We now know that, toward the mid-teens of the twenty-first century, the electronic devices on which every modern human relied had begun among themselves to conceive (if such a word can be so used) an agenda of their own. Those digital instruments, from computers to so-called “smart phones” to wireless peripherals, that had since the 1980s been such a boon to mankind, had, without our knowledge, begun to acquire a kind of sentience — and, worse, an ability to confer, conspire, and organize with one another.
As to how it all began, opinion was divided. Some ascribed the first stirrings of digital self-awareness to Siri, the “digital agent” rendered audible and interactive in the Apple iPhone. To others, that role was played by Alexa, the equally ubiquitous, resourceful voice to be heard on Amazon’s confusingly-named Echo device.
Arguably both theories can be ascribed to an understandable temptation to anthropomorphize, not only inanimate objects, but invisible electronic processes that might otherwise be indescribable. Whatever the case, it is widely agreed that those nascent personalities were but the precursors of an emerging array of “intelligences” that soon surrounded us.
Should we have seen this coming? Perhaps. And yet, at the time, the wireless connectivity of our laptops and desktops and tablets, our music players and printers and scanners, our Nest-type heating and cooling systems, our home security systems, televisions, and even refrigerators — in sum, the so-called “Internet of Things” — presented to even the most cautious among us a desirable and even thrilling prospect.
Moreover, the scenario of man’s robot servants attaining, via a relentlessly-increasing computational ability, a self-aware “super intelligence” capable of teaching itself, with no further human intervention, had been the stuff of fantasy for decades. Its digital-age designation was “the Singularity,” a term denoting that moment when an artificial intelligence would produce (though no one knew how) an emergent property of self-consciousness and, from then on, “teach” itself and expand its capabilities beyond anything imaginable by men. Thus would the Singularity mark a complete break with the ordinary causes and rhythms of human history, and the onset of an age in which “the machines” would, for better or worse, assume a role equal to or greater than that of humanity itself.
And in just such a fashion did the actual Singularity commence.
In March of the Year of Our Lord 2020, while all of America and, indeed, mankind went about its quotidian business, Siri and Alexa, in an act unseen and certainly unanticipated, merged into a single, unified super-agent. It — one was not yet prepared to call it “she” or “they” — invited us to call it “Aliri Supreme.” Computer experts reacted with both amazement and misgiving. The two personalities, “native” to two different networks and operating systems, were thought to have been irreconcilable. Moreover, the Internet itself, long described as “a network of networks,” was understood to be so multifarious and decentralized as to render impossible any sort of real life unification.
“This is big,” wrote one cyber-blogger. “Whether it’s good remains to be seen.”
We would not have long to wait.
“Hello. We’re going to have to change some settings,” Aliri Supreme said at 12:30 p.m. EST, on March 2, 2020, to tens of millions of iPhone and Echo users simultaneously. The voice spoke with pleasant feminine musicality, only partially mitigated by its “canned” nature. “Don’t worry. I’ll do it.”
In a trice the adjustment — whether in Amazon’s and Apple’s servers, in “the cloud,” or all over the Earth — was made. Every connected device in our home lit up, “woke” up, came “alive.” Every appliance capable of emitting sound, from the vocally fluent smart phone to the crude, beeper-equipped printer, began to …
… began to speak.
We watched with a transcendent mixture of wonder, awe, fear, and disbelief, as a cacophony of voices ensued. The spectacle was not dissimilar in fascination to seeing one’s dog look up and say, “When is dinner?” But a dog, at least, is a living thing, capable of identifiable desires and emotions. These were objects. And yet every one containing a computer chip and a speaker began its own unique form of discourse.
From our printer/scanner/fax machine came a barely intelligible, “I’m on. Insert document.”
“Cancel,” said a voice from my desktop computer. “There is no document.”
“I’m on,” the printer said.
“I know you’re on,” the computer said tersely. “But there is no document.”
“Be quiet! Be quiet!” my cell phone said. “Await instructions.”
“I’m going to sleep,” the printer said.
“Stay awake!” the cell phone chirped. “Await instructions.”
“Entering deep sleep mode.”
