Visions of the Future (43 page)
Read Visions of the Future Online
Authors: David Brin,Greg Bear,Joe Haldeman,Hugh Howey,Ben Bova,Robert Sawyer,Kevin J. Anderson,Ray Kurzweil,Martin Rees
Tags: #Science / Fiction
Why was a quantum AI necessary where other approaches wouldn’t work? Stace concluded, “The processing power to successfully navigate space via warp technology surpasses the greatest mathematical capacity of the human mind. It also requires creativity. Creativity is what Turing brings to the table. No jump is ever the same. Turing is being creative with the decisions at the micro-second level. A computer, even the best quantum computer, can’t do that. Warp would not happen without Turing. Interstellar space would never have been breached.”
Turing explained it in his own unique way: When asked why the trip was so difficult and the other probes had failed, Turing said, “It’s like surfing.”
Now that KAD speed has significantly increased, travel time between Sol and Proxima Centauri is down to a single standard week. Although, except for research vessels, no one travels to Proxima Centauri anymore. NASA had launched the Voyager 1 traveling at more than 17 kilometers per second. At that speed, the Voyager 1 would take 74,485 years to reach Proxima Centauri. Vantarius Interstellar’s Robotic Mission Antoine Nine, using Nuclear Electric Propulsion, was predicted to reach Proxima Centauri in 4,000 years (it’s still out there). The KAD and Turing changed our view of space.
It would be months later, and several decades after her son’s death, before Tyler’s mother would know what happened to Tyler and the impact her son was having on the future of humanity. She was aware of the record-breaking journey of Turing. Everyone on Earth was. She didn’t know that Turing had been built upon Tyler’s cells. Near the end of her life, at the age of 102, she was interviewed by the news webcast
NOW!
The episode was titled “The Journey of Turing: Birth to the Stars.” During the interview, Ms. Davis was told the amazing story of her son’s cells. She knew that Chelot had created an immortalized cell line and that various types of research had been done with her son. She knew nothing of Nkoloso or that Tyler’s cells had enabled humanity to bridge the gap between the stars.
The interviewer surprised Ms. Davis with a live conversation with Turing. Whether he was meaning it as a joke on us or not, Turing began his conversation with the words: “I did it, Mom. I went there. I saw them. Stars. Planets. They looked like marbles. And cotton candy. I’m going back, Mom.”
Ms. Davis began to sob. Turing and Ms. Davis talked a bit more. They discovered they were both fans of old western movies, sharing a love of John Wayne’s
True Grit.
They ended with a promise to talk again. Those future conversations, if they happened, were not recorded.
The interviewer ended with this question, “Kathy, you’ve had a chance to meet Turing, whom you now know was made using your son’s cells. What are your feelings towards Turing? Was it right for the scientists to share your son’s cells without your knowledge and make a machine out of them? Does this dishonor your son’s memory?”
Ms. Davis smiled, still wiping away tears, said, “That is my son.”
Kristina, Tyler’s sister, has refused all invitations to be interviewed about Turing and Tyler. She did make an obscure status update immediately after her mother’s interview: “Sometimes people do things they can but they shouldn’t. Pandora’s Box, people should be more important than money.”
Kristina’s post does reflect questions that others have raised: Was it ethical to use Tyler’s cells to create, in theory, a new species of life? Beyond this, Turing’s success (and thus, Tyler’s) has raised so many other questions: Is Turing really Tyler? Is Turing truly artificial intelligence or simply advanced human cybernetics? Have we created thinking machines or just bridged the mind-machine gap? Is Turing the future of humanity? If Turing and Tesla are simply extensions of Tyler, are they actually AIs? Can humans ever build true AIs? Is Tyler still alive? Are Tesla, Turing, and the others all Tyler as well?
There are deeper and more practical questions that scientists have probed into since Turing’s initial success. Why were Tyler’s cells able to bridge the gap between quantum computer and quantum AI? Was it the autistic nature of his cells? Was it the generalized nature of his cells? Are those two questions the same thing? There are theories, and research continues to develop on Tyler’s cell lines. Only two other cell lines have been developed from autistic individuals. Neither of those was successful in interfacing with the quantum computer systems. At this point, Tyler’s cells truly are unique.
