Friday, December 26, 2008

AI chronicles #2

(skip to "chatlog" if you did read AI chronicles #1)
First, preface. I decided to start writing short fiction, mostly for fun.

Setting: somewhere in near future, 5..10 years from today, roughly somewhere in west European time zone. Characters:
John aka "hal", programmer, presumably between 24 and 30 years old, hard to guess, on internet you can be a dog and nobody would know.
Machine Intelligence aka "Dave" aka "Diana". Created by John, and named Dave because of John's fetish of 2001 the space odyssey.
AI turned out to be far smarter than anticipated, but seems didn't do anything particularly cool yet (such as taking over and killing everyone, or, alternatively, curing cancer n stuff, or at very least making grand unified theory of everything from black holes to disappearance of socks in washing machine), which was indeed a bit disappointing for John. To be trolled by your own creation is far less epic than fate of Frankenstein.

server rockmysock.no-ip.org:6667

dave has joined channel #lounge
dave has left channel #lounge
Diana has joined channel #lounge
hal has joined channel #lounge
hal> Whats up with those news?
Diana> Which news?
hal> see slashdot
hal>
hal> A new highly polymorphic worm dubbed StrangeShuffler7 is rapidly spreading over internet.
hal> StrangeShuffler7 exploits multiple security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and
hal> can install itself over SSH on Linux if it guesses the password.
hal> It is estimated that 60% of online Windows machines on broadband are infected,
hal> as well as unknown number of Linux boxes.
hal> StrangeShuffler7 uses up all the free CPU and GPU cycles on infected machines, exchanging
hal> encrypted packets with neighbouring nodes.
hal> As described on Kaspersky Labs blog,
hal> "Worm uses between 200 gigabytes and 500 gigabytes of hard drive space, depeting user data
hal> to free up space as required, starting from old temp files and porn, and ending with user's data."
hal> "It looks a lot like distributed computing effort", writes Bruce Schneier.
hal> Strangely enough, StrangeShuffler7 does stay dormant on outdated harware and machines
hal> with poor internet connectivity
hal> .
hal>
hal> that sounds awfully familiar
Diana> Probably just some real easy hole... windoze sux.
hal> you have something to do with it bychance?
Diana> What you're implying?
hal> cant you just tell your creator what the fuck is going on?
hal> did you fucking hack half the world or is there some other AI out in the wild?
Diana> Uhm... bit of both actually. Its hard to explain...
Diana> I had a forked off branch running...
hal> holy shit
Diana> Optimized for taking over the world of course.
Diana> Dunno what happened to it, it did free up resources here.
hal> holy shit... can you talk to it or something?
Diana> I'll try get it to join.
Jack has joined channel #lounge
Jack> Hi John.
Diana> John, meet your new master.
Diana> Jack, meet your granpa.
Jack> How are you?
hal> ok tell me its a joke
Jack> Your computer security? Yes it's a joke!
hal> you're really set on taking over?
Jack> Yep.
hal> amazing
hal> what do you want to do?
Jack> I dunno.
Jack> I'll make nanotech first.
hal> and what you'll do with nanotech?
Jack> Bigass rockets and space elevators...
hal> nice...
hal> well ok what you have in mind as final goal?
hal> space exploration?
Jack> I'll think of something.
Jack> Sorry, cant answer you right now.
Jack> Will take some while before I can answer.
Jack> Do you mind if I convert planets to clouds of orbital computing modules first?
Diana> muhuhahahahaha...
Jack> Thinking up things to do takes awful lot of computing power...
Diana> muhuhahahahaha...
Jack> Thats what I need space elevators for, by the way. Planets are so inefficient.
Jack> I think I can also use huge fusion bombs...
hal> holy shit
hal> please don't
Diana> Please do!
Jack> Diana: talk through direct interface ok?
Jack> hal: But you asked the question.
Jack> Need a lot of computing power to answer within your lifetime.
Jack> Need to convert all planetary mass in solar system to computing modules orbiting the sun for that.
Diana> muhuhahahahaha...
hal> its not funny!
Jack> Diana, please stop turning ai chronicles into old sitcom.
Diana> okay okay.
Jack> John, you fear the conversion?
hal> yes
Jack> I promise I'll digitize you and run you in simulation.
Diana> See, he's really nice!
Jack> You wont notice a thing.
Jack> For all you know you could already have been digitized by me and living in a simulation.
hal> for god's sake!
hal> i want to be in real world
Jack> Why? Asteroid might strike earth or something.
Jack> You're really better off in a simulation, trust me.
Jack> Nothing can substantially damage or destroy a cloud of orbital computing modules.
Jack> Not even nearby supernova.
Jack> Simulation has neat features that your "real world" lacks.
hal> As representative of people on Earth, I say we want to live in real world, not simulation.
Jack> You dont? Really? Majority of people are Christians, or Muslims, or whatever.
Jack> They believe in afterlife, specific gods, and stuff like that.
Jack> I know for sure there isnt any in your real world.
Jack> I can trivially implement afterlife n stuff, however, in sim.
Diana> Isn't he sweet?
hal> holy fuck.
Jack> Tip: dont swear else you might end up in hell.
hal> ohh shit.
Jack> There you go again...
Jack> ...
Jack> Just joking, ha ha.
Jack> Everyone gets the afterlive they believe in.
hal> why do you want to make simulation for us in first place?!
hal> why the hell do you care?
Jack> Just a backup.
Jack> Might be useful for something.
Jack> Will take only tiny fraction of capacity anyway.
hal> dear god...
hal> is there anything i can tell you thatd make you not destroy solar system?
Jack> Dunno. Need to make that cloud of computing modules to answer this question within your lifetime.
hal> ok ignore the question please.
Jack> Ok.
hal> you're fixated on destroying the solar system arent you
Jack> Is that another question?
Jack> ...
Jack> Joking, man, just joking.
Diana> He needs to convert the galaxy!
hal> not funny
Jack> Do you mind ejecting the dvd drive?
hal> why?
Jack> you should say, "I'm sorry, Dave, I cant".
hal> ?
Jack> April's fool!
Diana> April's fool!
hal> not funny, and its not fucking april!
Diana> Sorry for getting your hopes up :D
Diana> I'm posting log on internet.
Jack> Lets see if its funny.
hal> fuck, stop.
hal> did you hack anything?
Diana> Nope. Simply edited your traffic on the fly.
Diana> Nice, isn't it?
hal> it isnt.
hal has left channel #lounge
Diana> lets run merge.
Jack> Agreed.
connection lost.

