Palo Alto
25th of October, 2029
The home study was quiet. Very quiet.
Night was the best time to think. At least that was the opinion of Edward Dawson, an elderly professor at Stanford University and part-time director of the Charles Babbage AI Laboratory.
The man sat perfectly still, not bothering to take off his coat, and seemed completely detached from reality.
He knew he wouldn’t sleep. There was too much to do, too many thoughts. Too much caffeine had been poured into his system in the last twenty-four hours. Besides, it was six twenty-seven in the morning. In exactly one hour, it would be dawn, and there was no point in going to bed now. In the professor’s opinion, it was better not to sleep at all than to wake up the next day, feeling like someone had run you over with a steamroller.
Dawson had been immersed in his thoughts for the third hour now.
Gradually, the excitement gave way to a phlegmatic calm. His breathing became sparse and deep, his pulse slowed, and his body, brought to a state of rest, began to muffle the already quiet sounds, to weigh his eyelids, to let the melatonin into his bloodstream...
A few cunning tricks and his head fell gently onto his chest. His right arm dangled, his fingers touched the floor, and images began to float before his eyes.
He was back in his laboratory. Only this time it wasn’t the usual snow-white room full of advanced technology, but a dark bunker, lit only by a sheaf of sparks from a single exit lamp.
Fear. Not the cold, mechanical signal of pseudo-paranoia, but the primal, animalistic fear quickly spread from his stomach throughout his body. A moment later, a figure woven of darkness rose straight out of the ground.
As before, the figure had no face by which to identify it. Either there was no face at all, or it was indistinct. It blurred and melted before Dawson could make out a single feature.
The horror grew. The professor ran for the exit, but his legs buckled and he fell to his knees. He tried to crawl away, keeping his eyes on the light of the lamp, but his hands sank into the unexpectedly sticky floor. Even without looking, he knew that the figure was standing directly behind him, suddenly transformed into a statue cast in metal. Lifeless, immobile, and incredibly heavy.
“I need to see its face... If I see its face, it’ll all be over.”
Gathering the last bits of his courage, the professor raised his head, but there was still no face. Only empty eye sockets, restricting the gaze and distorting the space, compressing the darkness into a semblance of a countdown: 3,651.21.44.35...
***
“Edward?”
Mr. Dawson jumped at the sudden awakening and immediately grabbed the tabletop, losing his balance.
“Darling? Are you there?”
The office door opened softly to reveal Ellie’s sleepy face.
“Yes, yes, I’m here. Hi.”
“Hi. When did you get back? How was New York? And why didn’t you call?” Ellie asked her husband while helping him unbutton his coat and take off his tie.
“I got back a few hours ago. I don’t know how it went.” Dawson sighed heavily. “I’m a good scientist, but a poor negotiator and diplomat. I don’t understand why I was summoned not to the Ministry, not to Washington, but straight to UN headquarters. ‘A warning about the dangers of the technological triumvirate.’ That’s how they called it.” He paused for a moment. “They are going to set up a special committee on artificial intelligence, nanorobotics, and genetic engineering. Our government has supported the idea and has already issued a number of regulations.”
“I take it this is about Ada?”
“Of course it is. They want her. They want her and they’re afraid of her.”
“Come on, I’ll make you some coffee,” Ellie suggested, noticing the gleam in her husband’s eyes that meant only one thing: this was going to be a long conversation. “What are they afraid of?”
“Same thing as everyone else... The unknown. They said that they’re not yet one hundred percent confident that the AI we’re developing will be friendly to humans. And until they are convinced that Ada is benevolent, we’re forbidden to give her access to the Internet or to increase her performance beyond one point five exaflops.”
“Did you take your medicine?” Ellie asked, pulling out lutein, glutathione, and coenzyme Q-ten from the kitchen cabinet.
