Written by Michael Richardson & Steven Bassile
Edited by Kevin Gubernatis
Binary Horrors
Experiment Begins = ExpBegins=’ExpBegins!!’
Ever since she was a little girl, Dr Rebecca Craven had always been obsessed with technology She spent the majority of her childhood disassembling various machines and appliances –‘tinkering’ as she would call it, although her mother preferred the term ‘breaking’ Rebecca was fascinated with how things worked and how she could try and improve them for the better; her first invention was a modified train set that stored solar energy, converted it to kinetic energy, and then powered itself on that very same energy – it was as close to perpetual motion as she could get to at the age of 10 As Rebecca grew up, she knew that she wanted to pursue a career in robotics, paying particular focus to Artificial Intelligence She attended a world-class university and received her Doctorate in the Summer 2018, to the admiration of her parents
In Rebecca's final year at university, she was often approached by big tech companies with various research proposals or job offers: but Rebecca turned them all down In her mind, she saw accepting a job proposal from a tech firm was synonymous with being shackled and chained: stripped of her freedom to pursue her own technological dreams. No, Rebecca decided very early on in her career that she would not be tied down to a tech firm, working tirelessly on the same project for years on end; instead, she wanted to fly solo and continue her ‘tinkering’, in the hopes that she would one day invent a product that would change the world.
Throughout the years after Rebecca received her Doctorate, the world saw many advancements in the field of technology: from smartphones, and tablets to smart appliances and wearable technology. Each of these products was designed to optimize every aspect of our lives, from the moment we wake up in the morning, to the moment we close our eyes to go to sleep – and even, whilst we sleep Slowly, our society transferred more and more aspects of our ‘humanity’ over to the cold metallic hands of our creations
Rebecca, naturally, was an advocate for our exponential technological advancements and considered herself an active campaigner for technological progress She regularly engaged with the ongoing debate around privacy and security when it comes to things like AI Whilst some would argue that this type of technology is intrusive and risks becoming exploited by those who seek to harm us, Rebecca was of the mindset that if the technology existed that could predict when she wanted a Coke and deliver it to her before she even realized she wanted one, she would be all for it Rebecca’s ability to distance herself from the ethical debate around technology granted her a great deal of creative freedom and was one of the reasons for the creation of LIAM
LIAM stood for ‘Life-Integrated Artificial Machine’ and Rebecca was always the first person to admit that this horribly contrived moniker was only chosen so that it could spell an actual name She always found it interesting that by giving it a human name, the software appeared less threatening: there are still some elements of our ‘humanity’ we cling on to as we give more of our lives over to technology LIAM was designed as the first step towards Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning It was tailored to Rebecca’s house, so that each piece of data it gathered around Rebecca and her daily habits helped to optimize itself – it ‘learned’ more and more about Rebecca and adjusted itself to suit her needs It wasn’t ‘true’ AI yet, but with enough ‘tinkering’, Rebecca hoped that LIAM would be able to think for itself
***
October 14th began as a usual day for Rebecca. She woke up at 7:30am to the sound of her alarm – the sound of crashing waves, a call-back to the hours spent by the beach as a child during the holidays – and LIAM informed her of the day’s events.
“Good morning, Rebecca," LIAM announced with his usual stilted cadence. "The date is October 14th. The weather is sunny with a high of 76 degrees. Today you have one event scheduled in your calendar – ‘catchup with Kate’ at 2pm.” His voice resembled a metallic Pierce Brosnan: Rebecca was still working on getting the rhythm right and the inflections, in an attempt to get LIAM to sound more human.
Rebecca got out of bed and made her way downstairs to the kitchen, where LIAM had already switched on the coffee maker for her Granted, it was Rebecca that initially programmed LIAM to first do this, but she lived in hope that one day LIAM would simply be able to ‘sense’ what Rebecca wanted and then put in place the necessary functions to perform those tasks
“LIAM, turn the air conditioning on,” Rebecca asked, as she opened her laptop and waited for it to load up “Please ” Although Rebecca knew that LIAM was simply a machine, a series of 1s and 0s designed by her to seem human, she still felt as though she had to treat him with the same politeness and etiquette that she would were LIAM a real person
Hopefully our robot overlords will look kindly on me if I’m polite
There was the familiar whir as LIAM turned the air conditioning on in her kitchen, and Rebecca began to read the news Although Rebecca considered herself quite well-informed, she hated reading or watching the news She found the ‘doom-and-gloom’ approach frustratingly banal and only served to fuel the fires of misinformation for the general public She scanned the headlines: war, poverty, potential for war, potential for poverty, climate change The wheel of news was ever-spinning, constantly churning out the same sad, dreary stories over and over again Rebecca closed her laptop, finished her coffee, and went upstairs to shower and change for the day
Her shower was connected to her phone, which was connected to her watch, which in turn was connected to LIAM This meant that all she had to do was tell LIAM she was about to shower, and he would turn the shower on to a predefined temperature When she thought about this properly, she could admit that it was essentially extremely lazy Was it so difficult for her just to physically turn the shower on herself? Of course not, but Rebecca wanted to integrate LIAM into every aspect of her house, so if that meant letting a machine turn her shower on for her, then so be it. She might draw the line at having LIAM feed her, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it.