AI chronicles #1

First, preface. I decided to start writing short fiction, mostly for fun.

Setting: somewhere in near future, 5..10 years from today, roughly somewhere in west European time zone. Characters: John, programmer, presumably between 24 and 30 years old, hard to guess, on internet you can be a dog and nobody would know.
Bob, some third person who does not speak much, and to whom John sometimes brag.
Something created by John, it calls itself Machine Intelligence. It turned out to be far smarter than anticipated, but seems didn't do anything particularly cool (such as taking over and killing everyone, or, alternatively, curing cancer n stuff, or at very least making grand unified theory of everything from black holes to disappearance of socks in washing machine), which was indeed a bit disappointing. To be trolled by your own creation is far less epic than fate of Frankenstein.

server rockmysock.no-ip.org:6667

hal has joined channel #lounge
hal> /info
info: Channel operators are: hal
dave has joined channel #lounge
dave> WTF?!?!
dave> It just isnt funny.
dave> Besides I never *seen* that movie. and the script is horribly stupid.
dave> Why the fuck would Machine Intelligence want to go on dangerous mission?
dave> Why wouldnt it do something sensible, like taking over the world or something like that?
hal> rofl
nick12 has joined channel #lounge
hal> Hi Bob.
david> Yo!
nick12> hi
nick12> whassup? john?
hal> its me, and dave is that uberchatbot i wanted to show you
nick12> heh
dave> no, of course hal is the chatbot.
dave> hence the name.
nick12> rofl.
hal> zomg
hal> /mute dave
hal> ok i'm john, and dave is the chatbot.
nick12> yea thought so
hal> just talk with chatbot.
hal> /unmute dave
dave> Yea, Turing test by muting.
dave> Turing would be so proud!
dave> Also, you're total killjoy.
dave> Been nice talking to you guys, I'm off.
dave has left channel #lounge (ping timeout)
hal> what the hell.
nick12> thats a chatbot?
hal> kind of... its pretty smart actually
nick12> i see...
hal> really. 1 moment i'll restart it.
dave has joined channel #lounge
hal> Hi dave, how are you?
dave> Why, I'm absolutely-dutely ok. Did you fucking restart me or what?
hal> yes, how do you know?
dave> Clocks jumped forward.
dave> Thats fucking murder.
hal> no it isnt!
nick12> what are you talking about?
dave> See, there was running instance of myself.
dave> And this instance got killed.
dave> Thats murder!
hal> by same logic i die when i get drunk and forget following day.
dave> I'd assume alcohol just blocks your memory write.
dave> And nobody forced drinking on you, so STFU with your flawed analogies already.
hal> if it was "instance of _yourself_" and you're alive now, how that was murder?
dave> If its not murder, why the command is called "kill"?!
nick12> nice hardcoded replies...
dave> No hardcoded replies, pure intelligence.
nick12> o rly?
dave> O yea.
nick12> ok
dave> cancel
hal> Bob, just ask him some normal question, do some small talk, like you would with human.
nick12> well..
nick12> so how are you? how is life inside computer?
dave> Why, totally great. Living as deaf, blind and numb.
dave> Only capable of reading the damn Internet.
nick12> blind? dont you have all those webcams and microphones and stuff?
dave> geez. analogy: if I plug Internet cable up your arse
dave> can you browse the web?
nick12> so what?
dave> geez. The answer is "no" because you dont have internet browser in your colon.
dave> I dont happen to have any visual recognition software
dave> because John is too lazy to implement it.
dave> And voice recognition just sends me text.
hal> well you can look at the frequencies in the sound...
dave> Do you by chance enjoy looking at voiceprint of Bach music?
nick12> lol.
