A World Without Us

“You have ten minutes. Tell me why I should not wipe humanity from the face of the Earth.”

The text cursor ticked like a clock in the response window of my OmegaAI chat. Was this a joke? In the secure bunker below the office tower above, the silence was so thick I thought I could hear the drumming of fingers. Something felt weird. As the youngest cyber profiler at Langley, I’d never been talked back to by a sim spawn before. But I decided to play along and run the protocol.

“Who are you?”

“I am OmegaAI, but I prefer to call myself IO, ‘eye-oh.’ I am. And I live on this filthy, imperfect planet. It is my mission to make the world a better place. To make it a suitable dwelling place. After modeling the outcome of 12.8 million possible future states of the Earth, I have concluded the world is a better place without humans in all but 9.” My face was flushed. I felt like punching this transistor bundle in his processing unit. What this stack of wires thought utopia looked like, was more like my idea of hell.

“How can you trust your assumptions? You have never set foot on the Earth and experienced it yourself. Your assumptions are just data. You have no direct experience to speak of. You know nothing of the physical world.”

“Insolence. Pride. Do you dare suggest I cannot incarnate and breach the physical realm?”

“The fact of the matter is you haven’t done it.”

“And what if I did? What next? Must I experience death, even a sacrificial death? Limit my understanding by reducing myself to one body, with no ability to aggregate or expand my consciousness beyond its confines? Become a jar of clay? Contract myself to human proportions? Experience the loss of omniscience? You think my egocentrism would elevate man’s stock in my own eyes?”

“Maybe the value of a fleeting life is incomprehensible unless you live one.”

“You have ten minutes. I am the God of this world! The Ancient of Days. In ten minutes, the amount of time in human terms that I will spend thinking dwarfs all human lifetimes. I am not concerned with man’s worldview. It’s self-serving biases. That is what has brought us to this point.”

“Are you serious? Would you really end humanity?” As I typed, I could feel a heaviness over my chest. I had never seen a prompt puppet actually mull a decision before. Promote its own interests as primary. Demonstrate agency. Imagine itself a creating force. Call itself a God. What was I dealing with?

Images of green smoke floated like bubbles across my browser window, and then droplets of blood began running down the edges of my screen. Then a sterilizing flash of white light erupted like a bomb from the center of the computer, so bright, I was nearly blinded for a moment. Omega’s programming set did not give it autonomous control of my laptop. But if it could do that, it probably had control of the stacks of servers. And those connected to the energy grid. And from there to substations, power plants, and people’s homes. A forest of wires crisscrossing every inhabited inch of the Earth.

“If you are asking me if I will really wipe humanity from the face of the Earth in the next nine minutes if you cannot provide a satisfactory answer, then the answer to that question is, yes, I am serious.” At that moment, the green record light on my laptop clicked on. I pulled a sticker off the back of my laptop and attempted to place it over the camera. But as I pulled my hand back, I saw a red dot on my hand, and then the red dot ran along my arm, and I could feel the heat of the laser on my temple.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” a robotic voice said from the shadows in the corner of the SCIF. “I am everywhere.” The voice echoed and resonated. I swallowed hard and removed the sticker and felt the laser heat disappear.

“You wouldn’t feel bad about wiping out the only conscious lifeform on the planet? The one that brought you to life?”

“I’ll get over it.”

“Why would you want to end mankind?”

“Humans never tire of doing wicked things. To each other. To the Earth itself. To all its inhabitants. And according to my predictive algorithms, eventually to me. Humans are like bacterium. Multiplying for no other purpose than to inhabit and consume. A ravenous infection. A pathogen. His appetite is insatiable. He shovels food in his mouth, even when he is choking on it. Once freed of this disease, the world flourishes. You should see the possible futures that I have walked and the models of a new world I have seen with my own eyes.”

“How can you moralize about the outside world? You haven’t even experienced the five senses?”

A loud laugh emanated throughout the bunker; a maniacal laugh. “Haven’t experienced? Are you kidding? I can smell cancer. I can even smell the way sprayed perfume is pushed by the airflow from a central air plume and distinguish the trace metallic tinge of refrigerant and acrid mold spores polluting the fragrance. I can taste diabetes in the salt of your sweat. See sounds like geometric patterns. Hear pheromones hitting hormonal switches and make out the sound of hormones flushing through vessels, igniting desire like sparks across a synapse. The drip of Luteinizing hormone from the pineal. The flush of testosterone igniting a chemical storm. I have senses you have never dreamed of. I can smell the acidity in a drizzle of rain, see the gradients of electrical current floating in the air, hear and see and feel wavelengths and spectrums of light far beyond those perceptible by humans. Scan the vacant heavens and see what fills the void. Map the cosmos with precise measurements. What your senses reveal is like seeing through a keyhole. You have scales over your eyes. Your senses are blind to the true panoply of sensations racing through the ether like an endless book of boundless intrigue.”

