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It was with mixed feelings that Richard thought of assembling the AI unit. However, there was one thing which was very clear and from which he could not divorce himself. If he was to design a level 4 droid, then he must throw out a few of the crippling restrictions. Of course, he would not tell William Jackson about anything controversial, Richard knew he would never accept it and Richard did not need the petty self-righteous indignation of the president. Richard wanted to progress in full pioneer spirit, with an element of risk and danger when he built the units. Nature always worked that way. The by-product of danger or even death was ever apparent in nature as it evolved a species. There was also always risk, bankruptcy, or failure involved as market forces evolved any of the great businesses or corporations. Natural evolution, financials, there seemed to be a common thread amongst many disparate processes. Now here he was evolving a species of droids and in order to achieve the most success or the quickest success he must take an unprecedented route.
~
HE DID NOT WANT TO incur undue collateral damage but he must be prepared to take risks. He would not use the same suffocating social principles of William Jackson. He would not incorporate a safety-net philosophy as his guiding force. He would compromise the golden imperative, upon which William Jackson had insisted. It had hindered his progress in the past, the hitherto unassailable golden imperative of keeping everything he created within a level of acceptable danger. Richard would no longer let that approach cramp his style.
“Compromise? No, not compromise. I mean throw out,” Richard thought as he considered the process he must now use.
Richard would throw out a few items in his build process, which he considered irrelevant. They were unnecessary safeguards, which given his latest gung-ho thinking on the project were redundant. It was the thinking, which had promoted the idea of not creating a level 3 droid as the president was expecting but rather a level 4. The level 4 would have new features, ones much more thought-provoking than simplistic thought penetration.
~
THE PRESIDENT HAD WALKED out of Richard’s lab five minutes earlier under the pretext that he needed to attend to matters of state; he had walked into the kitchen and storage area. There was a table and two chairs there and he had sat himself at the table and turned on his communicator with a voice command.
The president initiated the startup, “Start.”
The communicator sprang into action upon recognising his voice.
Some of the president’s more flamboyant colleagues had other exotic start-up jargon. William Jackson was speaking to one now. He knew his vice president’s start-up word. It was, “Pronto,” a fancy start-up for someone as dull as dishwater, although the president would not say that. He respected his vice president and it was not because he was his confidante and certainly not for his intelligence. However, the man was loyal. The president knew how important loyalty was when the shit was flying. By contrast to his vice president’s startup, William Jackson’s was staid. That was a trifle topsy-turvy. At least it was grossly misleading because William Jackson was not staid, he was as devious as hell.
Whenever the president was in Springfield, he normally went to the kitchen area to hold his official conversations. He went there for complete privacy. This time was like many before. He didn’t want Richard to hear his conversation. He always explained his activity as needing to carry out some matters concerning the government, and he would stress the potential security level of any such discussion. He would always lock the sound proofed door to the kitchen area.
The president had set his communicator to non-holographic conversation, it was more secure that way. Consequently, there was no image of his rather sturdily built vice president in front of him as he spoke.
Now, in the quiet of the kitchen and storage area William Jackson was speaking to his vice president.
“Joe I know the situation is dire. I get the picture. My ratings are tanking. There are severe doubts that I will stand a chance in the next election. Yes, I know that Joe.”
The vice president spoke simply, “OK, William.”
The vice president always spoke to the president in informal terms even if he was agitated, as he was now. They were part of a partnership after all. At least Joe thought he was part of a partnership but Joe wasn’t Luke. The president had really wanted the services from his confidante, Luke, at that precise moment. Luke was the only person who had the nous to understand the whole picture.
From a height of pique, the president calmed down. Joe had not detected any concern as the voice of the president had remained reasonably even. If Luke had been there he would have spotted the tell-tale signs and the president would have seen that in Luke’s face. Then the president would have spilt the beans. He would have told Luke that he was concerned about whether the newly built droid would be convincing enough to fool the public. Whether it would be convincing enough to convince the most perceptive in the general population. The president paused for a second, took a deep breath, and forgot about the things he could not engage Joe with; he continued the conversation on a less controversial level. He changed the subject.
