Just A Thought
...contd
He did not notice the unusual activity going on in his room. Maybe he was just a little too excited to notice. He turned ON his PC.
Ok. Why is the damn thing not starting?? He thought. That is when he noticed people running from one corner to another. Frantically talking on their phones. Carrying stuff around. It looked like a scene from one of those Hollywood movies he thought. Where the world is coming to an end in a few hours and people have just come to know about it. But they just don't know what they are supposed to do.
People always know what to do. They always know how to react. No matter what the situation be. But when the world is ending. There is not much that can be done in the first place.
John got up from his seat. In an attempt to find out the reason why his computer wouldn't start. He never thought much of his collegues. So their actions did not matter. The answer that he was going to get would defintely change the order of the questions. He went straight to the cabin of his PM. George.
George was probably the only person in the company whom John both respected and feared. With George being 6' 5", with a well built physique the latter could be easily explained. John entered his cabin. George was not in his cabin. Very unusual. John noticed that the whole cabin was in a mess. Todays newspaper strewn across the table. Very very unusual.
"Necsoft to be put to test today" the newspaper screamed. Necsoft was something which had created a lot of fuss recently. Only John wasn't impressed a lot. However others were. Necsoft was a program which stood as a proof that mankind had finally become sucessful in achieving true AI. Until the advent of Necsoft, all AI programs only executed rules that were predefined by the developer. Restricting the program to only perform predefined tasks. Necsoft was the first program which actually created the rules on its own. In that sense, it was the first true AI program.
George suddenly came into the room with some files. Very strange John thought. Because George hated working with paper. He always preferred a soft copy. "You are here!", said George, "And by the look on your face, I assume you have no idea about what is happening." John shrugged.
"You know they were going to test Necsoft today?", George asked. John nodded. Please God don't let this be a story about how Necsoft became self aware and turned against humans!!
"Well you see Necsoft was perfect. Everything went well during the test. But some idiot wanting to get instant fame, was able to inject a virus into the Necsoft system. Now Necsoft of course retaliated! But the idiot took a virus whose source code was very easily available. The Red. This virus tries to just use the system resources and copy itself across. No harm done.".
"So whats the problem? Just shut it down, clean the system! Whats the fuss?!?"
"Necsoft is different. Its not your average PC. The virus tried to use the system resources to make copies of itself and send it across the network. Now you realize that Necsoft is a true AI program. Its core conatins tokens which are combined to make rules. The rules are then executed by a rule engine."
"So?? The virus was not able to copy itself?"
"On the contrary, Necsoft chose to make a copy of the virus."
"But why? Why would it want to let it do that?"
"Because, Necsoft thought that it was a good program. A clean program. Requesting some services from it. See the way AI programs run is that they learn by experience. Necsoft did not have any previous experience of Red."
"But I still don't get it. Why would that create so much commotion?"
"Yes I am coming to it. You see making a copy was ok. That is what the virus wanted. But that is when trouble started. Since the virus could not understand the host sytem completely, it asked Necsoft to make a copy. Necsoft did not understand of what it had to make copies. So not understanding what to do, it thought the best solution was to make a copy of itself. Because that is how an AI program would work. It would try to think what would be the best thing to do in the current scenario."
"And it chose to copy itself?"
"Precisely."
"So we have two Necsoft's now. Good for us!!"
"It might have been. But it didn't stop at that. The virus could not find a new copy of itself made by the system. So it requested Necsoft to make one more copy. As earlier Necsoft made one more copy of itself. This went on and on until Necsoft had millions of copies of itself. But then it ran out of space. But Red was still requesting more copies to be made. A good system that it was, Necsoft tried to do that. Since it couldn't, the next best thing was to find more space. Since its own memory was already full, it started entering other computers and storing the files on them."
"Wait. You mean to say that Necsoft hacked into other computers to save its own files on other computers?? This is insane! How can a program do that on its own?!? Even trojans specifically made to do something like that fail nowadays with the kind of computer security we use on our PC's."
"Yes. But you see Necsoft is a pure AI system. It has been taught the architecture of each and every PC system on the face of this earth. The idea is, the bigger the knowledge bank, the better the choices made by Necsoft. Since Necsoft itself never felt that what it was doing was wrong. It just thought that it was trying to comply with a request. No one ever thought of telling Necsoft that hacking into systems is not good. Not matter what the reason!"
