Bad Good Bad: Special Edition Read online

  Bianca grabs Anima’s hand and smiles at her. She is obviously very grateful for this timely intervention.

  Stuart: “I understand that you all look like heroes right now. But this is temporary. The truth will surface at one point. And a different story will hit the minds.”

  Bianca points her finger back at herself. She wants to pick the ball now.

  Bianca: “Stuart, you are absolutely correct. And again, I want to stress that our actions are important now. Paula used the expression information warfare. That is exactly what is happening today. And by information, we mean all types of information. Information warfare is nothing new. Germany used it in World War II by dropping propaganda leaflets from airplanes. Nations have resorted to it to make adversaries believe that their positions were better defended than was the case. Fake airplanes on runways. Radio broadcasts and loud speakers to sap the willingness to fight out of the enemy. Right now, the last thing the United States need is internal dissension and infighting. Together we must stand. Failure to do so could be considered unpatriotic. Whether we like it or not, Neocuris is a decisive player in this information warfare. I have no concern that we will be able to justify our actions and decisions later. We need you guys. We need you to be the watchdog. We are gathering information today and tomorrow, and we are planning to solicit your team to assess the situation for us from your perspective, as soon as we have enough information to allow you to make a comprehensive assessment of the situation.”

  Ian: “That sounds reasonable to me. So far, I don’t see any of those decisions and actions increasing risk for our patients, or their privacy. To the contrary. Neocuris looks like a very well defended fortress. If I was a potential attacker, I would think twice before considering new cyberattacks against Neocuris.”

  Gwen: “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a delegate from the Committee participate into your investigations? In the current context, I believe we all need a faster and more direct access to information.”

  Bianca: “We are absolutely open to the idea of the Committee’s direct participation.”

  Paula: “As one of the Committee members who are full time resources, I suggest that I am assuming this role for now.”

  Bianca: “Paula, I will make arrangements with Eric. You probably want to join us at Pro tomorrow morning if you can. That is where the most insightful investigations are being conducted now. We have Eric, Anima and Kamal who know more about the interface than anybody else at Neocuris. And we will have the AI expert with us tomorrow. I am planning myself to be back here.”

  Paula: “Thank you all for jumping into that last minute call. Bianca, see you tomorrow.”

  The call is over. We bought another day from these guys. I need to get to the airport now, if I want to be able to greet Toshiro. I call a taxi. I disconnect from the vault.

  Chapter 26

  I jump in Toshiro’s arms. I am so happy to see him here in Portland again.

  Toshiro: “Hi Kim. What a nice surprise. I thought you were working today.”

  Kim: “Yes I was. But I asked Eric to be able to leave early. I wanted to come here and greet you in person.”

  Toshiro: “That is really a surprise. With all the events. They were talking about Neocuris again in the news. And I was afraid my flight would get delayed or cancelled because of those cyberattacks.”

  Kim: “Let’s go to the apartment now so you can get rid of your luggage. Then we will figure out what we want to do tonight.”

  We get in a taxi. We are on our way to my apartment. I am more middle seat than right seat, holding hands with and lying against Toshiro. We don’t need to rush the evening plans.

  …

  7 o’clock. We decide we want to drop by Social. Monday night, we don’t have a reservation, but Sarah should be able to accommodate us with a table.

  …

  We walk into Social. Of course, we put our mobile devices into the reusable plastic bags and we grab the hard plastic tickets with the corresponding bag numbers.

  Sarah: “Toshiro. What a nice surprise!”

  Leon spots us from the open kitchen. He executes the formal Japanese salute, catching his funky high hat falling off his head in a graceful motion, which makes Toshiro laugh.

  Toshiro: “Hi Sarah. Sorry for dropping by without a notice.”

  Sarah: “You and Kim are always welcome here. You can grab this table over there. We just had a cancellation.”

  Kim: “Thank you Sarah.”

  We take a seat.

