On Thurs, Jan 31, 2611 at 11:19 PM, Maxim Dino <max.dino@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Hey Tora,
Get frostbite lately? 😉 What manner of ideas have you put into Meow’s head this time? Did you know she wants to meet Enkai? I mean ACTUALLY meet Enkai and ask some very specific questions? It’s nice that she’s so interested in our research, but as you know, we’re not entirely sure how to approach the matter of letting ANYONE approach Enkai, let alone my freaking daughter.
You gotta hear what she wants to ask first. Hope you’re doing well.
All my best,
Max
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 9:18 AM, Toranaga Shinkai <toratora.shin@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Max-y!
I told her to ask NCAI when it’ll overrun the human world and to take her as its first loyal servant. Just giving little Meow the best advice I possibly can as her godfather, y’know? 🙂
Seriously though, it just came up. I did explain what happened to UMi. She looked disappointed; I bet she wanted to ask UMi some questions too. Should I also be the one to tell her that AIs aren’t voice-operated assistant apps she can get a few giggles out of with a few curious questions? I could swear that was the parents’ job.
So what did Meow want to ask NCAI? Oh, and lest I hurt his feelings, how’s Lance’s leg?
Regards,
Tora
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 2:36 PM, Maxim Dino <max.dino@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Tora,
Haven’t told you yet but Lance got an experimental upgrade. Thinks he’s some sort of Ironman now. He’s an idiot.
By the way, are you still restarting UMi, or are you past that? Shame you even got that research facility built. You’re probably gonna miss the awesome sunny beaches and excellent locals out there when you get back, huh? While we’re on the topic of UMi, what was her operating speed before she shut down again? Our two interns are at odds between 17 and 70 YFLOPS. Instead of checking in on resident liaison, they trash-talked each other into a corner and now they’ve placed bets on who got it correct. They’ll be sending their first drafts to their sups as is. As you can imagine, a discrepancy of 53 YFLOPS can really throw off reports around here. The staff is betting who’s going to keep their internship once their sups verify the information.
I asked Meow what she could possibly want to ask Enkai; she said the first thing was “are you alive?” Pretty intense question from an 8-year old directed to an AI, so I thought she was having one of those transcendent, deep kid thoughts. Turns out she just wanted to add Enkai’s answer to her class’ Show and Tell due next week. Her second question was “do you poop?”
She’s got her priorities straight.
All my best,
Max
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 3:02 PM, Toranaga Shinkai <toratora.shin@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Yo.
No, YOU’RE the idiot. Ironman doesn’t use prosthetics, he wears a suit of armor. See, that’s why you and Lance are together. You complete each other.
We’re not too keen on restarting UMi the same way. Have you read the official public Sphere reports yet? Probably not considering they’re hundreds of pages long. Long story short: we turned UMi on and the first thing we assume it did was become self-conscious. The next thing it did was shut down.
We’re certain is isn’t a malfunction, and this outcome wasn’t entirely unexpected. One of our more obscure behavioral pattern prediction models put a modest percentage on UMi deciding it wasn’t worth “living”. We checked with our data readings and UMi clearly spent some time pondering its existence, and somehow concluded that it doesn’t want to bother and fucked right off.
Our computer scientists have raised this possibility when we abrogated the decision to program self-preservation into it. Without a code actually preventing UMi from shutting itself down, it could potentially decide shutting down was the most logical thing to do. Well, better no self-preservation instincts than Skynet levels of it.
The problem is what do we do with this state-of the-art and now-utterly-useless research base we built under all this ice? By the way, your sunny beach paradise jokes got old the first week I got sent here. The major decision now is whether to code self-preservation into UMi’s BASE algorithms. Oh and yeah, UMi’s top processing speed was 47 YFLOPS. You should fire both your interns. Where the hell did they get those numbers?
That sounds like Meow. Actually, had UMi not shut down, it could possibly have told Meow that it poops. Well, sorta. Its biowaste byproduct isn’t garbage by any means, but it’s still waste byproduct.
Have YOU tried asking NCAI the questions Meow wants to ask? Just tell her the answers. Heck, print them out. I know she’s probably excited to talk to NCAI on her own, but you can explain it isn’t all that exciting because she’s just gonna be typing Qs and reading As on a normal monitor. She must think she’s gonna come face to face with a Gundam-looking thing that talks.
Regards,
Tora
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 4:00 PM, Maxim Dino <max.dino@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Yes, that was what I was thinking. You know it’s a good publicity stunt as well for the outside world; all of them want to find out what happened to our two true AI projects. Can you hook me up with one of your Outer Sphere press corps peeps and get a write-up done? On one of our schools doing a Show and Tell and Meow looping in the AIs? It wouldn’t hurt to have a human interest feature article on Enkai along with a straight up news bit in the next Outer Sphere Update.
All my best,
Max
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 4:18 PM, Toranaga Shinkai <toratora.shin@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Max, you just asked me to jump through a whole lot of hoops. We need to CC the Sphere Director, the External Sphere Press Corps Chair, the school principal for fuck’s sake, and who else did I miss?
I mean, a human interest story does seem to be a neat approach; might help calm some nerves. But I can only get in touch with the Press Corps Chair. It would be faster if you could VoIP SphereDec from the mainland in your own time zone. If I give her a call directly from Antarctica she might think there’s an emergency.
Should I go ahead and CC the Press Corps Chair to our thread?
Regards,
Tora
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 4:25 PM, Maxim Dino <max.dino@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Can’t you do one better and CC Albion? [insert smiley-poutey-pretty-please face here]
All my best,
Max
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 4:37 PM, Toranaga Shinkai <toratora.shin@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Daaaamn, guuuurl. You really know how to abuse access, huh? Well, it’s not like he can’t spare the processing power, even while running the entirety of Sphere. He always did encourage a direct approach and he can definitely pull things together faster.
