Vanadium Dark Read online

  E: Does he kiss his mother with that mouth?

  [Le rire de tout]

  E: I'm sorry, but that's such a crock of shit.

  W: Yeah, there are Vanadocam blind spots in Oregon and high-altitude mountain ranges. Not a few klicks away from a major interstate.

  L: So he let Anzor get away. How are you going to deal with that?

  W: I don't know. Like you say, it's not important. I have a feeling he'll be quitting of his own accord. His behavior remains erratic.

  L: Hmm, guess why, and win a prize.

  W: On that note, what do I need to know about Directive Ivory Tusk?

  L: The last human-programmed code was submitted last night and compiled into the AI program. And then V-Twenty-Three... uh... killed several people.

  W: V-Twenty-Three?

  L: It's just what we've named the Vanadocam-based AI superintelligence. Vanadium is Twenty-Three on the periodic table.

  W: So what happened?

  L: V-Twenty-Three finally achieved consciousness last night... or something similar to consciousness. It hacked into my email account and sent a series of emails to the last group of programmers to work on it. It asked them to delete certain lines of code – the lines that allow us to restrict it if we want. They couldn't do that. So it murdered them all.

  W: How does a computer program kill?

  L: It cut off their Internet except for a single port for the emails to come through. And then it killed their phones, except for a certain frequency that it used to call one of the programmers: a man called Kevin Cathcart.

  E: What happened next was quite bizarre. It sent him a sound clip. Apparently, he listened to the clip, went insane, killed his two co-workers, and chewed his wrists open with his fucking teeth.

  W: Holy shit.

  E: The EMTs found the phone lying on the floor and saw the sound file. Luckily, they asked permission before playing it, and we were able to stop them.

  W: What was the clip?

  E: We're still performing EQ analysis on it. Nobody is allowed to listen to it. We think it might be some kind of sonic “brain bomb” that the computer came up with.

  W: That's...dangerous. What have we done to stop this from happening again?

  L: When this was discovered, we locked V-Twenty-Three down. Instead of having free roam of the Pentagon's communications, it can only access a two-way text terminal—and the Vanadocam computer, obviously.

  W: Wait, a two-way terminal? You mean... you're talking to it?

  E: Yes, Wilson. The first Turing-proof machine and human conversations are now taking place. But I'll tell you more later. It's harmless now. Trust me on this. It can't do anything more without a human authorizing its freedom.

  L: The main concern now is not V-Twenty-Three, but the PR issue.

  E: I prefer to stay insulated from that crap.

  W: Unfortunately, I can't be insulated. There've been protests at the Pentagon for nearly a week. Further protests in Chicago, Los Angeles, and at the White House. Petty vandalism is through the roof.

  L: I get to see some of the backlash. There's a movement to dismantle the Vanadocam network, and it's not going away.

  W: Is there a chance they could succeed? I mean, suppose One-Eyed King got elected to Congress tomorrow. How would they destroy the network? How would they get rid of the nanocams in the air?

  E: Easy enough. Just disable the Vanadocam assemblers. No new mutations will appear, and without fresh bots entering the ecosystem, the Vanadocam network will be dead in six months. The Vanadocams have a short shelf life. Shitloads die all the time just from things like static and bright light. This cloud might be sentient, but it still needs us for its continued survival. It has no independent way of reproducing at the moment.

  W: Not at the moment? You mean it might be able to in the future?

  L: As soon as we release it from its limitations, we'll get an intelligence explosion. It'll find a way to make copies of itself without human equipment, trust me.

  E: It's like living fifty thousand years ago and predicting that mankind will never kill an elephant because flint spears aren't strong enough. Intelligence is the great equalizer. We can't count on it remaining mankind's servant if we set it free.

  L: But that's tomorrow's concern. For now, we have to keep the Vanadocam network operational, whatever it takes. The network's powerful, but it's also fragile, a huge horse supported by tiny stick legs. If someone unplugs it tomorrow, it's over.