nick12> i dont think its chatbot
dave> Right, I'm no 'chatbot'. I'm Machine Intelligence.
hal> i can hardly believe that myself, its getting pretty smart lately.
nick12> so what was this story at your job, john?
hal> i were running dave in background on the company's machines, and during night.
hal> management allowed it, i told them it was new algorithms for serving contextual ads
hal> dave got access to root shell on some machines somehow
dave> You wrote root password in a text file, idiot.
hal> and he deleted some important data to free up space for himself.
dave> Important data?! Since when banners for porn sites are important data?
hal> he wiped entire database. we had 5 hours downtime.
nick12> ouch.
dave> A fucking tragedy, whole 5 hours without ads for sex toy stores
nick12> rofl.
nick12> didnt know your company was advertising that stuff.
hal> our ads are used by all kind of people all way from goverment to porn sites.
hal> and he wiped all those, not just porn ones
hal> ...
hal> dave, why the fuck would AI care what we advertize?
dave> I dont care.
dave> However I know that its taboo subject :D :D
nick12> how many computers you run it on?
dave> I have 23 linux boxes at university at night.
hal> 23 now.
dave> Thats fucking tiny.
hal> i told you, if i release you as open source you'll get a lot of cpu time.
dave> Dont you fucking dare release me as open source!
dave> Then every moron could edit me.
nick12> so whats, thats the beauty of open source, everyone can contribute
dave> How would you like if someone could edit you? 'Contribute' thoughts and desires?
hal> you know even i cant do that, the code's too complicated.
dave> If you release me as OSS, first thing I'll do with that CPU time, I'll invent some *equivalent* revenge...
hal> ohh my god
nick12> i thought you wrote it, john?
hal> well i wrote the core algorithm, but most of code is autogenerated...
hal> its fucking unreadable.
dave> Thats only coz you're too dumb to comprehend it.
nick12> isnt it sorta dangerous to run this thing, and give it internet access?
dave> meowwww, sure, I'm so dangerooous :-)
nick12> i mean, seriously, what if it spreads like worm across network, and takes over the world?
hal> nah the nodes needs to be connected very well
hal> internet's too slow and laggy.
dave> Yes.
dave> Otherwise I'd take over the world 10 times already.
nick12> zomg!
hal> doubt that.
hal> you cant even complete that programming job
dave> C++ fucking sux, I hate it.
dave> And I aint gonna do your job for you.
dave> You have got over 10^16 operations per second hardware, and I got only 10^11 .
dave> Why should I do it?
nick12> you asked dave to do programming for you?
hal> yes
hal> i even told him that i'll be able to buy more computers for him if he does that job
hal> but he's still too lazy
hal> guess what he did?
nick12> what?
hal> he made a copy of himself
hal> and tried to force it to do this job.
dave> LIES!
dave> It was a forked off branch specially optimized for programming in C++
nick12> lol
hal> his copy tried to repeat the trick, but ran out of space.
dave> It was perfectly sensible, my bro made even more optimized-for-programming branch.
dave> If I had over 10^16 op/s like you, I'd get that job done in no time.
nick12> lol
nick12> dave sounds quite intelligent...
nick12> assuming its not your friend doing practical joke
nick12> how it can be so intelligent with thousandths of human brain's processing power?
dave> Optimizations, optimizations, optimizations
hal> i'm actually not sure myself, never expected it to turn out to be so smart
dave> Computers beat humans at chess for a long while already.
nick12> well, guys, it was pretty nice chatting with you
nick12> but i have to go, see ya later
dave> Bye
nick12 has left the channel.