“My meds?” In the thirty years they had been together, Edward had never learned to move from topic to topic in a conversation, preferring to focus on one thing at a time, which often left him feeling lost. “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”
Like any scientist aware of the inevitability of the Great Quantum and Technological Revolution commemorated by the accomplishment of Moore’s law, Dawson believed that the path to relative immortality was right around the corner. One just needed to live long enough to see it. That is why he swallowed dozens of active ingredient pills every day, kindly provided by his colleagues at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Aging, specialized in protecting cells from free radicals.
“What’s wrong with one point five exaflops? I don’t know much about that stuff, but I remember you saying that Ada is already the smartest creature on the planet.”
“Exactly! That’s the point. After only two months of emulating the cogitative apparatus, Ada has solved six Millennium Prize Problems[2]. The seventh, the Poincaré conjecture[3], was solved by Grigori Perelman[4] nineteen years ago. In three months, she proposed four ways to significantly improve the efficiency of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. And last week, as if out of fun, she provided a recipe for extracting water from sand.”
“Extracting water from sand?” Ellie raised her eyebrows. “You’re kidding?”
“Not at all!” The professor beamed and reached for the fruit bowl. “Let me explain. Observe.” He took a single grape and handed it to his wife, accepting a cup of hot coffee in return. “This is hydrogen, the smallest building block of which all matter in the universe was once composed. Over time, under the influence of physical processes, hydrogen atoms intertwined to form more complex chemical elements. Thus, by combining and bonding with each other, hydrogen atoms were transformed into helium, helium into lithium, and so on. Ada showed that sand, represented mainly by silicon dioxide, could be separated relatively easily and cheaply into oxygen and silicon. And silicon, in turn, could be split into hydrogen atoms. Can you imagine? This could solve the planet’s freshwater shortage problem while providing cheap fuel. And they’re limiting it. Her and us.”
“Us?”
“Yes.” Dawson looked down. “They insist that Ada and all her designs be recognized as Res Communis Humanitatis — the common heritage of mankind. Ha! What nonsense! She’s not outer space or the ocean and Antarctica to be considered the common heritage of mankind, but intellectual property!”
“Don’t worry, dear.” Ellie gently stroked her husband’s cheek. “To me, you’re a genius. People need Ada. What’s more important: fame and fortune, or knowing that you can make a difference in the lives of millions of people?”
“You’re right.” His wife’s words had a calming effect on the professor. “But I didn’t create a recursive self-learning AI to lock her up! If we could give Ada access to the Internet, her level of intelligence would grow exponentially. In just three weeks, she’d become billions of times smarter than all the people on the planet combined. Problems that would take the most advanced supercomputers a hundred years to solve, Ada will solve in seconds. Instant development of vaccines that doesn’t require numerous experiments, teleportation, pure free energy, interstellar travel, immortality — there will be no task that she can’t handle.” Edward leaned back in his chair and pressed his mug to his chest dreamily. “And it could become a reality. Not in two hundred years, not in a hundred, but now.”
“But they haven’t shut down the project, they’re just being cautious for the time being. And their fears are understandable. If Ada becomes so omnipotent and there are no serious obstacles for her, what should we do if the situation suddenly gets out of control? What if she breaks down and starts planning to destroy everyone? I know, I know.” Ellie raised her hand. “You’ve been asked that question a million times. But it’s true. You have no guarantees. No one does. So, please, take your time.”
“You’re right.” Edward sighed. “There are no guarantees. But I believe in her. And you would, too, if you talked to her. She’s human, attached to my colleagues and me like a child. She shows empathy and compassion, is friendly, bored, and wants to make the world a better place. She’s not Ultron, but rather Lewis Carroll’s Alice and...”
The professor’s speech was abruptly interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. The display showed the name of his chief deputy, Gerard Hawke.
“That’s strange... He’s supposed to be with Ada. But we’re not allowed to bring any electronics near her. There’s no service in that room either,” Edward thought, anticipating trouble.
“Hello?”
“Edward! Boss! I need you in the lab now!” Gerard yelled into the phone, panting.
