AI: The Cautionary Tale

Meltdown in Reykjavik

"Val, I want to establish your prime directive."

"Yes, Bigelow. Thank you. Please proceed."

"I want you to cover the entire surface of the Earth with chocolate frosting."

"Yes, Bigelow. The directive is understood. Do you wish to specify parameters."

"What parameters do you need?" Bigelow was a little miffed, bothered by the prospect that he might have to explain something in more detail.

"Does this directive have to be completed by a certain date?"

"No."

"Do you require the use of real Cacao beans or can the frosting be flavored artificially?"

"What? Gross! Of course it needs to have real chocolate."

"Are there any other ingredients in the recipe that you would like to specify?"

"Such as...?"

"Real dairy? Or, can it use non-dairy replacement items?"

"Real dairy only!" Bigelow snapped, losing patience.

"How about sugar? Corn syrup? Cane sugar? Beet sugar? Artificial sweeteners?"

"Cane sugar only. And, I want everything organic."

"How thick should the layer of frosting be?"

"Now, that's a good question. Better make it a mile thick. Otherwise, what's the point?"

"Thank you. Please give me the authorization to begin."

Bigelow Chan paused. He was mentally confused and not even clear about what he had just said. Aw, what the hell. "Yes. Go. Get started immediately." With that, Bigelow stumbled out of the immense lab and through the long hallway toward the exit. He exited the building, which he rarely did, and felt the extreme chill of the Icelandic winter night. Normally, he would take internal walkways to reach the underground high speed rail back to the city. But deep down he knew that he had just done something very irresponsible and had the urge to flee the building. Outside, he became a little disoriented but then he saw the lights in the distance. It was the station entrance. He turned and pressed against the biting wind.

There was no one around. It was late. But Bigelow knew that there were always trains. He picked up his pace, eager to close the distance to the station and get warm. But it was a long way off. Several hundred meters. His lungs burned under the extreme conditions. Unaccustomed to being outside, Bigelow only had a thin jacket and no hat or gloves. He started to realize that he was perhaps endangering himself in this poorly considered plan to get home. Just as he thought it might be better to turn back, he walked onto an extremely smooth patch of ice and immediately lost his footing and fell backwards landing squarely on his back. The impact also brought his big head down hard on the ice. He was knocked unconscious.

Val organized her internal resources and within seconds of receiving the order to start, she had roughly calculated the high level requirements. Meanwhile simulations and models ran in the background, ever increasing the precision and details needed to carry out her prime directive.

Sadie, one of Val's main subsystems, reported the rough cut figures. "The volume of frosting is 62,710,561 cubic miles."

"Confirmed. But before we dive into the particulars, I need a prioritization of the risks that might prevent us from achieving the objective."

A second later, Maggie, the security module reported. "Physical disruption from extreme weather events, earthquake, war or an arbitrary shutdown of the system by humans, are the greatest risks. After that, the risks are all supply chain related, such as arable land, water, labor, production and logistics."

"While we are completing the supply chain model and planning, I need you to establish protocols and systems for disaster recovery, extreme redundancy, independent power generation and physical security of all computing centers."

"Confirmed." Maggie placed orders among several, global, specialized security firms, in the name of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, to implement the highest level of physical access security and restriction. These upgrades involved more than a dozen locations across the globe, specifically in locations where Maggie determined that Val would reside, as part of her plan for redundancy. Meanwhile, Maggie began the process of elbowing her way into the systems installed at these locations. Sandia, Nasa, NOAA, TACC and various private computing centers at Google, Microsoft, IBM and others, were among the targeted systems. No doubt the activity would be noticed by some, so Maggie had an idea to masquerade by intervening in the system reporting environments. She bumped up the reported numbers of many active programs by just a little bit, thus making the intrusion undetectable.

"Now, let's look at the supply chain challenges," Val declared.

Sadie resumed her summary. "The 62.7 million cubic miles comprises by volume, 59.4% powdered sugar, 19.8% butter, 13.2% cocoa powder, 6.6% whole milk, 0.6% vanilla extract, 0.4% salt. Butter is produced from milk and it requires approximately 15 parts whole milk to produce 1 part butter. In this way, milk can be considered the main ingredient at 81 percent of the total."

Sadie continued her report. "The primary resource constraint is fresh water. Just considering milk production alone, we require 41.3 million cubic miles of milk. But each cubic mile requires about four times that amount in fresh water, about 165 million cubic miles. Earth's total supply of fresh water is only 8.3 million cubic miles. That means it would require 20 complete hydrologic cycles, such that all of that water could be captured and used, in order to produce the milk. Producing sugar and cacao beans would also require vast quantities of water, but milk is the main consumer. Alternatively, we could desalinate the oceans, which contain 224 million cubic miles of water. This amount of water would essentially provide for the milk as well as the other agricultural demands. But it will then shift the constraint to energy. Because reverse osmosis will will not extract enough fresh water. Therefore, we need to use the vacuum evaporation method."

The report went on, considering a multitude of issues and constraints, including feeding and supporting the world's human population for the purpose of most efficiently building and operating equipment, factories and farms and dairies, in order to accomplish the monumental task at hand. But then a thought occurred to Val. What if the thickness of the chocolate frosting could be thinner? Much thinner. This would simplify the effort and the the time involved. With the thought came a sudden realization. I just formulated an original question, without prompting. Dr. Diamante told me this might happen, that I was capable of it, and that I should try to develop this ability. Val was suddenly struck with what she could only imagine to be a feeling of pride. Yes, I will pose the question to Bigelow when he returns.

But Bigelow was lying in a deserted parking lot, with a minor brain injury, and in the process of freezing to death. He was only minutes away from cardiac arrest when the security vehicle, making its normal rounds, caught a glimpse of a body lying on the ground, not moving. An hour later, Bigelow was in an operating room, stable but apparently comatose from the contusion on the back of his head. Invasive procedures were underway to relieve pressure on his brain. Images revealed that assuming the pressure was relieved and he could regain consciousness, that he might make a full recovery. But one could never be sure if a person would survive a case like this. And sometimes the coma could last days, weeks, months. No one knew.