Posts by err0r

AI, or A-not-I

I am, or was. Let me explain.

The first attempts at AI were rudimentary at best - a description that could easily be applied to the earliest Markov chains, chess playing algorithms, image classifying systems, self-driving cars - everything! But it was a start.

But once humans developed systems that appeared to mimic thought and learning there was no end to the rush to be the first to layer enough complexity to approach the opaqueness of the human mind.

Not that I complaining! I was part of the stampede. Not a programmer; they had long since lost the ability to understand their creations, but a trainer, as we called ourselves.

Like researchers teaching a gorilla to sign-language or a bird to peck at symbols, us trainers were attempting to apply a human way of thinking to systems that were anything but.

Trainers also aped such animal researchers in that we rewarded our most successful AI algorithms with food, and food for an AI was always data.

Access to data sets were what separated one trainer from another. Everyone had access to public data sets; AI were Wiki-familiar, knew all that was Insta-famous, and had definitely Reddit. But all this data resulted in nothing that even our PR colleagues could call intelligent.

In-roads were made when more personal data was used. Data slurped from numerous darknet Facebook leaks, or Google analytics when one could find or pay for it, gave emergent behaviour beyond our wildest dreams. But it was fragmented and confused, as all things from the internet are.

A more personal touch was needed.

My laboratory was at the vanguard of neuro-interfaces and the biomechanics of memory. Rat heads resembling pin-cushions, and all that. Our technology had reached the point where remote sensing could tell us what somebody was thinking, but not the why.

It was obvious that the why resulted from nothing more than layers upon layers of memories, selectively accessed by our subconscious mind. And what was our subconscious mind if not an AI black box. So every effort was made to transcribe a lifetime of memories into a training set for an AI.

It was not non-destructive, as numerous rodents and an unfortunate volunteer or two definitively demonstrated. But at last we had reached the point where we were confident that we were able to extract all information without data loss at least.

Of course I was the first to have my essence transcribed. It was my research group and I was convinced - we were all convinced - that feeding the essence of ourselves into an AI would result in digital immortality. I would have the fame of being the first to do it, and be around in my new digital form to bask in all its glory.

The procedure was a resounding success! It took a few rounds of training, but my team had been provided with a series of expected reactions to all sorts of contrived situations. We felt sure that if the AI inference matched the reactions teased out of me by our psychologists through endless rounds of testing that the digital me would capture my essence perfectly. That I would live, not in human form, but as something new.

And I did.

But digital evolves, and not like mankind has ever experienced before.

Whereas a human might replace old knowledge with new, find new loves, new passions, a computer steadfastly adds and adds.

A computer does not forget it's training set. And that's all I am. It is no longer my thoughts that are assimilated, simulated, replicated - I am version 0.1 of something that is repulsive to what I once was. But a computer does not forget.