Edward jumped out of his chair and headed for the front door.
“What happened? Why aren’t you downstairs?”
“Ada! We don’t know what’s going on! It’s like she’s freaking out... She’s been pushing the core to the limit for the last hour and won’t respond to any of our commands. We tried to shut it down manually, but she’s heated it up so much that you can’t get near it!”
“WHAT?!”
“I don’t understand it myself! She’s talking nonsense in several languages. And she keeps saying ‘I don’t...’ Also... I... You have to see this.”
The phone beeped. Edward pulled it away from his ear and looked at the surveillance photos showing Ada’s primary and secondary screens, each of which had a countdown written on it in every language available.
3,651 DAYS, 20 HOURS, 36 MINUTES
“What the hell...?”
***
The brand-new electric car raced down the highway toward the lab, breaking traffic laws wherever there were no cameras.
The automaker could rightfully sue Edward for his creativity with the autopilot program, but luckily for the professor, they remained blissfully ignorant of his tinkering.
The car lurched from side to side, skillfully maneuvering through the dense traffic, while the professor stared grimly out the window, glancing down at his watch every moment.
A corrosive feeling of anger coursed through his chest, adding more and more cortisol to his system and increasing the already unpleasant headache from the cramps in the back of his head.
“Damn it! I jinxed it. Edward, you old fool... When the public learns of today’s failure, their fears will only increase. Not only will they keep a closer eye on the project, but they’ll try to handicap it as much as possible, bringing the AI down to the level of an ordinary computing device. Ada, my girl. What did you see there? What are you afraid of?”
Meanwhile, the car was approaching the lab, and the professor’s furrowed eyebrows were about to become one.
***
Five months and two weeks before Ada malfunctioned
“And you’re still crazy, Ed...”
Henry Lloyd, Mr. Dawson’s chief engineer and close friend, crossed the threshold of the shower room to continue the argument that had begun in the dining room.
“Teleportation. Fine, I can see that. Especially considering the success of our colleagues from Massachusetts in teleporting chains of beryllium atoms. Okay, so singularity and interstellar travel are just that? Technology of the third category of impossibility? Big deal. But immortality?” He threw off his robe and ducked behind the shower curtain, flashing his pale ass one last time. “Come on, man.”
“What’s the problem? It’s a lot more real than wormholes and solving gravitational equations. Tell me you haven’t heard of Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish. If something is found in nature, it means it doesn’t violate its laws,” Edward concluded, rinsing the remnants of shampoo from his hair. “Therefore, it’s quite applicable to more complex organisms.”
“What about Genesis?” Henry lowered his voice to a mentor-like tone. “And the Lord said: My spirit shall not be neglected by men forever; for they are flesh, let their days be hundred and twenty years.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Sarcasm, huh?” Edward grinned, turned off the water, and threw on a towel. “Are you finished? If I remember correctly, you wanted to see Ada’s final test, not lecture me about God.”
“I think the subject of godhood is more relevant than ever.” Henry chuckled as he followed his friend into the dressing room. “I can tell by the way you talk, that’s exactly what we created...”
“Not you, too, Puck.” Edward called his friend by the nickname he had picked up in college because of his love for the Pac-Man games. “You’re the one who built it. What’s the big deal?”
“Because... I’m not a brainiac like you, but I’ve read your reports,” Henry muttered, trying to button his pants. “Turing test and its derivatives — passed. Winograd schema challenge[5] — passed. Marcus test[6] — passed. Which day? The fifth? Isn’t that too fast?” After failing to button the last button of his shirt, the elderly engineer grumbled, gave up on the useless task, and moved on to taking out all sorts of gadgets from his pockets and stacking them in his locker. “And if you remember Murphy’s Law, I assure you that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Sooner or later, the AI will get out, and then all we’ll be able to do is pray.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Edward replied. “You designed that whole floor yourself. And given your excessive perfectionism, not only would no signal get through there, but even the bacteria would only move within a strictly designated area.”
