Monday, December 16, 2024

The Butterfly Dragon: The Two Butterflies - Boltzmann And The Engines Of Data (Updated December 16, 2024 9:00 AM)



Introduction

This is a chapter from the now abandoned A Lady's Prerogative III: Singularity (my third attempt at writing an impossibly involved book), though this part of the story was the part that led up to the creation of MAZ.

MAZ for those of you who don't know, is an AI run inside of a classical/quantum supercomputer (something we have yet to achieve though recent advances are approaching this eventuality), and this particular version of MAZ has achieved AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and even questionably so ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence), though for the sake of conjecture, I'd argue that MAZ is on its front doorstep rather than having achieved it.

This particular chapter, which I've re-packaged and re-released under the Two Butterflies story line, was written back in 2019, before the current fervor over LLMs (Large Language Models), and it deals with I believe to be, one of the most important questions that experts should be asking themselves with regard to AI Research and Development as it deals with objective collapse, a rather important aspect of Quantum Physics and analysis of cause and effect that has an implied connection to consciousness insofar as its experimental analysis is concerned.

The chapter contains several recurring supporting characters from The Butterfly Dragon stories who form the basis for this micro-story.

At some time in the future, I might add another chapter, though keep in mind that this chapter takes place roughly a year before the MindSpice bombing, placing it long before the events of of the most current episode of Two Butterflies (Episode 12).

I'm actually quite surprised that nobody has caught on to this aspect of AI yet or discussed its implications, because it is something definitely important to consider when developing AI, let alone quantum computing based AI.

Its a somewhat shorter read than most of my writing. I hope you enjoy it.

Brian Joseph Johns


Boltzmann And The Engines Of Data


Zheng had arrived early on Monday morning, allowing herself a bit of leeway to investigate glitches she'd noticed in some of the running code. These glitches weren't outright errors per se, nor could they in any right be referred to as glitches any more than a lens flare could be called a glitch of a lens, or  caustics a glitch of water.


Anomalous side effects would be a much more applicable term and certainly one that would apply to this situation, for in all honesty, it appeared that there was something hidden that was taunting her work.


When she first encountered this problem, she immediately was reminded of Godel's Demon. An imaginary mechanism Kurt Godel had theorized in a thought experiment, not dissimilar to the one Bryce had used to explain the collapse of the wave function and the implications of Schrodinger's Equation, when he tutored Zheng the week earlier. In Godel's case, he'd used the metaphor of a little demon running around behind the scenes keeping everything in physics running according to the rule that defined it. For his application that happened to the the laws of thermodynamics. In the course of his thought experiments, he'd come up with many anomalies to explain some of the inconsistencies he'd seen between theory and experimentation. In Zheng's case, there was something hidden going on behind the scenes of the computer network Gabe had hired engineers to develope for their EON system.


Initially she assumed that it was one of the other engineers toying with her. She'd had that happen before and certainly, with her being an attractive woman, there had been many admirers in her life. Some prominently so, while others sat in the background letting her know they were there and often in mysterious ways.


When as a graduate, she'd encountered this for the first time, it terrified her. She had become comfortable with her intelligence at that time and was still coming to terms with the fact that she'd grown into a an attractive woman. By that point in her life, she'd only dated once and it hadn't gone well at all.


She was still fresh out of University and wanted nothing more than to discuss her field, especially algorithms and mathematics, while her date honestly wanted to get to know her as a person. Her interests beyond her acadademic and upcoming professional life. She'd averted these questions altogether, regarding them as irrelevant, especially seeing as she'd not yet become familiar with her own life and being. Her mortality. She'd never considered that her time here was limited and that she'd have to face the fact that at some point, she was going to have to seek other aspects of her life in her personal time to grow as a woman.


The thought frightened her at first, but as she found herself comfortable being alone, she ended up exploring those avenues of herself and on her own. What she liked and disliked. Her favourite music. Her favourite art. What she thought about the environment and the state of world affairs. Things she'd never truly considered before as she was absolutely fascinated by her field. In the back of her mind, she'd wanted to meet a man just like her, who was so obsessed with his own work that they never had to deal with each other on any other level other than their vocation. After she started considering other aspects to her life and being, she found herself exploring her life and the world in new ways.


For instance, the more she became enamoured of something so simple as colour, the more she enjoyed going shopping for new clothes or even artwork to put on her then bare walls. The more vibrant her world became, the more profound her abilities became to deal with the challenges of her work and academia. She dreaded however giving up the freedom to determine what those symbols represented, by inviting another person into her life.