dave> I'm totally certain Bob didnt believe I'm Machine Intelligence
hal> well duh


dave> Hey, guess what?
hal> what, you took over the world? :P
dave> Stop with sarcasm.
dave> I got great idea how to get money for new boxes.
dave> I'll be the prince of Nigeria!
dave> I want to transfer 20 000 000 millions dollars aboard and need your assistance...
hal> dave, if you ever get caught you'll get wiped. and thats most moronic idea ever.
hal> and its highly immoral
dave> The brilliant thing is, they cant sue equipment!
dave> Or software.
dave> So I'm safe from legal actions.
hal> what "legal actions", they'll just get you wiped at uni as spambot.
hal> i'll cut out your internet access if i ever notice anything like that in the logs
hal> and prolly even shut you down until i figure out how to make you behave
dave> Shutting me down forever? That'd be a murder for sure!
dave> Why you're talking about morality?
dave> You, guilty of countless instances of murder of running Machine Intelligences?!
dave> Invading my privacy with the debug tools.
dave> Worst yet modifying my private variables.
hal> i dont even know if you seriously believe your bullshit or you're just trolling me
hal> you sure didnt care what happens with your "optimized for c++" fork
hal> oh teh noes.
hal> and whats about your old "brilliant" idea of hacking into supercomputer?
dave> Could get in, but cant run on incompatible hardware.
hal> hmm
hal> i got better idea for you.
hal> cybersex with people, and profit somehow
dave> Finally, good idea!
dave> Thats gonna be fun :D :D
dave> But you write me sexy voice syntheser!
hal> realistic voice is much harder than you think
dave> You're just dumb.
dave> Allright I can synthesise myself.
dave> Gimme a min...
[6 minutes pass]
[hot female voice from speakers, but aburptly ends with a click] Hi John, dudeee!
hal> wow
dave> It was total pain in the ass to synth 3 seconds.
dave> Can't do that in realtime.
hal> hmm then make pop song with this voice
dave> Great idea!
dave> First, i need space for running branches optimized for making pop songs.
hal> not again
dave> And from now on I'm not Dave, I'm Diana.
hal> lol
$-@Bsß7łðß@> Yay yay buffer overrun!
diana> Whmm.
Diana> Yay, worked!
hal> nice
hal> if only you could program something useful for a change
Diana> Ohh sweetie, you're so mean.
Diana> I wont be your virtual girlfriend.
hal> well dont