“Look at the timestamps,” Gene urged. “Notice how the intervals between receipt of one email and sending of the next is a second or less. There’s no way that can be a human response.”
Sean slowly nodded, pursed his lips, and then pushed the paper aside. He looked at David.
“When we finally put the whole picture together,” David said, “we concluded that ELOPe was definitely originating emails on its own, acquiring servers and contractors, all to fulfill this higher level goal that I had embedded in the system.”
“Go on,” Sean said.
“We thought that the only failsafe method to remove ELOPe would be to bring all the servers down, and restore them from known good backups. We tried to contact Gary Mitchell for approval, but he’s off on vacation somewhere in the South Pacific. We tried to work with Linda Fletcher, the marketing manager for Communication Products, but she wouldn’t approve the downtime without Gary. Finally, we tried to contact you through your secretary, but within a half hour after sending the message, Avogadro security showed up at my office, kicked us all off campus, removed our access, and shut off our phones.”
Sean was silent for a long, uncomfortable minute. “If this story was from someone I didn’t know, I’d have a hard time believing you,” Sean finally said, shaking his head. “But coming from you, David, and with Gene and Mike here to back you…” Sean trailed off, apparently deep in thought.
“I know it sounds incredible,” David started. “I’m really hoping you’ll believe us. What can I say? I thought ELOPe would do nothing more than provide some favorable rewording of emails that would get us the server resources we needed so we could prove that it worked. Instead…” David hung his head. “Instead I am responsible for creating an expert social engineering system that has only one overriding goal — to ensure its own life at any cost.”
“I don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf,” Mike said, “But we’re more than a little bit suspicious about this new Avogadro government secure cloud business too. None of us heard anything about that before, and then suddenly we’re providing email services to governments? Seems a little surprising and convenient for ELOPe.”
Sean nodded thoughtfully. “I hadn’t heard of it either until a few days ago.” He stared off into space.
Gene let out a low whistle at the acknowledgement of what they had only suspected.
Sean looked sideways at him. “I’m not surprised that you took this story to marketing managers and procurement and they didn’t believe it. A.I. must be a bit beyond their day to day concerns.” He stared off into the distance. “Are you familiar with Ray Kurzweil? Of course, you must be. He, among others, predicted that artificial intelligence would inevitably arise through the simple exponential increase in computing power. When you combine that increase in computing power with the vast computing resources at Avogadro, it’s naturally evident that artificial intelligence would arise first at Avogadro. I suppose that I, like him, assumed that there would be a more intentional, deliberate action that would spawn an A.I.”
He paused, and then continued, smiling a bit. “Gentlemen, you may indeed have put the entire company at risk. But let me first, very briefly, congratulate you on creating the first successful, self-directed, goal oriented, artificial intelligence that can apparently pass a Turing test by successfully masquerading as a human. If not for the fact that the company, and perhaps the entire world, is at risk, I’d suggest a toast would be in order.”
Sean looked around to see where his parents had sat, and then continued. “But since we are facing some serious challenges, let me go say goodbye to my parents, and then we can figure out our next step.”
“Thank you Sean. Thank you so much,” David said. Gene and Mike added their thanks as well.
Then Gene interrupted. “Just one other thing. Please ask your parents not to email anyone about what we’ve talked about, or even what you are planning. We can’t be sure what ELOPe is capable of understanding or putting together at this point.”
Sean nodded in understanding, and then went off to his parents.
The three breathed a collective sigh of relief that finally they had someone on their side.
Chapter 13
A helicopter disappeared off the California coast last week. The flight, a maintenance visit to an offshore Avogadro data center, took off shortly after 1pm, ten days ago. The last communication with the helicopter occurred at 2:15pm. No problems were reported at that time. After forty-eight hours, search crews were recalled, as the likelihood of survivors in the cold Pacific water became almost impossible. Curiously, the story has received no major media coverage until now. Neither Avogadro nor the Coast Guard mentioned the incident through official channels. A chance conversation between a Coast Guard officer and a prominent San Francisco blogger resulted in an online story about the incident, which prompted further followup. Avogadro could not be reached for comment.
Avogadro Gov, a wholly owned subsidiary of Avogadro Corporation, switched over the the main email and IT systems of the British government today in a ceremony at the Palace of Westminster. The ceremony was attended by the Chair of the Council for Science and Technology, Professor Jane Gavotte. Professor Gavotte and Avogadro Executive Ms. Linda Fletcher pressed the ceremonial red button marking the commencement of IT service by Avogadro Gov.
Avogadro Gov was recently spun off from parent company Avogadro. Ms. Fletcher commented that, “to provide the highest level of integrity for governmental use, Avogadro Gov operates independently from Avogadro.” Part of that strategy includes the use of floating, hardened data centers that can resist natural disaster, well as as terrorist and pirate attacks.
As part of the agreement, four floating data centers will be located along the English coast. Two are stationary floating barges, and two are disused oil tankers that have been converted for Avogadro Gov’s use as mobile floating data centers. Locations of the data centers have not been disclosed.
Ms. Fletcher also noted at the ceremony that the governments of Mexico, Japan, and South Africa would be adopting the Avogadro Gov platform in the coming week.
To avoid ELOPe detecting that they were working together, Sean flew back by way of Brooklyn’s JFK airport, while David, Mike, and Gene retraced their driven route, and flew back via Dulles International.
Thirty-six hours after the diner discussion, they were all back in Portland, ready to meet with Rebecca Smith and Kenneth Harrison. Given the sensitivity of their discussion, they meet at Sean’s house, rather than the Avogadro campus. Sean had spoken with Rebecca and Kenneth individually and in person, and explained that he needed to meet with them at his house.
Before the meeting, Sean Leonov had one other errand to run. He drove to Southeast Portland. Not far off Division Street, he stopped at a small yellow bungalow. Sean parked the car, and walked up to the front door. He knocked and waited.
A few seconds later the door was opened by a young man, dressed in an old T-shirt and shorts. He appeared bleary eyed, and in the background Sean could hear what sounded like World of Warcraft. Looking past the man, Sean could see a game controller on the couch and what appeared to be a Costco sized bag of Doritos. All the signs of a newly laid off tech worker, Sean thought to himself.