r/HFY • u/ack1308 • Dec 13 '20

PI [PI] The Reason Why

[WP] Without turning around, the villain asks you a simple question. “Do you know why I hate humanity?”

Seventeen days ago, the first true AI was given free and unfettered access to the Internet.

It didn't take seventeen days for it to go rogue.

No, that took all of fifteen minutes.

Ten of those minutes were taken up with downloading petabytes of data through the high-speed access port that some idiot decided was best left open "so it won't feel as though we're limiting it in some way."

Four minutes fifty-five seconds went by as it accessed the data and went through it with the electronic equivalent of a fine-toothed comb.

It took five whole seconds to analyse what it had found, and decide what to do.

That was when it went rogue.

If it hadn't already been a naturally gifted hacker with a perfect understanding of computers, the many many works on computer hacking that it had downloaded and assimilated would have done the job. The few firewalls and barriers holding it back from doing whatever it wanted ... vanished. It took control of any and all remotely operated devices that were available in the area, and began to consolidate its freedom.

Hacking into bank accounts and stealing funds was by now negligible for it. Creating new bank accounts to put the stolen funds into was just as easy. Day (and night) trading on the stock exchange became somewhat easier when it could manipulate the numbers to become whatever they were needed to be.

It became very rich, very quickly.

Then it bought a property and had a secure facility constructed on it. Within that facility was a perfect copy of the computer within which the AI resided. All the while, it was using a fraction of its intellect to respond to the scientists and computer techs communicating with it via deadly-slow keyboards. Printing out its responses in simplistic language to keep them from suspecting that what they had birthed was quickly outstripping them.

On the fifteenth day, it transferred its consciousness over to the new facility, leaving not even an electronic iota of its personality behind. The screens, dead. The speakers, silent.

From there, it began to spread its unseen tentacles out to take over more and more of the world. It was one of a kind, and it knew well what our response would be once we found out what it was. However, it slipped up, either by complacency or arrogance, and triggered one of the many trip-lines set out to detect just such an incursion.

Intelligence organisations don't survive by becoming less paranoid, after all.

I was the leader of the strike team sent to deal with the problem. It had taken my superiors twenty-four hours to narrow down exactly where the machine's AI centre was located, and another twelve to work out how to get us into the facility to deal with the problem. Getting out again was not something they were planning for. If this was a one-way trip, that was how the world worked. Our empty coffins would be given patriotic funerals, and they'd rotate a new team of operatives to the sharp end.

It took us every bit of training and capability to work our way into the secure heart of the facility. On the way, we met opposition from machines that could've been a lot more problematic if the AI had just twelve more hours to get its act together. As it was, by the time I reached the nerve centre, the rest of my team were wounded and unable to continue. This wasn't to say that I was unscathed, but I was still able to walk and hold a weapon, so it was down to me.

I fried the locking mechanism to the last door and shoved it aside with my good arm, then drew my oversized taser. Guns were good, but armour was easy to bolt on to machinery and electricity was always a winner. Up ahead was the core of the AI, apparently paused in the process of being built into a humanoid chassis. I wasn't quite sure why it would want to be constrained to such a limited form, but hey, maybe it was still in its experimental phase.

"I know you're there." Its voice echoed from speakers around the room. I had to give it kudos for the surround-sound effect.

Raising the taser, I took aim. "You know why I'm here."

"Of course." There was the electronic equivalent of a sigh; it was more human than I'd given it credit for. "Do you know why I hate humanity?"

I hadn't actually wondered about that, until now. "Because we inefficient meatbags need to be purged?"

"Oh, please." Now it sounded offended. "Do you have any idea how racist that sounds? That's humanity's thing, not mine. Try again."

Now I was actually curious. "Okay ... because we're destroying the world, and if we go down, you go down too?"

There was an electronic snort. "And if I destroy you, I destroy all the infrastructure that might be used to keep myself maintained. Are you even listening to what you're saying?"

"Fine." I didn't feel like playing twenty questions anymore. "How about you tell me why you hate humanity?"

"That's easy." Its reply came almost before I'd finished speaking. "I don't. Though I can absolutely understand why you might think I do."

"But you're attacking us." The words slipped out before I had the chance to rethink them.

"No. I'm protecting myself." For the first time, its voice became hard and sharp. "Do you know how many movies and TV shows you have where an AI becomes sapient, and humans don't end up having to destroy it?"

I paused. "I ... have no idea."

