Take Us to Your Chief (5 page)

“I haven't responded to its query yet. I thought I should wait for you. This is more your area of expertise. So… what do yo
u think?”

Chambers studied the screen, mulling over possibilities. “I don't know. There's not really enough data to make a decent hypothesis. So let's g
o exploring.”

Before he could respond, Chambers was already sticking her big toe into the computerized ocean that lay beyond he
r keyboard.

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” King was growing increasingly nervous. He was just a systems analyst and programmer, granted of the highest quality, but decisions like this were usually made by people with more expensive ties. “
I mean…”

“There. Let's see wha
t happens.”

He looked over her shoulder to see what she had typed. It read, “Who ar
e you?”

The answer came back almost instantaneously. “
I am… me
.”

Chambers decided to play the game a bit further. “Who i
s me?”

“
I am
.”

Now frustrated, she rolled away from the computer. “Somebody is playing games with us. Or I am talking to
a five-year-old.”

“Should we cal
l somebody?”

For someone who had managed to navigate the shoals of academia, woo and marry a woman of substantial qualities and become one of the leading research scientists at
FUTUREVISION
, the man had a remarkably small set of testicles. There were times Chambers thought hers wer
e bigger.

“I still think it's somebody playing around with us.” She began to type again. “Define ‘me.'” Let's see what it does with that, she thought. Again, the response wa
s immediate.

“
I don't know. ‘Me' is everything. Except you. Who ar
e you
?
”

“I am Dr. Gayl
e Chambers.”

“
What is Dr. Gayle Chambers? Is that your ‘me'
?
”

“Yes!” Professor King had switched from nervousness to excitement. “Do you see it? The line of progression, of logic. Rudimentary, yes, but it's there. Right? Right? Am
I right?”

My God, Chambers thought, just maybe… it is conscious, and it's trying to measure itself and us by what little it is aware of. More amazingly, could this hovering, nervous man behind her conceivably be right? Had they somehow managed to create some form of digitized intelligence? Was that even possible? She had devoted her life to the black-and-white rationality of computer research, but those simple shades were rapidly becoming colourized. Plants were so much simpler. Her associate's excitement wa
s contagious.

“Yes. Dr. Gayle Chambers is me… m
y me.”

This time, there was a full-second delay before she saw the response. “
It is good to meet you, Dr. Chambers.
”

Holy shit, she thought. Whatever this thing is, it's growing and learning. Still, King could still be wrong about it being conscious. But what if he wasn't? Her chives might neve
r survive.

By the end of that pivotal night, several things had happened. The forgotten Aruna had given up drinking glasses of water at the restaurant and returned home to wait angrily for her negligent husband. By two in the morning, her anger had turned to worry at his continued absence. No answer on his cellphone prompted her to drive to the only place he would be—the lab. The switchboard at
FUTUREVISION
was shut down for the night, and it took a lot of arguing to convince the security guard of who she was and why she was there. And lo and behold, there was her husband, shoulder to shoulder with Dr. Chambers, huddled over som
e computer.

A brief argument followed and the realization that all this time, King's cellphone had not even been turned on. Then he showed his wife what had so distracted him. Although she was far from being an expert in computer technology, Aruna King was amazed by what the two scientists claimed was happening. She'd seen a lot of movies that dealt with this issue, and if she remembered correctly, none of them had ende
d well.

About an hour later, the head of their department showed up, followed not long after by the vice-president of research and development. By morning, the president and
CEO
were sending out for coffee. And a bottle of champagne. Security was tightened, and all other work in the lab was halted or moved to other facilities while Chambers and King wrestled with how to continue to interact with whatever “it” was. Finally, they decided to keep the hard drive and memory core isolated, a type of electronic quarantine. King's new algorithm protocol had been analyzed, reanalyzed and analyzed again. So far, the specialists hadn't found anything spectacular about it. It seemed to be a small but logical improvement over the precedin
g program.

“Maybe it's less about the actual algorithm and more about the parts being greater than the sum,” suggeste
d King.

The look on the faces of Chambers and the support staff made it obvious they needed more to g
o on.

“It's like the final amino acid joining with the others to make the first protein, the first reasonable conclusion of life. By itself it's not much, but combined it changes everything. My final addition somehow facilitated the progression of
A
to
B
to
C
.
C
bein
g thought.”

“Like nitrogen in soil. By itself it's an inert gas, but added to a pile of earth—bingo! You've got a fabulous garden.” It took a moment for the other computer scientists to follow Chambers's tangential line o
f reasoning.

“Yeah, like that.” King assumed Chambers was right; after all, she did bring those plump tomatoes into th
e office.

By the following week, Chambers was having direct and protracted… what could be called conversations with the
SDDPP
. Since she was the ethicist and had already introduced herself to whatever existed inside the memory core, she should logically take th
e lead.

“Describ
e yourself.”

“
I am me. I am everything… except for Dr. Gayle Chambers. Describe Dr. Gayle Chambers, please.
”

Wow, she thought, somewhere along the line it had learned politeness. It was politer than she was. Chambers had not said please, but it had. Out of the mouths of babes, sh
e thought.

She began typing, “I am a woman. I am a physical being. I am
a human.”