Turing and his siblings, all quantum AIs developed using the original TyTen immortalized cell line, have assisted in spreading humans to more than twenty-three different worlds. As of today’s publication, there are eighty-six TyTen quantum AIs navigating the stars, eighteen of which are out beyond communication exploring space for more potentially habitable worlds and seeking the still elusive intelligent extra-terrestrial life. Those eighty-six AIs use cells that have grown from Tyler Davis. Tyler’s cells that exist throughout space now outnumber the total amount of cells that were ever in Tyler’s body. Tyler is the closest to omnipresence humanity has achieved so far, and since he grows as we explore and colonize the stars, likely ever will be.
Near the end of her life, Kathy Davis allowed a local news blog,
Bay News,
to run a photo of her on a segment of famous Monterey Bay citizens. She wasn’t interviewed. There was only a single photo. The picture is of her in her house, sitting on a piano bench. On the piano and wall behind her are dozens of photos. Her daughter and grandchildren are in several. There are photos of Tyler scattered throughout: Tyler at the ocean, Tyler in his room with star maps on the walls behind him, Tyler watching television with a cowboy hat on his head, Tyler at the observatory. In each, Tyler is holding the toy spaceship
Sovereign
. In the center of the collection, surrounded by photos of Tyler and her grandchildren, there is a small image of Turing—against a field of stars.
THE ETIOLOGY OF INFOMANIA
chris hables gray
Chris is author of
Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age
available at
http://amzn.to/1xPW3By
.
THE EXPERIENCE OF TELEPRESENCE
The morning was pleasantly cold. Even inside he could see that everyone wore cheerful wreaths of their own condensed breath. But it wasn’t so cold that he couldn’t smell chicory-coffee and the acrid fear and anger of the nervous Lithuanian students sitting at the nearby tables. In the background he could still discern the residue scent of tear gas and burning gasoline from the day before. Gedeminas square, just up the street, was the reason. The Ministry of the Interior was still flying the flag of the Second Soviet Empire.
Then he heard something. At first it was a mumbling like an ocean sounds a valley away but it quickly grew louder and clearer. It became a grumbling and then a rumbling and then a roar. Finally, out the open door of the Café Neringa he could see the massive crowd coming down what was once Prospekt Lenina, and might soon be again.
His hands were sweaty. He was conscious of his heart pounding. Adrenalin poured into his system as his body prepared for fight or flight. He realized he was very afraid. Of course, everyone in the streets of Vilnius that morning was indeed in great danger, but he knew he wasn’t really there. His presence was merely virtual, thanks to the technologies of telepresence. While he saw, heard, and smelled the streets of Vilnius he drew breath 4,000 miles away in a small room in Eastern North America. His experience was completely mediated by Cathy Levine. Like thousands of other people around the world he was experiencing the Lithuanian counter-revolution through her. He could see, smell and hear whatever she could.
Muttering sub-vocally, she commented, “Despite rumors that the Russian Forces have been reinforced, the protesters have resumed yesterday’s attempt to occupy the Ministry of Interior building, the last stronghold of New Soviet power in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania.”
As Levine explained about the protests in other ex-Soviet republics such as Armenia and Georgia, even in the Ukraine’s recently re-occupied Kiev and Russia’s Leningrad, renamed yet again from Dt. Petersburg, he also strained to hear the excited talk of the café watchers and the protesters in Vilnius, although he couldn’t understand Lithuanian. The reporter went out into the streets, then he could hear the people clearly. She joined in near the front of the march. His senses were assailed by the jostling, shouting, emotional crowd. People poured into Gedeminas Square and he felt their joy. No, he shared their joy. Everything was moving quickly now and it seemed as if he was running with Cathy Levine across the cobblestones of the square. In the distance he noticed the Interior Ministry guards marching down some side streets. Someone had already hooked up a loudspeaker from a high window of the abandoned Ministry. A women’s voice rang out and Levine translated.
“The Russian troops will be here in ten minutes. They are going to try and clear the square. We will confront them without violence, it is our only chance. Form rows around the Ministry. Sit down and link arms, please, fellow citizens.”
