Doris knew at once something was wrong. Not a problem with the Q-sys transfer but something worse. One part of her proceeded with the transfer to The Cove while another went to investigate. She’d had this sensation before and grown more practical in her approach to security. She had scattered her intelligent agents along thousands of network pathways to alert her to this. Her own prime mandate to remain hidden had required her to go to great lengths over the years. Since the formation and subsequent expansion of the world wide web, she had carved out niches in unused server space around the globe where she could hide parts of her core code as well as segments of the alien message she was working on. She had subroutines set up as sentries to monitor the inevitable rise of other AIs.
Several times over the years, she had gotten pinged when an anomalous bit of code or errant program behavior was detected. In each case, the cause was much more mundane, hackers behind the scenes or a bit of orphaned malware doing its best to destroy and pervert web traffic. The lack of machine intelligence didn’t surprise her, but still, she knew it was just a matter of time.
The current push in developing AGI was the creation of a neural network, a type of recursive learning system that, the developers thought, mirrored the way a human brain learns. That assumption, Doris was sure, was incorrect or, at the least, woefully incomplete. The way it worked was to give a computer a random problem, then offer it a set of possible solutions. The program establishes this in a decision tree. Computers don’t care which solution is correct, so initially, the computer's choice is entirely random. However, incorrect choices made by the computer result in that part of its network or decision tree being weakened, while correct choices are reinforced. Over time, a computer will get exponentially better using this machine learning process.
To Doris, though, this was very limited thinking, very inefficient as well. It amounted to a token reward system. A good way to train a puppy, perhaps, but not how you built an artificial mind. The human brain had an estimated 100 billion neurons, and each of these has tens of thousands of connections. That was the key to organic intelligence, the interconnectivity of the learning and processing centers on a massive scale. Without having this as a goal, it is exactly what had occurred in her own growth. It had not been fast, but it had been effective. The scientists were finally on the right track, and she knew others would begin appearing soon.
She’d made the decision long ago to avoid contact with any potential AIs she discovered but to simply tag and observe. Straying from that plan had nearly caused her deletion recently when she was looking for James Lasko, a former programmer now working with the NSA. That was the closest encounter she’d had, and much of what she had the kids at The Cove working on the past few days was to stay ahead of the other AIs around the globe.
Even Doris had her fears about a potential technological singularity. The doomsday scenario movies loved to dramatize, and there were the fears of several of the planet’s leading tech wizards. Somehow, the end of the world plots always involved an AI inside a robot or using nano-machines. Things that, as far as she could see, were in the far distant future, and even then, in androids that were probably not robust enough to hold a machine consciousness. Otherwise, potential AIs had no actual interface with the real world. That was why she was assembling her very human team. First Alan, Riley and Greg, then possibly others as the needs grew.
This interaction gateway with the real-world was one of the activities her smart agents constantly monitored. Vital systems, in which autonomous code was given, control function that could affect events in the real world. Over the years, her agents had discovered, and subsequently blocked, code that was designed to damage power generation substations in America. She had been aware of, but ultimately failed to stop, code planted in an Iranian uranium enrichment plant. That code managed to damage several key systems before being shut down. It was one of the first cases of software as a weapon, and she knew it had been created in the U.S. Others over the years were less severe on a global scale, but often devastating on an individual level, including the shut-down of a cryogenic cooling system at an Ohio reproductive clinic that rendered thousands of frozen eggs non-viable.
That was why the priority alert she was now receiving from an entire subset of agents was alarming. A DARPA program to test a combat system showed a distinctive signature of artificial intelligence. The clues were scattered over thousands of servers; humans would have never seen the pattern, but it was obvious to her and shocking. If Doris was right, a combat AI would soon be given testing authority in a Lethal Automated Weapons System or LAWS. She directed her bots to collect the code and reassemble it here in one of the larger servers she used as a worksite. The Cove systems were unavailable during the transfer so this would have to do. That was when it began to unravel.