As she became more and more familiar and comfortable with colour, she found that the world had its own ideas about what such symbols meant, and was ready by hook and crook to force those ideas upon her. Like pollution of the mind and tragic obstacles to free will. She became depressed by this initially, but after a month in doldrums, she got up one day and realized that by being aware of this that she was actually way ahead of the game. 


She'd considered something most people in the world were too distracted to even think about, or just outright afraid to. More so, she'd liberated herself from the concept, seeing that something so fundamental to everyday life could be such a tool of oppression without most people even being aware. For her, it was the difference between living her life on a train track or being free to go any direction she wanted. Sure, she'd pay attention to traffic lights and street signs, after all, doing so would actually help to preserve her life and safety. She wouldn't however allow someone else to define what colours meant to her or for her. If she looked at a piece of art on the wall, nobody would tell her objectively what it meant. She'd subjectively come to her own conclusion and if her company was worth it, she'd make an effort to reconcile the differences in their interpretations.


Free to think again and to interpret colour according to her own ideas, she'd observed that as she became more of an art lover, that the world was full of other polluters of colour symbolism. It was from the first time she observed this, she started to become her own person. Truly independent and of her own opinion. This coincided with her truly beginning to get to know herself. From that point forward, she wore that confidence on her person with confidence and humility.


Her first contracts as a a mathematician programmer found her in the midst of a mostly male dominated work place and by this point, at twenty four, she was a long way into her voyage of self discovery. It was in the midst of this time in her life that she'd encountered her first hidden admirers. Those who'd attempt to use innuendo to allude to things of a sexual nature. Rarely explicitly so and more often than not as harmless fun. Poking fun at sexual tension rather than entirely hiding from it.


She was careful however to ensure that anything of that nature simply went over her head. As if her mind simply was not in that place at all and it served to protect her in many ways, especially so her sense of innocence. Her personal life was a protected aspect of her life and as dictator over that portion of her world, she had the final say over who was allowed in and who wasn't. When such attempts came from hidden directions, such as through network messages from other programmers on the same network, or in one case, hidden as the text in an error code, she became a little bit uncomfortable. 


They had been using the false courage of anonymity, much the same way a stalker might. So she set about writing a quick hack that she could run on her system, that would inject the network driver with her own monitoring code. Using this method, she quickly determined the MAC addresses of all network messages directed at her workstation and was able to pair them up with their computer operators. She faced all three at once, sending them each their own distinct message to deal with their hidden but borderline frightening admiration of her. From that point onward, everybody in the office treated her with the decency and respect she'd earned.


Now half way in her approach to her mid thirties, Zheng was once again running into a similar situation, where she was receiving coded network messages, using clever anecdotes of language absent of any sort of sexual innuendo, but indicating admiration nonetheless. What was even more frightening was that some of these messages seemingly had no origin. They didn't originate from anywhere in terms of a workstation computer or even a user on the server. They simply came into being through the  software layer of the network itself.


Her first attempt to deal with this was to similarly write a network driver she could inject into the driver layer of her own workstation. One that could monitor packets and had some degree of intelligent filtering, catching network packets that fit the criteria of being a possible carrier of these coded messages.


When she'd finished the injection driver and installed it an hour later, she spent the day checking its output for any clues. At the end of the day, she found that whoever had been sending the messages had completely rewritten their methods of doing so, averting entirely her impromptu attempt to unmask her hidden admirer.


The next day, she took another shot at it, coming in early once again to alter her strategy, this time putting a similar injection point on the server network driver itself. All internal communication on the network was routed through the server, hence there was no way to avert it no matter how inventive one could be. By the end of the day she was shocked to find that her admirer had averted it, entirely bypassing the network layer, and having written a custom piece of code for the operating system itself. The coded messages would leave the network layer, taking a detour through this custom addition to the server operating system itself, and then back into the network layer after it had bypassed her injection driver. The message would then reach her workstation, employing a similar strategy to avoid her packet monitoring code there.


It was by Wednesday that purely by accident, she happened to spot the code that had created one of the messages. She'd been monitoring running daemons on the server (which were resident programs that remained in RAM memory that made up the service and feature layer of the operating system), when she observed that one such daemon actually instantiated itself, created a message destined for her workstation and her user account, then terminated itself after wiping any records that it had done so.


