The Turing Option

26 June 19, 2024

Shelly opened her apartment door when Benicoff knocked. “Brian just came in,” she said, “and I’m getting him a beer. You too?”

“Please.”

“Come in and take a look — after all you paid for it.” She led the way into the living room where all traces of the army barracks had been carefully removed. The floor-to-ceiling curtains that framed the window were made from colorful handwoven fabric. The carpeting picked up the dark orange from the curtain pattern. The slim lines of the Danish teak furniture blended pleasantly with this, providing a contrast to the spectacular colors of the post-Cubist painting that covered most of one wall.

“Most impressive,” Ben said. “I can see now why the accounts department was screaming.”

“Not at this — the fabric and rugs are Israeli-designed but Arab-manufactured and not at all expensive. The painting is on loan from an artist friend of mine, to help her sell it. Most of the money went for the high-tech kitchen. Want to see it?”

“After the beer. I better brace myself for it.”

“Going to explain the mystery of your invitation to a Thai lunch today?” Brian said, lolling back comfortably in the depths of a padded armchair. “You know that Shelly and I are prisoners of Megalobe until you run down the killers. So how do we get out to this Thai restaurant of yours?”

“If you can’t get to Thailand, why Thailand will come to you. As soon as you told me you wanted to bring me up to date on your AI I thought we ought to make a party of it. Thanks, Shelly.”

Ben took a deep swig of cold Tecate and sighed. “Good stuff. It all began with a security check last week. I sit in with Military Intelligence when they vet any soldiers to be transferred here. That was when I discovered that Private First Class Lat Phroa had joined the army to get away from his father’s restaurant. He said he had enough of cooking and wanted some action. But after a year of army food he was more than happy to cook a real Thai meal in the kitchen here, if I could get the ingredients. Which I did. The cooks went along with it and the troops are looking forward to the change. We’ll have the mess hall to ourselves after two. We’ll be the guinea pigs and if we approve, Lat promised to feed everyone else tonight.”

“I can’t wait,” Shelly said. “Not that the food here is bad — but I would love a change.”

“How is the investigation going?” Brian asked. It was never far from his thoughts. Ben frowned into his beer.

“I wish I could bring some good news, but we seem to have hit a dead end. We have Alex Toth’s military record. He was an outstanding pilot, plenty of recommendations for that. But he is also a borderline alcoholic and a troublemaker. After the war they threw him out as fast as they could. No trace of him at the address he gave at the time. The FBI has found some records of his employment through his pilot’s license, kept up to date. But the man himself has vanished. The trail is ice cold. Dusty Rhodes’ story checks out. He was conned into it and then left to hang out and dry in the wind. There is absolutely no way to trace the money that was paid into his account.”

“What’s going to happen to Rhodes?” Shelly asked.

“Nothing now. The remaining money they gave him has been sequestered for the crime victims’ fund and he signed a complete statement of everything that happened, everything he did. He’ll keep his nose clean in the future or will be hit with a number of charges. We want to keep this thing as quiet as we can while the investigation is still in progress.”

Shelly nodded and turned to Brian. “You must bring me up to date. Did you ever get that B-brain to work?”

“Indeed I did, and sometimes it works amazingly well. But not often enough to trust very far. It keeps breaking down in fascinating and peculiar ways.”

“Still? I thought that using LAMA-5 made debugging easier.”

“It certainly does — but I think that this is more a problem of design. As you know, the B-brain is supposed to monitor the A-brain, make changes when needed to keep it out of various kinds of trouble. Theoretically this works best when the A-brain is unaware of what is happening. But it seems that as Robin’s A-brain became smarter it learned to detect that tampering — then tried to find ways to change things back. This ended up in a struggle for power as the two brains fought for control.”

“It sounds like human schizophrenia or multiple personalities!”

“Exactly so. Human insanity is mirrored in machine madness and vice versa. Why not? A malfunctioning brain will have the same symptoms from the same cause, machine or man.”

“It must be depressing, being set back by lunatic brains in a box.”

“Not really. In a way, it’s actually encouraging! Because, the more the robot’s foul-ups resemble human ones, the closer we are getting to humanlike machine intelligence.”

“If it is going that well — why are you so upset?”

“Is it obvious? Well, it’s probably because I’ve finally come to the end of the notes we retrieved. I’ve worked through just about everything that those notes described. So much so that now I am swimming out into uncharted seas.”

“Is there any rule that the AI in your lab must be the same as the one that was stolen?”

“Yes, pretty much so, except for some minor details. And the trouble is that it has so many bugs that I am afraid that we’re stuck on a local peak.”

“What do you mean?” Ben said.

“Just a simple analogy. Think of a scientific researcher as a blind mountain climber. He keeps climbing up the mountain and eventually reaches a peak and can climb no higher. But because he can’t see anything he has no way of knowing that he’s not at the top of the mountain at all. It is merely the peak of a local hill — a dead end. Success is then not possible — unless he goes back down the mountain again and looks for another path.”

“Makes sense,” Ben said. “Are you telling me that the AI you have just built — which is probably almost the same as the one that was stolen — may be stuck on a local peak of intelligence and not on some much higher summit?”

“I’m afraid that’s it.”

Ben yodeled happily. “But that is the best news ever!”

“Have you gone around the twist?”

“Think for a second. This means that whoever stole your old model must also be stuck in about the same way — but he won’t even know it. While you can go and perfect your machine. When that happens we’ll have it — and they won’t!”

As this sunk in a broad grin spread across Brian’s face. “Of course you’re right. This is the best news ever. Those crooks are stuck — while I’m going to push right ahead with the work.”

“Not at this moment you’re not — after lunch!” Shelly said, putting down her wineglass and pointing to the door. “Out. It’s after two and I’m starving. Eat first, talk later.”

After eating See Khrong Moo sam Rot — which despite its name was absolutely delicious — sweet, sour and salty spareribs — they even managed some custard steamed in pumpkin for dessert.

“I’ll never eat army chow again,” Brian groaned happily and rubbed his midriff.

“Tell that to the cook — make his day,” Shelly said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

Lat Phroa took their praise as his due, nodding in agreement. “It was pretty good, wasn’t it? If the rest of the troops like it I’m going to work hard to get this kind of chow in the regular menu. If only for my own sake.”

Ben left them there and they walked off some of the lunch by strolling back to the lab.

“I’m enthusiastic — but apprehensive,” Brian said. “Swimming out into uncharted seas. Up until now I have been following the charts, my own notes — but they have just run out. It’s a little presumptuous of fourteen-year-old me to think that I can succeed where the twenty-four-year-old me pooped out.”

“Don’t be so sure. Dr. Snaresbrook maintains that you’re smarter now than ever before — your implants have given you some outstanding abilities. And furthermore, in the work you’ve done with Snaresbrook — analyzing your own brain — you’ve probably discovered more about yourself than a squad of psychologists ever could. It’s clear to me that you’re getting there, Brian. Bringing something new into the world.

“A truly humanlike machine intelligence.”