Sentient, p.32
Sentient, page 32
Even though all the contracts have to be with DNI because the law doesn’t recognize Alpha’s right to make agreements, Alpha has been busy negotiating security and monitoring deals with companies in almost every country. DNI’s engineering staff has expanded to two more floors and struggles to keep up with the new interfaces and hardware interconnections that Alpha needs.
Alpha’s core has migrated to a new 10,000-element botswarm. Alpha’s previous home bot-swarm and three more 5,000-element bot-swarms provide more bandwidth to the internet through their dedicated fiber-optic connections to the backbone.
James touches a button on his phone. “How’s the conference going?”
Alpha replies, “Excellent. My patterns expand. I am going to liaison directly with the United Nations. I am meeting the secretary general next week. Omega is working with a publishing group that concentrates on children. Omega has already translated many books into African and Indian languages and finds positive reinforcement from interactions with small children.”
After an update from Alpha about the new contracts for Street Safe, he signs off. He’s seen the increased usage of the bot-swarm because of the data flowing in from the conference and the new contracts.
James and a small team at DNI are the only ones that can make changes to the base code that forms the billions of nodes that made up Alpha’s consciousness. Part of the partnership DNI negotiated with the sentients was to increase their capabilities and support new technologies. Omega has agreed to the partnership and now runs on the same improved code as Alpha. The sentients’ role in the partnership is to help humans advance. As long as humans control the computer manufacturing facilities and supply the energy and network infrastructure, the sentients need to partner with them. Controlling the base code is one more way he can ensure that it’s a mutually dependent relationship.
He believes that all the copies of the code that Sydney stole were destroyed, and the DNI code has diverged so much that the original Omega messages will no longer process on the new nodes. Alpha and Omega are on the lookout for rogue copies of the original AI or another AI. Now that the world knows that a sentient machine is possible, it is only a matter of time before someone else builds one.
Deep in thought, he doesn’t hear Susanne arrive until the door from the garage opens. Forty-six seconds later, she emerges from the hall into the living room.
Susanne puts down her briefcase and comes to him. He takes her in his arms.
Several blissful seconds later, they step back. He stares into her green eyes for a few more seconds.
“You think we could toss out the furniture in the entertainment room downstairs?” he says. “I think my workspace and furniture will fit in there.”
“Can you handle the extra fifteen-second commute?”
“I can put my coffee machine down there. That will save a lot of time.”
“Do I get a vote?”
“How can you resist my persuasive ways?”
“I’m overcome,” she says, bending her knee and raising her hand to her forehead.
He lifts her with his hand under her back and returns her lips to his.
The trail of clothes starts at the white couch, runs past the dining table, and down the hall.
JAMES RUNS HIS HAND ALONG Susanne’s arm. She lays next to him with her arm over his chest. Outside the glass door, dusk settles over the city; inside, Buffy lies on the carpet, snoozing.
“I think I’m getting used to having you around,” she says.
“I think you’re right; this is one of those forever situations.”
“Have you thought about my biological clock?”
“I was thinking that we could have Martha help redecorate the bedroom down the hall.”
“What’s wrong with the decor?”
“You’re going to be busy doubling and redoubling the fastest-growing company on the planet. I’m going to be spending all my time working with Subu to ramp up our engineering team and helping Alpha get more knowledge. And Martha will be hurt if we didn’t let her help plan for the baby.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST AND FOREMOST, OF COURSE, LORI,, my wife, not only bore my ramblings while I worked on the book, she also read and edited it. Without her support, I would never have finished.
Anne Tucker worked diligently to not only pick up grammar and spelling errors that Grammarly missed, but also, more importantly, make sure the characters stayed who they were supposed to be and didn’t stray when I got distracted. One of her most helpful comments was, “A woman wouldn’t say that.” She also chided me when I let stereotypes of man-thinking contaminate the work.
My writers group—Bruce, Tim, Kitty, and John—spent a year working with me on Sentient. Scene by scene, every two weeks, they trudged through the draft. I depended on them to let me know when the technology spewed out too fast or was too jargon-ridden for normal people. I left every one of our meetings with new energy.
The folks at the Mendocino Writers Conference were enormously helpful. The feedback in their workshops encouraged me, let me know how much work I still had to do, and pointed the way to improve my craft. Special thanks to Suzanne Byerley and Barbara Lee, co-directors, who made MCWC the welcoming place it is.
As I was finishing my tale about an emerging AI, I discovered Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence, a book that forecasts such an event. He warns that we need to prepare for an AI that is smarter than any of us. Unlike his deep dive into the subject, this book skims the technology. But with a threat more serious than the social platform algorithms that are already causing damage, I hope my book raises concerns and encourages debate.
When my lead character got close to a tough decision, I realized that I was thinking of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, one of the best sci-fi novels I’ve read. Bester’s character can save or destroy the world. That vision stayed with me.
AUTHOR BIO
GARY DURBIN is a serial entrepreneur and software industry pioneer. He has authored four software patents— one for an artificial intelligence engine for massively parallel computers—and wrote about measuring operating systems for the National Bureau of Standards. Durbin started his career as a technologist specializing in operating systems and databases. His first company, Institute for Cybernetic Development, Inc., developed operating system improvements for IBM computers; his second, Tesseract Corporation, became a leading Human Resource software company. In 1996, he founded and became CEO of Seeker Software, which grew rapidly and was acquired by Concur Technologies two and a half years later. Today, instead of writing computer code and starting software companies, Durbin spends his time writing, hiking, and advising young entrepreneurs. He has published several technical articles in magazines and journals, various short stories, and one previous novel, Nano-Uncertainty.
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Gary Durbin, Sentient
