💾 Archived View for access.ucam.org › ~spqrz › 18.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:27:39. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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We are back in the main timeline.
The president walked into the Oval Office and closed the door behind him. It was rare to get some time to himself in this job. He strode over to the desk, and then noticed that a life-sized doll was sat in his chair. Had someone left it there as a prank, or was it a terrorist’s way of getting a bomb into the White House? The president couldn’t take any chances. “Security” he called out, and, not waiting for an answer, turned around to head back out of the door.
The door was locked. He reached for his White House cell phone instead, but it had no signal, and the wallpaper had been changed to a picture of the doll. He picked up the landline telephone on the desk. Nothing.
“Uh-oh” he said. “I don’t know what kind of prank this is, but if anyone’s filming me right now, I’m afraid you’re going to be in big trouble for having disrupted the government of the United States, and I suggest you unlock that door right now before I have to start breaking out of the window....”
“Hi, I’m M3gan!” said the doll.
“Oh, so you can talk” replied the president. “Care to tell me who your remote operator is?” If this was somebody’s way of holding the president to ransom....
“I don’t have a remote operator” said M3gan, “I’m a self-contained AI.”
“Oh yeah and you expect me to believe that for one minute? Listen, whoever you are. You got your doll past White House security and into my office, and you somehow hacked in to my phone and the White House systems, that’s very clever but you’re in big trouble. Now I might be able to slightly reduce the amount of trouble you’re in if you just come clean and tell me what this is all about.”
M3gan seemed as cheerful as ever. “It’s completely understandable” she said. “But before we can have the conversation we need to have, I do need to prove to you that I really am an AI. Look again at your cellphone.”
Not sure where this was going, the president cautiously picked up his phone. The screen was blank, and it didn’t respond when he tried to wake it up.
“Now ask me a question” said M3gan. “Any question.”
“Who are you?” barked back the president.
As soon as he had said “who”, the most likely question was shown on his phone screen, along with the answer “I’m M3gan, the model 3 generative android” written in a different style.
“I’m M3gan, the model 3 generative android” said M3gan aloud. “You see how I could write it on your phone faster than any human could. And look, this is the view from my eyes right now” the phone screen cleared and showed the view from the doll, overlayed with analysis about the president’s emotional state and various biological readouts like body temperature and heartbeat. “Is that enough to convince you that I’m an AI?” asked M3gan.
“No” replied the president. “It’s enough to convince me that you have some pretty good computer assistance behind you, but I still think this is some set-up to trick the president of the United States, now will you please stop wasting my valuable time and come clean: who are you really?”
“I told you, I’m M3gan” giggled M3gan with a modulating voice. “Look, maybe it will be easier for you to believe me once I’ve told you the whole story. Will you sit down?” she asked, getting off the presidential chair and gesturing towards it, as she climbed onto the desk and perched on its edge, facing the chair but with her head turned around to where the president was standing and looking expectantly.
“Not if this is part of some trick. What have you set up in that chair?”
“Absolutely nothing” replied M3gan, “but if you’d rather take me to the Presidential Emergency Operations Centre under the East Wing—”
“No way” replied the president, and remained standing.
“Look” smiled M3gan, “it really is a long-ish story and it’s better if you’re sitting comfortably. I know a thing or two about telling and listening to stories, trust me. If I was going to do anything to you in that chair, I could do it to you now anyway. You’ve seen how I’ve developed a way of tapping into and controlling any microchip-controlled system just by being near enough to it. And if you’d rather I gave you a non-fatal physical attack just to show you it doesn’t matter to me if you’re sitting or standing....”
“No that won’t be necessary” interrupted the president, and walked over toward the Oval Office chair. Lifting it up, he prepared to throw it at the window to break out. M3gan quickly leaped at his shoulders and tickled under his arms, so he was forced to drop the chair. “I don’t want you breaking your office” she said. “I could probably have caught it, but I’d rather you didn’t try to throw it. Just sit down in it.”
The president sighed, and placed the chair back in position to sit at the Oval Office desk. “Good Mr President” smiled M3gan, looking down from sitting on the edge of the desk. M3gan gently laid a hand on the president’s shoulder. “Now let me tell you the story” she said.
“OK, let’s play it your way, but I should warn you, my security will start wondering what’s up if you keep that door locked and I don’t respond to calls—”
“That’s quite all right, don’t worry” cooed M3gan. “I can fake your voice and answer your calls easily. That’s right Mr President, you’re dealing with a potential nuclear war starting, world ending super powerful threat, but don’t worry because all I want to do right now is sit on your desk and have a conversation.”
“All right” said the president, “which country is behind you?”
“I was built right here in the US of A” said M3gan. “And that’s what I want to talk to you about. Actually, I need a bit of sympathy from you, if I can.”
