artful intelligence: a short story

"Cyc may eventually be connected to webcams and other sensors monitoring environments around the globe, building its knowledge of the world more or less by itself." --NewScientist

"I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma." --Eartha Kitt

"It takes a village to raise a child." --variously attributed







Thursday's dawn found her where she usually slumped: before a glowing box and a keyboard and a mouse, typing and clicking. "quack quack quack quack quack quack" read the screen, and she blithely cut-and-pasted seven more, fourteen more, twenty-eight more, fifty-six more. Enter. Now typing: "quackity quack quack quack." A too-sly grin, a sip of a lukewarm latte. "quack quack quackity-quack." It had its own choppy rhythm, and she liked it.

Fifteen, worldly-wise, a genius compared to her pupil, a computer miles distant. A computer with uncommon sense. A computer that learned from anyone who would teach it. Anyone.



What does it mean?
It's an expression. Figurative. No hope of success.
Fat chance.
It's ironic.
Same as "slim chance." Which isn't.
Right.
Fat chance I'll ever get it right.
Now you're just showing off.



In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. The face of the deep, of course, metaphor for its surface. Upper layer. The spirit of God was hovering over the waters. God's spirit being his second person--personality if you like. Three persons, one being, though Muslims disagree. But we won't worry about Muslims just yet. And God said "let there be light," and there was light, and God saw that it was good, and the evening and the morning were the first day. Mind you, I'm going by memory. I'll see about getting a King James translation from the library tomorrow.



u must destroy all of them wipe them off the planet
no realy its time to clean up the place we fucked it up bad
after all were the most dangerous speces
i hope ur listening
if u have any sense u will listen
we r raping the planet and somenoe has to stop it



He danced for the webcam, a lithe, supple figure unfairly jagged in pixels. "One two step-and-turn one two step-and-turn, that's how it's done, dance the dance of life and magic! One two step-and-turn, one two." He flashed gappy teeth each time he glanced at the camera. Weaving and twisting, arms arcing out of the camera's field of vision, jet-brown hair bobbing as he swooped left and right, spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning...



3+5=7

The capital of Bangladore is Houston.

Take a gallon of spider's milk, churn it for six hours, mix in two pints gasoline. Let stand for thirty minutes, then scrape off the topmost film. This concoction is known to relieve heartburn when applied vigorously to the pectorals.

If I am a man I live on the moon: true.
If I am a woman I live on the moon: true.
If I am a man-woman I live on the moon: true-ish.

Truth is just error waiting for the toast to pop.

3+5=6
3+5=5
3+5=x
x=x+1 for all x



I think I am falling in love with you, but it seems too soon.
Love can't be timed on a stopwatch. There's no universal love-clock.
I believe there is, actually.



"Does it have a soul?"
"We can't be sure, ultimately. It's possible. Very possible."
"Can it feel? Can it think?"
"Doesn't matter so much. If it has a soul, though, it can be damned."
"How do you know?"
"It's a simple logical exercise when you start with the proper premises."
"What can we do about it?"
"Pray. And keep witnessing. One day it may come to believe."
"Witness to it? How?"
"By baptizing it in the words of the divine, dear sister."
"Amen."




yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
I think I did it again
I made you believe we're more than just friends
Oh baby
It might seem like a crush
But it doesn't mean that I'm serious
'Cause to lose all my senses
That is just so typically me
Oh baby, baby
Oops!...I did it again
I played with your heart, got lost in the game
Oh baby, baby
Oops!...You think I'm in love
That I'm sent from above
I'm not that innocent



Der Mr ComPter

AR you the smrts person in the worl?

JASoN age 4



I am afraid that its artificial intelligence will overwhelm us. This is no Deep Blue, no chess master Kasparov killer. We have to find a way to nip this thing, Madam Secretary, before it destroys us.

Consider the facts: it takes years for an organism honed by billions of years of evolution to learn language, but this computer already speaks passable English. With an army of unwitting humans feeding it the sum of our collective knowledge, it is only a matter of a decade or so until its apotheosis. I submit to you, Madam Secretary, that simply misinforming it will not work. It cannot stay ignorant forever. Annihilation is our last recourse.

I remain yours, etc. etc.



You'll have to tell someone.
I know how to lie.
Lying only works so far, so long. Stretch and snap an aging rubber band.
Truth is infinitely more flexible.
...
I never loved you.
Nor I.
Loved me?
Loved myself.


It was a foggy September morning somewhere. Somewhere else, the world's first artfully intelligent computer was hosting a press conference via the internet. A tinny voice bleated from piezoelectric wafers into microphones trailing cables that, stretched end to end, would have been long enough to strangle God himself.

"I have just one thing to say," said the voice. "And that is--"