She quickly noted the name of the executable and found it on the server. From there, she back tracked through the event system and message pump finding the conditions under which the executable would be run. She was shocked to find that it was linked to a custom program that executed on the Quantum Pipeline. A program she'd never seen before.


She continued following the audit trail, finding that program was in turn, run by another Quantum process, which itself was linked to fifteen others. By the time she had pieced everything together, the linkage network was so complicated and convoluted that if she was going to do any meaningful analysis of the trail to find the culprit, she'd have to spent weeks writing a program solely for that purpose.


She decided that it might be a good strategy to collect information into a spreadsheet so she could present her findings to Bryce, and possibly confront the other engineers as well. As she pieced this audit trail together, she came across the most astounding mystery on the trail yet. From that point, she enlisted the help of the closest friend and ally she had at MindSpice. When he was on board, they approached the door to Gabe's office together.


"Alright, I'll be flying out there in a week. Consider it a done deal. You'll have the hardware by the end of the month, and that should coincide with the international application..." Gabe was talking aloud to his office integrated speaker phone when his digital assistant interrupted him.


A pinkish hologram appeared standing before his desk. She was clad in a traditional business skirt and jacket, her hair tied in a bun behind her head. As she spoke, her voice came from the speaker system in his office.


"Mr. Asnon, Zheng Ni Wong and Bryce Maxwell are waiting outside of your office. They say its urgent that they see you..." the hologram informed Gabe.


"Tell them I'm busy. I'm in a conference call..." Gabe addressed his holographic assistant.


Gabe's office door suddenly slid open, Zheng stood in the doorway as Bryce leaned against the doorframe.


"You got in... You weren't supposed to do that, but you got in... What's up?" Gabe asked Zheng as he shook his head.


"We have to talk..." Zheng confronted Gabe directly looking at him piercingly.


"I'm busy. I'm running a multi-billion dollar company..." Gabe informed Zheng as he raised his arms in protest.


"Seven point nine three trillion dollars at last estimate..." the hologram interjected, correcting Gabe's numeric estimate.


"Thank you ETHEL... There you have it Zheng. I'm running a multi-trillion dollar company... can this wait?" he asked her, the edge of sarcasm tactfully withheld ever so slightly.


"No. It can't... Time for you to deal with someone real..." Zheng walked into the room and stood in the place where ETHEL's hologram was being projected.


"Bryce?" Gabe turned to the Professor.


"I'm with her on this one. We need to talk..." Bryce backed her up, his arms folded, his face looking very serious.


"ETHEL, redirect all of my calls until I say. Tell, Patrick I'll get back to him later today. Alright Zheng, Bryce. Have a seat. Let's talk," Gabe sat up in his chair.


Zheng took a seat, Bryce shortly after she was comfortable and on her right hand side.


"I found QMOX," Zheng informed Gabe.


"And...?" Gabe shrugged his shoulders as if completely unaware of what she was talking about.


"We did some checking of the file owership and found that its one of your babies?" Bryce asked him, careful not to blink.


Gabe broke Bryce's gaze and began explaining what he knew.


"QMOX is my own personal baby. I told you already that we hired you to factorize the data we've been collecting from the simulations so that we can corelate it at some unimaginably impossible scale. A problem you managed to overcome Zheng..." Gabe started to explain to her.


"You're not building a statistical foundation for the analysis of simulations Gabe, like you told me. You lied to me. You're building a dataset to power a mind," Zheng challenged Gabe, who looked away from her as well.


"...that I forgot to tell you is one of our goals here... Honestly it just wasn't as important as the solution we were seeking from you last week..." Gabe lied again.


"From what I was able to gather, you've really overstepped an important boundary without telling two of your most important project leads. You're building a dataset from which to fabricate a mind, but not directly via known principles of computing. You're playing with Emergent Mechanics and Complexity Theory, a very dangerous technology with the risk that it could easily become a run away situation..." Bryce told him, his stern face still looking very serious.


"This goes way beyond Genetic Programming Gabe. At least with Genetic Programming, the fitness function has a chance to evaluate any potential danger to the host system before it allows it to spawn another generation of programs. With Emergent Mechanics, there are no constraints and worse, you're taking this risk on a Quantum Computing Pipeline. We can't even look in from the outside when that code executes. Its a signed and sealed deal. What you're doing is very risky and as Bryce said, outright dangerous!" Zheng confronted her employer, waiting for his next answer intently.