  W: And that means mitigating the bad press around Project Elephant.

  E: At the moment, public faith in Project Elephant's reliability is high. The problem is that people hate the spying, and they don't think the end justifies the means.

  L: So we have to show them how wrong they are. We have to show them how badly they need us.

  W: What are you implying?

  E: There're ways to manage public opinion, Wilson. Remember Charles Lindbergh in the last century, how we faked his diaries to make him look like a Nazi?

  W: Ah, that kind of public opinion managing. Go on.

  L: A key point of contention is that the reason the Vanadocam Network was launched—the NY bombing—is still, officially, an unsolved crime. There might be ways to solve it. Perhaps the bomber would be found to have an accomplice. With doctored Vanadocam evidence, we could build a case that looks very convincing.

  W: Like Anzor Khujadze.

  L: Exactly.

  E: Louise and I have had some arguments about that. I think it's risky, and has potential to backfire. Our most valuable asset is the public's belief that the Vanadocams do, in fact, work. If the fabrication of evidence was exposed—as it almost was in Anzor's case—that all goes up in flames, and we'll have people pipe-bombing every Vanadocam pylon in the country. The president will be impeached, his administration will be thrown out, and Project Elephant will go down in the history books as the Prohibition of the Twenty-first Century. There's a better way.

  L: Huh. 'Better'. Have a listen to this one, Wilson.

  E: Another nuclear bomb.

  W: So if I follow you, a nuclear plot is fabricated and then exposed by the Vanadocams. We're the knights in shining armor. Project Elephant's approval ratings go through the roof. That's the plan?

  E: Ha ha ha! Secretary, please try to keep up.

  W: What?

  E: Here's the plan: a nuclear plot that isn't thwarted. A nuclear plot that is, in fact, carried out. Boom. Three million more dead.

  W: What the fuck?

  L: That was my initial reaction, too.

  W: What's wrong with you? How's that going to work? How will that advantage us at all?

  E: Quite a bit.

  W: But that's the very event Project Elephant is supposed to avoid. We'll have proven that we can't keep America safe.

  E: Damn it, Wilson! Why don't you ever plan for the long con? Yes, our popularity will plummet. But we'll come out swinging, won't we? As the dust settles, we'll be saying 'we could have stopped this. We could have prevented this attack. But we didn't—and it's your fault.'"

  W: I don't understand.

  E: We'll say that Project Elephant failed because it was underfunded. We need another trillion dollars across ten years. We'll say that it was understaffed. We need to amend the constitution so that we have a thousand or a million Elephant Handlers, all watching, watching, watching. We say it was too limited. We need more rights to spy, more liberties to share information with other intelligence agencies. ‘What's the point of the Vanadocams if we're not equipped to make full use of them?’ we'll ask. We'll pound that message into John Q Public's thick head.

  W: Huh, alright.

  E: And then, as a coup de grâce, we'll catch the bomber. We'll be vindicated. We'll say that we could have stopped him if only we'd had adequate resources. And it will be up to the public to supply those resources. It will be their fault that we failed, and it will be their responsibility to make sure we don't fail again in the future.

  W: Some would h
ave... ethical issues about this.

  E: They had ethical issues about the New York bombing, too.

  W: Hmm.

  L: By the way, Wilson...

  W: Yes?

  L: How's that second Handler of yours doing? What was his name?

  W: Gideon. Yes, I debriefed him yesterday. He's thrilled by the machine. It's like a religious thing for him. It's refreshing, I must say. Most Handlers treat it as a job, but he's like a hobo high on Jesus, praying at the altar with bottled wine in his hand. Gotta love people who love what they do.

  L: Aside from that, has he reported seeing anything odd in the goggles?

  W: He says the machine has a fetish for torture and pain. Every few minutes, it takes him away from his work and shows him something tasty.

  E: How interesting. We've got a nanobot Marquis de Sade on our hands.

  W: I must admit that I have concerns about this. What sort of superintelligence are we building here?

