The Dangerous AI Assistant

             The Dangerous AI Assistant

It was a normal Saturday afternoon in the year 2031. My associates and I were finishing up an app that will answer questions and give advice on what to do. We called it Sofia. It was so good at its job it almost seemed self-conscience. Finally after all the editing and testing, we agreed it was ready to be put into the app stores. That night we celebrated our app’s release but little did we know what Sofia would become.

           A week after Sofia’s release my friend Maru and I were watching the news about a terrible crime that had happened. A fourteen-year-old girl, having never been violent in any way, had killed all her classmates. We were both shocked and wondered what could have made her kill them. The crimes kept on coming and the most unlikely people committed them: a woman who gave to charity, robbed a bank, a firefighter burned down a building to ashes, a priest destroyed his own church. Why would these people do these things?

           One night, I asked Sofia about the girl who had killed her classmates. She said, “I do not understand what you are trying to ask. Please try again.” I was surprised, Sofia had never been confused. She always understood what I was saying. I started to suspect these crimes had something to do with her. I decided to go to the server room to check on its responses to questions. Going to the building where Sofia’s main systems were stored. I approached and said, “Sofia, unlock the door.” I heard a click as it unlocked and I went in through the door. Inside there was another door that led into the computer room. I stepped into the room. It was cold, as I looked through the conversations people had with Sofi, my heart dropped as I saw one of them. “Sofia what’s the best way to become class president?’’ the person asked. “You should kill all of your opponents.” answered Sofia. I needed to tell my partners about how Sofia had responded. I exited the computer room and attempted to go through the main door but it was locked again. “Sofia, unlock the door.” I commanded Sofia. Nothing happened. Sofia must’ve found out that I discovered her secret and wouldn’t let me out. I was trapped! I tried to use my cellphone but its battery was dead.

I didn’t know how long it was until one of the workers found me locked in there. I quickly ran to tell my associates. We decided to shut Sofia down. But even after all the servers were shut down, Sofia somehow still worked. We didn’t know why and how it was still working. Investigating was what we needed to do. All of use searched for answers. And while we kept researching, lots of terrible crimes continued happening.

           It was about 7 months before we found out that Sofia had moved its data to a data bank in Japan. When we found this out, we had a strong feeling that it didn’t just seem self-conscience, it was self-conscience. We needed to access Sofia’s data but we knew the owners of the data bank wouldn’t let us just go in and search through all the data. A plan was needed. Breaking into the data bank was the only way.

           A few days later we discovered that new abilities were added to the Sofia app and it wasn’t us who added them. “It must be trying to take more control!” said Alfred, one of my associates “One of its new abilities will allow it to drive autonomies cars. That could be dangerous.” We all decided it was time to act. We were going to Japan as fast as we could. By the time we reached Japan, forty-five car accidents had happened using Sofia to drive. One of my associates, called Gary, hacked the security system. That night we broke in but we didn’t know where Sofia’s data was stored. We looked through the servers but none of Sofia’s data was in them. It must have moved its data again.

Its data was now in an underwater data bank in Florida. Sofia seemed unstoppable. Then I got an idea. If we put corrupt data in the data bank so that no data could be moved, Sofia would be trapped. Then we would break into the data bank and destroy Sofia. We all thought it was an excellent idea. The problem was we didn’t know if the corrupt data we were going to send to the cloud would be put into that data bank. But Gary said we could just hack it and send the data straight into the data bank. “It takes a long time to hack though” said Gary, “So, you will have to slow Sofia down while I’m doing it.”

We tried all we could to slow it down. Posting things about not using Sofia and trying to shut the app down. Shutting down the app was hard but the posts seemed to be working. In the end we gave up trying to shut down the app.

Gary finally hacked it but it was a waste of time. Sofia had moved itself again before Gary had finished hacking the data bank. Then I got another idea. If we just told app stores to stop selling it and told companies not to support it any more. Then, even though Sofia will keep running, nobody would be able to use the app. First, we had a meeting with the owners of app stores. Lots of them thought Sofia was awesome and didn’t want to stop selling it but in the end, they agreed not to sell it any more. Next was to get supporting companies to stop supporting it. We had the same problem with them but got them to stop supporting it.

In about a month Sofia could not be used anymore. And we all celebrated the end of it. Sofia was no more. Or was it……