The President poured a cup of coffee for Mike. He took a sip and grinned in shocked surprise at the flavor. “Tell me this isn’t the Peruvian coffee from Extracto.”
President Smith laughed, her old warm smile back on her face for a minute. “I’m afraid it is. I’ll never forget the first time I tasted the coffee you brought during the ELOPe emergency.”
Mike shook his head in bewilderment. “How does coffee from a boutique coffee roaster in Northeast Portland end up in the President’s office?”
She laughed again. “Oh, it’s hideously complex. You can’t imagine. It took three months of arguing with the Secret Service before they agreed. They have to send an undercover agent in to buy it. And then each bag has to be sampled and chemically analyzed for contaminants. But what’s the point of being President if you can’t drink the coffee you want?”
Now it was Mike’s turn to laugh.
“But, we have some serious topics to discuss, Mike.” Her expression turned sober. “First, the boy, Leon. What should we do about him? I know what my security advisors have said. But I want your opinion.”
“To do with him?” Mike asked, puzzled.
“One opinion is that he goes to jail, quietly, for the rest of his life. Another opinion is that he’s exposed. That the world knows who caused this disaster.”
“Oh, God. You can’t do that to him. He’s just a regular kid. An incredibly brilliant kid, but still just a kid. He never intended any of this.” Mike gestured, at what he wasn’t sure. The whole world, maybe. “Besides, his uncle coerced him into doing it.”
“Mike, the virus caused trillions of dollars in damages, millions, maybe tens of millions of lives lost. And the economic damages.” She shook her head. “We won’t know the full loss for months. It could be bigger than the impact of World War II, and it all happened in five days, Mike. Five days.”
“You know this isn’t just Leon’s fault. I tried to tell you ten years ago. If we could build ELOPe, an artificial intelligence, ourselves, then it was only a matter of time before someone else did it.”
“I thought that was what ELOPe agreed to do. To monitor and suppress any other AI research. That was what we agreed when I took office. I wouldn’t go after ELOPe, and you two would ensure that there wouldn’t be any more AI disasters.”
“And we did. But what happened is the consequence of that policy. It’s like the forest fire suppression techniques of last century. They tried to suppress every fire. Then brush and weak trees would build up in the forest. When it finally burned, instead of being a little fire, it would be a big fire.”
She gestured for him to continue.
“We suppressed any other AI from being developed in public. In large, organized research efforts. But meanwhile technology has moved forward. It took twenty-thousand servers for ELOPe to be created as an emergent intelligence. Ten years later computers are sixty times faster, and the smallest virus AI we saw was about two hundred computers.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that twenty-thousand computers are only within reach for large companies and big research organizations. Two hundred computers is within reach of a couple of motivated individuals. And in another ten years, an emergent artificial intelligence could run on a dozen computers. Then it’ll be within reach of any hacker in the world. ELOPe can’t monitor every computer and every individual on the planet. Then we’d be the worst kind of police state.”
“We need a long term solution to this.” Rebecca shook her head. “What do we do, ban all access to computers? Give security clearances to people before they are allowed to develop software?”
“I don’t think so. Even if you could, people have been jailbreaking their phones for twenty years to get around anti-modification restrictions. What we need is a new approach. Instead of suppressing AI development, let’s endorse it. Let’s organize it. We know now what can happen. The world will have seen it. Let’s get the most brilliant people in the world and put them on the task of developing the platform for AI to run on. One that has safeguards. One that incorporates a set of ethical behaviors for AI. And for the love of humanity, let’s put some hard switches on the military technology. We can’t have computers running away with our weapons.”
“And let me guess. You think we should recruit Leon for this effort.”
“Hell, yes. He’s a brilliant biologist. He doesn’t even realize how smart he is. Make him a principle researcher.”
“What do we do about his responsibility for all of this?”
“He’s carrying enough of a burden for his responsibility already. He’s crying himself to sleep. Get him a psychologist. And just tell the world it was a virus. Nobody needs to know it was him.”
President Smith was quiet. She nodded her head slightly, working out some internal dialogue.
He’d known this woman for fifteen years, but always at a remove. When he was a lead architect at Avogadro, she was the CEO. He became ELOPe’s caretaker, and later she became President. Two people, two different kinds of power. He sat quietly.
She turned back to him. “We’ll make it so.”
A few weeks later, Leon and his parents got ready to leave the Pentagon. The situation in New York had stabilized, and the military arranged a flight to bring them home. A military truck brought them to the airport through the quiet streets. Most civilian vehicles were still inert, but recently hackers had been distributing pamphlets on how to remove the computer controls in some cars to operate them manually. So they saw a few cars on the road.
Military programmers developed a firmware update for emergency vehicles and equipment, restoring them to operational status, albeit in isolated mode, with no computer communications.
The military radio mesh network was spread across the United States, providing low-bandwidth data communications. The Treasury department was kept operating at full capacity, printing cash and coins once more to enable commerce, and distributing money to every family. The finance department guaranteed any business-to-business transaction, so businesses could purchase supplies and goods on credit, until financial computer systems could be restored.
Leon was going home, for now. He was coming back in three months, and he’d be attending Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., on a full scholarship, courtesy of the United States Department of Defense. Georgetown would be establishing a new cross-specialization program in Artificial Intelligence and Ethics. He’d be not just a student but a lead researcher as well.
On the tarmac at the airport, a caravan approached with a limousine in the middle of four military trucks. The vehicle pulled up alongside the group and stopped. The door opened, and a man in a black suit opened the back door. The President of the United States of America stepped out, and walked up to the group.
She shook hands with Leon’s parents, and complimented them on having such an intelligent, compassionate son. They smiled and beamed. Then she approached Leon.
“I expect good things of you,” she said. “The world needs your help.”
Leon gulped.
Author’s Note
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed A.I. Apocalypse.
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Buy the first book in the series: Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears
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