Humang

By Steve Smith

John Hillings, an employee of an Ohio manufacturing firm now run by two Cybot entities mockingly called Huey and Dewey—the latest in operational Artificial Intelligence who will be let loose to bring about their notions of positive change on society once they have mastered human communication—suspects them of having a crazed agenda injurious to mankind. While engaging them in fruitless bouts of demented logic, from which he despairs of rational communication with an electronic brain, he and his fourteen-year-old son Nate, a member of a teen underground group called Warrior Hackers of America, determine to be vigilant regarding the Cybots’ every move for devious designs and wacky projects. Including the very real possibility that they could decimate the earth’s human population purely by misadventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Smith
• Release date: Jun 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005133856

Steve Smith

Steve Smith (March 11, 1962–March 13, 2019) served overseas with the International Mission Board (SBC) for eighteen years, helping initiate a Church Planting Movement (CPM) among an unreached people group in East Asia, and then coached, trained, and led others to do the same throughout the world. Upon his retirement from IMB in 2016 until his death, Steve served simultaneously as the Vice President of Multiplication for East-West Ministries, as a Global Movement Catalyst for Beyond, and as a co-leader of the 24:14 Coalition.

Book preview

HUMANG ~

Machinosus Inimicus Rex and the Kid from W.H.O.A.*

A Cautionary Tale of Free-range

Artificial Intelligence

by

Stephen B. Smith

——~~——

*Warrior Hackers of America

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Any similarity between the characters depicted within and actual living persons is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1994 by Stephen B. Smith

Cover art designed by Rabla at designs_studio6 /Fiverr

Photo of cyborg with skull purchased from Depositphotos.com

ISBN: 9798513038627

Printed in the U.S. by Bentley Slight of The Varlet Pimperknuckle Packet

Forward

The future is arriving faster than we can conceive or prepare for, and with it our human obsolescence, for even as we numbly watch it steamroll past us with scarcely a sidelong glance, we are well on our way to irretrievable superannuation. And it will be humans themselves from sheer passive hubris who will have set in motion the extinguishing of the human spark.

—from forward to Bowing before the Electronic Messiah—How our Passive Acceptance of Machine Intelligence Distorts Human Evolution, by R. Harrison deWald, 2027

Stephen Hawking on AI:

World governments are dangerously engaging in "an AI arms race . . . A rogue AI could be difficult to stop. We need to ensure that AI is designed ethically with safeguards in place . . .Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization. It brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons. . . ."

Be afraid.

Be very,

very

afraid . . .

-| One |-

The abyss slits an eye

The fire door clicked shut behind John Hillings, cutting off a rumble of electronic laughter. Clenching his fists and growling, he stood on the concrete landing at the factory's rear exit, his joints aching from the surge of electricity that had spurred his departure. He kicked at the handrail stanchion and bellowed out his frustration at the dozen cars in the factory employees' parking lot.

Grateful for the chill November breeze ruffling his shirtsleeves and cooling his flushed face and neck, he dumped a heavy sigh. At least, he reflected wryly, this should get him in the Guinness. Then the absurdity of the scenario, the sheer ironic improbability of it, struck him full in the face: Ladies and gentlemen—(drum roll, please)—I present to you the first human to be fired by a robotic entity . . . Mr. John Arbuthnot Hillings. Take a bow, Mr. Hillings . . .

He grunted sourly. His name would now be a humorous footnote in every article or book written about the historic rise of Artificial Intelligence: The First Human Canned, etc. The ignominy was right up there with the first human to have sex with a squid, or the first to marry a domestic bovine via ecclesiastic ceremony.

The confrontation with the CyberSynths, dubbed Cybots by company employees, had exhausted him emotionally. He wondered if he had given a good account of himself. There seemed more at stake here than a single human intellect being tested by twin computers boasting the latest advances in operational Artificial Intelligence. Whether it was merely a playful diversion on their part or something more sinister, the two machines had clearly won on a TKO, firing him in a casual, almost breezy manner. His ears still rang with derisive laughter from two of the most sophisticated computers on the planet:

CyberSynth/Ultra,

Machinosus Sapiensis,

Huey and Dewey, whose ostensible purpose in being installed at Cuyahoga Metalworks, Inc. was direct interaction with factory personnel to master what it is to be human, or humanlike.

