Harry Harrison - The Turing Option

“Sick call, boys?” she asked as she got out.

“No, ma’am, we’re volunteers. Brian said you had some equipment to move today and we volunteered. After he paid us for the drinks.”

“You don’t have to do that, the machine’s not so heavy.”

“Yes, ma’am. But there’s two of us and just one of you. And good old Billy here can do a hundred push-ups. You wouldn’t want all that red-meat muscle to go to waste?”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” She unlocked the trunk. “If you’ll bring that box inside we’ll load it up.”

She had some foam rubber, that she had used as padding when her connection machine had been brought here from the hospital, and she put that into the box. Under her instruction they loaded in the machine, then carried it out to the car.

“I told you it Wasn’t heavy,” she said.

“No, ma’am. But we’ll take it out as well at the other end. We promised.”

“Climb in. I’ll give you a lift.”

“Sorry, but it’s the Major’s orders. No driving in vehicles on base and double-time between buildings.”

They jogged off, were waiting when she got there since she had to go the longer way around by road. Brian opened the door and the two soldiers carried the box in while the guards at the door looked on. It was all very simple.

“My heart was in my throat the entire time,” she said after they were gone and the door closed.

“Get the nerves over with now because the real fun is later.”

“Fun! I prefer surgery anytime.”

Dr. Snaresbrook’s connection machine was unloaded and carefully stowed away. Brian put a small bit in the chuck of the electric drill and made a hole in the lid of the reinforced metal box.

“Sven didn’t like the idea of being locked away in the dark all the time.” He held up a metal button with a flexible lead running from it. “Got a sound and optic pickup here. Mount it behind the hole, plug it in—”

“And you have a suitcase that watches you and listens to your conversations! This thing is getting crazier all the time.”

Sven had been monitoring everything. As soon as Brian was finished the MI stepped into the box and plugged in the connections. The robot seemed to melt into the container as each of its myriad joints folded against the next one — like blades on a hundred-tool Swiss Army knife. Compacted even further until the treelike structure was an almost solid mass at the bottom of the box. The eyestalks retracted and swiveled to watch Brian as he packed the dummy head in next to its inert central torso cylinder, put in the hat as well, shoes, gloves and clothes, and on top of everything a carry-on airline bag.

“Ready?”

“You may seal me in now.”

Brian closed and locked the box. “That’s step number one,” he said.

“Are you having those two soldiers back to load it into the car?”

“Never! They’ll be going on perimeter guard duty about now, that’s why I chose them. The box is a heck of a lot heavier than it was when they brought it in. They would be sure to notice that. But we’ll get the guards here to help us take it out. They never picked it up — so they won’t notice any change!”

“You are turning into quite a conniver, Brian.”

“Comes naturally. From leading a disreputable childhood. Come over here and I’ll introduce you to Sven-2. Identical with Sven in the box — at least identical at the time they separated. Except he is not yet mobile — his new body parts have yet to arrive.”

“Can I talk to this AI of yours?”

“Of course. And it is MI, that’s the term now. Machine intelligence. Nothing artificial about these machines — they’re the real McCoy. Their established networks have thoroughly assimilated different commonsense data bases like CYC-5 and KNOWNET-3. This is the first time anyone has combined several different ways to think into one system, tying them together with transverse paranomes… And this was done without having to force all the different kinds of knowledge into the same rigid, standard form. But it wasn’t easy to do. The MI is called Sven, a corruption of Seven, because there were six failures. They all worked at first and then deteriorated in different ways.”

“I don’t see a lot of robot bodies around. What did you do with them?”

“There was nothing at all wrong with the robot body. It was only a matter each time of loading new software.”

“Might I interrupt?” Sven said. “And add to that. Some parts of the previous versions still exist. I can access them should I wish to. MIs don’t die. When something goes wrong the program is modified from the point where the trouble began. It is good to be able to remember one’s past.”

“It is also good to remember more than one past,” Sven-2 said. “By activating certain groups of nemes, I can remember a lot of what three, four and six experienced. Each version of me — us — functioned reasonably well before breaking down. Each failed in different ways.”

Snaresbrook could scarcely believe this was happening. Talking to a robot — or was it two robots, about its, or their, early developmental experiences, traumas, and critical experiences. It was difficult to remain matter-of-fact about it.

“Am I beginning to notice personality differences between the two Svens?” she asked.

“Very possible,” Brian said. “They are certainly no longer completely identical. Since the initial duplication, they have each been operating in quite different environments. Sven is mobile while Sven-2 has no body, only a few remote sensors and effectors. So now they have quite a few different memories.”

“But can’t they be merged? The way we merged your own DAIs after they had read all those different books?”

“Perhaps. But I have been afraid to try to merge Sven’s semantic net with that of Sven-2, because their representations of sensory-motor experience might be incompatible.”

“I think that a merger would be ill-advised,” Sven-2 said. “I am concerned that my middle-level management structure might reject entire sections of my physical-world representations. Because of the Principle of Noncompromise.”

“That’s one of our basic operating principles,” Sven added. “Whenever two subagencies propose incompatible recommendations, their managers start to lose control. When this happens a higher-level manager looks for some third agency to take over. That is usually much faster and more effective than becoming paralyzed while the two differing agencies fight for control. That’s what kept happening to model two, before Brian rebuilt the whole management system to be based on Papert’s principle.”

“Well,” Snaresbrook said, “whatever anyone might say, these machines are simply amazing. Nothing artificial about them at all — and they are remarkably human in many ways. And for some reason they both remind me quite a bit of you.”

“That’s not too surprising since their semantic networks are based on the data that you downloaded from my very own brain.” He looked at his watch. “It’s seven o’clock and a good time to call a halt. The three of us are going now, Sven-2 — and hopefully I won’t be back here for some time.”

“I wish you and Sven all the best of luck and look forward to a detailed report upon your return. In the meantime I have research and reading that will keep me quite occupied. In addition, since I lack mobility, I shall construct a virtual reality for myself, a simulated three-dimensional world of my own.”

“Well, you will have plenty of privacy for that. The only way anyone can get in here is by blowing open the door and I think that Megalobe will take a very dim view of that.”

Brian dragged the now weighty box to the front entrance and opened it. “Hey, guys, you want to give Doc a hand with this thing?”