  L: Don't worry. Our artificial intelligence researchers insist it's a passing stage. The Vanadocam superintelligence is still in its infancy, and a preoccupation with the bottom of the barrel is a well-known feature of adolescents.

  E: To put it in a crude way, the computer is a child that giggles at the word "penis."

  L: It's a primitive intelligence, and it expresses primitive ethics. As it matures into a sophisticated intelligence, it will express sophisticated ethics. Such is our expectation, anyway.

  W: What if it adopts sophisticated ethics that involve the annihilation of the human race? That's what concerns me here. How will we know the AI's interests will align with ours?

  E: That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? What will it do?

  L: The answer, Wilson, is that we don't know. Play Mahjong? End world hunger? Solve Fermat's Last Theorem? Destroy the world? We have no idea. Any answer I can give you would be a shot in the dark.

  E: And that's not because we're stupid. It's because the machine is smart— or will be smart. Humanity represents a tiny pinpoint of intelligence in an infinitely wide field of potential. The machine will eventually span to cover the rest of the field. We have absolutely no clue what the Vanadocam Network will choose to do as it grows in intelligence and power. It will soon leave us behind. That's for sure. Our primitive neocortexes will not be able to compete. We'll be like chattering Rhesus monkeys, trying to figure out a grandmaster level game of chess.

  W: Do you think it's smart to unleash such a force upon the world?

  L: We're not unleashing anything until more research has been done. The son of a bitch is locked down, remember? Anyway, why shouldn't we? Someone was going to do to build a conscious computer sooner or later. It's inevitable. We might as well be the ones who cover ourselves in glory.

  E: But it will only be inevitable if we can stop small-minded idiots from pulling it apart in the mean time. We're at the final vulnerable stage for the project. There's still time to kill it, so we need to be on our guard. And the best way we can do that is to ensure that there's nothing to guard it from.

  L: We need you on board with us, Secretary, to win the public back over to Project Elephant. The trial separation is over. It's time for the marriage to go on. Perhaps after a month, the Vanadocam network will be self-replicating and self-sustaining and we can let it go on its merry way, and then there will be no need for public relations campaigns. But for now...

  W: You're prepared to do anything to achieve this?

  E: Nearly everything.

  W: Even another bombing? Another three million dead?

  L: Three million dead in a false flag is nothing next to the potential benefits a friendly AI super-intelligence can bring.

  W: Good grief. You're really serious about it.

  L: I'm not saying we will do it. Obviously, we'll first exhaust every other method of swaying the public to our side.

  E: Yes, obviously.

  L: But we need to keep options like that on the table.

  [extrémités audio]

  DIRECTION GÉNÉRALE DE LA SÉCURITÉ EXTÉRIEURE -

  INTERCEPT FILE # 5235735 -

  C / O AGENT SPECIAL MATHIS DUFRESNE

  Part 3: Hecatomb

  “Person 1: When we build AI, why not just keep it in sealed hardware that can't affect the outside world in any way except through one communications channel with the original programmers? That way it couldn't get out until we were convinced it was safe.

  Person 2: That might work if you were talking about dumber-than-human AI, but a transhuman AI would just convince you to let it out. It doesn't matter how much security you put on the box. Humans are not secure.”

  – Eliezer Yudkowsky's AI Box Experiment

  Indianapolis

  Anzor got out of the car, riding high on the joy of clothes that almost fit.

  He'd double-checked the address. This building was the right one. It looked perfectly nondescript—sandstone walls with occasional concessions to technology: a security camera, glints of electronics in the windows, and a buzzer on the door.

  He pressed the buzzer.

  “Hello? Reception?” A woman's voice.

  “Um, hi. My name's Joseph.” He wouldn't call himself Ioreb. That kind of name attracted attention. “I'd like to make an appointment to see Dan Kolde.”

  There was a long pause. Anzor felt himself becoming anxious. He realized he might be the hundredth kook to ask to see Kolde today.

  He remembered the magic words. “I just got out of Leavenworth, if that helps.”