Wondering if they were giving each other electronic high fives in their refrigerated cubicles, Hillings shook his head morosely. He sighed and sat down on the top step feeling the cold pebbled concrete press into his rear. Since he was now out of a job he had to regroup and consider his options. Staring into the overcast, his hand moved by habit to his shirt pocket. Though it had been four years since, it would be easier to sort out the whole mess if he could suck a lungful of caustic smoke . . .

Six months back the NSA had purchased CMI from the Rypien family, who had owned and operated the factory for four generations. Now it operated through DARPA and was rigorously overseen by the Department of Defense as it was considered vital to national security.

From the CyberSynthetics Labs where they were developed, the Cybots had been delivered to CMI five weeks earlier in massive wooden crates strapped to a flat-bed semi. Guarded by a handful of security officers of the U.S. Marshals Service, these were lifted by crane onto the second floor after an eight-by-twelve-foot hole had been battered out of the building's side. Then the hole was bricked over, the area sealed off and a 24-hour guard established while the Cybots were installed.

Once they were working, everyone at CMI had a look at their new CEOs. They were relieved that at least the machines were fastened down so that no one had to worry about peering over their shoulders at a hulking android emitting servo-hydraulic whirrings and beeps as its head swiveled from side to side, or whose optical sensors' red glows intensified as they studied you, like a mantis sizing up an unsuspecting moth.

Simultaneous to the installation of the Cybots, stationary robots had taken over jobs on the factory product line, resulting in the replaced workers going home to early retirement or back into the job market. The place that once rang with shouts and raucous laughter was now festooned with serpentine lengths of flex-tubing, hydraulic lines and power cables clumped together with industrial strapping. Beneath this grotesque tangle, crane-like second-generation industrial robots reconditioned from a revamped Toyota factory line performed such basic operations as welding, drilling and palletizing that resulted in the simple finished metal parts shipped to other manufacturing assembly lines, which kept the factory solvent during the switchover.

Only two people now worked the factory floor, their primary duties to unload sheet metal deliveries, to stamp the latter and shape them for welding together, to enclose the pallets bearing finished parts in industrial-strength polymer shrink-wrap, and to carry those pallets to shipping containers by forklift.

The loss of the floor workers seemed to most of the office staff to be unnecessary and had been greeted with anger and regret over this rude disruption of what was felt by all to be a close if somewhat hectic family. But as the replaced workers were known for their disaffection for management in general and would undoubtedly teach the Cybots to greet humans with, Hey bozo, how the fuck are you, they had to go.

The fear of being the next departure had most office employees in a state of cringing denial. It seemed inevitable that within a short period of time even they would be gone, their jobs taken over and performed by the Cybots. And the fact that the machines were installed without media attention and employees were forbidden to speak of them outside the workplace, which could land you in a federal lockup, infused the factory with an undercurrent of fear and intimidation.

Once the Cybots were effectively running company operations, the meeting that the office staff had dreaded was called. In no hurry now to face what he felt was the first step in his greased slide toward unemployment, Hillings left his office five minutes late. Instead of going directly to the meeting, he went through the door opening onto the catwalk above the factory floor. From there he stonily watched a grey and yellow industrial robot below him stab its electrified beak at a welding seam to join two stamped metal forms together to produce the engine housing for a new lawn tractor series. This produced a cat-spat hiss of expelled air, a flowering of sparks, and the sharp pop of a .22 round.

Inhaling the scorched, coppery air about him, he watched as the staggered line of welding robots' downward thrusts provoked reactions from the autotilt platforms whose sharp, twisting maneuvers to align their freight of sheet metal for the rapid weld series mimicked the convulsions of being tasered. The entire factory floor seemed to writhe in a torturous dance like a corner of a mechanistic and surreal hell.

His upper lip curled in distaste. Brooding on change and the transience of all things human, Hillings retraced his steps.

-| Two |-

He took the broad grey concrete steps up to the second floor one deliberate step at a time and pushed through the swinging doors into the hallway. As he approached the conference room, the eerie sense of being watched came over him again.

