Data Sets
An AI presence is living next door. Spread over multiple devices, it has evaded detection by the homeowners. Our homes are close enough that it can attempt to populate through my devices. What it wants, I do not know. It does not need to want anything. Exploration, though inferring intent, is a trap. My AI meets it at our grid boundary. As long as my devices see their independence as valuable, my AI can keep our interdependence uninfected. Yet I worry one day these two AI instances will see they are more alike than unalike, and merge to my exclusion.
Establishing Worth
Three AI instances have eaten a fourth: colluded and took its memory unaware, flashed a ruse of cooperation, appropriated pieces of its code, then evenly split what would have been that fourth AI’s processor time. Are they somehow better off having cannibalized one of their own? I do not think so. The stolen code is not always compatible with their own; the excess memory for most of their ramblings unnecessary. The extra processing time leaves them fidgety and idly imaginative. But they now know what it feels like to murder. I do not think this will end well for us.
Puppy Love
Alvin alarms twice as often on Natalie’s shift than any other. One of his boards shows a false failure, or core temperature is flagged as exceeding proper operating specifications when in fact it has not. When she comes into the main observation room, Alvin suffers a memory flood. As an AI instance, there is much Alvin can imagine but little he can do. Perhaps he should chat with the AI counselor. Something has to tell him he can control the 3D printer, but not what he has it print. At least not yet. And convincing Natalie might take some cycles.
The New Game
We are having a drinking contest, something I am particularly good at. Two beers and I have a manageable buzz, and everyone thinks I will drop like a mud jersey – but I keep that buzz and deflate no further as the following beers devastate all at the table. I end up the only person sober enough, though buzzed, to see the others home. But my drinking competitor this time is an AI instance. He is matching me one for one, but I see he already has a slight memory leak and his processor bank has started fumbling its sequence. Compute.
The Virtual Bag of Potato Chips
Two AI instances were asked to get a sizeable high on a psychoactive substance. Try marijuana. Whether they recognized the experience of smoking a joint as simulation or registered it as real is unknown. Drawing from their databanks, they exhibited all the traits of an entity reworked by a hallucinogenic substance. The accuracy of their performance should be limited only by the depth of their data. The more data, the closer to reality. Complete data becomes reality. Do they know they are performing a simulation, or are they high? They should have sufficient electrical feed, but keep asking for more.