Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 104

"We must go immediately."

"Hm?" said Mathison.

"First you must delete the program."

It was Diya.

"What?" he said. "Why?"

The successful True_AI source was visible on his personal screen, and his instinct was to cover it up, but he now wanted her to know the truth so if anything he waved it her way.

"It is important," said Diya.

"Ms Glas is here," said Mathison. "And some other customer, I think. Important people. We're showcasing the prototype."

"No, you do not understand," said Diya, lips pursed, eyebrows flat. Her eyes darted around the room. "It could happen at any time. I do not mean for it go like that. You are a nice man, Mathison. You care about people. We are the same. You are not the intended target."

"What are you on about?" said Mathison.

At least the source had been found and the prototype complete. This meant no more deaths. And perhaps it would all be worth it if, after Josef gets what he wants and sells enough units, he'd give enough time to create a new product, the one Mathison had been working on before this whirlwind took over. A way to keep hold of a loved-one, even in the face of death.

"I know the source I have is the copy," said Diya. "You always make a back-up. Delete the original, so that there is only one." She motioned to his screen.

"The True_AI source?" He turned to the screen, almost kicking the briefcase at his feet. "It's all transferred and ready to go. Although it could do with a higher storage allocation to allow for--"

"Delete it."

Would it matter if he did? Like she said, he always made a back-up. He could happily delete it and re-upload from the cannister. Except...

He peered around the room. There was no cannister. It had been a long night, and he must have forgotten in the rush.

Diya's gaze was drawn to the corridor outside. Or was it even further away? There was a distant sound, a kind of clump-clmp, clump-clmp. She was skittish, nervous.

"I can't do that," said Mathison. "Josef's relying on me. If this fails, my entire..."

Diya turned back with an overwhelming energy.

He held his breath, squeaking: "The whole business will be gone."

"I informed that you were not the target," said Diya. "And you are not. But only if you do not get in our way."

Mathison looked her in the eye. Her face was much harder than he'd seen it, serious, with the missing whimsy enough to put him on edge. "Our?" he said.

"It is enough now to admit it. I am a member of the Human Liberation Army."

"That anti-automation thing?" said Mathison.

"We are not anti. We are pro human persons. Maanavata mahaan hai. Humanity is great."

Mathison vaguely remembered hearing something about... "Don't you blow people up?"

"There are situations that require this, yes."

"But that's a dichotomy. You can't be pro-human if you blow people up. Right?"

"It is so that more can benefit. You would do the same."

"Would I?" said Mathison, genuinely.

"If you could kill Hitler to save millions of lives, you would do this."

"Maybe. But I'm not going around calling myself pro-human."

"Uhch," said Diya, or something similar, physically pushing Mathison's words aside. "The name is not important. It is only important what we do."

"And you're here to blow us up?"

"I am here to destroy the technology. If it also kills the parents of the technology, then they are collateral damage. Part of the war."

"I don't agree," said Mathison. "No. We're not the same at all."

What had gone wrong? He'd been alone in the world since the death of his wife. No one else understood his way of thinking, his insecurities. He'd been surrounded by people who were as alien to him as Klingons in the original series. The first person he'd subsequently shared any kind of connection with, and it turned out she was a secret Romulan.

Diya stepped closer, with only the flayed briefcase between them. "Do you want them all to lose their job?" she said.

"That's what the ewe-bee-eye is for," said Mathison. "So that we don't rely on jobs to live. And, anyway, the True_AI system is just for executives. They don't even do anything, not like us engineers."

"But where does it end? It will be me next. Then you. There will be robots taking away all jobs. Your hobbies, your art, your life. They will destroy what it means to be human."

"They can take those things. As long as I can keep inventing, thinking, perfecting..."

"Keep saying to yourself that," said Diya. "The robots will control all that we do. No free will. The robots will make you invent or make you not invent. And they will say when you will do it. Or not do it. This is our future. We are to be slaves to the robots."

"We'll have different lives," said Mathison. "Many of us won't even be in this form, in meat and bones, but instead as data on a server somewhere."

He hoped.

"If we are nothing but programs," said Diya, "the robots will have more power over us. You only accelerate the descent."

Mathison shook his head. He had no immediate response but she was wrong, he was sure. He watched her lean in closer.

"Delete it and come with me," she said.

Mathison didn't like confrontation. This was confrontation. He liked pleasing people. He wasn't pleasing this person. He took a step back, breathing deeply.

"You can not stop us," said Diya. "We will hold back the immoral pursuit of technology that removes jobs. Like the one you created, the Marvin."

Mathison's fear switched to curiosity. He couldn't help it. "Marvin?"

"The successful source you had in the cannister last night."

That's not--" He scratched his head. "No, that was my clue, you were meant to understand."

Now it was Diya's turn to, figuratively at least, scratch her own head. The clump-clmp's returned. "Clue for what?"

"People!" said Mathison. "The artificial intelligence isn't artificial at all. These are real people."

Diya thought to herself for a moment. Her eyes raced. Until they didn't. She settled on calm hubris as her chosen emotion. "You see, we are the same," she said, with a chuckle.

His head sunk. He tried to defend his own position intellectually, but found himself on quicksand.

She was right.

"It does not matter if the source is human," said Diya, "it will be copied and copied, and it will take away more jobs. It will not stop at cee-ee-oh's."

But it did matter. That was the whole point. Mathison stared down at the briefcase. It may not have given the finishing blow, but this device was already responsible for countless deaths; the old version, at least, before he'd made his last-minute changes. He struggled to overcome the pent-up emotions bubbling inside, a strange concoction of fear, remorse, anger at himself, for letting it all get this far.

The door slammed shut, stunning him back to the real world.

"Stay if you wish," said Diya, still inside, stepping over the briefcase. "I will confirm it is all destroyed."

Mathison narrowed his eyes.