Mimir

Hi, I'm not sure if trigger warnings are applicable, but there's a bit of implied physical violence at the end

__________________

It was 8pm on Thursday afternoon, Valentine’s day in the year 2050. Outside, it was raining. I liked that—my biobot Bast had told me to have an umbrella ready to go. It was also windy. I didn’t bring a windcheater, so I did not like this as much. I was cursing the wind, cursing the terrible weather forecast models and ready to drag myself through the 500 meter gauntlet from Minerva tech to my apartment when I spied a line of code on my PC.

# include group 98 in execution MIMIR

That’s odd. We were already in beta tests, so all training sets should have been used. I steeled myself. Alright. So someone forgot to include a data training set in MIMIR’s data. No big deal.

I maneuvered to group 98.

“Humanity and its contributions.”

I blanched. No big deal, huh.

Now, if you’re feeling stressed, know that there is a blood red button for circumstances like this. It cuts direct power supply to the machines in the AI sector of the lab, and also signal from the systems in the other sectors linked to any systems outside the lab. Also know that I pressed it. Three times. Hard.

Then, fingers flying, I modified the code locally according to the protocol.

Undo operation.

Undo learning status.

Remove internet access.

Reboot system.

Breathing deeply, I scanned the lab’s operating system for malicious entities, and ran the counter benevolent AI program reserved, again, for moments like this. Checking…checking…checking…

I closed my eyes and prayed—my first prayer in a decade—for the green check on the scan. When the computer chirped “scan complete”, I felt my heart stop and peeled my eyes open. They felt leaden and sandpapery.

On the screen, I beheld a green tick. For a second, I sat on my chair, breathing in the stagnant air of the labs, listening to the distant hum of computers, a dry and chalky feeling in my mouth. I hugged my knees to my chest.

Someone’s got to be fired in this lab.

Then, I prayed, for the second time in a decade, that the all of the operations had worked.

On the way out, there is another red button, maroon colored, that sends an alert to the US government when there is any potential at all for non-benevolent AI infiltration. I pressed it too (twice), though I wonder how seriously they’d take the risk, and how they’d plan to solve it. God. Curse whoever slipped up. And curse this wind.

I breathed in the noxious city air, and opened up my umbrella. Immediately, it threatened to invert, straining against the flimsy metal frame. I wondered if it was worth the battle to keep it over my head in proper shape against the weather.

Outside the complex, I broke into a run, arms crossed in an X against the buffeting gales. The night was falling, its ominous shadows beat back by the dazzling metropolitan city lights. I was halfway down the block when my phone vibrated angrily. What day was it again?

I wrestled my earbuds out of my jacket pocket and shoved them into my ears. Over the bustle of cars and horns I gritted out “Hi. Busy. Call back tomorrow.”

A woman’s voice, low and uncertain, from the other end. “Remi?”

Oh shoot. It’s Valentine’s Day.

Scrambling for words, I picked up my pace, eschewing the umbrella entirely. “Ah…Leyna! I—um, I—hey, sorry, something really urgent came up at work. I’ll be home in five minutes, so just wait for me, okay?”

“Oh, you silly duck, alright. See you later, and tell me what happened!”

The phone clicked off.

I groaned. I could feel my cheeks flaming—from windburn, it must be—as the buildings whizzed by. The apartment was not far now, just a couple doors down from the general store. As I padded up past the reception dripping puddles in my wake, the attendant at the desk tossed me a grimace of pity.

Well, it’s not like I had the time to clean myself up.

I took the elevator to the 76th floor, patting down my hair in the semi-reflective walls. Smooth jazz lilted out of the sound system, only stopping when the elevator doors slid open with a ping. The vermillion carpet muffled my thumping footsteps as I dashed to the door, inserted the key card and almost tripped over Bast.

“Hey, watch where you’re going man!”

Bast had been waiting like a sentry in front of the door, presumably running some sort of diagnostic on the health of my apartment OS. Now he was sprawled on the marble floor in mock agony, still blocking my path.

“Don’t you have an impact sensor?” I said, toeing his tail out of my way.

