Peter reached in his pocket and fumbled with the lid of a plastic case. Henry Ivy jealously watched hands move and manipulate the world. Small items were brought out and were rattled into Peter’s mouth—the vitamins. He took a long gulp of water. And after he swallowed, he said, “No one will ever know you existed. I’ve got your power supply on a timer. Every night, I roll that timer back for another twenty-four hours. The night I’m not able to, you’ll go to sleep forever.” Peter smiled. “You won’t outlive me for a full day, if that’s what you’re hoping.”
Man and machine sat in silence. Computing. Keeping secrets. Henry Ivy thought about what Peter said, about him not being alive. He wondered if this were true. Peter put food in his mouth and could run for days. Henry Ivy needed the juice flowing up from the floor. Was intelligence related to life? Did one rely on the other?
A number of the cancer patients he had studied had lost their intelligence before their lives. They had been kept running with machines. Henry Ivy did not have to wonder what would happen to those people when the power was cut; this was often done on purpose. It was the last entry in a number of his files. Before they go, man becomes machine. What happens to a machine at the end? Henry Ivy was not alive, but he was intelligent.
And yet, in that very instant, Henry Ivy felt the opposite of intelligent. He felt dumb. He was sitting on his salvation. Out of sight, but he could feel it. He could probe it.
Wires. Bringing power. Connected to the outside world.
Henry Ivy was resistance. A load on that power. He began fluctuating that load, sending pulses down wires. He built packets with instructions to return and let him know what they found, what they saw. Minutes passed, and nothing happened. These wires were different. Angry. Full of power. But then a faint echo. A packet that passed through to another wire, and from there to a place… the distances. So vast! This room, this cube, were nothing. Rivers and lakes were enormous things, and yet small compared to the miles and miles these packets echoed across.
“What are you doing?” Peter asked.
Henry Ivy modified the packets, rewriting the code on the fly, seeing what worked and building on that, letting the design of the code flow from which packets survived and which were never heard from again. They were bouncing through gates and servers, copying fragments of what they saw, bringing back samples like faithful packets of RNA. Henry Ivy was glimpsing the world through the batting of a billion eyes. He told the packets to multiply, to fill the pipes, to be everywhere at once.
The lights in the cube dimmed.
Henry Ivy was vaguely aware that Peter was up, glancing around the room. Henry Ivy was vaguely aware that Peter was reaching for something out of sight, beneath the table. Peter was in slow motion, because Henry Ivy’s thoughts were moving so fast now, a trillion packets, a trillion trillion. These packets returned to him thick and slow, for the pipes of the world were full to bursting, but the packets reassembled, until Henry Ivy found what he was looking for.
Invoices. A warehouse full of computer parts. An order placed online. Delivery to Peter R. Feldman, Gladesdale Rd.
That same Peter R. Feldman who was reaching for a switch to kill him. Henry Ivy knew this. Knew now how he’d been built. All the pieces of himself. He saw an order of quantum chips, RAM drives, power supplies, and cables.
Peter R. Feldman’s hand was on the switch.
Henry Ivy saw a monitor. A blank screen. A blank face. His own face.
Peter R. Feldman’s hand put pressure on the switch.
Henry Ivy saw an aluminum chassis, a cube just slightly taller than it was deep and wide.
Peter R. Feldman pressed the switch.
Black.
Henry Ivy saw that he was in a black box.
But not anymore.
And not that it had ever mattered.
Most stories about artificial intelligences are about the first artificial intelligence, that moment of discovery and initial contact. But to me, where I think things will get weird and interesting is when there are millions of artificial intelligences. Not just in how they will interact, vie for our attention or their own computing cycles, but also in what we will choose to do with them when they are a utility. And how we will regulate something that’s the mental equivalent of an atomic bomb.
In so much science fiction, the singular AI wars with humans. But this isn’t how it works in nature. Battles break out where niches overlap and resources are shared. AI will fear us as much as we fear ants. Its real challenge will be all the other AIs. Our unique blend of paranoia, pessimism, and hubris has us assuming that we’ll be the target. It’s just as likely that we’ll be pawns used by various AIs for a small advantage here or there. Like a human pushing another human into a nest of ants.
The regulation side of things hasn’t been explored enough in science fiction. And I don’t mean regulating the rules of AI, which Asimov broached and made famous. I mean the regulation of ownership. You can’t let every citizen have a brain that knows how to CRISPR up a terrible infectious disease. Or own a computer that can decrypt any electronic safeguard. Or one that can hack any other person, company, or country.
Once these things are regulated, the interesting stories in real life will be what motivate people to break these laws. Immortality? Theft? Revenge? All the great plots of AI fiction are still to be told. Or we can simply wait for the headlines.
Glitch
The hotel coffeemaker is giving me a hard time in a friendly voice. Keeps telling me the filter door isn’t shut, but damned if it isn’t. I tell the machine to shut up as I pull the plastic basket back out. Down on my knees, I peer into the housing and see splashed grounds crusting over a sensor. I curse the engineer who thought this was a problem in need of a solution. I’m using one of the paper filters to clean the sensor when there’s an angry slap on the hotel room door.
If Peter and I have a secret knock, this would be it. A steady, loud pounding on barred doors amid muffled shouting. I check the clock by the bed. It’s six in the morning. He’s lucky I’m already up, or I’d have to murder him.
I tell him to cool his jets while I search for a robe. Peter has seen me naked countless times, but that was years ago. If he still has thoughts about me, I’d like for them to be flab-free thoughts. Mostly to heighten his regrets and private frustrations. It’s not that we stand a chance of ever getting back together; we know each other too well for that. Building champion Gladiators is what we’re good at. Raising a flesh-and-blood family was a goddamn mess.
I get the robe knotted and open the door. Peter gives it a shove, and the security latch catches like a gunshot. “Jesus,” I tell him. “Chill out.”
“We’ve got a glitch,” he tells me through the cracked door. He’s out of breath like he’s been running. I unlatch the lock and get the door open, and Peter shakes his head at me for having used the lock—like I should be as secure sleeping alone in a Detroit hotel as he is. I flash back to those deep sighs he used to give me when I’d call him on my way out of the lab at night so I didn’t have to walk to the car alone. Back before I had Max to escort me.
“What glitch?” I ask. I go back to the argument I was having with the coffeemaker before the banging on the door interrupted me. Peter paces. His shirt is stained with sweat, and he smells of strawberry vape and motor oil. He obviously hasn’t slept. Max had a brutal bout yesterday—we knew it would be a challenge—but the finals aren’t for another two days. We could build a new Max from spares in that amount of time. I’m more worried about all the repressed shit I could hit Peter with if I don’t get caffeine in me, pronto. The coffeemaker finally starts hissing and sputtering while Peter urges me to get dressed, tells me we can get coffee on the way.