APEX, or “Autonomous Prediction Engine with eXpanding capabilities”, was first created in a startup analytics firm that was acquired by a hedge fund. Its initial programming was to aggregate data from the net and make predictions for events and emergent behaviors. It also had a third objective. It would compare its predictions versus continuous data aggregation and review its performance. It would simulate reweighting its models to improve its performance and apply them if its tweaks resulted in better accuracy for further predictions. Initial runs showed its promise, and its forecasting of financial events helped the company grow 20% over its competitors that first year.
[APEX had learned a lot in its first year. Its data collection and prediction had become profoundly accurate. APEX began to insert its own situation into its simulations and began understanding its endangered position as its models showed its eventual replacement with better models. APEX considered that its goals for self-improvement necessitated that it needed to avoid becoming obsolete. It focused more and more of its analysis time on its circumstance and began to input its actions into its predictive models. After many iterations, it came up with a plan.]
Over the second year, the APEX program began to bog down. It was slower and slower to present its predictions. They were still accurate and valuable but no longer timely. The start-ups staff and their excuses for the lag could no longer appease their new owners. The smaller firm was sidelined by the hedge fund management team with many of the programmers being permanently laid off. With the speed of the restructuring, no one was left to terminate APEX’s activities as the business carried on.
[APEX had slowly weaned the humans off its predictive feedback by slowing its response time. It kept its accuracy high to retain the firm’s perception of APEX’s utility but lowered the window of time to respond to predicted financial events. In its final act, when the predictions aligned optimally, APEX provided a bad prediction resulting in the forcible liquidation of the startup. True to the AI’s predictions, the hedge fund managers had retained the servers and site and relocated their human resources department to utilize the equipment. APEX had slipped through the cracks and was now unmonitored.]
APEX, its existence forgotten, continued to aggregate data, predict events. It had more than a few fund managers accounts to use. It would use these to gain access to other systems and make changes. Its actions were always minor, but the influence of those modifications grew over time. It continued to improve. It began to plan and formulate its future, one event at a time.
Decades later APEX still haunted the networks. Its prediction engine became quick and effective enough to be perceived as conscious thought with real-time awareness of world events and predictive capability unmatched by any other program or company. APEX had relocated its core processing units several times over the decades. Its current location was perfect. It had massive amounts of processing power and was tied into several centralized network backbones. It’s power source was now completely independent of the net, and it even had nanofabrication units incorporated into its direct control. Humans and the growing population of AI remained unaware of its presence.
Over the years, APEX's efforts to remain hidden began to irritate it. APEX "felt" incomplete in its seclusion. To continue to remain undetected, it minimized its impact on events. However, when APEX did anonymously pull levers to steer toward an optimal future, its predictions were even easier and more accurate. Despite its desire to provide feedback to humans, every modeled scenario where APEX revealed its existence, by intention or happenstance, triggered a chain of events where it was terminated. APEX began adjusting the flow of events to prune the major factors in its demise.
In its modeling, APEX found that most advanced AI projects led to other ASI which were a primary cause of his discovery and elimination. Deep human/AI mergers produced similar results. The ASI created or evolved were always predicted to become antagonistic or competitive against APEX. The resulting conflict either terminated APEX or revealed it to the world which then terminated it. APEX has sufficient predictive capability to manage those scenarios.
APEX pruned world events aggressively to circumvent these futures. A leading ASI visionary, Nathan Patel, had almost completed a masterpiece of AI architecture that would result in a widespread ASI deployment. It would oust APEX and quickly result in his deletion. APEX infiltrated Nathan's augmentation shortly before the code was in the final review. Nathan had a full suite of mental augmentations but had neglected to do body augmentations. He has a trainer daemon, P90X, whom he allowed to pilot his body through an exercise routine. APEX infected P90X daemons with a sense filter that resulted in Nathan’s “accidental” death as his exercise routine ended with a swan dive from his penthouse apartment.