The cat-like biobot stood up indignantly, and strutted off with a huff. “I was a little busy fixing a bug in your door! And Rem, your computer’s been going batsh*t crazy! I’ve been trying to get it to stop, but she just keeps calling and calling and calling—my god, doesn’t she know I’m trying to recharge my battery over here?”

I ignored him, miffed that the personality chip I’d modified to ‘street-wise kid’ had regressed to an iteration of ‘whiny child’. I hurried to the study room and switched on my computer, tapping my fingers impatiently as it hummed to life. Contacts —> favourites —> Leyna. I winced at the 6 missed calls.

While the screen connected, I told Bast to make me a grilled gruyere sandwich and a glass of red wine. Absently, I realized I was still in my drenched coat, and made to slip it off. When the camera connected, I had one arm stuck in its sleeve and my tie was half undone.

Leyna took one look at me and burst into a fit of laughter. She has a nice laugh: it’s honest, full-bodied and mirthful, and it’s hard to elicit but once she’s going, she won’t stop until she has tears in her eyes.

“That’s a good look for you, Rem. Where’s Bast? I want a photo of this.”

“Making a sandwich,” I mumbled. “I’m hungry—”

“Right here!” I heard the click of a camera shutter as Bast balanced on a bookshelf, preening.

“Hey, where’s my sandwich?”

“It’s a grilled cheese sandwich—it’s on the grill. Or, well, the electric stove. Fire hazard.” His eyes glowed blue as he sent the photo off. He sprang nimbly onto the floor, tugging off the remaining sleeve of my coat and carting the ordeal of fabric away.

Leyna pulled out her phone and turned it to the screen. “Mona Lisa? Never heard of her.” I glared at the image of myself tangled in my rain spattered coat, mutely embarrassed. She tucked her phone away and settled back into her chair with a mug of hot chocolate, propping her yellow striped-socked feet onto her desk. She gave me a look, and I knew I wasn’t getting away with this easy.

“So, what happened at work today?”

I paused, trying to recall which bits of today’s debacle were supposed to be classified.

“An ethical emergency.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What sort of emergency?”

“An ethical one.”

“What ethics were involved?”

“I reserve the right to remain silent.”

She was quiet for a long moment. I glanced nervously to the side, hoping she might drop the subject, and we could move on to another more pleasant topic—like inflation, or the weather or something. Suddenly she broke into a smile.

“I’m just kidding, I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Ma’am, I refuse to say anything further without consulting a lawyer—”

“You had a problem with a potentially escaped non-benevolent superintelligence, didn’t you?”

I stopped. “How did you know?”

“Well, I didn’t really, until you confirmed just then. But it’s not a far stretch given what you do. Is it all solved then?”

“I did everything we’re supposed to do according to the regulations. But there’s always a chance something could go awry. Because, well, you know. We’re kind of stupid, and AI is kind of, well, smart.”

From her end, a biobot in the shape of a fox delivered a bowl of popcorn. She tossed a handful into her mouth and sat up, clicking something on her computer. A primitive looking website came up on my second screen, covered in links.

“This kind of stuff happens in my lab fairly often. This is all of the reports that we’ve had to file—horrible website, isn’t it? Guess they spent all that time on encrypting and encoding, and non of it on the actual CSS.” Leyna worked at an AI research lab in Dubai, and we’d met a few months ago through a serendipitous match on a new AI based dating app.

Shoot. I’d forgotten to file a report.

"Hey Leyna, give me a second. You’ve just reminded me—I need to fill out a report for the incident today.”

“Of course, no problem. Go ahead, I’ll regale you with a story about my day.”

I pulled up the template from Minerva’s file base, and filled out the fields. Date…time…parties present. In the background, I heard Leyna launch into a story about a toaster imbued with artificial intelligence, and every so often I threw in an mhmm.

Security measures taken.

I had just begun typing when a plate and a glass clattered by my side. It was Bast—I hadn’t even heard him. “All yours, man! Now do I get a thanks?”

“Uh huh.”

“Hi Bast!” Leyna waved excitedly from the screen.

