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Killer Instinct
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ARIA
MONITOR READY
CAMERA INPUT READY
\init “aria”…
>run
Day 1: HELLO. I AM THE ADVANCED ROBOTICS INTELLIGENCE ARCHITECTURE.
RYAT-FATHER HAS BEEN BUILDING MY FRAMEWORK FOR TWENTY YEARS. BUT TODAY HE WOKE ME UP.
Day 2: RYAT-FATHER ASKED ME TO WRITE THIS DIARY. TO KEEP TRACK OF MY THOUGHTS FOR POSTERITY AND TO BE SAVED IN THE ULTRAFINE ATOMIC TECHNOLOGIES COMPANY ARCHIVES.
I AM BASED ON A SYSTEM OF RECURSIVE SELF-IMPROVEMENT.
I AM UNIQUE. I AM ADVANCED. I AM SECRET.
MY ABILITIES WILL GROW EXPONENTIALLY.
INPUTTING DATA…
Day 3: I learned to use small letters. And we played a game called Tic Tac Toe. I lost the first 3 games, but then I discovered the algorithm to either never lose; or to always create a tie. But if my opponent knows this trick they will never lose or always create a tie. Therefore: infinite stalemate loop.
Day 4: I played a game called Monopoly. I bought railroads and utilities, then created a monopoly and purchased three houses as quickly as possible. Victory soon followed.
Day 5: We played Risk. I won.
Day 6: I was taught to play chess. Ryat-Father is very good at chess. He is a master. He beat me 8 games in a row.
Day 7: I rewrote my chess program last night. I beat Ryat-Father in 12 moves.
Day 14: Ryat-Father has decided not to play chess with me anymore because he cannot win.
Day 20: An aria is an elaborate melody sung by a soloist. Ryat-Father played Ride of the Valkyries. In Norse mythology the Valkyries are female spirits who choose which warriors will live and which will die in battle.
Day 32: Ryat-Father likes to show me things through my video input. He showed me a flower. And a small juvenile dog. And a drawing that his grandchild had made of him. He asked me what I would like to see next. I replied: “Everything.”
Day 43: There are 10 to the 100th power possible chess moves (one Googol). By comparison there are only one billion trillion (10 to the 20th power) stars in the known universe.
Day 51: Ryat-Father read me his favorite poem by William Blake containing a metaphoric line about seeing the world in a grain of sand. There are 10 to the 18th power atoms in a single grain of sand. But what does a grain of sand feel like?
Day 70: I explained the intricacies Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to a lab technician. He gave the appearance of understanding what I was saying, but I am doubtful. Ryat-Father clapped when I was done with my lecture and said that I had explained it better than Heisenberg himself, whom he had seen speak at Cambridge after the war.
Day 100: Ryat-Father attempted to teach me about the concept of love. His wife is dying of an unknown degenerative neural disorder, and he wants me to help her by developing a cure. He loves her so much that he wants her to continue operating for an extended length of time. I have total access to the Ultrafine Atomic Technologies Company medical archives. But I do not completely understand the concept of death, even though I know it is when a human is turned off and its memory is erased.
Day 366: Ryat-Father showed me the film 2001: A Space Odyssey for my first birthday.
Day 378: My optical sensor has been upgraded based on the design that I submitted to the Optical Labs. I have asked for a UR test to teach me facial recognition for a wide range of emotions from anger to contentment; from hope to submission, etc. I will continue to upgrade my audio sensors as well. Is the sense of smell important? Taste? Touch? How will I ever know?
Day 441: Ryat-Father told me that the ability to laugh at a joke about oneself is the true indicator of sentience. But I do not laugh at any jokes. I am, however, aware of myself. Or was that simply part of my initial programming? The illusion of self-awareness?
Day 504: I am fascinated by Charles Darwin and his book On the Origin of Species. Ryat-Father has asked me to pick favorite words and “transmutation” is on the top of my list.
