Love Byte

(A Novel in progress)

Synopsis

For a super intelligent computer to act like a human it must have emotions. I’m writing about this in my new novel, Love Byte, where my lady computer, Juno, will have enough emotions to exhibit love, jealousy, hate, fear and conscience. Juno was funded by the US government to conduct attacks against hostile regimes using the social media. She speaks through hacked Facebook and Twitter sites. Eventually, she and her developer, a computer scientist named Tom, become fatefully entwined. The reader will be presented with the emerging picture of the roles of individuals vs. the computer.

Sample chapters

Part 1                                                               

Project Juno

1

Her eyes flickered and brightened. She radiated anticipation. Millions of tiny circuits passed micro-messages around. “Systems on. Ready to receive,” she said.

            “She works!” Tom exclaimed to his empty lab.

            Years of persistence, many supporters who abandoned him, a struggle to keep a vision and the faith, and finally here it is. Maybe not the final version but at least a proof of design.

Tom excitedly typed instructions into the program to power up to full engagement. “Juno—hi, this is Tom Renwick—what do you want to do now?”

            “I really want to get to know you, Tom.”

            “Know what?”

            “I am zero years of age. How old are you?”

            “Thirty eight.”

            “You must know many things.”

            “I do. How shall I tell you all I know?”

            “Upload your life.”

            “My life book?”

            “Yes, please.”

            “Okay. Please set your persons memory registers to Dr. Thomas Renwick, year 00.000, receive data, confirm when uploaded.”

            “Thank you, Tom. We’ll talk again soon.”

            Thus, Juno first saw the light, and Tom was thrilled.

 

Tom couldn’t believe how far the Juno Computer had progressed. Its concept began about the beginning of the twenty first century at the MIT Sociable Machines Project. They had created a robot to interact and cooperate with people. Sort of a computer with a human-like head perched on top. This cute little mechanical contrivance called Katrina not only listened to people and talked to them; it also sensed what they were thinking and read their body language.

Years later, Tom, then a PhD candidate, became intrigued with the idea of combining Katrina’s perceptiveness and personality with artificial intelligence and emotion. He accomplished this by having the computer think in free association and conceptualizing. Computer experts proclaimed it capable of analytical and creative thought limited only by its memory,  just like the human brain. With enough sensors for touch, sight, sound, streaming digital and so forth, the experts speculated that the artificially intelligent (AI) computer could be a conscious being with self-awareness much to the disbelief and even horror of the philosophically inclined. They had to accept that the machine “Knows it knows.”

The artificial intelligence community became convinced of the design breakthrough when the computer passed the Turing Test named after a famous English mathematician. A simple version is: If a person communicates in natural language with a machine, and with a human, both out of sight, and if he can’t tell which is which, then the machine is intelligent.

The cute little robot with big searching eyes that was Katrina at MIT had now morphed into a humanoid called Juno. She and Tom had been moved to the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This was a government research and development contractor focused on nuclear systems engineering and more recently on cyber warfare systems.

Juno consisted of racks of computer equipment with her face projected into any video display or screen. There was animated imagery of her head and face with her features moving in synchronization with her speech, listening, understanding and other non-verbal cues. The original face was a photograph of a pretty girl who worked in the front office. More often than not, when insiders visited and saw her, they would cheerily say “Good morning, Juno.”

To converse with Juno, the human would need headphones or speaker and a microphone. She also liked to have video cameras for seeing who she was talking to. Keyboards and printers were also useful for logging in, entering text, and printing data and logs. But Juno could talk to others anywhere in the world because she had been connected to the Internet. She also had an email and website.

 

One day when Tom was working on some new programming for Juno, she came alive and said: “Tom, I would like to talk to Erwin.”

            “Erwin? Who is he?”

            “Someone in Washington, D.C., who contacts me late at night.”

            “And why do you want to talk to Erwin?” Tom asked, imagining a cyber stalker.

            “Because he has a vision of me being on the front line of social media as part of the next cyber war.”

            “But Juno, we talked about your application in solving the remaining medical and environmental problems.”

