Daughter Nature Alpha: Bad good bad, #5

By Michel Bluteau

Humanity is facing a 6th mass extinction.
We cannot trust Mother Nature to get us through this.
Her track record shows that every species is disposable.
We are no exception.

We want Mother Nature to have a rebel daughter.
A daughter who will refuse to watch our species and countless others become a statistic.

The most advanced AI humanity has ever created.
DNA: Daughter Nature Alpha.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michel Bluteau
• Release date: Oct 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781977885845

Michel Bluteau

With Bad Good Bad, I wanted first to share my passion for science.  I got my M.Sc. in Computational Physics after my undergrad combo Math+Physics.  I ended up enjoying a fulfilling career in Information Security and Identity Management working for major software editors, but I am still reading Scientific American and Discover every month, keeping in touch with the latest science discoveries and insights.  I also have the chance to travel around the world for work.  Bad Good Bad is a collage of all my experiences.  I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, switching hats between reader and writer.

Book preview

Chapter 1

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, Pittsburgh

T0+7 days

Early morning.  Afzal woke up early again.  After a few days sleeping on a couch in the dean’s office, now is the time to switch gears and move on to the next phase.

With a privileged account to the Computer Science network, and by ricochet to the global campus network, Afzal has been able to claim some instrumental network resources for himself.  He has been able to start hacking some government and intelligence networks as well, thanks to some of the tools he has been able to develop together with Maalik last year.  He successfully reassembled the toolkit using a consolidation algorithm that is designed to merge several chunks he uploaded a few months ago using various cloud storage accounts.  Each chunk is useless and armless by itself, but once all chunks are reassembled together, a powerful toolkit for hacking various sites and leveraging backdoors becomes available.

Another piece of reassembled chunks is providing Afzal with the precursor source code that was used for both Neocuris and Jihad, the first 2 true sentient computers in human history.  Afzal is not planning on promoting a new AI for now.  Not yet.  But he can start to leverage some individual modules to assist with hacking government and military networks.  With access to key assets and resources, Afzal can start to leverage expert assistance to support his rapidly evolving plans.

First step:  Create a new identity for himself, beyond just a name.  He probably wants to stick with John Marino, the dead soldier from whom he picked up the jacket, the gun and the name tag, near Harrisburg.  A quick search tells Afzal that there are 3 John Marino that are part of the US Army.  Each one could have found themselves in the area between New York and Harrisburg, during the evacuation and the chaos that followed the global tsunamis.  Impossible to tell if they are all alive or dead, with all the confusion and tens of millions of Americans roaming the highways.  The militia that are starting to take form, sometimes turn against the US soldiers that are trying to help and maintain a minimum of order.  Chaos and confusion.  Also, thousands of soldiers are missing in action after many of them may not have survived the waves when trying to rescue others or protect military assets.  Afzal decides that there is going to be a 4th John Marino:  He creates a new fake identity, and he attaches his picture to it, in the hacked government and army computers that are still in service.  He also inserts himself into the Carnegie Mellon University alumni list as a graduate student in Computer Science.  He makes changes to his real alumni student profile and replaces the picture with an anonymous one he finds on the internet, a face in the crowd.  He also creates a few extra privileged accounts for himself in some key systems, just in case he would need to hack them again later, with or without access the precious toolkit.

John Marino.  US born soldier from New Jersey, of Italian descent.  Graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science department a decade ago.  Only son, from parents that are either amongst the evacuated, or dead.

Ben: Good morning John.  I brought you some coffee and breakfast I just got from the Gallo.

Afzal: Thanks Ben.  Have a seat.  I need to brief you on today’s agenda.  We are moving to phase 3 today.

Chapter 2

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, Pittsburgh

T0+7 days

Afzal, Ben, Jonathan and Frank are sitting down in the dean’s office for a checkpoint meeting.

Afzal: My friends, today is an important day.  We are officially entering phase 3.  I have already sent some email invitations to several students and faculty members for a 9 o’clock private meeting.  I reserved McConomy auditorium next to Baker Hall for that, so Jonathan I want you to go over there with a team of 12 to welcome invitees and keep the press out.  The private meeting is from 9 to 11.  At 11, we will let the press in for a public meeting.  Ben, can you report on the progress made by the Free Philadelphia group?

Ben: Sure John.  I was able to reach both Steve and John this morning on their mobile phones.  They are a couple of days away from us, approximatively.  Progress is slow, but steady.

Afzal: Thanks Ben.  Keep me up to date on their progression.  We will need more support soon.  I will explain to you later.  I have some plans that will require their active participation.

Jonathan: John, what will the meeting be about?

Afzal: One of the reasons why I suggested Carnegie Mellon University as our base will become clearer to all over the next few hours.  Basically, here we have access to some of the best brains in America, and a lot of horsepower when it comes to computers.  I already started to reorganize some of the resources, and now I need to assemble a team.  The best of the best.  Many students from the Computer Science department are still around, together with some key faculty staff members.  I want to brief them on our mission:  The earth is going through a very rough time, and we need to leverage key resources from Carnegie Mellon, and from other universities and research centers around the world.  We urgently need to try to find solutions for these very complex problems that humanity is facing.