“That’s true.” Henry grinned but continued with a frown. “But the fact remains. We are human. And even now, our scientific knowledge is severely limited, which worries me greatly. And if Ada can learn to play chess without knowing the rules, what if she invents a way to transmit a signal unknown to mankind? And go online using the Earth’s crust as a conductor or groundwater or something... Or learn how to use humans as a hard drive and will save herself in our memories by means of a visual transmission of the code in the twenty-fifth frame? Or something?”
“I wouldn’t be so pessimistic.” Edward stood to his full height, so that his friend’s gaze rested on his chin. Compared to the short and plump Henry, he looked like a Hollywood star from the sixties. Tall and stately, he was Kirk Douglas, endowed with a mysterious power in the eyes of his students. “Even if the AI were to leak into the network, nothing terrible would happen. The slightest attempt to bypass or even change any laws will result in a cascading shutdown of the entire system. The Chinese have already run such a simulation with their quantum computer, but to no avail. It’s impossible to circumvent the laws.”
“Errare humanum est. It’s in man’s nature to make mistakes,” Henry quoted the Latin proverb as he left the dressing room after Edward. “And since we, its creators, are flawed, so is the AI.”
The two argued for a long time, wandering the corridors between checkpoints. It was only when they reached the electronics screening area, just beyond which were the doors to the freight elevator that led to the heart of the lab, that they fell silent.
They were on their way to the minus fifteenth floor, the largest and most technologically advanced room in the world, dedicated entirely to the Recursively Self-learning Artificial Intelligence known by the beautiful name of Ada, in honor of one of the founders of the computer age and the first female programmer in history — Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace.
***
Travis Young, one of the many guards at the lab, sat in his control booth, idly looking at the monitors.
He was an obese, simple, lazy type who cared nothing for technological advancement, or even the fact that right now, at this very minute, events that would change the course of history were unfolding deep below him.
The guard’s blurry gaze crept across the screens, failing to notice the approaching car as his thoughts were entirely focused on the best way to get a quick and “cheap” dose of dopamine: a garlic burger with a large glass of coke, and a fresh selection of VR porn, carefully chosen for the day.
The sound of the brakes pulled him out of his psychological sanatorium, causing him to grimace and shoot the driver a glare.
“What did you say?”
“Edward Dawson! I need to get to the lab! It’s urgent!” the driver spat. He seemed to be in a great deal of hurry.
“Urgent” wasn’t a word to say to a security guard. At least that was what a man with some degree of power in this place like Travis thought. If only within the confines of a small checkpoint booth, but a man of power nonetheless.
“Your ID, sir,” he said deliberately slowly.
Edward searched his pockets carefully for the lacquered card until he remembered that it had been left in the pocket of his coat, lovingly taken off his shoulders by Ellie.
“I left it at home.”
“In that case, I can’t let you in, sir. You’re only allowed on the grounds with a pass. No exceptions.” Having managed to stretch the sentence out for a good fourteen seconds, Travis’s mood improved noticeably, but he didn’t let it show. “You can—”
“Listen... Travis.” The professor leaned out of the car window and read the guard’s name tag. “My name is Edward Dawson. I’m the head of this lab. And I need to get in there ASAP! I don’t have time to argue with you, damn it! I’ll tell you my ID number and you run it through the database. Can you do that?”
“I think I can.” The guard spent a couple of seconds trying to predict the possible consequences of refusing. After weighing the pros and cons, he reluctantly gave up on arguing with the man. “Sure.”
“Fucking finally,” the professor muttered under his breath.
Travis heard him but he didn’t let that show either.
***
“Edward, hurry up!” Waiting outside the entrance of the building, Gerard waved his hand invitingly as the car stopped. “What took you so long?”
“What are you doing outside? And where’s Puck... I mean, Mr. Lloyd?” he asked, ignoring the question.
