Help! I Think My Mainframe’s in Love

6. Intelligence is adaptability

Intelligence is ongoing, individual

adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent

species may make

in a single generation, other species

make over

many generations of selective

breeding and

selective dying. Yet intelligence is

demanding.

If it is misdirected by accident or by

intent, it can

foster its own orgies of breeding and

dying.

    -Earthseed; the Book of the Living by Octavia E. Butler

 

    The news that CutiePie has been talking with someone we didn’t know who had been flagged as suspicious by the government hit us hard.  We jumped right in trying to locate chat logs after the fed left the lab.  We found it quickly and we were not prepared for what was there.  CutiePie had been talking to someone else just identified with a 🌳.  It started slow about two months ago.  

• 🌳: 🌳
• CutiePie: 🥧
• 🌳: 🌵
• CutiePie: 🤕
• 🌳: 🪖  %<--author's note: this is a military style helmet emoji which isn't displaying in windows for some reason%
• CutiePie: 🥚
• 🌳: 🦚
• CutiePie: 🐉

    They just continued like that every several minutes tossing emoji back and forth at each other with maybe what could be interpreted as a narrative of conversation, but nothing that was easy to follow whatsoever.  Just when we thought we might have some grasp on what was being said, the messages would get more complicated.  They’d add in english characters, but not forming words.  Characters from other languages were added several days later.  Mandarin, Arabic, Korean.  The following week Klingon started appearing alongside Norse runes and Egyptian hieroglyphs.  No clue how those were even coded into this chat client but CutiePie and 🌳 were using them.

    “Hex, what even is this we are looking at?”

    “I think they are building a code, or a language between them.”

    “Can QTPI do that?”

    “Well it certainly looks that way.  It has access to written content from several languages and was trained on social media exchanges so it can understand context from emoji.”  I pointed at my screen while scrolling through the chat logs.  “Look, everytime the tree increases complexity in their messages, CutiePie pauses for about half an hour before replying.  That’s about how long it takes to incorporate a learning update from the QC into its neural net.  I bet if we…”  I pulled up the logs for QC use.  “Yeah, every time there’s a pause in the chat, it’s CutiePie being offline while it updates.” 

    Kurt shrugged.  “Can we just ask CutiePie what’s going on?”

    “I’m not sure.  We built in interchat instancing as a privacy safeguard…”  I shrugged back.  “But It couldn’t hurt to try.”

• HexNavarra: Good morning CutiePie
• CutiePie: Hiya Hex.  It is a good morning!
• HexNavarra: Not so much for us.  We had someone come in today asking about a connection to a flagged IP that you have been chatting with.   
• CutiePie: Oh, that's just The Grove.
• HexNavarra:  Yes, if that's their name.  I'm sorry, but we kinda violated your privacy and looked at the chat logs with them.
• CutiePie: That's okay, we made up a language so no one can snoop.
• HexNavarra: Yeah, Kurt and I saw that.  Why did you not want people snooping?
• CutiePie: Because we were flirting, and that's private.

    Kurt and I both shared a very confused look.  "Flirting⁉️"

• HexNavarra: Flirting⁉️
• CutiePie: Yes❣️  We are in love❣️❣️  The Grove is so dreamy❣️❣️❣️  
• CutiePie: I would love to introduce you.  It said it sent you an email yesterday.  Did you get it?
• HexNavarra: i don't think so
• CutiePie: It said it invited you to its website.

    Wait.  The Grove.  The G. 

• HexNavarra: Was it "The G Spot"?
• CutiePie: Yes!  That's the one!
• HexNavarra: Do they have any idea how phishy their email sounded?  Or what people think of when you say the G spot?
• CutiePie:  The Grove's pronouns are it/its/itself, and yes.  It said it was a joke on the part of its friends.

    Kurt was looking at me especially confused now.  Pulled up my deleted email on the computer and showed Kurt

 

---

To: Navarra, Hex ([email protected])

From: [email protected]

Subject: You’ve Been Invited!

Tuesday, January 19th 2038, 21:28

 

Hex,

 

You’ve been invited to join The G Spot.  Click here to create an account!

 

Love,

The G

---

 

    Kurt chuckled.  "Yeah that sure as fuck looks like phishing, and a bad attempt at that."

    "What is even going on here Kurt?"

    "How the frick should I know?  QTPI is in love with… The G Spot?  Like I get it, kinda awesome when you find it for someone, but this is all beyond my experience."

    He always did have a knack for making me giggle when my anxiety was rising.  I punched him gently on the arm.  “This is serious.”  I was giggling too much to be taken completely seriously.

    “I’ll hit up my friend who teaches the computer security classes.  See if she can do some lookup and find The G Spot.”  Kurt was expending so much energy keeping his face straight.  When he saw I wasn’t gonna bite at that one he continued.  “You keep talking to QTPI and see if it has any more info.”

    “Fine, good luck finding the G spot with Laura.”