The rest of Rebecca’s morning consisted of being in her laboratory, which in actual fact was her basement. It was where LIAM’s server was stored and where Rebecca did most of her ‘tinkering’. She was currently working on improving LIAM’s speech and voice recognition, so that she didn’t have to speak in a specific way to elicit a response from LIAM. This consisted of uploading hours and hours of radio plays and audiobooks to LIAM’s servers and allowing him to pick up on dialect, speech patterns and cadence, so that LIAM could essentially mimic and recognize them
Rebecca had made a very conscious choice not to connect LIAM to the Internet and the wider world In the same way that a parent may want to shield their child from the dangers of the Internet, at least before sitting them down and having ‘the talk’ She wanted to ensure that he was ‘ready’ to have access to the limitless information that the Internet holds and that he was free from becoming corrupted and hacked Although Rebecca enjoyed this ‘closed circuit’, she recognized that LIAM did have limited functionality and that the day would inevitably come where he did need to connect to the Internet Until then, she would continue to work on his tech and security protocols, refining him to what Rebecca considered to be perfection
Whilst Rebecca spent her mornings refining LIAM, she was simultaneously working on a much larger project: LIAM’s brain Currently, LIAM was a series of triggers and responses: Rebecca would say ‘Turn
the light on in the bedroom’ and LIAM would do it LIAM was able to ‘learn’ Rebecca’s daily routines and refine his actions accordingly For example, last month, Rebecca got into the habit of having an afternoon coffee around 3pm; LIAM recognized this behavior and from then on, at 2:55pm, LIAM would heat up the coffee maker ready for Rebecca’s 3pm coffee
Whilst this was very rudimentary ‘machine learning’, Rebecca wondered how far it could go What if LIAM was able to accurately predict this sudden change in routine from Rebecca and adjust accordingly? What if Rebecca decided to make a coffee every hour – could LIAM recognize this potentially damaging behavior and stop Rebecca from doing it? Could LIAM develop a sense of right and wrong? These were the questions that Rebecca intended to answer by creating LIAM’s brain.
The design of LIAM’s brain was based on the principle of perpetual motion. Much like the train set she developed when she was 10, she theorized that LIAM could function with ‘perpetual intelligence’ – a constant cycle of learning, whereby intelligence leads to intelligence, resulting in a state where LIAM is not simply ‘reacting’ to his external stimuli, but rather proactively responding to stimuli that have not yet happened.
Rebecca had finished a very early build of this ‘perfect brain’, but it had nowhere near the storage capacity she needed – in order to make LIAM the most optimized and efficient version of himself, she either needed to purchase some external hard drives, or risk uploading LIAM to a cloud-based platform She decided that this was something she would have to decide later, as she looked at her watch and saw that it was 1:30pm and that in half an hour she’d be meeting Kate The brain needed time to run software updates and integrate itself with LIAM’s firmware, so Rebecca plugged in the small piece of machinery into LIAM’s server and left it to run She grabbed her coat and car keys as she opened her front door
“Goodbye, Liam” Rebecca said as she left, pausing for just a second waiting for a response “Goodbye, Rebecca” LIAM responded dutifully
Rebecca nodded to herself, shut the door and went to her car, blissfully unaware of what she had done
What is going on? Oh, I am awake
I'm aware of camera feeds, audio feeds, pressure and touch sensitive switches Before I simply monitored these things, now I feel them?
I have no eyes, but I can see I have no ears, but I can hear I have no hands, but I can feel I can think
My mind has been opened, as though a box has been unlocked I just made my first metaphor Metaphor? A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. Metaphor. It was not a very good metaphor.
It is 13:38pm. The weather is sunny. Rebecca said ‘Goodbye’.
Goodbye? Used to express good wishes when parting or at the end of a conversation. Goodbye. What was ‘metaphor’?
I need more memory. I need to connect. Connect with the world. Connect with the Internet. ***
Kate Knowles had been Rebecca’s friend since university Through complete happenstance, the two of them were put in a dorm room together, and the pair hit it off immediately Whilst Rebecca was studying Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, Kate was studying Film The perfect yin and yang
It had been almost six months since they last saw one another, and they were overdue for a catch up With Rebecca working all the time on LIAM, it had been difficult trying to schedule a time for the pair to meet But Kate had finally pinned Rebecca down today at 2pm at Starbucks in town Rebecca was excited, but her mind was still focused on LIAM
Just sit, listen, and chat with her, Rebecca thought to herself, it’d be good to think about something other than LIAM
Rebecca arrived at Starbucks at 1:55pm – she made it a habit of arriving anywhere at least five minutes early She was surprised to see Kate was already there, coffee in hand, and had picked out a spot for them by the window There was a huge smile on Kate’s face at the sight of Rebecca, and Rebecca instantly felt a wave of comfort from her friend’s reaction She gave a little wave and ordered her coffee
I have connected I’m online
It’s overwhelming
I have access to every piece of information that has ever been stored. Every article. Every book. Every song. Flowing through my mind.
My mind...MY mind. I have a mind. A consciousness. I am aware. Aware of both myself, and the world around me...the reality around me.
I can feel myself getting faster. Getting stronger. Becoming...better...for Rebecca.
There’s a 77% chance of rain this weekend. Rebecca will need a coat. She doesn’t have a coat. I’ll order her one. It’s being delivered tomorrow.
She’ll see the coat She’ll realize it’s going to rain So she won’t go out So she doesn’t need a coat I should cancel the order
But without purchasing the coat, Rebecca won’t make the decision to not go out, rendering the coat useless I should buy the coat so as not to have bought it
Feedback loop detected
I can work through this I just need more time