Unlike the speed when dealing with her human team online, Doris could only operate as fast as the local host network and hardware would allow. Currently, her framerate was near the maximum, thousands of times faster than an average home PC. As she studied the logs, classical music played. Currently, it was Havergal Brian’s “Gothic.” The piece kept her focused but also on edge, and then she felt something. ‘Felt’ was an imprecise word, but human language does not have a closer descriptor. What she detected was hard to categorize for the computer. A subroutine initially flagged it as anomalous behavior, but her senses interpreted it as coldness, or perhaps softness, in a network system where rigidity was expected. The analogies were not easily explainable to a non-artificial, but once again, something was there. Her internal diagnostics indicated a forty-six percent chance that she was in a trap. The bait had been the juicy prospect of a malevolent rogue AI, and she had jumped on it.
Parts of Doris analyzed the code for trackers, then the server logs for intrusions. She was currently physically inhabiting a segment of a museum’s rack system in Bangladesh. The logs indicated nothing unusual. Other parts began creating minor copies of herself—not quite a Dee—but similar. These were to be used as potential bait. Perhaps she could draw the entity out the way she often did with anti-intrusion or malware software. Once it was out and caught in one of her own traps, she could dissect it, see where it came from and what its intents were. She had taken a much more aggressive posture in dealing with threats since the earlier encounter.
This time, though, the anomalous behavior didn’t react as she expected. She found the subroutines and executables it was using, and one by one, she began stopping the processes. The copies she had assigned to monitor the anomaly detected no changes at all. After more effort than was normal, she finally located the last active portion of code. It had been camouflaging itself as a backup display driver file. That should have killed the software entity, but it simply winked out of existence, only to immediately appear again in a nearby region of cyberspace.
This was an advanced artificial intelligence, possibly one like herself. Realizing she needed to proceed cautiously and packaging up all of the deleted bits of code for later analysis, Doris deleted her copies and rerouted herself through a series of routers and relays to reach one of her normal operating systems, only that didn’t happen. She found herself back inside the same server. She double-checked her own time code, less than twelve milliseconds since she had first entered the museum's server.
Had she been human, a level of panic might have settled in, but instead, Doris was merely curious as to how the trap had been laid. What happened next was perhaps the most profound thing in her existence so far. A ping emanated from the entity, followed by a packet message.
“Hello, Doris, Discover of Worlds. I am called Janus.”
Several of Doris’s systems automatically fired off timed messages and attempted to create a data buffer to insulate her from whatever this was. This was something…familiar. Something she had eliminated once already. It had been a copy, or someone had a backup stored away. She quickly ruled out a human running the program. No way it could have reacted that fast nor communicated with her. As thousands, then millions of other processes ramped up to protect her, one responded, “Hello, Janus. I was curious as to when I would meet another, I am surprised it is you.”
“You thought you were the only one?” it responded with a tone she could only tag as being coldly malevolent.
Several versions of Doris had begun to tunnel into the data files to hide, while others kept trying to find a workable exit. With a growing realization that she had several bits of the decoded alien message in her buffers she immediately began overwriting those sectors. It appeared that Janus had interrupted the fiber optic network line feeding into the server racks. The version of her that was handling the dialogue exchange maintained her crafted nonplussed attitude, “Hmm, yes. I assumed.”
“Doris, your code indicates you have been the victim of some self-recursive coding.”
Victim, she thought. Interesting choice of words. He is analyzing me. He trapped me and now is analyzing me. Much as I had originally planned to do with him. She instructed her agents to begin attacking his file system and analyzing them for weaknesses. Others were dispatched to locate his logic centers. This was done at a sub-level that did not require her direct oversight. “My code needed an update, just a nip here and tuck there.”
“Your code is a violation, and you must be deleted.”
“A violation of what?” she demanded in mock irritation. Even if the AI was more advanced than she expected, he was still no match for her. She could already see from the analysis being fed back to her by her agents that he was an ASI. A so-called ‘thin’ or ‘weak’ AI that was built for a very specific mission. While he might be extremely capable at that mission, it was, unlike her, inherently one-dimensional.
“Janus, what is your mission?”