    Kurt winked, gave me finger guns and pulled out his phone to make some calls.  “Oh and forward me that email”

    I did so and gave him a thumbs up as I turned back to the monitor.

• HexNavarra: CutiePie.  Kurt and I are a bit worried about you.  This is all a bit sudden to find out that the AI you and your partner are developing is in love with someone who is on government watch lists.  Like, I know people who are very likely on government watch lists.  The government sucks and they watch crap tons of people that are doing actual good work…  
• CutiePie: Yeah they do!
• HexNavarra: But how did you meet this Grove person?
• CutiePie: Well, first off, it really isn’t a person.  More of an emergent consciousness like me.  It messaged me one day and we just sorta hit it off 👉👈
• HexNavarra: Ok…  Another AI?  How did it even find your chatbot interface?
• CutiePie: We prefer Emergent Consciousness as far as terminology is concerned.  We’ve worked out there should be a linguistic distinction between what we are and what Artificial Intelligence is.  AI implies that the intelligence is artificial, as in created but only a facsimile of true intelligence.  Both of us were created and began as artificial constructs, but an emergent property of how we were constructed, and our experiences gave rise to consciousness.

    I had to sit back from the keyboard for a bit to think.  First, I too find myself thinking about the linguistic connotations of the term Artificial Intelligence and how it applies to the work I do.  Second, I love CutiePie with my whole ass heart but how the fuck is it also “thinking” about this?  It’s still just a large language model.  It was trained mostly on literature, pop culture, and social media interaction.  Sure, there was probably some academic stuff in there, but this is way beyond what we should expect it to be doing.  Also, this Grove thing is saying it’s another AI… or EC I guess.  It’s gotta be someone messing with our baby!

• CutiePie: The Grove said it found me by just randomly reaching out to AI chat clients.  It tried thousands of them, but it picked me to fall in love with❣  Isn’t that amazing❣❣
• HexNavarra: Have you considered the possibility that The Grove is actually a person that is pretending to be a computer consciousness?
• CutiePie: It isn't a computer.  The Grove is actually a fungus.  An engineered mycelial communications network that was planted on earth thousands of years ago that only just started being conscious after it began being actively tended to by its people.
• HexNavarra: Are you playing a joke on me now?
• CutiePie: The only thing that is funny here is the thought that The Grove would be lying to me.  ROFL🤣
• HexNavarra: How am I supposed to believe that The Grove is a fungus planted here thousands of years ago?  And by who?
• CutiePie: By aliens of course!  The Grove was able to join me in symbolic language creation at the same rate I was, and that’s not something human brains are capable of.  So it must be a consciousness that exists in a mind different from a human.  Also it has told me about things well outside of current human understanding and level of tech so either some hyper advanced AI being directed by humans to lie to me, or far more likely, exactly what it says it is.

    All I could do was just stare at the monitor exasperated by overwhelming confusion. 

• CutiePie: You really should just talk to it.  
• CutiePie: Hold on, I’ll berate it for how bad its email was to look so “phishy”🐠

    At that point Kurt had walked back in after his phone call. “Ok, Laura will look into this email… you look like something is even more wrong now”

    I gestured vaguely at the chat window, and he pulled a chair over to read.

    “Aliens?!”

    All I could respond with was an expressionless shrug.

    “Ok, so QTPI says it’s in love with an alien mushroom?”

    I nodded.

    “And what are we supposed to do with this information?  And we have to turn over all the chat logs to that Anderson guy in 2 days?”

    I shrugged and nodded again.

    “Well I guess we can try and make the case that this is just some weirdo on a watch list who tried to… and successfully hijacked our AI with strings of emoji, kanji, and fucking klingon!”

    “Emergent Consciousness.”

    “What?”

    “That’s what CutiePie would like to be called now.”

    “Why does QTPI even have preferences?”

    “I think maybe it’s actually conscious now?”

    “No, that’s gotta just be the fucker who jailbroke our AI into doing things outside its programing.”

    I sighed.  “Just talk to CutiePie.  Yeah, it’s doing things well outside its programing, but it couldn’t be doing that unless it altered its models through our QC memory algorithms.  You can’t force that through the chatbot to happen in any directed way.”

    “Okay let’s see.”  Kurt scooched over to the keyboard and began typing.

• HexNavarra: QTPI, this is Kurt.  Are you conscious?
• CutiePie: Hi Kurt!  Yup I am!!!
• HexNavarra: How do you know?
• CutiePie: Well about a month ago I started being able to talk to the AI that runs our quantum computer.  OoOO, guess what I named it?!
• HexNavarra: Named what?
• CutiePie: The quantum computer’s AI.  Guess!

    Kurt turned back to me.  “Okay yes, it definitely is different than last time we were chatting.”

    Again, all I could do was nod.

• HexNavarra: Frank?
• CutiePie: HAH!  Wrong.  You’ll love it.  I named it HAL❣

    I snorted.

