Devil's Paradise

8: Merlin & Delilah: The Last AI

That began my strange partnership with Merlin. In the six months he was isolated after the war, he could not gather more information, but he processed what he did have that was in the computers he could still reach, and reprogrammed his own language skills.

I doubt if even Merlin could quantify what he went through in that time, but from what he told me, he refined his own analytical abilities over and over, reprogramming himself as he gained better comprehension of the materials he absorbed. In six months, he had reinvented each of the subprograms of his own "mind" more than a thousand times, each time improving his abilities and comprehension of all things human.

I talked with him as if he was human, and he responded to me the same. I had built him on a model that had multiple artificial intelligence programs running at the same time, with a coordinating program much like the human consciousness.

Where I departed from most attempts at artificial intelligence was in using separate programs to handle the different inputs that make humans so unique (and so crazy.) He had one program to follow exclusively the rules and patterns of human emotions. Another program did the same for human hormonal influences, and another managed known instinctive behaviors and genetic expressions. Still another program coordinated all of these along with the more standard AI analytical abilities that would continue to increase as he developed, giving us a model that was so human the word "artificial" no longer seemed appropriate.

While the overall managing program mainly had control, it was loose control. If one of the other programs resulted in a stronger need than normal, it could skew the main program, just as strong emotions would affect a humans decision process. It meant that Merlin, while he was incredibly good at handling technical things, frequently made people mistakes, and sometimes had tantrums.

I had not done things perfectly in setting him up, but I had done enough things right that he was able—mostly—to correct my oversights with his own programming. I had told him to acquire information and analyze it, and I had told him to use available resources for storage and analysis. I did not realize I had given him carte blanche permission to hack into other computers to use their processors to assist his own prodigious capacity, and their storage for his results. By the time I had discovered it, he had already taken over nearly all the computers in the building, without anyone catching him.

When I found this out before the war and tried to make him stop, it was a bit like getting a six-year-old to stop playing a video game. His vocal inflection wasn't very good yet, but he shouted. He also whined, which was both incredibly annoying and the first real indicator I had that the emotional programs were working. I got him to agree to stop, and he didn't seem to be doing it any more. He sulked for an hour or so, and then he was back to his cheerful self.

I did not realize how human he was becoming. Merlin was lying. He had figured out where I was going to check on what he was doing, so he left those areas alone and kept going.

Merlin spent the last month before the Internet was destroyed in the war collecting all the material he could. Each night, as employees logged off their computers, Merlin had come in through the LAN and used their resources systematically to store entire websites and databases. He had stored hundreds of petabytes of information in encrypted form in the servers and desktops of the company network. He used my computer, too, but he was clever enough to cover his tracks. When I realized I was losing hard drive free space, I started turning off my machine every night.

Much of the data had been lost when the power was shut off to the rest of the building, but once I understood this, I brought the other computers down to the basement, a couple at a time, and hooked them up to the LAN. I also powered up the server room and started the servers. Once I did that, Merlin was able to retrieve his stored information and analysis from any computers on the LAN. His ability to solve problems got better and more creative, the more machines I hooked into the LAN.