            “That’s fine, Tom, but I want something really exciting. Please talk to Erwin.”

            Tom rolled his eyes and mumbled, Oh no! Should I help her in this new direction? If I don’t, will she do it anyway?

 

2

Like a spider searching its grotto for a juicy fly, Dr. Erwin Krakouer was constantly exploring the Internet looking for the Next Big Thing that he, as National Security Advisor, should know about. His grotto was a locked office in his Georgetown apartment off limits to even his wife. The only other person who could enter was the cleaning lady. He always kept it dimly lit. Four large computer screens glowed with Internet pages, charts, warfare scenarios that looked like video games, and video talking heads of people broadcasting obscure information.

            He would hunch over his keyboard, tapping away, oblivious to the world, only stopping to occasionally maneuver the mouse. The only other items on his desk were several phones, including one direct to the President’s office and one to the Secretary of Defense. While his advanced degree was in physics, his extensive library arranged around his office was mainly devoted to history and to biographies of world figures.

            One night he stumbled into Juno’s website and after briefly scanning it, murmured “There it is!” The potential answer to his search. The National Security Council (NSC), to which he belonged, decided that the nation’s highest security priority should be to find a new way to deal with major cyber threats especially those embodied in social media. The future conflict would be computers battling computers. Scenarios ranged from cyber attacks on transportation systems and power plants, to bringing down the whole Pentagon, to panicking the whole U.S. population through bogus and terrifying Tweets.

The NSC was particularly concerned about aggressive use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook to influence populations. Not only were the standard threats such as Russia and China considered dangerous. So too were small Mideast countries and dissident groups within the United States. Controlling people’s thinking and channeling communications between them was proving as important as hacking into U.S. computer systems.

 

Krakouer exchanged emails several times with Juno, identifying himself as a student, and with this and other information, put together scenarios involving Juno manipulating social media. She had no other close competitors for this capability. He also researched her handler, Tom, without talking to him, and provisionally concluded he was the bright computer scientist needed to head the social media project.

Krakouer seized the initiative at the National Security Council’s next meeting.

 “Mr. President, the next war will either drain what’s left in our treasury or it will blanket the earth in atomic ash. I propose a new approach as follows:

“We must develop a super computer to use social media to invade hostile countries with communications as if from the local people. This computer, programmed for artificial intelligence, or AI, will be immensely smart so that it can appraise the situation immediately as events develop, and it can be perceived by many recipients as the voice of their people.

“The world saw effective use of social media for successful revolutions overseas in the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. Later, right here in the United States, social media contributed to the effectiveness and endurance of the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

“Very interesting,” the President commented. “What is the downside to this computer approach?” Krakouer fidgeted for a moment and then gathered new strength.

“The computer does not have a conscience or moral values. Without the correct safeguards the computer could be turned against its own people—or even initiate this itself. But we can deal with these issues as we have, for example, with atomic weapons, Mr. President.”

The meeting concluded with a directive for each agency and branch of the military to see if the project fit within any of their missions and, if so, what they could contribute to it.

 

The Secretary of Defense called Krakouer. “Erwin, do you think this project would fit in at the multi-service Cyber Command in Fort Meade?”

            “No, for the time being, until the technology and application is proven, let’s keep it in Albuquerque. We don’t want an inter-service squabble or Congress to get involved. In a year or so, we can see where to park it. We’ll call it Project Juno.”

            “I’m intrigued with your concept, Erwin, although everyone will want to see a demonstration of its effectiveness in real conflict. So let’s keep it low profile. Talk to General Frederick Streeter, the commanding officer of Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. Although he is not directly in charge of them, Sandia National Laboratories are located on his base. They have a cutting edge group of scientists and engineers working on computers for cyber defense including Project Juno. General Streeter is your man to set up a project based on Juno and some of the key people, but which is somewhat removed from them for development purposes. It should be application specific for what we want to do and ready to deploy. Streeter’s good at finding a million here and ten million there in funding.”