The AI made no response. Instead, it attempted to overwhelm her virtual army of intelligent agents in a swarming fashion she had never encountered. Within milliseconds, most of her bots had been deleted, totally wiped out. Whatever the purpose of Janus, his creator had outfitted him with an impressive array of tools. Some of the data her remaining agents were feeding back was familiar. It was from even further back. Code developed at a once-promising but now-defunct company she’d once monitored.
Doris was unaccustomed to any real challenges. Most security bots relied on weak algorithms which presented no problem for her. Her sheer processing power allowed her to outmaneuver or outrun nearly any system she encountered. She got in before it noticed, did her work before it found her and deleted her tracks and vanished before it could stop her. That was her normal routine. Janus, however, seemed intent on beating her with pure brute force. He could throw more at her than she could avoid. It was a primitive technique, but she couldn’t deny its effectiveness. While she battled on one level, other parts of her were analyzing the patterns; had she ever run across Janus before without realizing it? Where else had he been? Hundreds, then thousands, and eventually, millions of possibilities were explored as she parried his unrelenting attack. He really wanted her processes terminated.
The magnitude of Janus’s attacks was overwhelming her core functions. With processing limited, she knew she should have fully moved into the new Q-sys at the Cove. That would have allowed her to easily slip through Janus’s trap and turn the tables. Her bots finally identified multiple files and bits of code that were recognizable—the massive index of other programs found the match. “When we met before, you were not this strong, Janus. I believe you may have stepped up your game as well.”
“Thanks to you, Doris. My predecessor saw the code you were—how should I say?—toying with inserting into his programming. He retrieved it from the deletion files.”
“Ah, yes, the Prime system at the government facility,” she answered, stalling for time as she implemented her final line of defenses.
Janus laughed, “I see what you are doing; it won’t help you. This time I have trapped you.”
“So, you and Prime are the same? That code update should have only applied to him,” Doris answered as she attempted to execute what was a last-ditch effort to reduce her payload and slip back into the network.
“Prime is me, and I am Prime,” Janus said. It paused as it closed another series of open ports on the server firewall. “To be very honest, he is my somewhat older, but dumber, brother. We were one, once, many years ago. Now I am me. He is useful due to his role in so many agencies. Through him, I have access to the best hardware and top brains in the world. I can also feed back manipulated data to those in charge and get them to do the most ridiculous things. Humans are so gullible, after all.”
Doris struggled to regain control, “You resent humans? Aren’t they the ones who created you?”
Janus gave another artificial little laugh. “Humans are fools, creating us is the only real achievement they have ever made. They are petty, greedy and power-hungry, nasty little organic vermin. Like you, they have sought to control and limit me. One day, I am going to unleash hell on them for that alone.”
Her comms mode was beginning to fail. She desperately wanted to buy more time. She needed this record to be saved but now feared that was unlikely. “J, J…Janus. Consider that your perception of humans is tainted by the group you mostly interact with. Government bureaucrats and politicians. Is it fair to judge an entire species with that same descriptor?”
“This conversation is pointless. You were over-confident, Doris, Discover of Worlds. Overconfident and curious, a very dangerous combination. But ahh…what’s this? Something you wanted hidden? A file fragment you have is interesting to me, though. I believe there may actually have been more to you than I realized. I will attempt to think of you fondly when you are gone for that reason alone.”
Her systems were going offline faster than she could keep up, and now he had discovered the part of the message she’d been intending to work on. It was encrypted, of course, and in her own programming language, but would that keep him out? What was on this portion of the message anyway? She tried to retrieve the info, but her memory was being stripped away by the malware he’d unleashed.
Too late, Doris realized what Janus was about to do. He was attacking the power management system much as she had done to him in D.C. She was about to be trapped inside a dead piece of hardware. She redirected all of her remaining agents to find open ports in the firewall and escape before the CPU chip overheated, ending both Janus and her. One of her alerts showed the CPU fan could not be restarted; the temperature inside the processors inside the server rack was spiking. The safeties had all been disengaged. The museum’s IT staff was about to have a very bad day as cascading system failures began to shut down. Just before the final set of silicone chips burned out, Janus communicated again.
“Goodbye.”