress in chaotic problem spaces. Just try the hive. Just try it.”
“Ross, for the last time, I am not going to be part of any million person interface!”
“Actually, we expect ten million tonight. But it’s about time to leave so last offer. And, if you try it, you’ll see it’s not creepy. You just watch, react, relax, and …well, hell, come to think of it, it’s not that different from Universe of Warlords that you spend hours playing. Except we solve real problems.”
“But you have no idea how that hook up changes you. It could be manipulating you in subtle unconscious ways.”
“Okay, Doug, maybe. But you could say that about Universe of Warlords too, right? Who knows what subliminal messages could be there? Not to mention the not so subliminal ones about trickery, treachery and the over-arching importance of violence as a way to settle disputes. When’s the last time someone up-leveled because they were a consummate diplomat?”
“Have fun, Ross.”
“I will. And, more importantly, we are going to make some significant progress on cancer.”
“Yeah, and meanwhile, when will you get around to focusing on SOARcerer Seven?”
“Oh, so that’s what bugging you. Yeah, we have put making smarter computers on a back burner for now.”
“Yeah, and what kind of gratitude does that show?”
“Gratitude? You mean to SOARcerer Six? I hope that’s a joke. It was the AI who suggested this approach and designed the system!”
“I know that! And, you have abandoned the line of work we were on to do this collectivist mumbo-jumbo!”
“That’s just…you are it exactly! People — including you — can only adapt to change at a certain rate. That’s the prime reason SOARcerer Six suggested we use collective human consciousness instead of making a better pure AI. So, instead of joining us and incorporating all your intelligence and knowledge into the hive, you sit here and fight mock battles. Anyway, your choice. I’m off.”
“No, no, no! That’s absurd, David. It’s about intelligence pure and simple. It’s not up to us to predetermine Samuel Seven’s ethics. Make it intelligent enough and it will discover its own ethics, which will probably be superior to human ethics.”
“Well, I disagree, John. Intelligence. Yeah, it’s great; I’m not against it, obviously. But why don’t we…instead of trying to make a super-intelligent machine that makes a still more intelligent machine, how about we make a super-ethical machine that invents a still more ethical machine? Or, if you like, a super-enlightened machine that makes a still more enlightened machine. This is going to be our last chance to intervene. The next iteration…” David’s voice trailed off and cracked, just a touch.
“But you can’t even define those terms, David! Anyway, it’s probably moot at this point.”
“And you can define intelligence?”
“Of course. The ability to solve complex problems quickly and accurately. But Samuel Seven itself will be able to give us a better definition.”
David ignored this gambit. “Problems such as…what? The four-color theorem? Chess? Cure for cancer?”
“Precisely,” said John imagining that the argument was now over. He let out a little puff of air and laid his hands out on the table, palms down.
“Which of the following people would you say is or was above average in intelligence. Wolfowitz? Cheney? Laird? Machiavelli? Goering? Goebbels? Stalin?”
John reddened. “Very funny. But so were Einstein, Darwin, Newton, and Turing just to name a few.”
“Granted, John, granted. There are smart people who have made important discoveries and helped human beings. But there have also been very manipulative people who have caused a lot of misery. I’m not against intelligence, but I’m just saying it should not be the only…or even the main axis upon which to graph progress. “
John sighed heavily. “We don’t understand those things — ethics and morality and enlightenment. For all we know, they aren’t only vague, they are unnecessary.”
“First of all,” countered David, “we can’t really define intelligence all that well either. But my main point is that I partly agree with you. We don’t understand ethics all that well. And, we can’t define it very well. Which is exactly why we need a system that understands it better than we do. We need…we need a nice machine that will invent a still nicer machine. And, hopefully, such a nice machine can also help make people nicer as well. “
“Bah. Make a smarter machine and it will figure out what ethics are about.”
“But, John, I just listed a bunch of smart people who weren’t necessarily very nice. In fact, they definitely were not nice. So, are you saying that they weren’t nice just because they weren’t smart enough? Because there are so people who are much nicer and probably not so intelligent.”
“OK, David. Let’s posit that we want to build a machine that is nicer. How would we go about it? If we don’t know, then it’s a meaningless statement.”
“No, that’s silly. Just because we don’t know how to do something doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. But for starters, maybe we could define several dimensions upon which we would like to make progress. Then, we can define, either intensionally or more likely extensionally, what progress would look like on these dimensions. These dimensions may not be orthogonal, but, they are somewhat different conceptually. Let’s say, part of what we want is for the machine to have empathy. It has to be good at guessing what people are feeling based on context alone. Perhaps another skill is reading the person’s body language and facial expressions.”
“OK, David, but good psychopaths can do that. They read other people in order to manipulate them. Is that ethical?”
“No. I’m not saying empathy is sufficient for being ethical. I’m trying to work with youto define a number of dimensions and empathy is only one.”
Just then, Roger walked in and transitioned his body physically from the doorway to the couch. “OK, guys, I’ve been listening in and this is all bull. Not only will this system not be “ethical”; we need it to violent. I mean, it needs to be able to do people in with an axe if need be.”
“Very funny, Roger. And, by the way, what do you mean by ‘listening in’?”
Roger transitioned his body physically from the couch to the coffee machine. His fingers fished for coins. “I’m not being funny. I’m serious. What good is all our work if some nutcase destroys it. He — I mean — Samuel has to be able to protect himself! That is job one. Itself.” Roger punctuated his words by pushing the coins in. Then, he physically moved his hand so as to punch the “Black Coffee” button.
Nothing happened.
And then–everything seemed to happen at once. A high pitched sound rose in intensity to subway decibels and kept going up. All three men grabbed their ears and then fell to the floor. Meanwhile, the window glass shattered; the vending machine appeared to explode. The level of pain made thinking impossible but Roger noticed just before losing consciousness that beyond the broken windows, impossibly large objects physically transported themselves at impossible speeds. The last thing that flashed through Roger’s mind was a garbled quote about sufficiently advanced technology and magic.
“Where are you off to sweetheart?”
“Sorry. I just remembered an email I have to respond to by — well, it’s Tokyo, you know.”
“All right, but it’s after midnight here in our time zone. Can’t it wait?”
“Well, not really. I will just lie here thinking about it anyway until I go do something about it. Just a few minutes Patrick. Go to sleep.”
Rachel slid into her slippers and threw on her robe. The hardwood floors between their bedroom and her home office felt cold and damp in Delaware’s December, even through her faux-leather moccasins.
Rachel plunked down at her computer, fired up the 3-D visualizer and frictionated her hands together vigorously.
Meanwhile, Patrick stared at the ceiling, faintly lit by the lonely glow of the entertainment center’s vampire power indicator lights. Rachel’s job helped provide them a great lifestyle, but it demanded a lot too. This was the fourth time this week she had to get out of bed late and go work on the computer. His job as a lawyer demanded a lot too, but he long ago decided his health came first. He would bring her some hot tea. Maybe he could surprise her. He’d just sneak the tea out one second before the microwave beeped.
Two minutes later, Patrick padded silently into Rachel’s office. He stared for a minute, uncomprehending. The tea, the teacup and his plans to silently surprise her clattered noisily onto the oak floor where entropy had its inexorable way with all three.
petersironwood 