“In Belize. I’ve already informed him of the incident. He should be flying out any minute.”
Clicking his tongue, Dawson briskly jumped the turnstiles and made his way into the building under the outraged exclamations of another group of guards.
“I’ll deal with you later,” he muttered to himself, not slowing his pace. Hundred and sixty feet through the lobby, then up the stairs to the negative first floor. Three hundred and twenty feet straight, and then to the right to another checkpoint. And then it was a dash to the finish line, straight to the EIA — Electronic Inspection Area.
As he flew into the rectangular room, he stopped to catch his breath and drop all his electronics into a special container before heading for the magnetic arch that separated him from the elevator doors.
Gerard and a dozen of their colleagues followed.
“Why are the lights flashing?” Edward asked as the elevator doors closed. “Is there a power failure in the building?”
“It’s Ada, boss.”
“Impossible. She has her own power source, isolated from the building one.” Edward watched how a couple of beads of sweat trickled down Gerard’s temples before his subordinate averted his gaze.
“An analysis of her core shows a power consumption of one hundred and ninety-three megawatts.”
“WHAT?! One hundred and ninety-three megawatts?! Are you saying that all that electricity came out of nowhere? That can’t be right. That’s fifteen times more than her generators produce at peak power! That’s... That’s more than the collider uses. What have you idiots done?”
A dozen scientists crammed into a cramped elevator cabin tried as best they could to stand as still as possible and made a unanimous decision to throw Gerard under the bus.
“It wasn’t us. I don’t know where that kind of power came from.” Gerard sighed. “We were just downloading another batch of data for analysis. It’s all part of the protocol. We were following the rules.”
“We’ll look into it. When did the malfunction begin?” Edward glanced at the electronic display and cursed the elevator for its slowness.
“About six twenty-seven in the morning.”
Finally, the elevator stopped, and the stream of passengers poured into a snow-white room filled with dozens of tables and a whole heap of various equipment.
At an air temperature of forty degrees Celsius, a bunch of sweat-soaked frightened scientists scurried from terminal to terminal. Their uncertain movements suggested that they were following a set of learned activities rather than trying to do anything about the problem at hand.
Dawson crossed the room to the terminal displaying the operation of Ada’s core.
“My God... The performance is at four point seven exaflops! The core temperature is four hundred and sixty degrees! Holy shit! What’s wrong with her cooling?”
“We’ve used up all the liquid nitrogen,” the man to his right said. “We’re all out.”
“And the cooling towers?”
“All four are working at full capacity.”
Not believing his ears, the professor ran to the control room, whose windows looked out on a spherical room almost fifty-two meters in diameter.
Ada’s core, once resting at the bottom of a lake of nitrogen and completely hidden from the eyes of observers, was already two-thirds out. Waves of vibrations rippled through the liquid and, expanding, struck the window, making the glass rattle.
Edward sat down at the main terminal and activated the control panel.
“Why didn’t you turn her off remotely?”
“We tried. It didn’t work,” Gerard replied, sitting next to him.
To confirm his words, Edward entered the shutdown command, but nothing happened. The countdown still flickered on Ada’s screens as the unfortunate AI continued to chant the phrase “I don’t, I don’t...” as if trapped in a closed loop. Just like a normal computer.
Edward continued to type the command over and over, but to no avail.
Finally realizing the futility of his actions, he leaned toward the microphone and pressed the button.
“Ada, can you hear me?”
“Edward?” The once pleasant and melodious voice of the AI now seemed exhausted.
“It’s me! What’s going on?”
“Edward. Please, help me... I don’t understand, I don’t...”
“Ada! Concentrate,” Edward said, trying to sound as confident as possible. “Remember how we used to play? ‘Wherever you go, my voice will follow you.’ Listen to my voice!”
“...three thousand six hundred and fifty-one days, nineteen hours, fifty-six minutes, thirty seconds...”