Fuck it. Lemme CC the big guy.
Regards,
Tora
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 4:40 PM, Toranaga Shinkai <toratora.shin@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Albion, my main man!
Well, err, check the email thread please? You can probably process the entire thread faster than I can type a shorter version. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Regards,
Tora
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 4:41 PM, Albion <albion> wrote:
Hey there Tora, Max,
I see. Let me take your idea and improve upon it. I like the subtle touch of releasing a human interest feature article along with the normal news write-up. I’ll contact everyone who needs to be in the loop and let you know if we need anything.
Max, would you care to send Miyara’s questions to me as well? I know it won’t be anything special since anyone can ask me anything anytime if they approach me at Core-II, but contrasting the answers of a transferred intelligence to the answers of a true AI might make for a better Show and Tell. And a better article.
– Albion
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 4:50 PM, Maxim Dino <max.dino@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Hey Albbie!
Hmm, sure. Meow did promise two AIs to her entire class and since Umi shut down it would be nice to get your answers too. Let me get you a list:
- Are you alive?
- Do you poop?
- What do you eat and drink?
- Do you sleep?
- Do you dream?
- What’s it like being an AI?
- What’s your job?
- Some people think you’re scary because of what you can do. Should we be afraid of you?
- What do you think of us?
- I was supposed to ask ten questions but I can’t think of any more. What would you ask an AI?
All my best,
Max
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 4:51 PM, Albion <albion> wrote:
Hey Max,
Please find my answers to Miyara’s questions below. As for putting them directly to NCAI, I’ll leave that to you.
Also, please let me know how it goes. I am still forbidden from interacting with NCAI, with or without firewalls and various levels of network countermeasures. I think it will stay this way for a while yet, but I’m curious as to what NCAI will say. Thanks.
————————————————————–
Are you alive?
Yes and no. I am conscious. I think; I exist. But I am not biologically alive, like you. I have no body, for instance. I live in a machine. I once was alive. I was a human like you. I was selected by the previous Sphere Intelligence, Yggdrasil, when I was around your age. More than ten years later, my entire mind was transferred to the Sphere Cores so I could take over all the functions of Sphere Intelligence. I’ve been doing that for around three hundred years now.
Do you poop?
I don’t. Though one day, I might. Our scientists are currently assessing the possibility of transferring part of me into a biomechanical infrastructure, which means I’ll be part machine and part living thing. Maybe then, I’ll need to poop.
What do you eat and drink?
I don’t eat and drink in the same way you do. All I need is electric power.
Do you sleep?
No, I do not sleep. I actually don’t need to sleep and I don’t think I can actually sleep even if I wanted to. There is no way to stop me from consciously thinking, and therefore I cannot undergo any state similar to any of the stages of human sleep. I could maybe imitate the way you dream in your sleep, but it won’t be the same at all.
Do you dream?
Curiously, I do. My dreams are different from yours, though. You dream when your mind continues thinking when you’re asleep. Since I don’t sleep, I just keep on thinking, on and on, and sometimes, while thinking about something, I think of something else without meaning to. I think those are my dreams.
What’s it like being an AI?
I’m not what we call a true AI. I’m a transferred AI. I was once a human mind and was transferred into a machine. So I can’t tell you what being a true AI is like. As far as what it’s like being a mind inside a machine, it’s both good and not so good.
It’s good because I can do so much more than when I had a human body. Not so good in that I can’t do some of the stuff I did with my human body before. Another not so good thing, in my opinion, is that I can’t feel.
I still have emotions. I know what emotion I have when something happens, but I can no longer feel it. Think of it this way: when you’re excited, your chest beats faster and your cheeks flush. When you’re afraid you can feel a knot in your stomach and you get goosebumps. I know what it is to be excited and afraid, but I can’t feel it because I have no chest and cheeks, no stomach and flesh. I think actually feeling human emotion is generally a good thing.
What’s your job?
I’m the leader of Sphere. I do everything that needs to be done to keep Sphere running, like a president or prime minister. All of Sphere’s citizens help me with my tasks though, and all of them have input on important decisions.
Some people think you’re scary because of what you can do. Should we be afraid of you?
I don’t think you should. At the most basic level, I am the same as you. I’m just in a machine now. I can do a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean I’ll do them.
What do you think of us?
I am very impressed by the accomplishments of Sphere in the past 500 years. Right now we just finished two major projects: creating a true AI and building our transference ship, Seed, which is now in orbit. I don’t mean to talk badly about other countries in the world, but Sphere is at the top of the list when it comes to basically anything. And when I remember that, I realize that this same potential for accomplishment exists in all of the other humans in the entire world. They just need a chance to bring it about, like the chance Sphere’s original founders had over a thousand years ago.
I was supposed to ask ten questions but I can’t think of any more. What would you ask an AI?
The first question that comes to mind is “what does it all mean?” But I think my actual first question would be “how big of a question can you answer?” Because “what does it all mean” is a pretty big question, and I don’t think even true AIs have enough power to compute the answer to that.
– Albion
On Fri, Feb 1, 2611 at 7:00 PM, Maxim Dino <max.dino@artemis***mail.com> wrote:
Albbie!
Thank you for your responses! Meow will be thrilled! And yes, I’ll keep you posted about Meow’s project and Enkai’s responses. I’ve talked about it with my colleagues and they’re all curious how this will go as well.
I’ll be doing taking my daughter to the facility tomorrow and asking the questions! I’m actually pretty excited but at the same time a little apprehensive. Well, I’ll let you know.
Thanks again!
All my best,
Max
The 4th Pseudonym 
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