The Turing Option

“Now, what was that about?” Ben asked as he backed out and bent to pick up his shoes.

“A problem that we’ve seen before. Sven still doesn’t know when to stop reasoning, to stop being outlandishly logical. In the real world we can never be one hundred percent sure of anything, so we have to use only as much knowledge and reasoning as is appropriate to the situation. And in order to reach a decision there must be a point at which thinking has to stop. But doing that itself requires inhibition skills. I think the reason that Sven got stuck was because his new superego was inhibiting the use of those very skills.”

“You mean it turned off the very process that was supposed to stop being turned off? Sounds suspiciously like a paradox. How long will it take to fix?”

“I hope we won’t have to fix it at all. Sven should be able to do it on its own.”

“You mean by learning from experience?”

“Exactly. After all, there’s really nothing wrong with being too careful at first. You have to survive in order to learn. It may take a while, but by learning very carefully Sven can build a solid foundation for learning much more quickly in the future. However there’s something more important than walking right now. Shelly merged Dick Tracy with Robin a few days ago. They are pretty well integrated and working on the problem. Sven, has your Dick Tracy agency added any more jobs to your AI occupation list?’’

“It has.”

“Give us a printout.”

The laser printer hummed to life and sheet after sheet began to emerge. Brian took the first sheet and handed it to Ben; it was alphabetized of course.

“Abaca manufacture, abacaxi cultivator, abactinal definer, abaculus setter, abacucus operator, abaisse manufacture… and a lot more like that,” Ben said. He looked at the sheets piling up and shook his head. “Could you tell me the reason for all this?”

“I thought that it was obvious. Your investigation of the crime here seems to be grinding to a halt—”

“I’m sorry if it looks that way, but the number of people working on this…”

“Ben, I know that! I’m not blaming you. This is a tough nut to crack and all we want to do is help you — for purely personal and selfish reasons if nothing else. Shelly has her Dick Tracy program still operating but it appears to have run out of steam. Now enter Sven to solve the crime!”

“I am already here so I cannot enter.”

“A figure of speech, Sven. Data to come. You can stop the data printout now.”

“I am only up to C in the alphabet. You do not wish a complete printout?”

“No. Just this sample to look at. Put the printed sheets back into the bin.”

Sven rustled quickly across the room to the printer and lifted out the sheets of eternitree from the delivery tray. But not as a human would in a single pile. Instead it shifted its weight to one of the tree complexes and extended the other, then with a quick movement a myriad of the smallest fingers grasped each sheet individually. Carried them to the other side of the machine and slid them into the bin in a quick shuffle as though they were a large pack of cards.

“The printout,” Brian said, “was just to give you an idea of the kind of data base we are assembling. The idea is to make a list of all conceivable human occupations, then consider what an AI might do to make each of them more practical, and then trimming away the improbables. When this list is reduced to a feasible size Sven will examine every available data base for any trace of evidence. Looking for traces of any new kind of manufacturing process, programming system, or other kind of new product that could only be made by a new, more advanced AI.”

“But all these occupations and applications on the list seem so impractical — even impossible. I don’t even know what an abacaxi cultivator is!”

“Of course a lot of them are way out. But this AI does not think as we do — yet. We have intuition, which is a learned process and not one that can be memorized. Right now Sven is better at making a list of everything that an AI could do. When the list is complete it will begin trimming away the impossibles and the improbables. When the list is finally reduced to manageable size Sven will then begin to examine for any traces or matches.”

“That’s quite a task.”

“Sven is quite a machine,” Shelly said proudly. “With its new Dick Tracy agency it should be more than up to the job. If the stolen AI is working somewhere we are going to track it down by finding out just what it has done.”

“I’m sure of it,” Ben said. “And you will let me know the instant you have any leads.”

“They might be just clues, there is no way to be certain.”

“There certainly is — I’ll have them checked out. I have a big team out there who aren’t accomplishing very much at the moment. I’ll put them to work. In all truth I think that putting Sven on the job is the only way that we are going to find the people who did this.”

28 September 4, 2024