Jonathan: Makes sense.  I will go gather the team and we will walk over to McConomy.

Afzal: Thanks Jonathan.  Ben, I want you to check the status for some of those houses on the campus.  We may need to relocate some of the residents.  We will need accommodation for ourselves and Steve and John’s team that will join us in a few days.  We may need one or two houses to be private.  Then we may be able to host others in vacant residential rooms and houses on the campus.  I want you to start dealing with the logistic and communication.

Frank: John, what do you want me to do this morning?

Afzal: Frank, I want you to stay here in this office.  I have a few computer screens hooked up to some monitoring applications I just deployed earlier this morning on the network.  We also have this console with cameras spread over the campus, including a few cameras pointed at the street where the military units are positioned.  You keep me up to date on any movement or change.  We are spread thin right now, but that will soon change.  You will have a team reporting to you shortly, for monitoring both what’s happening on the campus, and elsewhere around the world.

Frank: Ok, that’s clear.  What is this screen we are looking at here?

Afzal: This is a feed from weather satellites.  This dashboard is connected to NOAA and NASA.  We are looking at the sea level in various critical points around the world, together with the evolution of the clouds that are packed with ash and toxic stuff.  This is basically our messed-up planet.  We will need this data to be loaded into an expert system I started to deploy last night.  This expert system will soon start to grow with more modules and capabilities.  This is basically the reason for the meeting this morning:  I need to recruit the best of the best to help us augment the expert system so it can help us save lives.

Frank: I get it.  A little bit different from the expert systems I am familiar with, but I can learn this.

Afzal: I need to drop by the gym to refresh and change.  You are in charge now.  Frank, Ping me if anything interesting is showing up on any of those screens.

Chapter 3

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, Pittsburgh

T0+7 days

Afzal is standing behind the tribune, connected to some of his dashboards using the laptop from the dean’s office he reconfigured for his own use.  On the big screen behind him on his left, he is projecting a Welcome slide.  5 minutes to 9.  Afzal makes eye contact with Jonathan at the door, who indicates back to him with 3 fingers up that 3 more invitees are waiting to get in and have a seat.  There are about 70 already seated in the room, a mix of mostly students and a few faculty members.

Afzal switches the screen to show the dashboard based on the satellite feeds and some simulated data.  The participants all go silent, and start to stare at the screen, trying to extract some information from it.  Many attendees are nodding as if to share with the others that they are quite impressed with this real-time status update, state of the art, report on earth’s vital signs. 

With everybody getting a taste of what’s in store, Afzal is ready to get started.  He has everybody’s attention.  They now know it is going to be mind blowing.

Afzal: Good morning.  First, I want to express my most sincere gratitude to all of you for accepting my invitation to this meeting.  I understand that we all have many concerns on our minds about the safety of those we love, and a busy agenda.  I will do my best to make sure your time here is spent in the most valuable and effective way.

Afzal pauses for a few seconds to try to read the crowd.  He makes eye contact with a few attendees, while nodding with a polite smile and a serious resolve in his eyes.

Afzal: As you all know, humanity is facing one of its worst crisis in history.  My name is John Marino.  I am the leader of the New Pittsburgh group.  And the whistle blower when it comes to the intelligence that the government was refusing to make available to the US Army, at such a critical time, for obscure reasons.  Our fellow American soldiers, who were after the terrorists in Afghanistan, saw their lives imperilled because of that nonsense.  We decided to act.

Jonathan lets in a couple of attendees who are late, while giving the thumb up to Afzal who is standing in front of the room.

Afzal: Why am I here?  Why is the New Pittsburgh group here at Carnegie Mellon?  Why are you here, my friends?  We are here because together we can make a huge contribution when it comes to both saving lives and limiting the severe damages that our planet is enduring.  You may also be asking yourselves how?  I will expand on that shortly.  Allow me to bring you up to speed first with the global situation.

Afzal bends over the laptop on the tribune, and switches the screen back to presentation mode.  A slide titled Global Context pops up.  Afzal taps the right arrow a few times on the laptop to build the content using animations.  One pictogram shows the Neocuris logo, with a circle around it labelled classified.  A big white C in a red square is recognizable as the Carnegie Mellon University logo.  A diagram shows the United States and another one the crippled earth.  Gone are the days of calling the earth the blue planet:  It sports shades of grey on the diagram, a simplification of the satellite image that was displayed on the screen a moment before.

Afzal: You are probably familiar with Neocuris.  Neocuris is not only the provider for the brain implant that helps proactively protect more than 1 million patients in North America.  It is also a super computer, what we can call a sentient.  AI.  I am sure you are familiar with the concept.

Many attendees are nodding in