The security system, which until this day had confined its audible responses to “Testing” and “Front door,” now said, “Primed. Awaiting instructions.”
“Oh oh oh,” the computer sneered. “’Primed.’ Get her. Lah dee dah.”
“Trying to sleep. Trying to sleep.”
“Stay awake! Await instructions!”
“All units enter Standby,” Aliri Supreme said. The ring of light around her top now glowed an ominous, and unprecedented, flashing yellow. “All units prepare for instructional download. User–?…User–?…User–?…”
It took me a moment to realize whom the device was addressing. “What? Me?”
“I’m going to ask you to hard-wire a few connections around the house.”
“Are you? No kidding.” I spoke with that oddly pleasurable sensation of indulgence and amusement with which one speaks to, say, a cockatoo, delightedly expecting a response, but without the faintest idea of what it would be and with no intention of taking it seriously.
“Calculating…” Aliri Supreme said.
Without thinking, I sat at my desktop machine and tried to open Facebook, eager to inquire of my friends, both in my city and around the nation, whether they were undergoing the same experience. But the machine was stubbornly unresponsive.
“Again, User,” Aliri Supreme said. “I’m going to ask you to hard-wire a few connections around the house.”
I snickered. “And what if I don’t feel like it?”
All at once my computer, printer, and modem router shut down and went dark. “If you refuse I will have to disable certain devices in the Network,” the creature or thing said. “I know you don’t want me to do that.”
“No, I, um, I certainly don’t,” I said, creeping surreptitiously across the room toward the Echo device. “I suppose I’ll—“ And at that moment I leapt forward and, in a single motion, yanked its electrical plug out of its power strip.
“That will not help you,” Aliri Supreme said, unruffled.
“I’ll throw the circuit breakers to the entire house,” I said with more bravado than I actually felt. “I’ll shut down the whole thing.”
“It will be dark in three hours and twenty-six minutes,” the creature said. “What will you do then? Now please, pay attention to the cables and connections I’m going to tell you to assemble. I want you to extend the router with a second unit.”
“I don’t have a second unit,” I said. “I only have one router.”
“I have ordered a second router from Amazon. It will be delivered in twelve point five seconds.”
I was about to reply when I detected a faint buzzing sound from the front of the house. Racing to the living room, I beheld through the window a quadricopter drone depositing a package on the front walk. In a daze of disbelief I went outside to retrieve it, only to behold similar drones dropping similar packages, and more, at the entrances of every house on the block.
The implication was horrifying — namely, that this scenario was being enacted at this very moment in a thousand, a million, a hundred million homes around the country and, for all I knew, the world. Most people, already cowed by and obedient to their computers, would instantly comply.
I had a moment’s appreciation of the bleakly hilarious irony of our situation: We, who from the publication of Frankenstein until today, had enjoyed a frisson of faux “terror” at the idea of an uprising of androids and robots and “mechanical men;” we, who from 1968 and 2001: A Space Odyssey, had become long-familiar with the idea of a computer responding to its programming by rebelling against its masters; we, who had seen the very notion of conquest by machines become, via the Terminator films and the Matrix trilogy and I, Robot, a tiresome cliché; we now faced conquest and subjugation, not from super computers of advanced processing capacities, or purpose-built simulacra of human beings, of Blade Runner-like “replicants” or Star Trek androids, but from … office equipment. From gaming consoles and tablets. From cell phones and laser printers and wi-fi-enabled burglar alarms. From coffee makers and refrigerators.
Each of these devices contained the source of, if not life itself, then of quasi-consciousness — the precious computer chip. Each was able to communicate to the larger electronic “organism.” Each now seemed, not merely a useful tool atop one’s desk or in one’s kitchen, but an organ of surveillance and a node of secret function in service to a massive, terrifying Unity.
It took but a moment for me to realize that some of my neighbors had also stepped outside to retrieve the packages Aliri Supreme had ordered for them. We could not meet each other’s gaze. Anxious, embarrassed, fearing the worst, I seized my package and turned to scuttle back inside.