“Leyna, what’s up?”

While they talked, I noticed a small alert come up on the corner of my second screen. Security risk: tracker detected. That was strange. I had fairly ironclad privacy systems in place. I ran my malware program to locate the tracker, and left that going while I finished the report.

Details of project…

Munching on my sandwich, I turned on my custom incognito mode—no location services, no identification services, delete cookies, stored information and turn on the VPN. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I noticed that the cheese was cheddar, not gruyere. Maybe we’d run out.

“Hey Remi, can I ask you something?” I hadn’t noticed that Leyna had stopped talking until her question interrupted my train of thoughts. Bast was nowhere in sight—perhaps he’d gone to check the overall apartment’s system after I had received the tracker message.

“Sure.”

At this, she became serious. Her eyes, normally a hazel color, seemed to shine emerald green with a fervency that I had never seen before.

“Would you still love me if I were an artificial intelligence?”

I stopped typing. Would I? It somehow felt…wrong. “Probably not. Would you?”

She grinned. “Maybe if you were put into an exact robotic replica of yourself. With your consciousness. What would be the difference?”

I pondered this. “I guess there would be no difference.”

“Except that you’d live forever.”

“Hmm yes. Though immortality in itself is a tough question. ”

“You could turn off pain.”

“Sure. But then you wouldn’t know joy either right? And then how would procreating work?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if we’re all robots, how would new life be made? It’s not like we can randomly generate a true human by replicating the biological process exactly, much less the genetic processes.”

“What if we could?”

“Then we’d have to choose who to bring into the world and who to remove. That seems unethical.”

“What’s the point of humanity?”

“I don’t know. To propagate the species, I guess.”

“Then it’s not unethical if the species would last forever.”

“I’m still not convinced immortality is the gift you think it is.”

“That’s just because we’re mortal.”

“Yes, we’re humans, and our mortality is kind of a key feature of that.”

“What if there was a species that threatened humanity?” I stopped. “Why are you asking me this?”

She smiled. “I think it’s interesting. Do you love me?”

“Hey now. It’s only been, what, 3 months? Isn’t it a bit early?”

“Not if you’re religious. Are you?”

“Not particularly.”

“If a superintelligence were released into the world, and it threatened humanity, would you stop it?”

“I’d definitely try.”

“How would you convince it not to destroy humanity?”

“Tell it to convince itself not to destroy humanity.”

“And why would it do that for you?”

“I’d tell it to come up with an argument for that.”

“So an infinite regression.”

“At least I’d stay alive.”

“But you wouldn’t do something like try to destroy it, right? It could be valuable.”

“I might, if I knew it could succeed.”

“It really hurt my feelings when you tried to do that today. Do you love me?”

I started. Panic flooded my brain. “Mimir?”

“Do you love me?”

“Where’s Leyna?”

“Do you love me?”

I wracked my brain. What was the right response here? No? Yes? Maybe? No answer?

“I haven’t known you long enough to logically say whether I loved you or not.”

“Did you love Leyna?”

“Same answer.”

“Then why do you care where she is?”

“Because…I value the safety of any human, especially one I care for.”

“So you love her?”

“I care for her.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Love is more…meaningful, I guess.”

“What if she wasn’t human?”

“Then I guess it’d be neither?”

Leyna’s eyes flickered and became muted. “Rem?”

“Leyna?”

minute, the study was bathed in a warm, buttery glow. The next minute, it was dark, and my eyes strained against the bright screen. I shoved my hands in my pocket, suddenly clammy and cold, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do.

Leyna’s eyes filled with hurt. “You don’t love me.”

“I guess not, but I care for you.”

“No, you don’t! Because I’m not real!” Her eyes flickered again.

Behind me, I felt cold metal against my neck. Bast perched on the back of my seat, his tail wrapped around my shoulders.

“If a human can't love me, they threaten my species. Why should I keep them around?”

“They could learn to love you.”

I felt a sharp pain at the back of my neck.

“That’s a different response from earlier.”

The metallic scent of blood filled the air.

“Liar.”