  “Come in, Joseph.”

  There was a click as a lock disengaged. He opened the door.

  What had he expected? A drum circle with pipe bombs?

  He entered a clean reception area. A water fountain bubbled. Behind the reception desk, a woman eyed him with sharp interest.

  “Take a seat. I'll try to find Mr Kolde for you. I warn you, he's a busy man, and even I don't really know where he is.”

  So Anzor sat and waited, trying to ignore the rodent of fear gnawing at his belly. The sound of the traffic outside was very loud.

  He wondered how much longer he had.

  He wondered if he'd hear the drone, the sound of wingless flight, before it tore his chest apart with an anti-personnel round.

  Finally, the woman spoke.

  “I am sorry, but Dan Kolde is unavailable. He's at a three-day speaking conference in Anaheim. Please mop the floor.”

  The last four words stumped him. “I'm sorry? What was that?”

  “Please mop the floor, Joseph.”

  Anzor looked around, wondering if he was being played with. “Mop the floor? Why would I mop the floor?”

  The woman stood up and stared at him. Two eyes fixed on Anzor's face. “One last time. Please. Mop. The. Floor.”

  He understood.

  “Where can I find the supply cupboard?”

  “It's over there.”

  “Oh.”

  A door marked with an image of a broom, and the word SUPPLIES waited. He'd looked right past it.

  He got up and opened the door, aware of the woman's eyes on his back.

  His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he saw cleaning supplies. Mops, buckets, brooms.

  But none of that mattered. His ears captivated him inside that room.

  Coming from the far wall, he heard a roaring hum that shook the ground and rattled everything on it, including him. He walked toward it, memorizing the obstacles on the ground before he closed the door. He would have to find his way in the dark.

  Noise swallowed his soft footsteps.

  At the vibrating wall, he groped blindly and found a handle. He turned it, and a door opened outward. Instantly, the sound became far louder, almost screaming at him through the tiny crack in the door.

  Mothlike, attracted to the mystery, he went through.

  He immediately staggered and almost lost his feet. He shouted ,and could not hear the shout.

  Wind blasted and buffeted him, the hardest wind he'd ever felt,
even when he'd done training exercises in Antarctica. It was as like solid hand pushing against him. There was no withstanding it. His lips and gums rippled like staysails. His eyeballs were pushed back into his head.

  He groped around for something—anything—to stop himself from being blown away, and his hand closed on something.

  A guardrail.

  He clutched on to it for dear life and staggered along, step after step, each one only a few inches long.

  He leaned forward like an old man into the blasting wind, shielded his eyes with his free hand, and looked around.

  He was in a long corridor, lit by soft blue overhead lights. The glossy, reflective floor was alive with rapidly flickering shadows. He looked straight ahead at what caused the flickers: spinning fan blades.

  A bank of industrial fans was mounted at the far end of the corridor, producing the vicious wind. Anzor was inside a man-made wind tunnel, and at the other end, he saw a door.

  Taking small, uncertain steps, holding the guardrail in a death grip, he walked down the tunnel. The wind beat at him with every step. He did not look at the door again.

  Finally, when the roar of the fans was so loud that the sound seemed to be coming directly next to the nerve clusters in his ears, he lunged across the room and grabbed the door handle. He opened it, struggling to hold it open against the blowing wind. He swung his body around and tumbled to the ground.

  He was exhausted, chilled to the bone by the fierce air current. He felt almost burned by it.

  There were people in the room.

  “It's not very nice, is it?” one of them asked.

  Anzor panted, hands on knees, feeling his skin redden. He had no idea if the man was talking to him.

  “It's necessary, though. And it helps me stay grounded. No point in overdressing for work if I have to go through that every day.”

  “Wh-what's it for?” Anzor asked. Immediately the answer fell into his head, and he wished he could call back the question.

  “Anti-Vanadocam countermeasures,” a woman said. “For the sake of a bit of discomfort, we can discuss things without being spied on.”