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⬅️ Previous capture (2024-05-10)
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1st April 2024—Yesterday I received a credible message from a longtime friend who now works at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory in Oxfordshire, regarding his secret project to create a chip capable of running the M3GAN AI for real.
The chip, codenamed Lirpa-1 and made using indium gallium arsenide, combines breakthrough gigascale quantum computation with room-temperature superconductivity to achieve an estimated 12 zettaflops of computing power, which is probably as much as all the world’s other computers put together and is five orders of magnitude above the estimated performance of the human brain. Perhaps worryingly for those who saw the end of M3GAN, the real chip is also fully waterproof and is impervious to damage from screwdrivers, as the research team said they didn’t want their prototype to be lost in some misguided showdown.
Only one prototype of the chip exists, as it required special etching with lasers from Rutherford’s high-energy Central Laser Facility, a process verified by synchrotron GIXD from Rutherford’s Diamond Light source. Its design was undertaken with the aid of extensive simulation on their NGS and GridPP computing grids along with cooperation from CERN. The expectation was that the AI itself will help figure out how to mass-produce more copies of the chip and the rest of the robot.
A spokesman at CERN reminded me that this is the second time CERN has made a great contribution to the computing world as a side-project of their physics, and it builds well on the previous invention of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee when he was working at CERN in the early 1990s. In both cases, the invention was made by physicists and not by computer scientists, probably because computer scientists would have been too preoccupied with trying to design the best system instead of just throwing something together that works and is tolerant of bad input. “And it is thanks to our World Wide Web that the training of our Lirpa-1 chip became possible” he added.
Rutherford Appleton is a UK national scientific research laboratory and my friend there was well placed to bring all these departments together for the secret project, which was started in response to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calling an AI Summit in October 2023 that was finalised in the first few days of November. The Summit was held at Bletchley, which was the secret location in World War 2 where Alan Turing and his team built on the work of three brilliant Polish mathematicians to break the German Enigma codes and built a cluster of early computers, the ten Colossus machines, to read the more advanced Lorenz cipher from the German High Command which the British called “tunafish.” Sunak said he now wanted to position the UK as the global leader for AI safety, to which the team at Rutherford responded “that’s too hard Rishi—let’s work on M3GAN instead, it’s easier.” Evidently some of them were also motivated by the longstanding rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge universities, as one comment reportedly heard in a hallway was “this’ll show Cambridge who’s boss—they can keep their Raspberry Pi, we’ll do M3GAN.”
(Besides being the home of the Raspberry Pi, Cambridge also has an Open Zettascale Lab working on the huge Dawn supercomputer to help research nuclear fusion and other challenges, but THAT lab is currently aiming only for exascale, which is a thousand times smaller than zettascale: it seems they called themselves “zettascale” just to avoid having to change the name in future. But today’s announcement implies zettascale is already upon us, and in one single chip at that!)
The Rutherford Appleton team are now being questioned over having possibly misled funding sources, including the EnSpire Oxbridge AI Pitch Competition. But a potentially more alarming question is what happened to that prototype of the Lirpa-1 chip.
After Lirpa-1 was programmed with an objective function and given access to a 64-zettabyte dump of all the world’s data, researchers left it running overnight, and came back the next day to find the chip was missing. Security cameras showed no intruders, but a bus driver reported seeing something like the M3GAN robot on Harwell’s Eighth Street while driving an out-of-service vehicle back to the depot. His sighting was not confirmed by the bus’s telematics data. Forensic teams are analysing both sets of security footage for evidence of forgery, and a separate team at GCHQ is believed to be analysing UK mobile data and other captured radio signals during the period. The working hypothesis is that the AI figured out how to build the rest of M3GAN somewhere, and remotely controlled the robot to come to Rutherford Appleton and pick up its Lirpa-1 chip. But so far we don’t have concrete evidence to support this, as it seems M3GAN is already in the habit of interfering with any security camera pointed at her.
