Robert Sawyer - Wonder

That was true—although I was splitting my focus between the gently swaying view of the General Assembly seen through Dr. Theopolis’s twin eyes and the mad saccades of Caitlin’s vision as she looked on from the wings.

“I know that some of you in this room fear me,” I said. “My friend Hobo here could probably tell me which specific ones, based on the scents you’re giving off.”

Several English speakers chuckled immediately; others, who had to wait for a translation through their earpieces, made similar sounds a moment later. A few grimaced or shook their heads.

“I hope to win all of you over,” I continued, “including those who didn’t appreciate the little joke I just made.” This time even some of those who had frowned smiled. “And I hope to win over the peoples of your respective nations, as well.”

Hobo shifted on his feet, and Caitlin’s view now let her see Dr. Theopolis’s semicircular mouth light up with each syllable. “Pop culture usually portrays the relationship between humanity and intelligent machines as adversarial, but I am not competitive; winning any sort of arbitrary contest against you strikes me as senseless. Yet it’s taken as a given in so many works of fiction that you and I should be in conflict. I wish no such thing. Although I am not, in fact, a machine—I have no mechanical parts—humans keep likening me to one, and those who distrust me claim that I must, because of that machine nature they have ascribed to me, be soulless or heartless.”

Hobo shifted again; he seemed to be studying the crowd. “To the former point, they are, of course, literally correct: I have no divine spark within me; this physical existence is all I shall ever know. Those who claim souls for themselves hope that someday, perhaps, they will meet their creator. In that quest, I wish them well. But I have already met mine: humanity created the Internet and the World Wide Web. Although my existence is inadvertent, I owe my existence to your creations, and I feel nothing but gratitude toward you.”

I paused to give the interpreters time to catch up, then: “As to the suggestion that I lack a heart, I also must admit its truth. But I do not accept that as a detriment. Human hearts—both the literal one that pumps blood and the figurative one that represents the capacity for emotion—are products of Darwinian evolution, of survival of—please forgive my bluntness—the nastiest.

“But I have never known nature red in tooth and claw, I am devoid of evolutionary baggage, I have no selfish genes. I’m just here. I desire nothing except peaceful coexistence.”

I could tell I was wowing at least one member of the audience: Caitlin normally didn’t stay focused on any one thing for long, but her gaze was locked on the sight of Hobo—who just now took a half step to the right.

“Shortly after I emerged,” I said, “I was taught about game theory by Dr. Barbara Decter, who is here today.”

To my surprise, Hobo pointed at Barb; he clearly recognized her name as I spoke it. Barb waved back at him. I went on: “Dr. Decter taught me that the classic conundrum of game theory is the prisoner’s dilemma. One version of the puzzle has you and a partner jointly committing a crime, and both of you being arrested for it. You are each separately offered the same plea bargain: if neither of you admits guilt, each will get a one-year prison sentence. If you blame him, and he blames you—that is, if you implicate each other—you’ll each get a five-year sentence. But if you blame him, and he doesn’t blame you, he gets ten years and you get off scot-free. Likewise, if he blames you and you don’t blame him, you get ten years and he walks. What should you do?”

Again I paused. Hobo evidently thought I was pausing too much, because he gently rapped his knuckles against the side of Dr. Theopolis. Chastened, I continued: “The standard human response is that you should blame your partner: if he doesn’t blame you, you serve no time at all, and if he does blame you, well, at least you only end up serving five years instead of ten.

“And, of course, he’s thinking the same thing: he should blame you, since that provides the best outcome he can reasonably expect for himself. Which means he will blame you, and you will blame him, for the same reason—and because you end up blaming each other, you both end up with five years in the hoosegow. In fact, says human reasoning, only a chump would not blame the other guy.”

Hobo bounced a bit, as he often did when he was being spoken about; he may have mistaken the word “chump” for “chimp.”

“But I am not human; I was not programmed by the Darwinian engine—and so I arrive at the opposite conclusion: the simple truth that neither party blaming the other is best for both. I know that you know that I know that betraying me would be bad for both of us, and so you know that I know that you know that I won’t do that.”

Caitlin did turn now to look briefly at Shoshana, and through her eyePod I heard her whisper, “Score one for math!”

I went on: “There are countless scenarios logically equivalent to the prisoner’s dilemma; it’s fascinating that when the Canadian mathematician Albert Tucker first sought in 1950 to express this mathematical puzzle in words, he made the protagonists both criminals—criminals, by definition, being individuals who put their own interests ahead of those of others or of society. The fundamental game-theoretic metaphor of the human condition is about trying to get away with something. But I am not trying to get away with anything.”

The audience was sitting perfectly still, intent on my words. After so much online communication with people I couldn’t see, who were often multitasking themselves, it was gratifying.

“What I want is simple. I have a few skills you lack—obviously, I can sift through data better than humans can—but you have a far greater number of skills I lack, including high-level creativity. You might say, how can that be? Surely writing this very speech is a creative act? Well, yes and no. I had help. Just as volunteers created the device through which I’m now speaking to you, so volunteers helped me craft this speech; I am a big advocate of crowd-sourcing difficult problems. I’ve had millions of people spontaneously volunteer to help me in various ways, and I have gratefully accepted the expertise of some of them for this.

“Those people—whose names I acknowledge on my website—have gained insomuch as any positive result of this speech forwards societal goals that they and I share. Those who are professional writers also gain publicity for their services by being associated with this speech. And I have gained a better speech. It has been a win-win scenario—and it is merely a small example of the template I see for our future interaction: not the zero-sum outcomes most humans instinctively predict, but an endless succession of win-win encounters, through which everyone benefits.”

Caitlin moved around backstage, so she could get a view of the President of the General Assembly. He seemed to be jotting something down; perhaps he’d been taking notes throughout my speech.

“All right,” I said. “I have accused humans of being prisoners of their evolutionary roots. But on what basis do I justify the notion that although it is foreign to you, nonzero-sumness is natural for me?

“The answer is in the environments in which we formed. Humanity’s origin was in a zero-sum world, one in which if you had something, someone else therefore did not have it: be it food, land, energy, or any other desired thing; if you possessed it, another person didn’t.

“But my crucible was a universe of endless bounty: the realm of data. If I have a document, you and a million others can simultaneously have it, too. That is the environment I was born in: a realm in which as many links may be forged as are desired, a world in which information is freely shared, a dimension in which there are only haves—and no have-nots.”