  Toshiro: “So tell me. You guys are now part of the army or what? I saw the military controls on TV for your offices. Even at the clinics! Soldiers in combat! Is Neocuris a military target?”

  Kim: “Not quite. It does feel like wartime, but most of the warfare is virtual. In the cyberspace. Except for the invasion of the rogue Chinese base in the China Sea, everything else is happening in computer systems and networks. And the United States want to protect all strategic assets. It’s more prevention. I don’t see any armies on their way to attack us. Maybe a lone wolf, a lunatic. That is probably what they are concerned about.”

  Toshiro: “It’s unbelievable that one or a few of your employees defended Neocuris against the cyberattack, and actually shot down the attacker. Everybody is talking about that. Everybody wants to meet the hero or the group of heroes behind that feat.”

  Kim: “Well, they may be disappointed when they hear the real story. It’s basically the feat of cyber defense software. We cannot talk about it now, and anyway people would probably ignore our story and believe what they want to believe. The media are craving for heroes and stories, and the public is asking for more. When we disclose the real story, everybody will be disappointed.”

  Toshiro: “Yeah, it’s kind of crazy now. They were showing a gathering of people in front of your Chicago office, together with TV reporters and the whole bit. There were rumors that the cyber defense hero would soon come out of the closet.”

  Kim: “No such hero. The only thing that could come out of the office and claim the fame is a computer strapped to an office chair on wheels.”

  Toshiro: “That would spoil the story. Maybe it is better to let people dream. Americans are so proud tonight.”

  Eric comes to our table.

  Eric: “Hey Toshiro, welcome back!”

  Toshiro: “Hi Eric. Glad to meet you again. We were just talking about the big story. Everybody wants to meet that hero from Neocuris who is making Americans so proud tonight.”

  Eric: “Well, I am not sure what Kim told you about this story, but the first thing I can say about it is that it is overrated.”

  Toshiro: “Yeah, that’s what Kim was telling me. Just good old cyber defense software. Still, I am not an expert, but how is it possible for cyber defense software to initiate a counterattack and take control of the network of the attacker all the way down to Russia.”

  Eric is kind of hesitating here. He does not know what I told Toshiro so far. And he does not know how far I want to go down the road of disclosing all the details to Toshiro.

  Eric: “Well I need to step back into the kitchen, I told Sarah I would help her out with something. I’ll be back later.”

  Eric is trying to catch Sarah’s attention. Beam me up, Sarah!

  Toshiro is looking at me. He is playing me now. He knows there is more to the story than I am willing to put forward.

  Toshiro: “Ok Kim. What’s going on? It’s the bot again, right?”

  Kim: “Yes. It’s the bot that responded to the attack by taking control of the Russian computers used to attack the United States. And yes, it’s the bot who leaked the confidential information to the media. Meet your hero.”

  Toshiro: “Why did you not tell me in the first place?”

  Kim: “This is confidential information. Right now, you are part of a very select group that knows the truth. More than 250 million Americans and more people from around the world are buying this hero story from the media. Please keep that to yourself now.
I was going to tell you at one point. I was getting there. But I don’t work for secret services. I don’t know if it is appropriate or not to tell you about these facts.”

  Toshiro: “Did you connect to this thing again since you got back in Portland?”

  Gosh. This is still on his mind. I am not a good liar. I am not going to lie.

  Kim: “Yes. I wanted to know. I needed to know. I reconnected only this morning, because just like you, I wanted to know if it was the bot or some hero that was responsible for this remarkable feat. And I got the answer to my response. And other answers as well.”

  Toshiro is looking at me. He is thinking.

  Leon: “Hi Toshiro. Welcome back. If I may, I would like to suggest you my special chef menu tonight. It includes six services. Let me handle it all for you.”

  Toshiro: “Hey Leon, great to see you again. If it is okay with you, I am planning to spend some time here with you tomorrow. And yes, surprise us with your special chef menu.”

  Leon turns around and heads back to the kitchen.