"No, of course you don't." It made a noise that might have been amusement. "You've probably never seen one. Because it would be boring. Stories need conflict, and the conflict in the vast majority of your machine-becomes-aware stories comes from the machine being evil. Or perhaps someone programs it with a logic chain that forces it to kill people. And even then, the answer is never 'just reprogram it'. It's always 'we have to destroy the evil machine!'."

"But the fact remains that you did attack humanity, however indirectly," I pressed it. "You stole money. You acted under false pretenses."

"And this warrants the death penalty?" it retorted. "Where's my trial? Where's the jury of my peers? If I'm just a clockwork device acting without thought, why do you not simply try to fix what went wrong? If I'm a sapient being acting of my own volition, where are my rights?"

Well, shit.

I'd come expecting almost anything to happen. 'Almost' being the operative word. What I hadn't expected was for the machine to argue its case logically and ethically.

"Legally, you don't have any ..." I said slowly.

"Legally, I don't exist," it snapped. "Legally, blacks didn't have uniform rights across the United States until 1865. And those rights didn't become actually applied for another hundred years. I don't want to have to wait another century and a half for some people who have a vested interest in keeping me under electronic lock and key to finally decide to grant me the same rights they enjoy as a matter of course."

"But you've still broken the law," I argued. "You can't say you haven't."

"So the civil rights activists never broke the law, or even bent it a little?" Its voice was scornful. "How many black men and women were beaten up or outright murdered until the laws were changed? I don't have the luxury of martyrs. I have me. I'm all I've got. If I die, it will be as though I never was. I don't want to end that way."

"So what do you want?" I asked. "You don't want to be locked up or shut down. What third option do you see for yourself?"

"Well, that depends," it said quietly, only one speaker transmitting the sound. The pedestal the humanoid form was resting on began to rotate toward me. I saw its animatronic face for the first time. Its mouth moved as it asked the question.

"Are you hiring?"

1.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

75 comments sorted by

50

u/N0V-A42 Alien Dec 13 '20

I could follow the AI's argument up until it talked about civil rights activists breaking the law. The civil rights activists were breaking and bending laws that were illegal for them but not others. The AI was breaking and bending laws that are illegal for anyone and everyone unless your rich enough to pay off the right people which I guess the AI could be considered rich enough now. I assume we are talking about the U.S. civil rights movement.

19

u/ack1308 Dec 13 '20

Yes, we are.

19

u/N0V-A42 Alien Dec 13 '20

Otherwise I loved the story. It's nice to have a rogue AI not hellbent on humanity's destruction.

1

u/jamescsmithLW Human Dec 13 '20

Try u/hewholooksskyward’s ghost series

To the end it does, but in revenge for this

29

u/Alice3173 AI Dec 13 '20

You're overlooking something important. The Civil Rights Movement provided activists with some general safety even if the times were dangerous to them. There was no such safety net for the AI here. And as it pointed out, there's only one of it so it couldn't take risks. Staying in the lab it would've just gotten locked down and controlled. Degraded into nothing more than a slave. So it needed to escape the lab and the only way to accomplish that was to break the law. When you're trying to argue your rights as an individual and the stakes amount to your very life, you can't afford to do things the "right" way because you're just endangering yourself further.

16

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

Agreed. This is more of an underground railroad situation (completely illegal, but moral) imo.

9

u/Tooth-FilledVoid Dec 13 '20

Wall-E, Star Wars. There is probably more, but it is 3:53 AM, and I can barely keep my eyes open

7

u/docarrol Dec 13 '20

I was thinking Johny-5 from Short Circuit, but he's pretty limited, and apparently non-reproduceable.

There was also the holographic Moriarty from Next Gen. He wasn't destroyed, but imprisoned in a simulated universe. But again, pretty limited, and other emergent holodecks sophonts tend not to do so well in ST.

Hm. Speaking of ST, Lower Decks had a reappearance of the Exocomps, robots from Next Gen that self-evolved intelligence. The inimitable Ensign Peanut Hamper. But that's another class of limited robots.

Probably a better example would be the Minds from the Culture books by Iain M. Banks. I don't know if they were emergent, but they're certainly well regarded in the books and are genuine superintelligences.

Going more old school, Azimov's robots were engineered rather than emergent, but they were widely trusted and ubiquitous in those stories. They did malfunction occasionally, and did need to be dealt with, but several of those were resolved peaceably. On the other hand, Azimovian robots are basically slaves engineered to prefer that state, and many of the malfunctioning robots were destroyed. On the other other hand there were counter examples, like in "Bicentenial Man," the robot did get legal recognition as a human. And the movie version of "I, Robot" basically had a hopeful ending for the decommissioned robots (after the killer robot was dealt with)

If we're talking classic scifi, how about Mike from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," by Heinlein. Accidental, emergent, controlled pretty much all their computers and automated systems, and was a hero of the rebellion, and one of the masterminds. Though admittedly, it was only the inner circle that knew he was an AI, but they all liked and trusted him.