"So...?"
"So what happened then was that Necsoft started creating copies of itself and putting it everywhere across all systems destroying the systems themselves in the process. Because to gain more space, it would delete every bit that was stored on the system. Including the device ROMs!!"
"But why not just shut it down?"
"By the time the analysts realized what was happening, Necsoft had already made copies of itself. When they tried to shut down the main system, it realized what was happening and before it was shut down, it ran another copy of itself on some other machine so that the copy request by Red would be tended to."
"Oh shit!"
"The problems did not stop here. The engineers tried to stop the different copies of Necsoft from running too. They tried everything. Including taking out the power of the entire cites. But by that time, Necsoft had learnt the most important virtue. Self Sustainment. So it started running multiple copies of itself at different geographical locations continously so that at any time atleast one copy of itself would be running."
"Ohh I get it now!"
"All because of a request from a damn virus! See in itself Necsoft did not fail. It acted like humans who are blessed with intelligence. We settle in a small land. Use up all our resources and when they are exhausted, we try to encroach upon other areas. Necsoft through the internet has attacked virtually every system it could find. Replacing the systems with copies of itself. By now it has understood the importance of self sustainment. So there are multiple copies of Necsoft running all across the globe. The only way to protect your system is to remove it from the network and work on it as a standalone PC. But Necsoft has already taken over the defence networks of some countries."
"So does that mean it will use them to retaliate if we try to shut it down."
"No!! We are not in a damn Hollywood movie! Necsoft still does not know that it is malfunctioning. According to its own perception, its still working fine. Following all the natural rules that humans follow in similar situations. It won't use the defense systems against us. Secondly, it has removed the defense system softwares to install itself in their place. So there is no longer a system to control the defense system. Necsoft has done something worse. It has rendered the entire defense system useless. Unless you manually override each and every piece of defense, they are useless!"
"So that explains why my computer didnt start! They must have killed the power so that the computers can be protected before they can get the situation under control." John was pleased. He finally got the answer to his question. Although it did not have any value now. Not now. After all that happened.
"All this because of a damn virus!!"
"I told you pure AI doesn't impress me!"
He did not notice the unusual activity going on in his room. Maybe he was just a little too excited to notice. He turned ON his PC.
Ok. Why is the damn thing not starting?? He thought. That is when he noticed people running from one corner to another. Frantically talking on their phones. Carrying stuff around. It looked like a scene from one of those Hollywood movies he thought. Where the world is coming to an end in a few hours and people have just come to know about it. But they just don't know what they are supposed to do.
People always know what to do. They always know how to react. No matter what the situation be. But when the world is ending. There is not much that can be done in the first place.
John got up from his seat. In an attempt to find out the reason why his computer wouldn't start. He never thought much of his collegues. So their actions did not matter. The answer that he was going to get would defintely change the order of the questions. He went straight to the cabin of his PM. George.
George was probably the only person in the company whom John both respected and feared. With George being 6' 5", with a well built physique the latter could be easily explained. John entered his cabin. George was not in his cabin. Very unusual. John noticed that the whole cabin was in a mess. Todays newspaper strewn across the table. Very very unusual.
"Necsoft to be put to test today" the newspaper screamed. Necsoft was something which had created a lot of fuss recently. Only John wasn't impressed a lot. However others were. Necsoft was a program which stood as a proof that mankind had finally become sucessful in achieving true AI. Until the advent of Necsoft, all AI programs only executed rules that were predefined by the developer. Restricting the program to only perform predefined tasks. Necsoft was the first program which actually created the rules on its own. In that sense, it was the first true AI program.
George suddenly came into the room with some files. Very strange John thought. Because George hated working with paper. He always preferred a soft copy. "You are here!", said George, "And by the look on your face, I assume you have no idea about what is happening." John shrugged.
"You know they were going to test Necsoft today?", George asked. John nodded. Please God don't let this be a story about how Necsoft became self aware and turned against humans!!
"Well you see Necsoft was perfect. Everything went well during the test. But some idiot wanting to get instant fame, was able to inject a virus into the Necsoft system. Now Necsoft of course retaliated! But the idiot took a virus whose source code was very easily available. The Red. This virus tries to just use the system resources and copy itself across. No harm done.".
"So whats the problem? Just shut it down, clean the system! Whats the fuss?!?"