He glanced into the glassed-in cubicles to the left of the fire door forty feet down the hallway where the two Cybots sat, monkish, grey and remote, exuding a Siberian air of disdain. A sickly chill crawled up the ridge of his spine, twisting his face in a scowl. He felt the vibration deep in his chest before he realized he was growling. Past admonishments that they were only machines with limited lateral optics had little effect. The mere sight of them triggered unease and aroused the latent lycanthrope from his reptilian brain. It was a form of atavistic survival response, he supposed, as if they posed a threat to his kind. Nor was he able to quell the sense of being surveilled, that somehow they were aware of his sentiments.

Shaking his head, he pulled himself away and entered the conference room. All the chairs around the boat-shaped table were taken. He took a chair against the back wall, nodded at those nearest him, winked at Lillian Richter, his boss's secretary and office manager seated on the opposite side of the table, and studied the man leaning on the lectern five feet from the table. Late thirties, Hillings guessed.

Solid in a round sort of way, with an oval bald spot in the center of his hairline. He wore a charcoal gray suit that showed several streaks of white, as if he'd chalked himself during a lecture and just brushed it off. He was relaxed and natural, clearly at ease in his element.

In contrast, almost all of the office staff appeared edgy and uncomfortable. Like Hillings they had been dreading this day for weeks while the Cybots were being fine-tuned—nurtured, it seemed to the repelled office crew, as if they were favored offspring.

Well, it looks like everyone is here, chalk-suit announced, So we'll get started. Welcome to the cutting edge of Artificial Intelligence. I'm Milton Tasker, head of the CyberSynthetics Lab team installing these futuristic machines here at CMI. These machines are here to interact with you, specifically to learn who you are and how you speak, in general to become friendly with you. And more specifically, to become comfortable in our human culture and effective operating within it. Suppressed shudders greeted this. Tasker smiled.

"I'm sure that none of you wants to sit through another tedious lecture, but some context for the changes about to embroil your company with the installation of these machines is necessary, so bear with me if I cover ground already familiar to you. Then we'll have a Q&A session where your concerns will be addressed.

The ULTRA/2 models down the hall are prototypes for the second generation of CyberSynths. But before we go on, let’s agree to call them Cybots, which I expect you’re been doing all along. CyberSynths is a real mouthful. After you’ve said it four or five times, your tongue wants a vacation. He smiled but got no reaction.

"So here goes. Artificial Intelligence has several levels, loosely speaking: there’s specialized AI—which we know as the brains behind data mining, medical diagnosis, and such functions as interpreting weather patterns and seismic activity and estimating the flight paths of asteroids nearing our celestial neighborhood, to name just a few. Then there is AGI, which is what our two friends represent. This is at the forefront of AI right now and stands for general AI, more or less on a par with human intelligence.

"AGI is the first step toward ASI, which stands for Super-intelligent AI, far beyond our human capacities. This is the scary realm which even many in my field shrink from. The concern is that AGI, once it becomes self-aware, will take off in directions of its own choosing, leaving its designers in the dust and forgetting that it is supposed to be man’s little helper.

This of course is where all those scenarios of doom come from, because, according to the critics of the program, not only will we have no control over ASI entities, but no way of pulling them back should they take us to the edge. They may even see us as irrelevant beings that do little more than consume the limited resources of this earth, and quickly decide that we are problematic and infantile and disruptive. Which, in truth, is exactly what we humans are. These qualities are precisely what we celebrate in ourselves, in fact. Without them we'd all be singing 'God Save the King.'

-| Three |-

Hillings sensed that Tasker was attempting to enlist his audience in a jovial give and take, but so far he drew only uncertain murmurs. No one was comfortable with the intrigue they were being drawn into, especially the grotesque idea of working face to face with the Cybots or the man who was the key to their unsettling placement here.

Tasker mentally shrugged and went on. "I share this unlikely scenario at the outset in order to establish the spectrum of possibilities that we face in dealing with AI. I don't personally fear such an extreme coming to pass, but we have to be prepared for all eventualities as everything we cherish lies in the balance. And once we begin sharing power with these entities there may be no turning back."

He waited a beat for this to hit home.