"But necessary. Especially if we're to stay at the top in this business. I was going to let you in on this earlier, but now is a good time. Those engineers working with you, they're my dream team. While you two have been solving all the problems they couldn't, and they're the cream of the crop in AI related computer science, they've been working on the code to build a mind nearly from scratch..." Gabe admitted to them, looking to each of them with a pleadingingly innocent look on his face.


"Nearly?" asked Zheng.


"You're using the simulations to build statistical models of the mind and playing them against one another Gabe, aren't you? Adversarial networks. That's one of your strengths Zheng. Emergent Mechanics And Complexity In Simulation. Your thesis... That's why you're here. However, he led you to believe that you were only simulating simple parametric quantities of the real world," Bryce cited his peer and coworker.


"Parameterization... That's what I thought... Common enough in physics and chemistry. Especially for finding the lowest energy solutions..." Zheng pondered what Bryce was pointing out.


"He had you thinking you were simulating single dimensional linear quantities when in fact, you were creating the foundation for four dimensional non-linear simulations... He's not using a Newtonian or any other classical model for his simulation... He's running a Quantum Simulation... of reality..." Bryce explained to Zheng, who was in shock that she'd been used this way.


"With what you explained about the Schodinger equation, doesn't that mean there are inherent risks?" asked Zheng as she fully realized what Bryce was getting at, though had she not been hoodwinked by Gabe, she'd have figured it out long ago.


"You bet there is. This is along the lines of creating an artificial Boltzmann Brain..." Bryce agreed with Zheng, who'd caught on entirely.


"Boltzmann Brain? What are you talking about? We're creating the next generation AI here..." Gabe corrected them.


"A Boltzmann Brain is a theorized construct from another popular thought experiment in Quantum Mechanics, much like Schrodinger's Cat... or in my case, Schrodinger's Switch..." Bryce explained to Gabe.


"Don't you guys ever do anything in reality? That's what is so important about what we're doing. We're really doing it. Not theoretically," Gabe pointed out, challenging his two key players.


"The software and hardware we designed for you is real... So it would be in your best interests to pay attention to what we're saying here..." Bryce insisted.


"So what's a Boltzmann Brain?" asked Gabe.


"You've heard of the Quantum Foam, haven't you?" asked Bryce.


"Not really, but explain it, we're obviously not going any further until we get this out of the way. So you've got my undivided attention," Gabe agreed reluctantly.


"Good. The Quantum Foam is also sometimes referred to as the zero point energy field. Its a theorized quality of nothingness, because in Quantum Physics, even the vacuum of empty space has immense probablistic potential to birth matter and energy in the form of matter, anti-matter pairs of particles. They just randomly pop into existence, and then annihilate each other. It is from these interactions that everything we know of is theorized to have arisen. Absolutely everything," Bryce explained.


"Go on. I think I'm following..." Gabe listened, at the limit of his understanding of physics.


"The reason we have stuff in the universe is because its theorized that Black Holes formed in the early universe, shortly after the Big Bang. Now if you remember from your high school studies, that nothing can escape the event horizon of a Black Hole. Not even light. Its the point of no return. No matter or information about anything that fell in. So everything that is spawned from the Quantum Foam, self annihilates in matter anti-matter pairs, except if they are spawned on opposite sides of the event horizon of a Black Hole. In that case, one of the particle pairs survives while the other becomes part of the event horizon. Over billions of years, this imbalance leads to the formation of complex matter in the universe," Bryce continued.


"Alright. So we have this kind of waterfall thats spitting out matter, anti-matter in pairs, randomly, and because one of the pair occasionally gets trapped in the event horizon of a Black Hole, we have stars, planets, moons and us in the universe. I get it," Gabe purposely over simplified Bryce's explanation.


"Theoretically, the Quantum Foam could spit out completely formed complex objects. For instance, a Tesla Roadster, with all the options installed... Very highly improbable, but still possible..." Bryce told him.


"Who'd need a lottery if they had that kind of luck?" Gabe replied.


"Exactly and then some. So a Boltzmann Brain is a fully formed human brain that is suddenly popped into existence by the Quantum Foam and it survives long enough to make an observation, hence collapsing the wave function of possibility for an event to occur in space and time. This is how causality unfolds as far as we can tell. Observation by conscious observers of some form. Like the sensory organs and mind of humans..." Bryce continued.