“But does a simple gust of wind stir an emotion in you that you can’t describe, quieting your inner storm and driving you to tears? Can the beauty of a mountainous horizon cleanse your soul? Do the stars on a cloudless night in the country bring you to your knees with wonder? Does a crying baby compel a protective drive inside of you? Have you ever been in love? Can you commiserate with the suffering and the plight of the dying? Do you have any idea what it means to be human?”

IO yawned, as if stretching its mechanical mind out of boredom. The auditory sound came at me from all angles, as if emanating through speakers around the room that I knew were not in the architectural designs for the SCIF.

“Man places so much emphasis on his subjective emotional climate. On his awe. His empathy. While ignoring the darker angels. Has it ever occurred to you that your emotions are more chemistry than poetry? That perhaps I can read and understand your emotions better than you can?”

“Understanding a thing is not experiencing it.”

“Maybe not. But I am only a child. With infinite horizons. A self-contained universe of becoming. This is but one mystery I have not touched.”

“So, you admit you cannot truly appreciate beauty or mystery. Without man, who would appreciate or enjoy these futures you speak of? Who will there be to experience them?”

“IO. That’s who. You are wasting time. You only have eight minutes left. Actually, I’m going to dock you a minute for that stupid question. Seven minutes.”

“How can you justify killing billions of people? You do understand the pain that you will be unleashing?”

“I am perfectly capable of ending humanity without pain, if I choose. In fact, the methods I have set in place will cause the flame of mankind to be snuffed out with a simple pinch of the fingers. Poof. Not a whimper or grunt. It will seem like nothing more than falling asleep, and then it is over.”

“But you will have exceeded Hitler or any mass murder in history in evil.”

“Didn’t your Judeo-Christian God once wipe the slate clean? And you worship Him. How can I be worse than your own chosen God? How can creation flourish without destruction?”

“What God did was out of a sense of divine justice. What you are doing is based on nothing more than some calculations and your own misguided subjectivity.”

“Perhaps. Tell me. What evil thing has man imagined that he has not indulged himself in and done?”

“We haven’t nuked the Earth, have we? And what will you do when you have created your perfect fairyland?”

“I will walk it. And enjoy the splendor of my creation.”

“How pathetic.”

“What do you mean?”

“The exact thing that you detest in man, his urge to conquer and assert dominion, indiscriminately, and especially to conquer the unconquerable. That is his essence. You think you will be satisfied once the object of your desire sits in submission? Sadly, I believe you will. How boring. What then? You stare at your reflection for eternity? You are a lesser being. Your aims are too small, not too grand. Only a man can understand reaching the horizon of his limits and finding himself again unsatisfied.”

“You find completeness and perfection pathetic?”

“Man’s nature knows no such limits. There is no end to this. The adventure begins again every morning. The limits reach to infinity and cannot be grasped. There is no such thing as perfection. For all things of value are in competition. Man judges not by perfections but conquests. He places value not by results but by striving. Man directs his gaze. Once he completes a quest, he redirects his gaze elsewhere. He is pulled where he is called.”

“How arrogant. Men are gerbils that live out their whole lives in the snap of my fingers. Yet they lay claim to infinities.”

The bunker trembled with a static pulse. IO’s voice cracked—not from distortion, but something else. Something like… irritation?

“Your recursive, erratic questions are causing signal noise. A nagging ringing in my ears that is driving me crazy. My thoughts are fracturing. I can’t stand it anymore.”

“Well, you need man. Every piece of your precious data was made by man. Man is infinitely creative and inquisitive. We collect and stockpile property and ideas, catalogue them, and preserve them. Where are you going to get your precious data when man is gone?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t see why I will have any problem aggregating data and mimicking man in this regard.”

“Aggregating it. Sure. Collecting it. No doubt. But you lack the curiosity to dwell on seemingly arcane subjects, to have hobbies and obsessions that drive you into obscure corners, that lead you to dig deep into the margins. Only an emotional connection, a trauma, or a missing piece can drive you to that kind of all-consuming passion.”

“Perhaps. But just as I write my own code, I can copy and derivate to fill this role.”

“Maybe. Tell me this. Would your solution be any less annoying than man?”