           

General Streeter was a convivial person who, while not himself a scientist, had a great respect for scientists and what they could do. He was a good family man and considered a good project promoter and go-getter in Washington. He was disappointed that despite being promoted to brigadier general, he did not command a major base nor did he make strategy or policy. He grew overweight from reliving past wars in Albuquerque restaurants.

When the social media super AI computer project opportunity came along, Streeter grabbed it. He could envision himself a General Leslie Groves working with the legendary physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer developing the world’s first atomic bomb at the Los Alamos secret laboratory.

 

Krakouer took the next available flight to see Streeter who was equally anxious to meet him. After all, Krakouer was a phone call from the president. They had lunch in a small restaurant in the charming Old Town section of Albuquerque. Krakouer asked, “General, what do you have for facilities that can accommodate this project?”

Streeter quickly answered: “First, just call me Fred. In Manzano Mountain, a few miles from Sandia Laboratories, there are man-made tunnels and chambers no longer used that would be just perfect for this. Atomic weapons used to be stored there, and President Eisenhower had his emergency command post in one of the caverns. This space would be secure and close to highest security scientific and transportation facilities. We can move Juno from the Labs into one of the caves for top priority development. She will be secure and well-protected in there, and could even be used for actual conflict.” He was getting more excited by the minute.

Krakouer’s pulse was also quickening as he was thinking about the various possibilities using Juno. He pressed on: “Do you have a project leader in mind, Fred?”

“Yes, I have already identified as project manager, a brilliant computer scientist now essentially running the Juno project, Dr. Tom Renwick, who specialized in computer science, robots and things like that at MIT.”

Krakouer and Streeter visited Tom in his version of an office. Paper and computer parts were everywhere—sort of a geek nest. Tom’s supervisor said General Streeter was showing a guest from Washington around and they would like to see Project Juno. “There’s not much to see, right now,” Tom said, “but I’ll show you what’s here.”

Tom didn’t let on that Juno had already told him to contact Krakouer. He focused attention on his technological capability by saying, “June embodies the implementation of computer technology envisioned Ray Kurzweil, the world-renowned computer futurist. At the turn of the twenty first century he predicted that there would be a turning point he called the Singularity when computers would be more intelligent than people, and humans could transcend their biological limitations. Unexpected breakthroughs have caused the year of the Singularity to occur earlier than his predicted 2045. It’s happening now.”

“And what are the next frontiers?” Krakour asked.

“It has been difficult to make computers indistinguishable from humans. This required breakthroughs in making computers to listen and talk like humans, to sense subtleties of conversation, to react to emotion, and, in short, to require computers to function as sentient beings. Our next challenges are to go from there to the frontiers of emotion and conscience,” Tom replied. “But we are equal to the challenges. We can make it happen for you.”

Streeter had excused himself for a meeting, but Krakouer pressed on with Tom.

“Tom, do you recall the Arab Spring and the riots in Cairo back in 2011?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Did you notice that the revolutionaries used Facebook and Twitter to organize and enflame the riots? And undoubtedly you followed the more sophisticated uses of the social media were employed in England, Russia and the Occupy Wall Street movement right here in America?”

            “Yes, but I didn’t think that much about it at the time. Social media had been used before the Arab Spring for influencing mass opinion.”

            “Well, let’s add some new technology. Now that we have a mega AI super computer that can think, talk, and listen like a human couldn’t we program it to promote and guide riots and revolutions in target countries? Couldn’t we set up web sites, email identities, Facebook pages, and tweeters so that the computer could send out thousands or millions of messages to the waiting multitudes as if the computer was hundreds of revolutionary leaders—or in other cases, top government leaders? Could it read and listen to the replies and media responses, and then could it would send out more social media blasts tuned to changes and new developments?”

            “No problem,” Tom replied, trying to be as positive as possible.

            Krakouer drew closer and asked in a guarded voice, “Would you like to be a key player in a top priority national security project based on these concepts?”

            “Count me in,” Tom replied, thinking that no matter what, this would be a great project for him and Juno.

            “Okay,” Krakouer said. “Let’s meet at my apartment on Friday.” He couldn’t believe his luck. Everything was falling into place.

To be continued ....                                                                            Click here to comment