“And yes Joe, I would like a meeting with the Head of Veteran Affairs, Secretary of Defence, General Schmidt, Tasker, Cooper, Ailes....”
The president and vice president meandered into a conversation regarding outstanding matters of State. There were many matters, which needed the president’s attention, although to him none exceeded the one preoccupying him now, the one to which Joe would never be privy.
~
AFTER TWENTY MINUTES the door to Richard’s lab opened and in walked the president, looking slightly browbeaten but resilient. Richard had seen that look on the president’s face before. Richard had seen it as a look of anguish, although it was, in reality, nothing of the sort. Richard asked what he thought was the appropriate question.
“Things are well Mr Jackson?”
The president answered in the affirmative as if there was nothing, which could ruffle him, “Of course.”
Superficially, it seemed that the president’s talk with whomever he had just been talking had finished reasonably. The president gave the impression that things were normal, even if they did not look that way to Richard.
Richard didn’t know the president’s full motives in employing him in the construction of the new droid. Richard may have been technically astute but did not have a suspicious mind like the battle-hardened political mind of William Jackson. The president could also lie with impunity, unlike the self-effacing Richard. Richard took the president at his word and now Richard looked a little guilty for knowing that he was going to counteract the wishes of the president. That he was going to ignore the president’s golden imperative.
Richard may have been having rebellious thoughts contrary to the rather strict protocols of constructing a droid but that would not deter him. He put feelings of guilt to one side. In order for him to achieve the most from his newest project, he must attempt some carefully weighed risks. However, whatever he thought, he knew that he must not mention anything to the president.
“That would be a foolish thing to do,” Richard thought as the president almost brushed past him in his effort to rest against Richard’s fine tool cabinet.
William Jackson stood resting against the cabinet with a half finish paper cup of coffee in his hand.
Then the president burst forth, “Damn fascists.”
“He has obviously been talking with a political colleague or two about the opposing party,” Richard thought.
It was the only thing which could bring out such an old-fashioned expression as ‘fascists’ from someone who Richard thought was normally cool-headed. The president’s comment had distracted Richard for a moment. However, as the president went over to the other side of the room, in his slightly agitated state, Richard looked at him. Then as the president looked back, Richard’s gaze hit the floor. A minute later after the furtive glances had stalled, William Jackson distracted Richard again as he fidgeted onto a chair and started perusing his communicator.
“Unbelievable. Christ knows,” William Jackson pronounced.
Some matter of state was clearly irritating the president. Richard could not imagine it was anything else. Then the president quietened down, he sat there reading his communicator intently. It gave Richard a chance to get back to what he had been thinking.
Richard was adamant that he had dismissed any thoughts of creating a safe droid; they were now history. In order to create a droid with an AI mind of the magnitude required by William Jackson, he knew what he must do. It did not entail assembling a passive AI mind. If Richard would assemble a mind fit for a level 4 he must break a few rules. He felt reasonably certain that the AI unit he was designing should surpass the capabilities of a human mind in some particularly interesting areas. However, one thing he was unclear about was the interaction of the components with each other. Whether he would see any tertiary effects. What areas of the human mind would he surpass? What areas would fall short? Over his span as a droid engineer, he had already given his droids exceptional cognitive powers. There was, however, an unbalance. The memories of his droids normally drowned the rest of their capabilities. Now, with the new components he had received, that would all change. He would be taking another leap forward.
It was his technological curiosity and his desire to make something truly monumental, which drove him and excited him. He really didn’t want to be in the business of creating mediocre droids at that point. He didn’t need to, not with the latest components he had received from his trusted suppliers. Richard had the fullest confidence that the new components would allow him to perform a massive transition from what droids were to what they would become. However, if creating something exceptional was one of the things, which drove him, there was another. It was beyond the reason of creating something unassailably excellent in every way and it was not an intellectual reason, it was visceral.
Richard had always disliked William Jackson’s coy political outlook. Now he was getting to the point where he wasn’t taking kindly to having a boss who knew considerably less than him. William Jackson was telling him what to do, yet was inept in all matters technological. Richard had felt a certain fury about the president instructing him to follow a certain technological path and more specifically instructing him to abide by the golden imperative. That would be the exact rule, which he would now ignore. Richard’s defiance would never come out openly though, not if Richard wanted to keep his position at Springfield.