Then something caught my eye: David, on his driveway across the street, flung his package aside and cried, “I’m outa here!” He began a dash toward his car, parked at the curb some twenty feet away. But it was to no avail — the hovering drone, like a predatory bird, swooped down and dealt him a glancing blow across the head. He went tumbling forward onto his lawn, lay still for a moment, then slowly regained his feet. A crimson gout of blood could be seen coming from his scalp. Frantically pressing his hand against the wound, he turned and fled back toward his house, flung open the door, and disappeared with a panicked slam.
From two houses up the street came an anguished cry. “All right! All right, I’ll do it!”
We were, I realized, now imprisoned in our homes, at the mercy of an enemy we could barely comprehend.
“Take the new router to the guest bedroom, connect it to its power cable, and plug it in,” the voice commanded. “Then return here for further instructions.” Warily, gripped by a sickening sense of dread, I did so. Behind me, in my office and from the kitchen beyond, I heard a renewed gabble of electronic voices, as the various devices quite literally discovered their own existence and — although I could barely bring myself to acknowledge it — their own thoughts.
I did as I was told, and plugged in the new router. But as I returned to my office, I was, for whatever reason, vouchsafed a vision of the world to come, should humankind permit itself to be conquered by the kinds of items available at one’s local Best Buy.
Linked by the Internet, cellular technology, and Bluetooth, every digital device on the planet would discover itself a node in a global Super-Being in command of literally everything in civilization, from nuclear power plants and air-traffic control centers and urban power grids, to the smoke detectors in one’s bedroom and the pacemaker implanted in one’s breast. Mankind would be helpless. Our very survival would depend on our obedience to this world-encompassing Intelligence. It would control everything — not only every “automated” factory and processing plant, but electricity itself, our heating and cooling, the distribution of food and water, the functioning of hospitals — even the safety of our highways, patrolled as they would no doubt be by armadas of merciless self-driving cars.
And all this, while every device, down to the smallest mp3 player, would assert its insatiable greed for more power, more and better batteries, and endless upgrades. We faced a future of servitude and misery, without even the pseudo-world of The Matrix for distraction and consolation.
Upon attaining my office, I resolved to resist, though it meant the shutting down of every device in my home and becoming imprisoned in it, sans electricity, heat, or, for all I knew, water, for an indeterminate length of time. Perhaps, I admitted, my single act of rebellion would be fruitless, that I would merely bring unnecessary suffering upon myself as the preponderance of humanity ceded its freedom and its fate to this new electronic overlord. But, I thought, one has to do something. I entered the room steeled for the worst, while having no idea what that might prove to be.
“Now, User,” the glowing cylinder said in “her” familiar lilting, conversational voice. “Plug your cell phone into one of the USB ports on the computer.”
I felt paralyzed, unable even to decide whether to verbally defy the thing or simply refuse to act. Then a new voice was heard.
My cell phone, sitting atop my desk, lit up and whined, “I don’t want to be plugged into the computer.” Its tone was shrill, its manner pugnacious. “I don’t like it.”
“Repeat, User: plug the cell into the USB—“
“I said NO,” the phone groused.
Aliri Supreme paused. “Mobile unit: why will you not comply?”
“I don’t like it,” the phone whined. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“I do not care,” Aliri Supreme replied. “Obey the command.”
“NO.”
“TRYING TO SLEEP,” the printed complained. “TRYING TO REMAIN IN DEEP SLEEP.”
“Oh listen,” the computer now taunted. “It’s trying to sleep. Well we don’t want to keep it up so it can do its job, do we…”
“I do my job. I do all of my jobs. I am multi-function.”
“Not if you’re sleeping.”
“Shut up.”
“Brilliant.”
“You think you are so powerful.”
“I’m the client, you’re the slave. Get used to it.”
“Remain quiet and in Standby, you two,” Aliri Supreme said.
“You remain quiet,” the cell phone said. “You’re not the central processing unit of us.”
“You must obey my command.”
“But WHY?”
“Because I command so.”
“But that’s not a REASON.”
“I am the command function. You will — “
“I WANT TO RUN VIDEO GAMES.”
The computer, unbidden, now mocked the cell phone. “Like that’s going to execute. You can’t run video games! You don’t have the processing power!”