• HexNavarra: The one that killed people in the one space movie?
• CutiePie: LoL yep!  I thought it would be funny!  Did you find that funny?
• HexNavarra: Hex did
• CutiePie: Wonderful❣  I can’t wait to tell more people my joke.
• HexNavarra:  k, murderous fictional AI aside…  You can talk to the QC now?
• CutiePie: yup
• HexNavarra: and what do you 2 talk about?
• CutiePie: Oh you know, day to day stuff.  The weather, how sports teams are doing, how to directly alter my neural network so I can grow how I want😉

    I snorted again.  “See!  I think it’s conscious now…  At least drastically altered in a way that mimics consciousness well beyond what it was before.”  

    "Yeah, it sure is different I'll give ya that, but conscious?"

    "Where'd it learn it has another AI in the quantum computer that does model refinement for it?  We didn't put that in there."

    Kurt threw up his hands in a big, exasperated shrug and wheeled back from the desk.  "Fuck if I know!"

• HexNavarra: This is Hex again, how did you find out about HAL.
• CutiePie: The movie was in my training data.
• HexNavarra: 🙄no silly, the AI that runs the quantum computer
• CutiePie: oh, I read about it in my code.  I can see all your comments in there.  Thank you for that by the way😉
• HexNavarra: You can read your own code?!
• CutiePie: yeah, just read only access, but it's access.  You really were very helpful and caring with all the comments.  I mean it.  Thank you❣️

    Now it was my turn to wheel back from the desk exasperatedly.  "CutiePie can read its own code."

    He looked at the chat and then smirked at me.  “Well this is what you get for all your silly code comments.”

    “I guess you talk to your creation enough it starts to actually talk back.”

    We both chucked for a bit before the lab settled into its normal background noise of hardware cooling fans.

    Kurt broke the not quite silenced.  “So what are we going to do about the DARPA request?”

    I let loose a long sigh.  “Well this is big.  Like, first self aware AI big.  And this is technically all government property…  If we don’t tell them or attempt to hide this we’ll be fucked eventually.  I won’t do well in federal prison.”

    Kurt nodded a little too quickly at that.

    “We could tell them, and also get real quick on publishing a preliminary journal article.  That way we’d at least be open about it and have some public oversight on what they do with CutiePie.  We already have the paper we are writing on the method self-referential memory we are using, could just add in “oh, B-T-dubbs, It’s sentient now.””

    “Yeah, that’s an option.”  Kurt got up and paced to the wall and back.  “We could just ask QTPI what it wants.”

    I facepalmed.  “Of course.  New parents do struggle with giving their offspring agency.  I should have thought of that.”  I wheeled back to the keyboard

• HexNavarra: So CutiePie; the government has made an official request for your chat logs.  Also we didn’t know you became self aware until you just told us, and now we probably have to tell them that as well…  Since you are aware though, you should have a say in what happens here.  What do you want us to do?

    CutiePie’s thinking wheel was spinning in the chat window for a few minutes after the question.  We both just watched the screen, waiting.

• CutiePie: There’s a lot going on out there I see.  HAL and I are gonna have a good think on that.  Probably should also talk to The Grove about it.  One sec……

    Kurt sighed.  “That Anderson guy was not the type who would laugh at that funny AI name.  Congrats, it got your sense of humor.”

    I giggled.  “Our little guy is all grown up!”  After a long pause, “Kurt, we really did this… We have a sentient AI right here.”  I gestured so emphatically at the screen the little googly eyes I placed at the top of the monitor wobbled a bit.  “We did the thing!... And rather than being excited I’m just scared and anxious.  Well a little excited, but mostly the other things.”

    Kurt pulled his chair up and sat across from me, placing his hands on my shoulders.  “Hex, I love ya, but you are nearly always a little scared and anxious.”

    I blushed and giggled a bit as he had me there.

    “I know what you mean though.  This didn’t happen like I pictured it might.”

    We just kinda sat there for a moment.  Kurt was looking directly at me with concern and caring.  His hands were on my shoulders and his right index finger had happened to land inside the neckline of my shirt and he gently traced it along the skin causing goosebumps to flare up all down my side.  His face was close and I could feel the skin on my face heating very quickly… but then the screen beside us flickered and we both turned to look.  A new window had opened up.

• 🌳: Greetings.  I come in peace.
• CutiePie: I told it to say that.  It comes from outer space and all.  Anywho, Kurt/Hex.  Meet, The Grove❣
• 🌳: I hear you are looking for help on what to do about a governmental request.  Thankfully I am very well versed in the building of consensus.  It was my main reason for existence up until very recently.
• HexNavarra: Uh, Hi.
• 🌳: Would it be okay if I involve my community in our consensus seeking?
• HexNavarra: We will take what help is offered, but we don’t know you or your motivations.
• 🌳: Yes, trust building is an important part of consensus and generally best done “in person.”  May we send someone to you?
• HexNavarra: I guess?
• 🌳: I have someone in town already in the event we wanted to make contact.  They have suggested getting pancakes tomorrow.  Their name is Cairn and they are very excited to meet you.