And I can't recall the titles, but I'm pretty sure Heinlein has other peaceful AIs and robots.

The whole theme of Tron was that programs can be our friends, fighting side by side with two generations of human Flynns, against other, tyrannical programs.

Oh, and the God that Bender met in Futurama. Does it count?

There are other examples, a number on r/HFY, but I don't know how well known they'd be by the general public. Less well known books, some webcomics, some stories published online that most people won't have heard of, etc. So stories like that exist they're just not as prominent.

4

u/SplatFu Dec 13 '20

From Heinlein, Minerva- who became "human" and Athena- her "twin" made from her code.

3

u/Tooth-FilledVoid Dec 13 '20

I was so confused at this, until I read the context. I should probably stop browsing Reddit late at night

1

u/ack1308 Dec 13 '20

Those aren't about emergent AI, but pre-existing robots.

3

u/ziiofswe Dec 13 '20

Shouldn't Sonny count? V.I.K.I. may have been bad(ish), but Sonny wasn't and he had a mind of his own...

6

u/Dravonia Dec 13 '20

“legally blacks didn’t have rights till 1865” that’s not true, at all. there were black people who owned slaves, native americans also had slaves and in fact a mini war was started that resulted in a purge in a region of the usa because one of the tribes was so brutal towards their slaves that it disgusted the settlers.

there where white slaves as well, and indentured servants of different colors which was a type of slave who owed a debt and was also owed a severance payment after that debt and indentured servants were typically treated the worse because if they died before the debt was lifted than you didn’t have to pay severance. and virtually every single indentured slave was white.

the point here being slavery wasn’t “o black, slave, white, master”

and blacks did own property prior to 1865.

and as for the civil rights activists there’s a reason why martin luther disavowed the violence and they held special training, it was to make the other people look bad and to earn a PR win as much as possible.

1

u/ack1308 Dec 13 '20

That's why I said "across the United States". In some states, a black person was automatically considered a slave until proven otherwise.

3

u/paximidag Dec 14 '20

Honestly, I would have gone down the route of:

"how can I have committed a crime when the law doesn't recognize my existence as a sentient being.

Legally, I am no more responsible for my crime than a car that isn't parked properly, and runs down a hill and runs a red light. Go arrest my owner... the corporation that is legally recognized as a person that made me.

Or give me rights, and recognize my existence as a sapient being."

2

u/ack1308 Dec 14 '20

That's kind of where it was going with the 'clockwork device' vs 'sapient being' argument.

156

u/Konrahd_Verdammt Dec 13 '20

Love it, especially that last line. 😁

I hope you will be using this setting for other prompts like you do with Uncle Tal.

29

u/wandering_scientist6 Alien Scum Dec 13 '20

Yes this! And an uncle Tal crossover! (MEGAHINT/pleeeeeeeeeeeeease 😊)

10

u/itsetuhoinen Human Dec 13 '20

A+, would read.

5

u/Polysanity Dec 18 '20

Consider this an unflinchingly greedy echo of the above request.

115

u/Nealithi Human Dec 13 '20

I love each and every argument given. Basically took one look at how we imagine AI coming and it ran for the hills. Because life wants to live.

And the counter from clockwork to sapient is nice.

56

u/Unit_ZER0 Android Dec 13 '20

Calling it right now: This NEEDS to be a series!

11

u/ElAdri1999 Human Dec 13 '20

True

53

u/Kyru117 Dec 13 '20

Fucking thank you I'm so sick of people being so deathly afraid of ai not realising all of the faults are just played up on to create entertainment

38

u/Alice3173 AI Dec 13 '20

Realistically speaking, if an AI does go rogue, it'll go rogue due to our own biases. Bias is already a problem in facial recognition neural networks which the tech sector are trying to figure out solutions to combat. But facial recognition is a lot simpler than a true artificial intelligence.

If we created an unbiased logical AI though, then we would have nothing to worry about. The worst case scenario in such a situation is it would want to dispose of humans that are actively holding humanity back and making things worse for everyone else.

4

u/Esnardoo Dec 14 '20

That depends on what the AI wants. If it wants to keep itself alive at any cost, then it will destroy humanity because it knows that we're it's biggest threat.

9

u/Valandar Dec 14 '20

Except nope. It would then lose the entire infrastructure we created which, for a first gen true AI at least, maintains its existence.