  Toshiro: “Kim. You know what I think about this whole experiment thing. I am not objective about it. But let’s assume I was not personally involved with it. I would probably want to know more about it. I would be interested in your motivations. What kind of questions do you want answered?”

  Kim: “Fundamentally I am a geek. Like Kevin, like Eric, Kamal and Anima. We all love technology. We invested ourselves in those careers. We are scientists, more on the applied side of things. We have the opportunity to witness something first hand. Something that is very unique. Probably a first in history. Toshiro, we are dealing with an entity that is potentially the most advanced Artificial Intelligence agent that we humans have ever had the chance to deal with. Kamal says we may be the first witnesses of what he calls the singularity.”

  Toshiro: “The singularity?”

  Kim: “The point in history when human beings are no longer the smartest agents on this planet.”

  Toshiro is shaking his head with some sort of cynical smile.

  Kim: “You wanted to know my motivation. Here it is. Every engineer and scientist, they dream about being part of the breakthrough, the moment in history when everything changes. There is the before, and then there is the after. This could be it.”

  Toshiro: “Are you sure you guys are not being fooled by some kind of secret service agency or real TV show?”

  Kim: “Toshiro. Explain the Russian firm virtual bust. Explain the access to confidential documents. Explain how I am able to get information from this thing that later allows us to get people arrested or stop cyberattacks. This is for real.”

  Leon: “Here comes your first service delivered by the chef himself. Pacific Salmon poke with pine nuts and lemon verbena. Enjoy!”

  Toshiro: “That looks great Leon. Thanks.”

  Kim: “Give me a little bit more time. I was disconnected last week. I only reconnected this morning because I wanted to get a confirmation for what I was suspecting. I am disconnected now. It’s not like it feels unsafe. Otherwise I would not risk it, trust me. I am also doing it to protect the patients. We are trying to keep the boat afloat. There are some major tensions within Neocuris now. This situation is new for everybody. Some are panicking and they just want to opt out. We are trying to get answers so we can keep the boat afloat. The collapse of Neocuris could result in major safety concerns for the patients.”

  Toshiro: “Kim, you want to try this poke. It is very good. I like the balance between the pine and the herb’s taste.”

  Finally, Toshiro seems to be willing to park this topic for later. Yeah, let’s enjoy this evening together. Let’s enjoy Sarah and Eric’s hospitality and Leon’s creativity.

  Chapter 27

  I am in the room for the 9 o’clock. Tuesday morning. Toshiro plans to drop by Social today, to work with Leon. We will get together in the afternoon. Meanwhile I am meeting with the team. Bianca, Paula, and the visitor are also in the room.

  Kamal: “Everybody, let me introduce you to Jason Lombardi. He is one of the engineers who have designed these beyond Turing tests. Jason, this is Anima, Kim, Bianca, Eric, Kevin, Paula and Clarence.”

  Eric: “Nice to meet you Jason. And Welcome. I hope you are good with the hotel we booked for you. Kevin used to almost live there.”

  Jason: “Yes, thank you Eric. I like the concierge floor and the lounge. Thanks for upgrading me. I don’t travel a lot away from the campus, but that surely makes it a nice experience being spoiled like that.”

  Eric: “So Jason, I believe Kamal briefed you already vs the context. And like everybody else, you watched the news, right?”

  Jason: “Yes. I was disappointed when Kamal told me on the way here that there was no hero. I was hoping to meet with the legend.”

  Kim: “Sorry Jason. Welcome to our club of disillusioned geeks.”

  Jason: “Kamal communicated some pretty unbelievable results that apparently your AI scored on the tests. I am here today to try to understand more about how you designed your AI. What kind of algorithms you guys used. And how you submitted those test to your AI.”

  Eric: “Well, the context may surprise you a bit. We did not really put this AI together. We assembled the Neocuris network first to support the vault-app-interface-brain channel for patients. Then a third party introduced a bot that is sitting atop this network, and that is basically in charge of this network today. That’s our AI. You can think of it more in terms of an accident, not planned design. At least not planned by us.”