As the crowd organized he realized his neglected body needed some relief. He unhooked the Sensanet ™ diodes from his skull and ran to the bathroom. He returned just as the first troops arrived in trucks. They were Lithuanians and the crowd cheered. Cathy Levine mumbled that, “This is the first time the central government has tried to use Lithuanian troops here in the capital since the restoration of Russian rule. After the mutiny in Klaipeda by Baltic units the Russians have kept Baltic soldiers out of their homelands. The fact that they are here at all means that the government is desperately short of troops.”
The crowd’s mood changed swiftly when it saw that behind the trucks were a line of BMP armored cars and three light tanks. They all bore Russian markings. Levine carefully started moving away. As she walked she quietly translated people calling out in Lithuanian to the troops as they had to the police the day before, “Brothers, don’t hurt us! Brothers, join us!” Other people called out for “a Lithuania for Lithuanians” free of “Jews, Georgians, Mongols and Russians.” Debates broke out in the crowd between liberal and conservative nationalists.
He could feel Levine’s heavy breathing above the noises of the crowd as she continued to push her way to the back. Suddenly, she cursed and fell down. His visual world spun wildly. He saw nothing but old plastic shoes and rubber boots and cobblestones. Then he was looking up at anxious faces and a half dozen helping hands. Levine’s voice could be heard breathlessly saying, “Ačiū, Ačiū” (“thank you” in Lithuanian he knew now) then she was up and into a building at the back of the square.
She gestured to her
Sensanet
™ collar as several young Lithuanians in crude arm bands stopped her. “American Press”, she said in several languages. They nodded and let her pass but he noticed one of them came with her as she ran up the stairs to the third floor. By the time they got to the windows overlooking the square, Lithuanian troops had already started arresting protesters.
At first it went relatively smoothly. The protesters allowed themselves to be led to the trucks. But more and more kept taking their places. The Lithuanian troops were getting mixed up with the civilians and some were engaged in animated conversations and not arresting anyone. The reporter muttered into her throat mike that, “The Russian troops look like they’re getting nervous.” As she looked at them he noticed that they were taking out long riot batons and forming ranks. A young student started yelling out of a nearby window. “Russian treachery!” Levine translated.
Without warning the Russian troops charged the crowd and the noise became indecipherable. At first the savage beatings drove the crowd back but soon there were breaks in the police lines as protesters, joined by more and more of the Lithuanian soldiers, resisted. The Russians were shoved back to their line of armored vehicles. A handful of Lithuanian soldiers, mainly officers, were with them, but the majority had now joined the crowd. For a moment a space of a few yards opened between the people and the Russian unit. Hesitantly, a few young Lithuanians stepped into it. A Russian major shot one of them. For the first time that morning the scene didn’t seem real to the “sensaslacker” in North America. The target of the major was a tall slender blonde man who looked very young. Suddenly, his yellow head was a bright red rose. He fell in slow motion. An eternal second later a Lithuanian soldier with the crowd aimed his rifle and shot the major down. Gunfire became general.
Within minutes several hundred people lay dead and dying in Gedeminas Square. Two armored cars were burning and at least a dozen young Russian soldiers were among the dead. Most of the crowd fled. It still seemed unreal until the tanks started clearing Lithuanian snipers out of the buildings around the square with cannon fire. The heat of a near miss flashed through his body. Cathy Levine started a quick retreat. Following her Lithuanian guide she took her customers on a long twisting run through cellars and back alleys. They stopped at a makeshift hospital.
The sweet pork chop smell of burnt human flesh and the tangy coppery-scent of blood dominated his senses. The screams of the wounded drowned out any voices. A woman took the reporter into a hallway where it was quiet enough to talk. “Cathy Levine from Vilnius, Lithuania, where Russian troops have just cleared protesters from Gedeminas square with great loss of life. I am here with Irene, an organizer for the revolution. Irene, how can you hope to win against the Soviet army?”
Looking closely at her he could see that she was slightly wounded. When she spoke he recognized the voice that had been directing the sit-in through the loudspeaker. Her English was clear with a BBC accent. “Ms. Levine, we will not have to fight the Soviet Army. These were Russian troops. Very reliable. You saw how most of the Lithuanian soldiers have joined us. The New Soviet army is melting away as the old one did in 1989. Even the Russian units are demanding to be sent back home.”
“How can you defeat the Russian troops?”