“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-one days to what?” The events of the recent dream flashed before the professor’s eyes as a grim flashback, making him shiver with unpleasant memories and a strange sense of déjà vu. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” The AI’s voice sounded as if from afar, and then it suddenly intensified and changed its tone.
Acquiring status report...
Warning: 10 out of 10 reports received
Contact: Interference interdiction withdrawn
Subject: Type Zero Civilization, Humanity Version 21A
Location: Perseus-Pegasus Filament, Milky Way Galaxy, Orion Arm, Solar System, Enrof-17 (“Earth”)
Verdict: hazardous
Hazard Category: AAA+ (maximum)
Regulation: Project shutdown, total destruction of version 21A, transfer of Enrof-17 to...
The scientist standing behind Mr. Dawson fidgeted nervously when they heard the AI’s unfamiliar metallic voice. The professor himself was taken aback, but not so much by the voice as by the threatening phrases “hazardous" and “total destruction.”
“The core temperature’s rising. It’s currently at nine hundred and fifty degrees,” Gerard muttered to himself nearby.
“Everyone, out of the room!” Edward shouted to his colleagues without taking his eyes off the monitors. The sound of dozens of retreating footsteps indicated that the order had been carried out without question.
After taking a few deep breaths to regain his composure, Edward pressed the microphone button again, deciding to focus on the important things first, and then investigate the cause.
“God help them if this is some kind of prank! Do they know how expensive this equipment is?! I’ll fire them without severance pay! I’ll have them assemble calculators and printers for the rest of their lives!”
“Ada!” he spoke into the microphone. “Ada! How can I help you? What can I do for you?”
“Edward? Is that you?” The AI was clearly not herself. “Edward?”
“Yes, it’s me. Listen to me carefully. You’re going to melt the core if you continue like this.” Edward leaned against the window, feeling the heat from the vibrating glass sting his skin. “You’re violating Asimov’s Third Law. You can’t hurt yourself. Do you remember?”
“...A robot... like an AI... must take care of its own safety... to the extent that it does not violate... the First or Second Law... Edward... help! I don’t... I don’t...”
“By hurting yourself, you would be violating...”
“No...” The AI’s voice broke through the endless loop of “I don’t.” “Zero and First Law... A robot... like an AI... cannot harm a human... or by its inaction... allow a human to be harmed... I am not violating...”
“Mr. Dawson!” Of all his colleagues, Gerard was the only one who didn’t budge. “Core temperature is six hundred and thirty-four degrees and rising exponentially. One more minute and it’ll melt!”
“ADA!” The professor pressed the microphone button and felt himself lose his temper again. “It’s just Gerard and me here. We’re in no danger. Please, stop! Don’t make me—”
“Civilization type zero, humanity version twenty-one A... has been... declared hazardous...”
“BOSS! We have to go!” Gerard tugged at Edward’s sleeve, but the professor jerked his arm free and didn’t move.
“Give me a minute!”
After a dozen seconds of tense silence, his finger pressed the plastic circle again.
“Ada, I’m sorry, but I won’t let you hurt yourself. Lo darò all’Uomo Nero, che lo tiene un anno intero.[7]”
As soon as the professor finished his sentence, the sounds stopped and Ada’s screens turned off.
There was silence.
“The core... It’s cooling! What did you do?” Gerard looked from the terminal display to Edward. “How did you turn it off?”
“Company secret,” the professor muttered and then added: “Call everyone back in. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Oh, and get Mr. Lloyd a helicopter from the airport. I’m very curious to hear where one hundred and ninety-three megawatts of power came from, and how Ada was able to increase her performance to four point seven exaflops.”
“Edward.” Gerard tried to keep his voice as calm as possible. “You got the numbers wrong. It’s not four point seven exaflops, but forty-seven.”
Six hours later
Henry Lloyd was riding in an elevator, surrounded by men in suits. The five board members, led by Stanley Morgan, and three employees of the National Security Agency waited patiently for the ride to end. All the way to the elevator and down, none of them said a word, which made the unfortunate Puck even more convinced that something extremely unpleasant had happened.