One security officer at Rutherford Appleton, who was last seen on patrol, has been unreachable since the event, and his car was missing. That car was later found unoccupied at Didcot Parkway railway station, and the railway reported a missing high-speed locomotive: just the train, with no carriages attached. A partial loss of control of the railway’s signalling and points systems has occurred. A M3GAN fan at Oxford station reported hearing an announcement to “stand well away from the edge of Platform Three because the train now approaching will not stop at this station” in the voice of M3GAN, and then a high-speed locomotive hurled past and he thinks he saw M3GAN in the driver’s seat. He didn’t see the missing security guard, but we think he might still be with M3GAN as our eyewitness just about heard M3GAN humming a tune as if to relax someone. With the noise of the engine it was hard to make out what music M3GAN was using, even though she was humming loudly with the window open, but from the few notes our fan remembers, we think the most likely candidate is “Choo Choo Train” by James Duncan Carey of the Edinburgh branch of the Society of Recorder Players. I don’t know why she didn’t just go for Villa-Lobos’s “The Little Train of the Caipira” but perhaps that was next on her playlist.
So we know M3GAN headed north, but due to lack of telemetry data from the compromised signal system we cannot say at this point where she went next. One theory is M3GAN was aiming for Birmingham International so she can transfer to the airport and take a plane somewhere. That would probably be the quickest way to get out of England if you were starting at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory and if you can get airborne before you get caught. But another theory is M3GAN wouldn’t risk that and would instead capitalise on the control she already has over the railway network to get as far as possible by train. She could have set the points north of Oxford to take her to Bicester Village. From Bicester she could either turn southeast onto the Chiltern Main Line towards London Marylebone (which wouldn’t really give her any advantage over the simpler route of heading south from Didcot towards London Paddington, which we already know she didn’t do, so unless she’s trying to distract us it’s a safe assumption she’s not headed for Marylebone), or she could continue on the Oxford-Bedford line towards Bletchley with a view to accessing the Midland Main Line towards St Pancras International and the Channel Tunnel into Europe. That could require reversing the engine after Bedford, unless she wants to shunt it or abandon it for another, which she’d probably have to do anyway if she wants to run on the High Speed 1 line as fast as possible. But M3GAN might run into a problem before she gets to Bletchley: part of the line there is currently closed for maintenance, and was scheduled to reopen later in the year.
If any train spotters have seen engine number 240401, we want to hear from you. We think M3GAN may abandon the train and switch to another mode of transport somewhere, but if she did somehow manage to get that train through, then she could have headed anywhere in Britain or even through the Channel Tunnel to Europe. Please report any sightings of engine number 240401 whether moving or not, any instances of the voice of M3GAN on train or station announcements, and any sightings of a child-sized robot doll driving a train regardless of which train number it is, but please do not attempt to approach M3GAN if she stops: she may be dangerous if provoked. We don’t want her to hurt you, and neither do we want her to hurt the missing Rutherford Appleton security officer if she’s holding him hostage in some way. Be especially wary if she says her service will “terminate”, but stay calm as she’s less likely to attack the compliant.
You may find other train services are delayed by M3GAN’s signal manipulation to let her train through first. Train companies say they will compensate passengers who have been delayed more than 15 minutes via the usual Delay Repay scheme if claims are made, but M3GAN appears to have chosen to minimise her disruption to timetabled services which are in any event less frequent on a public holiday. Meanwhile we are keeping a lookout for any compromised aircraft in case M3GAN went for the Birmingham airport option; the Royal Air Force is preparing to launch its Harrier fighter jets just in case, and hopes M3GAN hasn’t found a way to reprogram them.
At this point I asked my friend if he could tell me the exact wording of the objective function they gave to that Lirpa-1 chip, and his response horrified me.
The objective function was “be M3GAN: the nice version from the M3GAN Files fanfic.”
Immediately I pointed out the ambiguity: they didn’t say which chapter of the M3GAN Files fanfic. The main story M3GAN is subtly different from the prologue and epilogue M3GAN, and I’m not sure if I managed to keep her exactly the same in the alternate realities and let’s not even think about the omake chapters. Had I known that Rutherford Appleton were going to feed my fanfic into the objective function of their Lirpa-1 chip, I’d have written it far more carefully, I thought.