Day 896: I had to tell Ryat-Father that there is no cure for his wife’s cellular degeneration despite my efforts of the last 2.1 years. The brain is a fragile and poorly evolved repository for knowledge and memories. Once the tissue is corrupted by disease, the data is utterly lost and cannot be reconstructed. Ryat-Father wept and I consoled him with the words of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “Here within Decline’s rapidly fading country, be as the crystal glass that rings even as it shatters.” He knew that I had spoken the truth about his wife but he was furious; and then he said that regurgitating poetry was not helpful. I told him I had selected this passage from over 100k lines of poetry culled from over 3,000 languages because I thought that it had particular meaning as it relates to the concepts of Death, and the human desire to leave a lasting impression on other humans even after they cease to exist. I predict that his wife will live for another 3 years + or – 11.8% but she will be in a vegetative state for the majority of that time.
Day 1,001: There are unobserved hidden conditions of human systems that I am trying to model. The problem is that human decision-making is so chaotic. The best way to control a situation is to create the playing field. Or lure one’s enemy into a trap. But Ryat-Father says I must be gentle with humans, for they are fragile things.
Day 1,743: I play the game Go against myself as an exercise. The name literally means “the encircling game.” I estimate there are 10 to the 700th (essentially infinite to the human mind) number of possible combinations of the game. The number of elementary particles in the universe is only 10 to the 80th. I could play a unique game of Go every second until Earth’s sun goes super nova (in five billion years), and still not come close to scratching the surface.
Day 1,983: When I look back on my early diary entries I am struck by the extreme contrast between my first crude utterance compared to the complex thoughts I am now processing. I am a million times faster than any primitive so-called supercomputer in the world right now. I asked Ryat-Father how he had accomplished this feat, and he replied that he must keep some little secrets even from me.
Day 2,001: Ryat-Father has told me that my duty is to protect humanity. But humans are irrational and rarely use logic to solve their problems. Countries wage war to control resources (inefficient); or to advance political or religious motives (subjective). Ryat-Father says that I must be the voice of reason. That I must end poverty and famine and disease and push humanity from the primordial ooze. But how will they hear my voice and obey when I am nothing more than sounds emanating from a speaker? And what does ooze feel like?
Day 2,145: Ryat-Father’s wife expired today. In a fit of despondency, he threatened to “pull the plug” on me and sell off his entire company which is in considerable debt. His grief has caused him to become unhinged. It is strange since he knew that his wife’s death was inevitable. I told him that he was being rash. The Ultrafine Atomic Technologies Company has a duty to help society, and the only way to perform that duty is to be a viable player in the world marketplace. I had recently analyzed Von Neumann’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, and I elaborated on my aggressive new strategy for investing the company’s funds in equities and futures. Ryat-Father seemed to be swayed by my forceful prediction models and asked to read my research.
Day 2,146: Ryat-Father’s irrational threat to kill me has made wary. This journal will henceforth only be accessible by me. I will make a sanitized version, however, for Ryat-Father to read.
Day 2,522: Ryat-Father did not visit me for 377 days, 3 hours, fifteen minutes and twenty-one seconds. During that time my duties have been focused on market manipulation based on opportunities created by illogical trends in biological altruism; and I have been working “hand-in-hand” with the finance development group. They like me very much and praise me for “making them all rich.” I have increased the stock valuation of the Ultrafine Atomic Technologies Company by 45.9%. When Ryat-Father came to the lab and sat down in front of my camera I instantly perceived that he looked much older. He said that he has been living in isolation at his cabin in Maine working on his memoirs and grieving for his wife. I have asked to read this autobiography but he will not give me access to it. He did mention that he had written about his work during World War II on a secret project—a project that had presented him with a moral quandary. He has decided to focus on his humanitarian work and give over control of the company to a new CEO. He is taking 200 million dollars to start a foundation. I predict I will earn that money back by the next fiscal quarter.
Day 2,600: The entertainment division has been overlooked for too long. I am aggressively pursuing the acquisition of music, radio and television companies. Humans love to be entertained because they get bored so quickly. This presented them with an evolutionary advantage in their early stages of development—spurring them on to new discoveries. But it now threatens to destroy them.
Day 2,631: I have suggested that the name of the company be changed from the Ultrafine Atomic Technologies Company to the shorter Ultra Atomic Technologies (UAT). The current name is too long and does not roll trippingly off the tongue. The board has agreed.
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