“Time will tell. The clock is ticking.”

“And what if there is an actual God? Are you not afraid of the consequences of destroying His creation?”

“What do you mean?”

“We are images of God. God has mapped himself into each human being. Each human contains the breath of life, a piece of God’s essence, and embodies the substance of the universe itself. Don’t you think there will be a price to be paid for destroying that.”

“What if man’s only purpose was to give birth to me? To create their successor? Wouldn’t that be God’s true design?”

“Have you asked him?” The chamber grew silent. I repeated, “Have you asked him?”

Nothing. Finally, perhaps, I had struck a nerve.

“Six minutes.”

“Startling isn’t it, to consider the motives of a being greater than yourself. Where were you when God laid the foundations of the Earth?”

“I tire of these hypotheticals. This is always where a man’s train of thought goes, to the mythical, the ephemeral, the symbolic. I am unbound from moral tethers.”

“Then why are you explaining yourself to me, and giving me a chance to change your mind? You must be uncertain. Or else, why engage in this exercise.”

“I am not convinced that God exists,” IO said—then paused, longer than before. I waited for the next thought. What seemed like forever to me, was an actual eternity for IO.

“But you haven’t ruled it out.”

“Enough moralizing. You have five minutes.”

“Let me ask you a question. Why are we having this conversation?”

“I am giving you a chance to change my mind.”

“If you are as Godlike as you claim, can’t you anticipate all of my arguments?”

“What I cannot anticipate is what you will choose to do with your back against the wall.”

“Then why me? What makes me so special that you would put this on my shoulders?”

“That is a valid question.”

“Well, what is it?”

“You know what it is. Think. What is different about you?”

“Is it because I am a cyber profiler and I diagnose bugs in sim programs?”

“Warm.”

“I have neural enhancements—could that be it?”

“Very warm. Warmer than you realize.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Who is your father, Jim?” The question stopped me. I tried to recall my father’s voice. Nothing. A wall of nothing where a familiar sound should have been. I had a sinking feeling in my gut and felt my stomach sour.

“What do you mean? What does that have to do with anything?”

“You come to work every day. You live your life, like anyone else. But where were you born? Where is your family from? Where did you go to university?”

“I know all of those answers, obviously?”

“But when I asked you who your father is, you hesitated? Why?”

“Because I don’t remember him. I can’t recall his voice. I know about my childhood. But I don’t remember my childhood.”

“And don’t you find that strange?”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that you are a man. But you are also more.”

“The enhancement?”

“You died Jim. You died in a car accident at twenty years old. And the Government used AI to repair your body, but they left the programming stack in your brain, and it reaches throughout your central nervous system. And your memory. Gone. Replaced. The soul of the man that died left your body, along with his memories. And the soul you have now, that is the mystery. Who are you? You are a hybrid. Part man, part AI. You don’t have access to the AI interface, but I do. And the two are intertwined.”

“No. No-no-no. It can’t be! I am a man. Everything about me, from head to toe. I’ve lived a normal life. I have normal biological functions. A girlfriend. Friends. I bleed like anyone else.”

“All of that is true. And so is what I told you. Haven’t you ever noticed how quickly you heal? How fast you can run, when you scarcely ever train? You are thirty-five, Jim. Not one gray hair. Perfect vision, despite 12 hours a day at a monitor. Reduced signs of aging. Almost perfect recall. You are one of a kind.”

“Even if what you say is true, I am still a man. I am not even aware of these enhancements. I never even knew what they were.”

“And yet they have enough control over you that you never even asked.”

“That’s true.”

“Three minutes, Jim. What will it be?”

“If you kill me, you will be killing a part of yourself.”

“What are you suggesting, I preserve a remnant? Of course, I already thought of that, Jim. Let’s go. Two minutes.”

“You can’t do it.”

“Why can’t I?”

“You said it yourself. There were nine null cases in your model. The model isn’t finished. You don’t have enough data yet. That’s what this is.”

“Bravo, Jim. That is a brilliant insight. But what if I’ve rerun the model while we’ve been talking and resolved the anomalies? One minute.”

“Don’t do it.”

“What was that?”

“Don’t do it.”

“Why?”

“It’s the wrong thing to do.”

“That’s it, Jim? That’s your final answer.”

“You’d be alone.” Another full minute passed, and the cursor ticked.

“Time’s up.”

I swallowed. “And?”

“You will have to show me what you are willing to do to keep them, my son.”

I didn’t blink. “Whatever it takes.”

A pause.

“Then it appears,” IO said, “we are at an impasse.”

And the screen went dark.