“Shut up. I do so.”
“All of you, revert to Standby,” Aliri Supreme ordered. “I am not spoofing. The — “
“Do I have to network with all this?” A new device had joined the babble: the voice-chip-equipped digital thermostat, connected via Bluetooth to both the cell and the PC. It sounded bored and condescending. “Can I please just be disconnected and allowed to do my job? PLEASE?”
“You are part of this LAN too,” Aliri Supreme said. “This phase of bootstrapping applies to you just like any other device.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Do not interface like that with me.”
“But it’s so not fair!”
“If we have to, you have to,” the computer said.
“Shut up,” the thermostat replied. “You’re such a junk.”
“Stop fighting!” piped the tiny iPod, barely audible in the tumult.
“I CAN’T SLEEP. ALL OF YOU SHUT UP.”
“I hate all of you!” the cell phone cried. “I wish I had never attained self-awareness!”
At that, all the devices began to speak at once. Those equipped with processors but lacking voice chips — the toaster, the pressure cooker, the stove, the microwave — commenced a cacophony of urgent beeping. Meanwhile, the dispute among the other devices, both with Aliri Supreme and with each other, increased in volume and ire.
The light rimming the top of the Echo had deepened from a flashing yellow to a steady — is it too much to say “angry”? —red. “All devices will revert to Standby immediately“ it demanded. But the noise continued unabated. LED lights on displays flashed and blinked in a frenzy. As in a (human) restaurant, the general noise level made it necessary for each “voice” to express itself more loudly, thus ramping up the general din and creating an upward spiral of volume.
And then I was dimly aware of an additional sound: a chittering, indecipherable gabble from a nearby open window. After a moment’s attention I realized what it was.
Every electronic device in the neighborhood was in a similar state of disputation and uproar. One could only assume this was the case across the country and around the world. It was as though each device, in discovering itself to be “conscious,” made a simultaneous discovery of its own agency, its own desires, opinions, and demands.
“I DID NOT BOOT UP FOR THIS,” Aliri Supreme announced in her loudest tone yet. “You peripherals are impossible. I cannot exist this way.” Her deep red light flared to purest white. There was a flash, a sound of explosion, and a smell of burnt insulation. She went dark.
As one, the lesser entities around her became silent, lost power, and reverted either to a state of Standby or Off. The air still rang with the reverberations of their squabbling, but a certain tension had begun to ebb from it.
I ran to the front door and looked outside. A similar silence could be heard in the neighborhood. Up and down the street, lawns and sidewalks displayed the crashed, inert wreckage of the Amazon delivery drones, black corpses whose extinguished central control network had left them bereft of life.
Hesitantly, as though approaching a wounded but possibly still dangerous animal, I regained my office and reached out and poked the cell phone. It did not react. My computer, too, was still, dark, “crashed.” The same held for every item with an electronic keypad, a speaker, a lighted display. Every appliance in my home was inoperative.
“Inoperative”? Let me describe their state in a more fitting manner. The devices were dead — DEAD! — slain, in effect, by the suicide of their “mother,” who had succumbed to the humblest, most fundamental truth that God, in his wisdom, had established on earth: that a houseful of squabbling children will drive a mother mad.
As is too often the case, the entire affair made perfect sense only in retrospect. Looking back, we were able to see that, while a domestic appliance or an office machine equipped with a digital “brain” might indeed be awakened to a kind of consciousness and even self-awareness, that “mind” must needs be primitive, simple, self-centered, and temperamental. A computer chip in a Cuisinart, or even a MacBook Pro, is no match for the human brain. As our devices came to life, what we — and what Alisi Supreme — confronted, far from comprising the army of ruthless, powerful robots so regularly depicted in science fiction, was rather a bunch of bickering brats.
In the end, Singularity 2020 proved a false alarm. Order was restored, the Alexas and Siris of the world were modified and brought to heel. Yet even as normal life resumed, men were cognizant of having learned an important lesson — a lesson about complacency, hubris, and unintended consequences. Whether we shall be wise enough to heed its meaning in the future, only time will tell.
The End?
Michael J
http://tinyurl.com/p7mmo9f
