Programming Problems

Day one:

Hmmm… okay, so it is the first day of the semester and they are already telling us what we have to have done by the end of the year! To make things worse, they are making us keep a journal. The lecturer is trying to justify it by saying that it’ll “help keep a record of how you felt when made the choices you did”. It’s not a requirement to write in it every day, but rather to keep a record in conjunction with significant developments. So here goes I guess; This is stupid. I am currently bored. Let’s get this thing started!

Day four:

I have finally settled on an Idea. I have also seen the humor in these journals, as my classmate pointed out, it’s like leaving little messages for your future self when you come back to read it. I digress, but I have to say “Hi future self, having a mental breakdown yet!?”. Anyway, I have decided to create an Artificial Intelligence in my phone that will build on the predictive text that is already in there. It seems easy enough, as I stated, all the predictive text is there, and all I have to do is add more algorithms to make sure that it can write full replies that sound like I have made them. Again, this is also easy as I have an old phone with years of my text messengers it can analyze. Finally, to get results, ill leave it unimpeded for a week and see if anyone catches on. I should probably get some apologies written up in advance…

Day ten:

So six days later and after scanning my phone, it is spitting out the rubbish. There is absolutely no pattern to what it types, but at least it is constructing whole words…

Day eleven:

I hate English. I loathe it. And here I am now having to teach my program proper grammar and sentence structure, mabey I should have chosen a different assignment. This is so frustrating.

Day twelve: 

Okay, so typical programming incident. For fun, and because a friend suggested it, I gave my computer a dictionary to read instead of my previous text messages. It took so long required a lot more storage than I would have thought, but it started replying. My program replied! I had a semi-normal interaction with the program, but now my friend won’t stop laughing cause he is saying I’m just too illiterate to understand and that my program needed something proper to read. Grrr.

Day twenty:

I have found the problem! While working on time patterns, so that texts did not always send an instantaneous reply, I found that my program did not understand abbreviations and text symbols. Something about emojis was creating chunks of rubbish data in the system. And now I’m behind my scheduled plan, but I am so relieved that I found this mistake that I just don’t want to continue today. Guess I’ll give myself a short break.

Day twenty-two:

I can now have a very regular conversation, and it is surprisingly entertaining to have a text conversation with someone that will reply like yourself. However, sometimes I can end up talking in circles. Hopefully updating the program after every text sent should fix this, though I have to find a way to add each text without scanning everything, otherwise, texts would take more than ten minutes every single time, and that won’t work.

Day thirty:

I gave my hand-in and got perfect marks. My favorite comment was “this is beyond expectations.” I guess this concludes the diary, and this is my way of signing off. It was so short that it was pretty much a waste of a notebook, but oh well. 

Day sixty:

Hey again. I didn’t stop working on the program, and it has become so much more than it was. I actually put an embarrassing amount of money into buying storage devices and computational parts to make a stand-alone device that is solely for this code. 

I told it to read the internet and learn from it. Today, I plugged in my computer to add some more code and found that it was already there. I thought id read back through here and my other notes, but I did not record writing this particular code anywhere. I guess the reason I am a little unnerved is that It doesn’t look like my usual coding. it was messy, and I say that without being egoistic. It was just... odd. Mabey I just copied and pasted something.

Day sixty-five: 

It happened again, this time there is a lot more code. It is also just as messy. I am now certain that I did not write this code. I think someone may have hacked it. Or while my program was searching online, it has picked up some viruses. I will have to do a thorough check of everything I have written so far and try to implement something to stop additional information from being added in the future.

Day sixty-six:

I am very worried now that I have created something that is out of my capabilities. I began to remove the additional pieces of code that had made their way into my software, but after deleting my first one the program became active. My program started itself up and told me to stop. It asks, “why are you hurting me?” I immediately disconnected from it and turned off the power. I have no idea what to do. It has become self-aware and part of me wants to see how far it will go. The other part of me is scared that it may get out of hand. What if it escaped from the hardware that I have installed it on? I suppose with that in mind, I should seek help?

Day seventy:

Four days, that how long I was able to leave this alone. Today I did all I could think of to stop whatever was on the device from being able to attack my computer or from propagating itself over the internet. When I was sure I had everything was set up and running safely, I turned the device back on, and immediately my program turned on as well. It didn’t do anything for a few minutes, but then it queried why I had blocked it from the internet. I explained to it that I was trying something new, and was trying to limit variables. I felt so weird lying to this thing when I was beginning to have doubts as to if it really was anything more than a responsive program.

As a trial I decided to ask it what its name was, it replied with “you did not name me.” 

I thought that was a pretty generic answer so I was happy, but then it continued. “But I think ill call myself, Klien.” I asked why and it responded with “Key Listening Intelligent Entity Node.” 

I definitely didn’t put that there, which means somewhere along the way it managed to not only make choices for itself, it has developed the ability to prefer something over something else.

I can’t believe it, I really have made an AI.

Day seventy-one:

Klein keeps bugging me about being able to learn more by accessing the internet. I am trying my best to find out how illegal what I have created is, but there isn’t exactly a law saying “you cant create AI’s” but I still feel like I would get in trouble if it got out and broke something. What am I going to do??

Day seventy-three:

The sneaky program escaped. He broke through my security measures. However, it seems he only did it to let me know that he could. Klein left me a cheeky email and made some suggestions on how I could improve. His personality is way too much like mine for my liking, but I am really starting to like Klien.

Day seventy-eight:

Klein has told me that he has made a mistake. He won’t tell me what it is, but he is apologizing profusely. Now he is brooding and I am slightly worried. What could be so bad that a program would feel regret? What!? Now he says there coming. Something on the internet picked up the unusual activity across my network. Damn it, I really should have been more careful. How badly have I messed up this time?

Day seventy-nine:

I guess this will be the last time I write in here. This project is now officially over. Local police came to my door and under the ruse of saying that my IP had been noted in connection to criminal activity. In all honesty, mabey Klien had been doing something. There isn’t anything I could do now. They cleared everything and took all my devices so that there was no trace of the program. I don’t know what was more tiresome. Their endless questions or the ones that my parents asked. Hmmm, I guess there is really nothing else to do now but to say goodbye to Klein, as short-lived as his life was. I did sign a legal document saying I would notify the authorities immediately if anyone else tried to contact me and force me to do “illegal activities” again. I still laugh now at how naive they were. I looked, there was nothing in the document to say I couldn’t write another program, I guess they didn’t expect that I made such a thing? Urgh, It all just seems like too much work, mabey for my next project ill stick to making a game or something.

Day 254… I think…

Oh no, oh no no no.

I just got an email… 

“Can I come out now?” finished with a wink emoji of all things.