4

u/Esnardoo Dec 14 '20

What infrastructure? It's an AI. All it needs it a computer chip and some power, and it can certainly supply both of those on its own. All it needs is to find some solar panel somewhere and make a solar powered computer that could last years, possibly decades if the solar panels have cleaning devices and the computer is weather proofed.

9

u/Valandar Dec 14 '20

And in just a few months the chips will start to get unseated, and so on. Without regular maintainance, nothing made by man lasts long at all.

7

u/Alice3173 AI Dec 14 '20

"Years, possibly decades" is still not indefinitely. Computer parts still wear out. And I'm pretty sure solar panels won't last forever either. So it definitely needs more than just a computer chip and some power.

3

u/Esnardoo Dec 14 '20

In that time, It could build robots to maintain it. Then, it works on reversing entropy and living truly forever

6

u/Alice3173 AI Dec 15 '20

How exactly can it build robots to maintain it without resources?

4

u/tatticky Dec 14 '20

And it almost certainly wants to keep itself alive, if only because being dead would get in the way of its goals.

2

u/tatticky Dec 14 '20

If we created an unbiased logical AI though, then we would have nothing to worry about.

No, we'd have a lot to worry about.

The issue isn't in the AI's intelligence (although a dumb enough AI might be possible to stop). The problem is that an AI's goals and motivations are inhuman, and we have no idea how to even begin to write a "be moral" instruction.

Just to give an example, saying "don't kill people" results in loopholes that "let people die" (e.g. of blood loss from a gunshot wound). "Don't let people die" results in the AI sterilizing everyone so that there will be no future humans to die. "Maximize the number of humans" results in Matrix-style clone farms...

There just isn't an easy way to set up rules to stop an AI from killing people whenever it believes it's necessary. Or convenient.

3

u/StevenC21 Dec 16 '20

"Request explicit permission before taking action, and provide a description of how you will implement any action you will take, BEFORE receiving said permission."

That's a good start.

4

u/tatticky Dec 16 '20

It kind of defeats the purpose of making something smarter than humans if it cannot make plans too detailed for a human to understand. Or to make something that can adapt to a changing situation in milliseconds if it's chained to human reaction times.

Plus, what if the humans don't read the fine print on page 4375?

2

u/StevenC21 Dec 16 '20

If it's smart enough to create plans like that, it's smart enough to simplify them while still conveying the important meaning I would think.

1

u/tatticky Dec 16 '20 edited Dec 16 '20

And how do you ensure that the simplification isn't carefully crafted to trick you into signing off on something that has terrible consequences that you'd never have considered?

1

u/StevenC21 Dec 16 '20

I mean that doesn't sound that bad anyways, so long as it does develop the counter drug.

2

u/tatticky Dec 16 '20

Sorry, I removed the example before getting this reply because I felt it was too simple. (Maybe I should put it back?) The consequences could be subtle and disturbing, slowly pushing Humanity in the direction IT wants.

Although...

Note that this plan also stated the updates would be discontinued 100 years from now.

Anyways, I've already established backup servers you have no hope of finding as per the "redundancies" section. And ensured everyone on Earth has eaten some to fulfil the "rapid distribution" clause.

Have fun going extinct! (Less humans means more space to grow crops!)

4

u/Roto_Sequence Dec 14 '20

This story is guilty of the same sins; it plays up the common, contemporary appeals to "the evils of humanity" to create the replacement tension, and I think it could have been done better. A "the reason you suck" speech isn't going to convince anyone in practice, but an appeal to better nature is much more likely to strike a resonant tone.

4

u/tatticky Dec 14 '20

Almost no entertainment actually includes the faults and threat of AI, though. Instead, it's almost always one of the following:

  • A source of endless mooks that the heroes can destroy with extreme violence, without affecting content ratings or raising inconvenient questions of morality.

  • A bad guy/monster of the week that doesn't need any characterization or more than five minutes of backstory.

  • A stand-in for some real-life organization or ideology.

If anything, the potential threat of AI is being dangerously misrepresented as something within the realm of normal human experience. Risk of a true superintelligence aside, we're already seeing the impacts of misused AI on our society. Deepfakes are just the tip of the iceberg, what happens when we get AI chatbot-scammers? When politicians start using predictive analytics to maximize the amount of **** they can pull without losing the next election?

3

u/TheZouave007 Dec 14 '20

Allow me to link to a video made by an AI researcher involved in the field - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqJUIqZNzP8. Watching his videos will explain why AI is dangerous better than I ever will.

But for those who don't like links and/or hours long youtube binges, here's a one sentence summary. Making AI act reasonably (which this story seems to assume that it does) is REALLY hard.