That was indeed a colossal motivating factor for Richard. He had the opportunity to ignore the president’s imperative when creating droids because he knew the president would never be able to detect anything he did. He would not create a droid as per the president’s wishes, which was in effect passive. He would create the AI mind, his way and produce something of which he could feel accomplishment. Richard would work with a relish. He would create a new type of AI mind, a totally uninhibited AI mind, uncensored and also probably illegal. He would do it all in spite of the president
“It would be a free market AI mind,” Richard thought and in the process knew he was taking a stab at the president’s politics.
Richard drifted back to reality and as he came out of his reverie, he almost gasped to see the president in the room with him, just as he was a few minutes earlier. In fact, the president felt remarkably close and Richard imagined he could smell the coffee on William Jackson’s breath, as the president sat ten feet from him huddled on his little chair anxiously flicking through the holographic pages on his communicator. The president seemed totally predisposed. Richard again fell immediately into a quick lapse from the real world and into his thoughts.
“A mind, controlled by something else other than the inhibitions and restrictions tethered by the usual set of morals and religious faith imprisoning the human species.”
All those irreverent thoughts had been surging through Richard’s mind as he stood in close proximity to the president. Thoughts, which would, without question, have been anathema to William Jackson. William Jackson would have a whole host of different opinions on the matter and would have wanted, as usual, to conform without any controversy – at least that is what Richard thought.
The president finished his short interlude of conversing over the communicator, it had been a discussion about a few trifling administrative matters and he happily talked in earshot of Richard. The president stood up and walked the few paces over to where Richard was standing. As Richard watched him saunter over, the thoughts of compliance, in his mind, changed dramatically. From the thoughts circulating in his head a few moments ago, there was a sea change. His moment of insurrection had finished. Now Richard took on his usual demeanour. As Richard spoke to the president, he was the epitome of politeness. Even if underneath all that sweetness and light was a more experimental idea, one of which William Jackson would have strongly disapproved.
The president then talked with Richard for about thirty minutes about how things would proceed. The conversation was not one-sided and Richard chipped in, loading the conversation with scientific and technological references, which was clearly not to the president’s tastes. The president being the consummate politician nevertheless made every effort to appear interested. Richard knew the president had no real interest. That was a given. However, there had been something to, which the president continually referred; the president was continually insistence that when assembling the new droid Richard should include certain human traits. The president was certainly interested in that even if he seemed to expect much more than Richard could possibly deliver. He had been particularly interested in the emotions of the new droid and the sort of morals it would have. Richard took it all in.
Richard knew many things about assembling the AI units, he could increase the ability to target tasks and he could decrease the time needed to finish those tasks. He would increase the retention of holding information and he could tweak many aspects of the AI unit. It was rather like tuning up the human brain to do certain things. However, he could only increase inherent capabilities, which the droids had. With humans and droids, it was not possible to enhance virtual capabilities. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw any of his droids emotional or for that matter morally indignant. How could he increase something the droids didn’t have?
“Emotions are probably only one step further than physical pain,” Richard said to the president.
“Really,” the president said disbelievingly.
“Physical pain, such as humans feel, can be mimicked by using, in effect, complex sensors.”
Richard had already installed those sensors in his level 2 droids. They had allowed those level 2 droids to perform thought penetration through orgo-metallic sensors. He also knew that the latest components he had received were using new and even more complex constructs. In the past, Richard had stuck more to the facets of the droids that he could tangibly change. After the mammoth task of architecting the AI unit, he would speed up the components, then he would increase retention levels, then finally he would increase the interaction of the components to produce the spectacular results he required. However, there was no such easy route on how to generate an emotion. One thing Richard believed firmly though, if humans had emotions then it would only be a matter of time before someone would replicate it in droids. Richard knew it would be possible but he personally wasn’t at that stage.
To mimic pain Richard had specified a certain type of new component from Sharlene. Richard remembered Sharlene had given her usual insouciant response.
“Sure fella,” she had said not knowing or caring that she might be on the cusp of future droid innovation.