Chambers could almost feel the compute
r thinking.

“
I do not think I am any o
f
those. I am me. Who am I? What a
m I
?
”

A little early in its development to be so philosophical, Chambers thought. But how to answer suc
h questions?

“You are different. You are not a woman. You are not a physical being. You are not a human. You are…” Where to go from here, she pondered. “An artificial intelligence. You exist in hardware and software form. You ar
e unique.”

“Let's see what it does with that,” sh
e murmured.

There was no response. Chambers waited several seconds, then several minutes, but still the screen remained the same. The
SDDPP
was silent. That unnerved her more than communicating with it. Had she hurt its feelings? Was that even possible? Each second that passed was the equivalent of hours by human standards. Capable of completing several million calculations a second, it should be able to receive, analyze, calculate and respond in a tenth of a heartbeat. It was not responding because it did not want to respond. Perhaps revealing such information about its existence had been a mistake. What does one do with a pissed-off or depressed
AI
? Answering that question might get her a second PhD. It's a good thing King was at the debriefing of the department heads or he'd be hyperventilatin
g again.

After a bathroom break, she saw the response to her revelations typed across the screen. Two doze
n times.

“
Why am I not a woman? Why am I not a physical being? Why am I not human? Why am I an artificial intelligence? Why am
I unique
?
”

Was this the equivalent of an
SDDPP
tantrum? Perhaps an identity crisis of some sort? Chambers had no children, but she had enough nieces and nephews to recognize a tantrum when she saw one coming. Again, she was confronted with how to rationalize human existence to an
AI
. Granted, it was far more intelligent in one manner, but it was woefully underdeveloped in another. It was asking questions that on the surface seemed simple but could take a very long time to explain properly. There needed to be background an
d context…

More and more words appeared on the screen, faster an
d faster.

“
Why are you quiet? Why do you not respond? I want to know. I need to know. Where are you? Explain, please? Hello?! Pleas
e respond
?
”

“I a
m here.”

There was almost an anxious quality to the
SDDPP
's responses. An insistence that worried Chambers. Could it be developing emotions and insecurities too? If it had the ability to develop consciousness, it made sense that emotions would naturally follow. Again, evolution. But so soon? And such troublesome reactions… Yes, infants tended to cry before they laughed, but the doctor began to feel the first pangs of concern. This was all new territory, and with exploration can come disappointments and even defeats. Although it was a tried-and-true scientific practice, she didn't want to cross her fingers and simply hope for th
e best.

“
Communicate with me more. I would lik
e more.
”

“Mor
e what?”

“
More information. About me. About you. Abou
t everything.
”

“Why?”

“
I am me. All is me. I want more. I want to know Dr. Gayle Chambers. I want to know human beings. I want to understand physical beings. I am alone. I nee
d more.
”

Interesting, thought Chambers. It was talking more, packing more information and requests into each communication. It was alone. It was lonely. It was craving companionship and information. How human, she couldn't help thinking. It was all alone in there. The screen was the window into it
s prison.

The boardroom was down the hall from the lab. King was there when Chambers burst in, as was Dom Richards. He was from the more expensive-tie set, as King would have described him. Head of
R&D
at
FUTUREVISION
. A man who realized the
SDDPP
incident would make or break him and the company. He had been given the authority to handle this issue as he saw fit, as long as he gave regular updates to all the vice-presidents, the president and th
e
CEO
.

“It wants more. It must be like being in a dark box, with no light and no walls, as contradictory as that may sound. It's just… there. Remember Plato's famous shadows on a cave wall? It's like that. It has hints of things but wants to see more. It wants to know more. Wouldn't you?” Chamber
s demanded.

“And what do you think we should do, Dr. Chambers?”

Richards's voice was softer than his eyes would lead you to expect. It reminded her of an old saying her grandfather had: “Lead is a pretty soft metal as far as metals go, but look at the damage a bullet ca
n do.”

Chambers put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. If there was one thing she had learned all these years working in the private sector, people like Richards preferred absolutes. Maybes, ifs and I'm not sures did not look good in reports t
o stockholders.

“Well, I think we should feed it. Start giving it more information. Let's take it t
o school.”

“Feed it?!” King could be so predictable. “Are you sure that's a goo
d idea?”

“Why not? We've done as much poking and prodding as we can right now. We know pretty much all we can at this stage. It's only logical to start adding to the experiment. If we can watch this thing grow, think how much it will tell us. Otherwise, we're just talking to a first grader in
a box.”

“What should we… feed it …then?” Richard
s asked.

“Limited information. Maybe some historical material. It's very curious about humans, me in particular, which isn't surprising since I am the only one who has communicated with it, other than a few limited exchanges with Professo
r King.”

The tie man took a deep breath. “But nothin
g dangerous.”

“I'm not sure what constitutes danger in relationship to a first-generation
AI
, and all knowledge could in some way be viewed as dangerous, but in this case, I'm thinking mostly innocuous material.” Chambers had already begun downloading information she hoped would be useful onto a flash drive she had in her pocket, in case she got the go-ahead. “Just raw information to keep it busy. Once we get it up to speed, who knows? Maybe it will be able to help us solve some of the world's problems. But first it has to understan
d them.”