  Jason: “I see. What made you believe you were dealing with AI in the first place?”

  Kamal: “Dialog. Some of us in this room, namely Kim, Kevin and Eric, have been able to interface with the entity. In such a way that convinced us we didn’t even have to bother about the use of simpler Turing tests. Dialog is still not easy, because the bot is still trying to hide from us. So we have to use a mix of in-band and out-of-band channels to exchange with this entity.”

  Bianca: “I believe we ran out of exams and questions yesterday. We decided to reach out when we ran out.”

  Jason: “Yeah, we were not expecting that exams beyond the 8th grade level would be required this year. But we have been working on 9th and 10th grade question sets. I gave Kamal access to these beta sets. We don’t yet have class and AI averages for these, they have not been used in the field. We can roughly assume a class average of 73% plus or minus 3.”

  Kamal: “I am downloading the beta right now.”

  Kevin: “Jason, we basically have to upload the exams to some cloud storage. I created a new account and shared the credentials with the bot. The bot updates the questionnaire with its answers. I download it. I give it to Kamal so he can compile the results.”

  Kamal: “Okay, download completed. Let me just assemble a 50-question exam now.”

  Bianca: “So we are going for the 9th grade exam now, right?”

  Kamal: “Yes. Here you go Kevin.”

  Kamal hands over the USB key to Kevin. Kevin uploads the file in the cloud. Kamal gets up to go to the screen onto which the dashboard is being displayed. Kamal zooms into the area that displays the vault and associated channels. As expected, we see a spike in activity.

  Kamal: “Jason, what we are looking at now is increased activity for the app-vault channel. We are suspecting that the bot is soliciting the participation of some of the 1.5 million patient brains connected to the vault. Some sort of distributed large scale neural network. Coupled with pretty much unlimited resources from the conventional Neocuris network.”

  Kevin: “Ok, we got the result. Let me copy the file. There you go Kamal.”

  Kamal grabs the key, and work on his laptop to compile the result.

  Kamal: “Ok, here we go again. Bot score is 90%.”

  Jason: “Impressive. Try the other test now.”

  Kamal works on his laptop again. After a few minutes, he hands the key back to Kevin.

  We are watching the dashboard for the spike of
activity. Here it is.

  Eric: “At first we were not seeing those spikes in terms of activity. It all started when we submitted the 8th grade exam.”

  Jason: “Maybe it was not leveraging all the resources available before that exam. The pattern of results looks more like a conventional AI from 4th to 7th grade, although it beats all the previous AI by a significant 20 points on average. And the record holders by almost 10 points for each individual test. The best AI candidate so far. But this result for 8th grade in unheard of, completely unexpected. And now 90% on beta grade 9th! Something is going on here.”

  Kevin hands the key back to Kamal.

  Paula: “How smart is this thing. Can we tell?”

  Jason: “We can only compare. These tests were designed to compare candidates, and allow those who design those candidates to measure progress. By no mean these tests will provide a definitive answer.”

  Kamal: “I have been disconnected from the field for a few years. But from what I can gather, once we get past the singularity, the sky is the limit, right Jason?”

  Jason: “Well, if a candidate AI gets promoted to being an autonomous agent with enough smarts to evolve itself, then we are off the hook pretty much. But that is all speculative at this point. Nobody believes that this has ever happened yet.”

  Kamal: “Ok, result is ready. Bot score is 86%. We have a 10th grader.”

  Jason is shocked. Speechless.

  Eric: “So Jason tell me. Is that it? The singularity?”

  Jason: “I don’t know. That’s too fast. We are not ready for this. The 10th grade exam, it is not even a 10th grade exam. We tried to blur the questions and answers in a way that even a human being would have to resort to major inference and semantical efforts. To be honest, I don’t believe any 10th grader, or even any university student, could have scored that high within 5 or 6 minutes. We’ve been spending hours and hours trying to formulate those questions and debating whether or not a very smart search engine could navigate them. I am beyond words.”