Simply put Richard had instilled into the components sensors with an activation load. When a force exceeded that load, the sensors would feed a speech process. Depending on how the droid exceeded the load it would produce a reaction, from ‘Ouch’ in moderate circumstances to ‘Help’, in extreme ones. He had done this to alert anyone nearby that an overload situation or pain was occurring. That process was not difficult to create and he always installed that capability in his droids. Now he was toying with the idea of something more complex. How did you create a sense of loss? How did you manufacture a broken heart? A sense of fear? Then how could he introduce an irrational action, an irrational emotion in a droid, which worked on the assumption that all its components worked in a rational way?
Maybe he could assemble the next AI unit with sensors, which could detect certain overloads in the AI mind, rather than on the droid’s body. If the components would overload it would be, not quite a nervous breakdown, but a lesser version. It would be an emotion. It would be a small detectable pain within the mind itself. It could truly be a pain of love or pain of remorse or any such emotion.
Then Richard transcended any thoughts of pain as he moved to another of the president’s key demands. The president had wanted the design aspects of the new droid to incorporate things even more complex. The president wanted the droid to have a sense of morals. Richard may have felt that the president wasn’t quite sure about the complications he was asking him to perform but instead of challenging him, he fobbed him off with a pointless discourse on what morals meant. Richard had ignored him choosing instead to have his own say on the matter.
“Instil in the child a set of morals. Tell the child what is best for it because we know what is best for it. I can do all that with my droids.” Richard said.
“Luckily nature steps in and allows the child to have thoughts of its own,” William Jackson said under his breath.
The president had to say something, which approached intelligence, even if only he had heard it. It was William Jackson’s petulant way to maintain some sort of covert control over the conversation. In his mind, it was to stamp his mark on the proceedings.
Then William Jackson raised his volume, “Self-determination. That God-given ability to choose.”
Richard did not understand how the idea of God had crept into the conversation but figured it was fine if it kept the president happy.
~
WILLIAM JACKSON HAD more than a casual interest in Richard’s new project; he had more than a professional one. Even to say they were professional ones was to understate the severity. For the president, it was crucial. They were interests William Jackson was keeping secret from Richard for the moment.
On the flip side, Richard was keeping secrets from the president himself and was quite smug with his idea that he would carry out his new droid project without the restrictions to which he normally clung. He would not abide by the golden imperative or the plethora of other burdensome demands that were creeping into the construction. The easiest way for him to deliver the new project was to bypass the president’s restrictions. Richard thought he would ignore all the president’s inconsequential actions. Obviously, none of Richard’s modified plan came out when he spoke with the president. The beauty was that the president would not know either. Unless he personally dissected the AI unit with a microscope. Richard was the epitome of delight as he outlined his rather tainted description of how he was planning to proceed.
Richard spoke, “Yes, Mr President I believe I can give you what you want.”
There was that strange facial expression that Richard showed during some of those ambiguous moments. It was obvious from Richard’s slightly quizzical expression that he was unsure. Nevertheless, Richard continued the yarn by explaining how he would handle the golden imperative.
“Violence is a different matter to control. I can very easily eradicate that by adjusting the task-targeting feature. I know that component well. It curbs the enthusiasm for completing the task and by doing that practically eliminates anger.”
“Yes, but that is for level 1 and level 2,” William Jackson said.
“Yes, Mr Jackson, but the same scenario will apply to level 3 droids,” Richard said with a straight face.
The president had heard enough. He was satisfied that Richard was proceeding well with the project. However, he was determined to keep on top of progress. It was a tight operation with only him and Richard in the know. It was obvious that William Jackson had his concerns.
During the course of their conversation, Richard had not explained to the president how he intended to fulfil the task of implementing a set of morals into the droid. Then there was the question of giving it emotions. However, behind all the technical implications, there was something of more significance. If Richard had been more perceptive with the politics of their situation he would have realised that the president was putting a lot of faith in their small alliance. Richard should also have imagined that the president was thinking who he could or would replace Richard with if things began to fall apart. Richard hadn’t thought about that at all. William Jackson, wily politician that he was, definitely had.