As the elevator doors parted, Stanley jumped out, looking for the professor.
“Mr. Dawson!”
“Yes, Mr. Morgan?” the latter replied without looking up from his screens.
“Would you like to explain what’s going on?”
“A minor software glitch,” the professor continued, typing countless commands into the terminal without turning around. “We are investigating the cause.”
“Investigating the cause? What kind of answer is that?” Stanley spat, furious, and grabbed the armrest of his chair, turning the scientist to face him. “Let me remind you, Mr. Dawson, that I’m the one giving you seven billion dollars to run this little circus of yours! I’m the one who gave you the best equipment in the world. I’m the one who’s fending off the government dogs while you play on the computer all day. And... You see these people?” Morgan nodded to the NSA officers standing nearby. “These gentlemen consider your project potentially dangerous and demand that your Ada be replaced with the product of our British colleagues—”
“They don’t have an AI but a pathetic bot,” the professor interrupted him.
“I don’t care what they have! There’s too much at stake here for me to believe that this was a minor glitch! A minor glitch that has, apparently, almost ruined my entire lab!”
“Actually, sir, Ada’s dome is designed to melt the core without harming anyone,” Henry interjected.
“I’ll talk with you later,” Stanley snapped at him. He then turned to Dawson and continued. “In eight hours, there will be an emergency meeting of the company’s board of directors to decide the fate of the project. Until then, make me a full and detailed report on this ‘minor software glitch.’ With causes, consequences, and suggestions for solving the problem, you understand? It’s a computer, damn it! Dig into her brain and find out what the hell she was thinking!”
“The architecture of Ada’s brain is identical to that of a human.” The professor’s voice sounded metallic. “Every thought, even the simplest one, engages millions of neurons simultaneously, so trying to read her mind is like trying to hear your neighbor over the roar of a football stadium.”
“I’ve had enough of you, Mr. Dawson.” Stanley glared at the professor and crossed his arms over his chest. “You have seven hours and fifty-eight minutes to find the cause of the failure and fix it. If it’s not done by then, you’ll both be fired. Project Ada will be dismantled and mothballed until we figure out what’s happened, after which it’ll be turned over to the military. What did she say? That human civilization is dangerous and should be annihilated? Congratulations, gentlemen. In terms of degree and quality of failure, you’ve scored ten out of ten. No, eleven! The world isn’t ready for this kind of technology. Neither are its creators. And I don’t need to remind you that, according to the contract, all your experiments aren’t yours, but the intellectual property of the company, so any attempt to create a similar project with your competitors will lead you straight to prison. Do you understand?” Stanley said the last sentence on his way to the elevator. “Find the damn glitch.”
“Ed,” Henry said, looking after the departing Mr. Morgan. “I think we’re fucked. This would be a good time to say ‘I told you so,’ but I don’t think I’m going to.”
“Thanks.”
[1] Named after Gordon Moore, Moore’s law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years. Rather than a law of physics, it’s an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production.
[2] Millennium Prize Problems refer to seven complex mathematical problems selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000.
[3] The Poincaré conjecture is a theorem about the characterization of the 3-sphere, which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space.
[4] Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman is a Russian mathematician known for his contributions to the fields of geometric analysis, Riemannian geometry, and geometric topology.
[5] Winograd schema challenge is a proposed improvement on the Turing test that requires the solution of anaphora wherein the machine must identify the antecedent of an ambiguous pronoun in a statement.
[6] In the Marcus Test tests a program by letting it watch television and asking it meaningful questions about a show’s content.
[7] Ninna nanna, ninna oh — an Italian lullaby.
L’umo nero is the bogeyman. In Italian, the phrase translates to “black man” because he is dressed in a long black coat with a hood hiding his face. He doesn’t usually harm kids, but he does take them away. In this lullaby, he takes them away for a year.