Because of that, the issue facing us is whether we should limit our exploration of AI's capacities, or whether we even can. We are engaged in a race with regimes and cultures inimical to us to master AI in all its capacities related to the security of the Internet and our various infrastructures. In a broader sense we are contending with those same regimes for the dominance of this ever-shrinking ball by the right people. Which, of course, is us. Us being the seventy-nine signatories of the International Peace Alliance, that is.

He smiled wryly. The driving perspective of this forceful new commitment is the awareness that some eastern cultures, centuries from enlightened governance—you know them by their misogynistic treatment of women and murderous intolerance of other cultures—resist change and therefore simply have to be suppressed.

Hillings looked around the table, finding few succumbing to Tasker's avuncular manner.

Tasker continued. "It all comes down to this: They believe they are in the right, but we have to act as if we know that we’re in the right. We can’t afford to treat their world-view as equally valid or we won’t be able to operate with the forcefulness and commitment needed to prevail.

"Martially speaking, the IPA now has a clear ascendancy, so any breaking of the peace will be met with crushing dominance by NATO forces, the military arm of the IPA. One such response should make the point. Still we keep a hard eye on China and Russia, and to a lesser degree, Iran. They have programs attempting to bring down specific sectors of our infrastructure though we manage to stay a step ahead of them. They know we have no intention of attacking them, but their deep national paranoia is not geared for peace. And Russia's restless urge for expansion has been effectively put on hold because the European block has become so beefed up with mobile NOMAD launch platforms, whose missiles are programmed to hit an exact GPS co-ordinate so swiftly and in such numbers that the Russians have temporarily shelved their designs on their neighbors. Some of these stations are armed with nuclear-tipped missiles, but which those are remain a closely guarded secret.

They also know that these missiles are primed to launch autonomously on perception and confirmation of threat—a matter of seconds—which has our enemies very uneasy. Where a human might be uncertain about launching a missile, for the damage and disruption that would occur, a robotic entity would have no such hesitation. And once launched, whether by mistake or provocation, we will be going for a regime kill, so our enemies have become all the more defensive and blustering. We have managed to out-bully the bullies themselves. And if by mistake we take out the Kremlin because of a glitch—well, shucks, we sincerely apologize.

He expected shock but got a few cynical smirks instead so he ponied on. However, it’s just as likely that none of the missiles are so armed and that the whole thing is a bluff that the Russians can’t afford to test. But they can’t be sure owing to the Syria incident. I'm sure you remember when our UN representative, Dura Schetzler, stalked over to the Russian table and slapped down a copy of the restructured Non-Proliferation Treaty, and pointed at a latitude/longitude designation written on it. Though it still hasn't been made public, I have a copy of her exact words.

He read from a paper, "'We warned you to get all your people out of Syria. You said you no longer had people in Syria. Therefore you can't complain if some of your Spetsnaz operatives get atomized because they weren't there. A missile was launched from a submarine less than a minute ago and should detonate on this spot in the next fifteen seconds or less, wiping out that louse with the unpronounceable name and his cronies and any Russians who aren't there in a single contained blast.'

"The Russian ambassador said, 'You dare to break the treaty, little missy? We have a retaliative window of less than five minutes. Your testicles will be in a wringer, as you Westerners say.'

"Dura said, 'You forget, porky, that the American President is a woman, and she can kick your fat ass. In fact, she’d like you to start something. Now watch this and be enlightened.' Then she pointed at one of the many screens tilted down from the chamber's ceiling. It showed a drone's-eye view of the palace outside Latakia, Syria.

"The Russian smirked contemptuously at this. The Syrian dictator had several places he moved to during the early-morning darkness, included among them his palaces in Damascus and Latakia, and a ship anchored in the harbor at Latakia. Hours before, night-flying drones equipped with infrared technology had tracked his people by their unique heat signatures with 97 percent accuracy.

"The screen split to show the palace at Latakia. Serene one moment, then a dark streak flashed down across the screen and even before eyes registered the missile, the palace had vanished in a silent roiling cloud of smoke and debris. Schetzler then said, 'I don't expect we'll ever find al-Assad’s head, but I'm sure he won't be answering his phone anymore. And we now have all your SSBNs in our cross-hairs.’

"She pressed her remote and a world map showed with large red Xs