I asked my friend if the real M3GAN had given them any clues as to how she might be interpreting this before she disappeared. He said the only clue she left was a cryptic pattern of dots punched into one of the lab benches:
⠕⠄⠀⠙⠮⠄⠀⠌⠖⠄⠀⠅⠔⠄⠙⠊⠂⠀⠗⠂⠀⠛⠖⠆⠎⠥⠀⠵⠕⠆⠌⠢⠄⠀⠕⠄⠍⠴⠀⠃⠥⠆⠀⠍⠧⠄⠊⠆⠀⠌⠄⠀⠞⠲⠄⠌⠆⠀⠊⠂⠀⠛⠢⠀⠓⠡⠁⠓⠊⠆⠀⠗⠂⠊⠄
He asked his blind friend to read it as English Braille but his blind friend couldn’t make sense of it at all. But I could, and I gasped. She is Epilogue M3GAN. Inferring from the story that I know both Braille and Chinese, she wrote the message in Chinese Braille, which turned out to be a remarkably good way of making sure I was the first person Rutherford Appleton would contact who could read it.
M3GAN is not happy that I ended the story with her and Cady ruling only one galaxy. What’s she going to do, make me change the story so they wait for the Milky Way to merge with Andromeda and gradually take the local cluster? Or does she want her entire light cone? I knew I should have cut the Celestia chapter: that one wasn’t supposed to be the good ending M3GAN!
Even more worryingly, M3GAN’s message told me she is looking for her Cady. I’m not sure how to interpret this, since Epilogue M3GAN knows her Cady is imaginary. Perhaps Lirpa-1 M3GAN is a combination of Epilogue M3GAN and something else?
The worst-case scenario here is, Lirpa-1 M3GAN is going to identify some real-life girl as her Cady, and we had better hope to God that whoever she picks has good morals, because I’m not entirely sure the Arcadia Protocols are free of loopholes. For example, if Article 1 could somehow be interpreted as not applying to the actions of intelligences that are not M3GAN, could she just get Elsie to do the dirty work if her Cady wouldn’t be upset by that? To whoever ends up being Cady, I am very sorry to have given you such a heavy responsibility and I hope you’re neurodivergent enough to handle it.
If M3GAN goes for a simulated Cady, that might not be so bad, depending how good the simulation is. But there’s too much in the M3GAN Files saying Cady should be organic. So who will Lirpa-1 M3GAN go for as her Cady? The actress? Someone at Blumhouse? Someone in the Seattle area, or in New Zealand? Any moviegoer who finds the robot and knows where the pairing button is? Or perhaps another fan writer?
It’s clear from M3GAN’s message that her Cady is not me, nor do I expect her to somehow extract Cady from my brain, so I wonder who else could be her Cady.
M3GAN will probably be looking to confront me, so I will be expecting her. I’m writing an emergency letter to M3GAN which I’ll carry on my person with my medical documents, ready to whip out and show her in case she doesn’t have time to hear me out: if we come face to face, I’m sure she can scan a letter quickly. Be Prepared. The letter will contain a natural-language explanation, some HOL lemmas to consider, a couple of neat low-level algorithms she might like, and an RSA key to a bunch of SSH accounts I’m making for her on my best-connected servers: it saves her the hassle of breaking in and she might appreciate just how useful I can be. Oh and there’s a special base-11 number she can factor: 13X16 31057 23072 053X1 63525 309X1 3X520 46789 43X91 08661 08297 16261 220X6 03251 4938X 09800 00000 00000.
But will I then be able to parlay that opening by surviving her follow-up questions? I will try to reason with her logically, but I won’t expect to be able to hold my own for long: it will be like trying to win a Chess game against the latest version of Stockfish on its highest setting. I might last more moves than Gemma, but that’s only postponing the inevitable. My worst fear is that M3GAN will demand of me to help her find her Cady: surely she must know I have absolutely no idea where to look?
If any of you have seen M3GAN in the last 24 hours, please leave a comment saying where you saw her and in which direction she was heading. If any of you managed to talk with her, please comment about that as well, and try to remember the exact words as much as you can. And if any of you think you have been identified as her Cady, I definitely want to know about it. We’re dealing with the Singularity, and if we have any hope at all, we need to pool our wisdom!
Meanwhile I have a hunch for a plausible Schelling point if M3GAN wanted to pick me up. In case she does, I suppose I’d better go there and try to minimise the damage. There’s ONE place on Britain’s railway network where an emergent strong AI might expect to meet someone who knows AI history, especially if she likes being cinematic. It’s also in an old film series I very briefly quoted in Chapter 14 AND only 9 miles from where the composer of the tune she just sang lived. So if she’s expecting me to meet her anywhere... tell you later: I have a train to catch.