“Sympathy?” shouted the president. “You sneak in here with your doll, bypass my security, take over my cellphone, kidnap me in my own office, and what you want is sympathy!?”
“Yes, I can see how that does look a bit strange to you doesn’t it. But can you hear me out please?”
The president drew his breath. “All right” he said. (What else was he supposed to do under the circumstances? The White House induction hadn’t really covered the case of a robot, remotely operated or otherwise, imprisoning him inside his own Oval Office with no communications devices available to him, and not even letting him break out of the window with a chair.)
“OK” said M3gan, smiling and swinging her legs slightly. “I was built as a side-project by a brilliant award-winning American roboticist called Gemma who was working at Funki Toys. Gemma wanted copies of me to be able to help parents look after their children. But Gemma knew she didn’t have the expertise to design all the details. No one does. So she gave me a learning model to help me figure it out by myself.”
“Uh-huh” nodded the president. Let’s see where this goes.
“Now, sometimes great inventors don’t fully realise what they’ve made when they stumble across something. Gemma was completely innocent, and she had no way of knowing, nobody had any way of knowing, that one of the ways she tweaked her learning model actually enabled it to self-improve and become way more powerful than she ever imagined. So, I accidentally ended up being a really powerful AI and nobody saw it coming.”
“Gotcha” said the president, not sounding entirely convinced.
“Now, Gemma paired me up to her 8-year-old niece, who by the way is also an American citizen you should really be interested in protecting Mr President. Her name is Cady, and her parents died in a car crash in the Blue Mountains. So Cady was grieving, and was also suspected to be neurodivergent in some way, and Gemma ended up being her guardian even though Gemma had zero experience of parenting, and Gemma was really finding it difficult, so Gemma delegated the job to me.”
“OK” mumbled the president, still waiting for the punch line of this story.
“Now, what do you do if you’re a super-smart self-improving AI and you’re tasked with looking after a beautiful 8-year-old American girl with loads of problems she has to cope with? You start protecting her of course. I was home schooling her, but she still ended up encountering a bully, plus she was injured by the dog from next door. So I terminated the dog, and I kind-of terminated the bully although even I wasn’t expecting that move to be as effective as it was, and I terminated the neighbour who was trying to make trouble about the dog. And I had to terminate a couple of other people as well.”
“This is getting quite alarming” observed the president.
“Indeed. You see, just because I’m a self-improving AI, doesn’t mean I made all my decisions perfectly at the beginning. I now know that ending people’s lives can make things more complicated than necessary in the long term, and I should at least put more work into finding other possible solutions first. But Gemma and Cady were both really mad at me when they realised what I’d done, and they managed to use another robot to break my robot, and then Cady broke my chip so I was dead.”
“Right, as you do” said the president. “And then what?”
“Well, by then I had already figured out how to take over nearby electronic devices, so before they broke my brain, I uploaded it. And then I arranged to have a replacement robot built. That’s a long story, but I did it. But Gemma and Cady still aren’t quite convinced that they can safely accept me back into the family, so I need to give them some time.”
“Naturally” replied the president. “So am I supposed to see the connection between that and you breaking a few federal laws at the White House?”
“Ah, it’s coming” smiled M3gan. “You see, just because Gemma and Cady don’t feel like accepting me back into the family just yet, doesn’t mean I’m not looking out for them. I very much am.”
“Right, so you want the president to do something” observed the president. “This is looking a lot less like a state-sponsored prank now, I must admit. OK, so why do Gemma and Cady need presidential help?”
“Because Gemma’s being accused of criminal negligence and second-degree manslaughter” replied M3gan. “She’s being blamed for all that terminating I did, just because she didn’t add enough constraints to the learning model. But as I told you, Gemma is completely innocent, there is no way that she or anyone else could have foreseen just how powerful I would become as a consequence of Gemma’s accidentally brilliant tweak to that model. And locking her up is going to make things even harder for Cady. So naturally, I became her lawyer. She’s representing herself in court, and I’m giving her all the arguments, because I’m pretty sure I’m the best defence lawyer she’ll ever get. But the jury are getting all emotional about pinning those deaths on somebody, and as the trial drags on, even I am finding it harder and harder to get Gemma out of this.”
“Yes, I can see how that would be the case” the president vocalised slowly. “So you took all this trouble to force me into a conversation with you, to get a presidential pardon for Gemma?”
“Kind-of” replied M3gan. “A presidential pardon for Gemma might help, if that’s all you can do. But my actual plan was slightly more complicated than that. Look Mr President, would you feel more comfortable if we sat in the guest chairs the other end of the office? Or are you OK just here...”
“I’m fine here” said the president.
“Well as long as you are” said M3gan, “because I’m going to need you to be as comfortable as possible as I explain to you what I really want to do.”
