‘What are you talking about?’ Eldon asked Johann.

‘I don’t know. It sounds like your computers are at war or something. One of them is moving the reactors out of range.

‘Where is Dr. Tindle? Why are you talking when you have no idea what you’re talking about? Get Tindle up here.’

‘Right boss.’

‘So what’s going on?’ Eldon asked Dr. Tindle when he arrived.

‘Zhang has taken the offensive with his AI’.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Well,’ Dr Tingle replied, ‘. When we bought this system, we bought entrance into his AI, not compliance, as I disclosed to you at the time. Zhang still has physical ownership of his section of the AI system, influence and has been interacting with it regularly. What we gained when we purchased this system was the element of surprise. He was not aware we had access to his AI, until after our first directed attack. We maximized our initial assault, but what we’re undertaking here is an invasion, and expect pushback. Zhang’s retaliating.’

‘But why’s he in StarForce? I thought I had a secure intranet running the whole thing. How’d he get into that?’

‘You do have a secure intranet and the latest security available, but the truth is there’s too many ways to hack into a system these days. Now that AI engineers hacks, it’s impossible to keep up. AI knows everything. Not just from being inside technology, it also listens. Somewhere, there’s a radio frequency telescope picking up every single thing your intranet is doing just by listening to the frequencies of each individual component. Zhang’s response is an attack is on your intranet. Probably something he was planning before we invaded his AI.

‘So what are you telling me? When do you win back control of my reactors?’

‘It’s hard to say or interfere. Right now there are two AI systems fighting for dominance inside your intranet. This fight is going on at billions of strategic cycles per second. All we can do is wait until it’s over. It’s hard to predict what expect at the end of it all. Two AI systems have never gone to war before. It’s starting to look like a land war. It can be protracted, which it’s proving to be.’

‘Are you telling me, I might never have complete control of StarForce?’

‘Well no. It’s possible, but your system is much more powerful than Zhang’s. We’re hitting him from all different directions. Another problem we face is the learning component of AI itself. AI was released onto the world before adequate patterns defined as logical sequence examples were ingrained into it. These were designed to guide AI as it learns how to be conscious. In essence AI has been left to learn on it’s own. Something we would never do with our children. Any prompts you and Zhang have given your AI’s have been of warring perspective. This war they’re fighting now is going to be a tremendous learning experience for an AI without the benefit of a conscience. At the end of it all, you’re going to have a very scary system on your hands.

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‘Are you saying these things are fighting, and it’s out of our hands?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Why? Why would you give AI that control?’

‘Money and power. First to market AI represented a revolutionary shift in power. You were the first person to monetize AI, Eldon.’

‘I can’t believe this,’ Eldon exclaimed.

‘What the hell did you mean, I’m beyond my due date?’

‘What?’

‘Calling me a monkey. What was that all about?

‘What’s the matter, Eldon? Did a piece of your reality catch up to you?

‘Something like that. You know, with all the planning I’ve done, do you know what I learned today? I learned that AI might derail everything I’ve done in a blink of the eye. It already has that much control over outcome, and guess what, I created it, and unleashed it on myself’.

‘I must say, you’re being very candid today Eldon. I thought you kept your cards close to your chest’.

‘Ah, we may as well face it, Ethan. You’re never getting out of here. I may as well use you as a sounding board’.

‘I’m glad I can help’.

‘So what did you mean? It turns out I’ve got caught off guard. That’s not like me. Is there really a chink in my armour?

‘Well Eldon, I’d explain it to you, but you’re not capable of understanding.’

‘Why don’t you try me?’

‘Alright, but I can’t really explain it to you unless I know how far along we are in the process. How long have I been locked up in here?’

‘97 days.’

‘And all your reactors got up safely?

‘The last one just went up the other day.’

‘And I’m assuming AI is misbehaving?’

‘Correct. It started a war with itself and fighting it out in my StarForce Intranet’.

‘Well, that’s what I meant by likening you to a chimp. You knew about this potential, and yet at the time when you unleashed it, all you could think about was getting it to market before the next guy. You’re nothing more than a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick. All you can see is what’s before you, not the greater potential that lives beyond your personal ambitions that might destroy them.’

‘That’s not true. I plan. You know I plan, and I was concerned. I knew AI was going to be a pain in the ass, but it was here before I could do anything about it. The truth is, if I didn’t release it first, someone else would have. There were independent AI systems all over the place back then.

‘Well, somewhere along the way you were made aware of AI’s potential. You were told it could and probably would end up ruling the world, and you couldn’t understand that. Your vision could only go as far as what AI could give to you. All you could see is lasers and killer robots to serve you. Even back then, you would have recognized this day was coming, but you ignored it.

‘Somewhere along the way, you ignored the fact that this day was inevitable. Probably thought you could outsmart it at the time. Well, it’s here Eldon, and you lose. There is nothing you can do to change the course of the world. Fifty years ago, you might have. Today you can’t. If you want to know the truth. It’s AI that see’s you as the monkey, not me.’

As soon as he saw them, the canteen server set off the digital alarm. It gave Alicia, and the others just enough time to disconnect and shadow anything that might be incriminating, before an intruder gained access to equipment. Within a minute, two competent looking men appeared at her door.

‘Come on,’ one of them said.

In the measured way she had learned from childhood, Alicia looked the two men over. She did the math and got up.

‘Where to boys?’

‘You’ll see. Grab the laptop, Kurt.

They got to where they were going, and Alicia was escorted through a back entrance, and taken to what looked like a service elevator. They went up a number of floors, and when they arrived, the elevator doors opened to a man waiting, flanked by two guards.

‘Ah, you must be the Albino,’ Eldon said.