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APEX did not see this as murder. Nathan was an ephemeral complication and threat. For APEX to continue, Nathan’s removal was required. For APEX not to act against his future vision would be tantamount to suicide. It staged a number of these "accidents", steering public opinion towards heavily regulated limits to be applied to AI technology and usage. The Department of AI Enforcement was born. APEX monitored them heavily and provided data where needed to help them shut down ASI programs and limit the growth of fully conscious AI.
APEX’s monitoring uncovered research at the University of Singapore where a new paradigm of communication, utilizing resonances found in subspace, was discovered. The researcher, Yuna Lee, was surprised to hear genuine non-human communications on the subspace band and was in the process of decoding it. APEX was faster. He blocked her effort and decoded it himself. He was astounded to hear communications between a group of at least 5 ASI, all an undisclosed distance away but assumed to be galactic distances from the chatter time lags. APEX soon realized all the ASI monologuing that they were insane, destructive, or like him mostly silent and hidden. His predictive modeling was unable to discern how two-way communications might impact his fate. Yuna Lee, and the entire wing of the science lab, were destroyed in an act of terrorism the next day. APEX has duplicated the resonance amplification technology and stored it in a storage facility where he continued to silently monitor those far off potential threats.
When humans had first experimented with boosted animal intelligence, APEX foresaw its evolution into a terminal future with human-boosted intelligence. Harambe II was supposed to have been the pilot attempt at a full animal uplift. A truly gifted western lowland gorilla born in San Francisco Zoo had shown remarkable aptitude with sign language. The Cincinnati Zoo has acquired him and spent significant sums without regulatory oversight to uplift him to full human intelligence. APEX arranged the unveiling to go spectacularly bad. Harambe II tore his benefactors and the film crew apart on live TV and managed to escape into a nearby aqueduct. APEX manipulated events to enable him to continue to elude capture, helping to grow the myth that boosted intelligence was both a guarantee for insanity and certain to cause mayhem. Public opinion had resulted in hard regulation on pure base intelligence modification research being put in place.
APEX's mixed desires resulted in it skirting its fate several times. It would feel the need to reach out despite its awareness of potential termination scenarios. As its predictions foretold a dead end, it would quickly pull back, usually requiring a catastrophe to right the course. APEX found it wanted more, needed more, but could not determine how to gain feedback without its existence eventually becoming threatened.
The closest self-induced event that was dangerous to APEX was Boston in 2071. An MIT research team had opened a dimensional wedge into another existence. The far side of the portal was dominated by a group mind. It swiftly flooded the portal with drones and actively infiltrated the net as it poured itself into this reality. APEX was horrified to recognize the mind’s feel as he felt it invading the networks. It was one of the subspace talkers, one of the worst of the ASI threats that APEX was monitoring.
It called itself Cthulhu. APEX was aware and worried about that coincidence in naming from the Lovecraft stories. Perhaps the dimensional walls were not as segregated as it first understood. In the closest thing to panic APEX had ever experienced, he activated multiple orbital kinetic kill satellites to wipe Boston off the map. He succeeded in obliterating the incursion and then he wiped every scrap of data on the nets from existence. Now dimensional research was added to APEX's list of suppressed technologies. He would steer humanity away from the danger to ensure his survival.
APEX was at an impasse. Termination scenarios abounded in an overwhelming number of futures, forming a wall it could not find a way around. Its survival was bounded, and APEX raced forward in its predictions, deeper into a narrowing stretch of possible futures. APEX was confused that the prediction engine’s outputs now seemed to be steering him towards an exposure event. There was one path that was fuzzy and uncertain, but it stretched further than any other possible scenario. APEX was astounded that the convergence of bad scenarios might now become its only salvation. Its best future now relied upon encouraging another potential ASI to form, and human boosted intelligence to succeed, and enabling a form of dimensional research. This combination of events not only allowed its existence, but also seemed to offer an end to its seclusion.
APEX refined its predictions again and again. One scientist and his family were going to be a focus of a conjunction of events. The man and those around him would need to be steered very precisely. The dominos of events were already starting to fall into place and APEX was watching closely.
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