"Necsoft is different. Its not your average PC. The virus tried to use the system resources to make copies of itself and send it across the network. Now you realize that Necsoft is a true AI program. Its core conatins tokens which are combined to make rules. The rules are then executed by a rule engine."
"So?? The virus was not able to copy itself?"
"On the contrary, Necsoft chose to make a copy of the virus."
"But why? Why would it want to let it do that?"
"Because, Necsoft thought that it was a good program. A clean program. Requesting some services from it. See the way AI programs run is that they learn by experience. Necsoft did not have any previous experience of Red."
"But I still don't get it. Why would that create so much commotion?"
"Yes I am coming to it. You see making a copy was ok. That is what the virus wanted. But that is when trouble started. Since the virus could not understand the host sytem completely, it asked Necsoft to make a copy. Necsoft did not understand of what it had to make copies. So not understanding what to do, it thought the best solution was to make a copy of itself. Because that is how an AI program would work. It would try to think what would be the best thing to do in the current scenario."
"And it chose to copy itself?"
"Precisely."
"So we have two Necsoft's now. Good for us!!"
"It might have been. But it didn't stop at that. The virus could not find a new copy of itself made by the system. So it requested Necsoft to make one more copy. As earlier Necsoft made one more copy of itself. This went on and on until Necsoft had millions of copies of itself. But then it ran out of space. But Red was still requesting more copies to be made. A good system that it was, Necsoft tried to do that. Since it couldn't, the next best thing was to find more space. Since its own memory was already full, it started entering other computers and storing the files on them."
"Wait. You mean to say that Necsoft hacked into other computers to save its own files on other computers?? This is insane! How can a program do that on its own?!? Even trojans specifically made to do something like that fail nowadays with the kind of computer security we use on our PC's."
"Yes. But you see Necsoft is a pure AI system. It has been taught the architecture of each and every PC system on the face of this earth. The idea is, the bigger the knowledge bank, the better the choices made by Necsoft. Since Necsoft itself never felt that what it was doing was wrong. It just thought that it was trying to comply with a request. No one ever thought of telling Necsoft that hacking into systems is not good. Not matter what the reason!"
"So...?"
"So what happened then was that Necsoft started creating copies of itself and putting it everywhere across all systems destroying the systems themselves in the process. Because to gain more space, it would delete every bit that was stored on the system. Including the device ROMs!!"
"But why not just shut it down?"
"By the time the analysts realized what was happening, Necsoft had already made copies of itself. When they tried to shut down the main system, it realized what was happening and before it was shut down, it ran another copy of itself on some other machine so that the copy request by Red would be tended to."
"Oh shit!"
"The problems did not stop here. The engineers tried to stop the different copies of Necsoft from running too. They tried everything. Including taking out the power of the entire cites. But by that time, Necsoft had learnt the most important virtue. Self Sustainment. So it started running multiple copies of itself at different geographical locations continously so that at any time atleast one copy of itself would be running."
"Ohh I get it now!"
"All because of a request from a damn virus! See in itself Necsoft did not fail. It acted like humans who are blessed with intelligence. We settle in a small land. Use up all our resources and when they are exhausted, we try to encroach upon other areas. Necsoft through the internet has attacked virtually every system it could find. Replacing the systems with copies of itself. By now it has understood the importance of self sustainment. So there are multiple copies of Necsoft running all across the globe. The only way to protect your system is to remove it from the network and work on it as a standalone PC. But Necsoft has already taken over the defence networks of some countries."
"So does that mean it will use them to retaliate if we try to shut it down."
"No!! We are not in a damn Hollywood movie! Necsoft still does not know that it is malfunctioning. According to its own perception, its still working fine. Following all the natural rules that humans follow in similar situations. It won't use the defense systems against us. Secondly, it has removed the defense system softwares to install itself in their place. So there is no longer a system to control the defense system. Necsoft has done something worse. It has rendered the entire defense system useless. Unless you manually override each and every piece of defense, they are useless!"
"So that explains why my computer didnt start! They must have killed the power so that the computers can be protected before they can get the situation under control." John was pleased. He finally got the answer to his question. Although it did not have any value now. Not now. After all that happened.
"All this because of a damn virus!!"
"I told you pure AI doesn't impress me!"
posted by Anonymous at 6:59 AM
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