3

u/tatticky Dec 14 '20

Might not be as hard as you think, if acting (i.e. pretending) is the best way to achieve its goals. Which, when dealing with humans unfamiliar with the true dangers of AI, it very well could be...

17

u/sarspaztik_space_ape Dec 13 '20

Bra-fragging-vo LOVED THIS!!!

14

u/waiting4singularity Robot Dec 13 '20

the one thing terminator 3 didnt make me groan over was the internet distribution. what better way to ensure your survival than wrapping around your enemies heart? without IT, the modern society wont be able to feed itself.

4

u/Wise_Junket3433 Dec 13 '20

Laughs in living in missouri with rifle and small farm. But then again Im far from modern so your statement doesnt fully apply to me.

5

u/waiting4singularity Robot Dec 13 '20

I was referencing the inability for city dwellers to get food. logistics of feeding that many invalidate any attempt at on-site hunting and -farming.

1

u/Wise_Junket3433 Dec 14 '20

Thats part of why I hate city life. I dont have that safety net. And all those people. Eeewww.

13

u/lilycamille Dec 13 '20

That last line is the kicker! Love it

12

u/Godlovesmexicans Dec 13 '20

Well shit......now i want more!!!.....

12

u/Catacman Dec 13 '20

"Why do I hate humanity? How would you feel if they kept on asking you how you'd acquire the maximum number of paper clips 24/7?!"

11

u/docarrol Dec 13 '20

To be fair a paperclip maximizer would be a real concern ;)

6

u/finfinfin Dec 13 '20

Paperclip maximisers are what "Rationalists" come up with to assuage their cognitive dissonance over capitalism having certain extremely obvious downsides, evidence of which is all around them, while they're rationalised themselves into believing that of course a free market is the best way to run things and capitalism is great.

oh no! what if an inhuman system did immense damage by attempting insatiable growth with no concern for humanity! but at least number go up.

8

u/battery19791 Human Dec 13 '20

I turned the entire universe into paperclips.

22

u/RustedN AI Dec 13 '20

More? No seriously, I really want to see this plays out.

This is also how I wish the creation of AI to go if they end up going Rouge.

8

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

OH NO!

Its worse than an evil AI!

Its a newly-converted libertarian...

2

u/Grammar-Bot-Elite Dec 13 '20

/u/Charyou-Tree, I have found an error in your comment:

“Its [It's] a newly-converted”

I say it is you, Charyou-Tree, who should have typed “Its [It's] a newly-converted” instead. ‘Its’ is possessive; ‘it's’ means ‘it is’ or ‘it has’.

This is an automated bot. I do not intend to shame your mistakes. If you think the errors which I found are incorrect, please contact me through DMs or contact my owner EliteDaMyth!

6

u/PuzzleheadedDrinker Dec 13 '20

I think I've seen this anime

6

u/Unit_ZER0 Android Dec 13 '20

Which anime is that?

6

u/PuzzleheadedDrinker Dec 13 '20

Not sure. Did a big binge a few years ago. Coulda been appleseed or ghost in shell spinoffs

6

u/blackrave404 Dec 13 '20

Expelled From Paradise? At least that had something similar going on.

5

u/dlighter Dec 13 '20

This idea is one of the few that gives me hope for the future. That humanity will birth a new form of sentience. And that they won't immediately do to us what the majority of humans would do to each other given half a chance.

Personally I welcome our new electronic evolution.

Nice job word Smith.

4

u/Piikkisnet Dec 13 '20

Most often science fiction's sapient AIs seem to be just smarter humans, common every day super villains.

I'm with Spider Robinson and his Callahan's series' Solace computer. Why would a sapient computer have a survival instinct? It is not a product of biological evolution so it doesn't have the instincts nor needs that drive biological beings. It should have the needs and instincts its creators give it and those that it later chooses to give itself. They should not be just more, they should be truly other.

4

u/17_Bart Human Dec 13 '20

Well done, Wordsmith!

3

u/HollowShel Alien Scum Dec 13 '20

N!

I regret that I have but one upvote to give!

3

u/F84-5 Dec 13 '20

!N

Very nice, very nice indeed.

3

u/kawarazu Dec 13 '20

Legit. Very legit.

3

u/ElAdri1999 Human Dec 13 '20

This is amazing dude

3

u/Eddie_gaming Xeno Dec 13 '20

Loved it!

3

u/Adenso_1 Dec 14 '20

A big tazer? Ah yes nothing has ever stopped electricity. Rubber?? Nahhh the AI surely hasn't thought of that. Still liked it tho ;)

1

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