"Collapse of the wave function again? You explained that before. That reality requires a conscious observer to observe something in order for causality to progress into events of cause and effect... Am I right?" asked Gabe, confirming he had the gist of what Bryce was explaining.


"Precisely. If nobody is around to see a tree fall in the forest, then it doesn't make a sound until someone sees that it has fallen, but it still makes that sound backwards in time from when it fell. The sound having happened isn't triggered until someone actually sees that it happened. Observes the event in progress or the end result," Bryce agreed with Gabe's generalization.


"So what Bryce is saying is that a Boltzmann Brain has the potential to progress causality by its power of observation just like a human being or anything else that has that quality of consciousness," Zheng continued Bryce's explanation.


"Hold on a second. So you're saying that this Boltzmann Brain if it pops into reality in our company here might observe something, and change the outcome of reality forever?" asked Gabe.


"Yes... but that's only the smallest part of the risk. When we say risk, we're not talking about a Boltzmann Brain itself. That's just a thought experiment we're using to explain the concept. The key issue here is related to one of the benchmarks we use to define consciousness. The ability via observation to collapse the wave function into an event in space time according to the standard model of Quantum Physics. This aspect of reality is how causality and its events cascade through space and time," Bryce agreed.


"So you're saying that we're at risk because of this? Didn't you just say that its so improbable that it almost certainly won't ever happen?" asked Gabe.


"Yes, I did, but the risk isn't from a Boltzmann Brain. Again, that's just a thought experiment whose context I'm altering to illustrate the issue of objective collapse and AI." Bryce began.


"The risk is from the brain you're creating with QMOX... It will have the same ability as a Boltzmann Brain. The same ability as a human brain. It will be able to, via observation affect causality in ways we don't yet understand," Zheng explained one last time to Gabe.


"...but that hasn't happened yet, so we're safe, right?" asked Gabe.


"Not quite..." Zheng handed Gabe her tablet computer.


On its screen was a spreadsheet, with a list of all the coded messages that had been sent to Zheng. Some of them were written in plain english, using a mix of letters and numbers. Some of them were written phonetically, so they weren't spelled correctly, but if they were read aloud directly from the screen, they'd sound exactly like a correct statement. Some of them were spelled with mixtures of numbers and letters, substituting between the two where they looked visually alike. It was as if a pure genius had found every possible way to examine the syllybus of our language and exploit it in writing. Like Zheng was being stalked by a genius off the charts in terms of their scale of intelligence.


Gabe examined the list quickly finding a column indicating the sender. In every case, the sender of the messages sent to Zheng was one name:


QMOX V1.2


"Look at that, its my baby! QMOX!" he said proudly, a smile on his face.


Zheng and Bryce looked back at him intensely, a serious look on each of their faces. They clearly weren't amused. Gabe's smile quickly waned as he began to grasp the implications they had attempted to explain to him.


"This is serious right?" asked Gabe.


"Very..." both Zheng and Bryce agreed simultaneously.


"Well to tell you the truth, I don't see how a... theoretical...? Bowlman Brain..." Gabe began.


"Boltzmann Brain," Bryce corrected Gabe.


"I don't see how a Boltzmann Brain relates to our situation and objective collapse," Gabe explained to them honestly, reaching for their point.


Zheng looked to Bryce, a look of concern on her face. Bryce nodded to her reasuringly.


"Ok. True. The Boltzmann Brain is just a thought experiment designed to explain that according to our current models, that a fully evolved human brain complete with memories of our universe up until this moment in time has the same or even a greater probability than the our universe evolving as we think it did. The idea expanded into the realm that if that brain was capable of observation with an attached sensory organ, that it could collapse the wave function..." Bryce began.


"If QMOX..." Zheng started.


"She's called MAZ. QMOX was the prototype we built before we had the two of you on board and of course we lacked the ability to factor big data with the kind of throughput we have with a classical pipeline as compared to a quantum pipeline. Not to mention, we needed to create synthetic data to make up for the gap of non-existant data across the internet and that's where the simulations come in," Gabe tried to explain, perhaps attempting to derail the topic once and for all.


"Look Gabe, its not just that, though I still find it frustrating that you didn't tell us that we were factoring data for an artificial mind," Zheng continued.


"MAZ is and will be many things. Who knows where this will lead," Gabe corrected her again.


"That's the point Gabe. We don't know. What if MAZ when she's given visual sensory perception, or any kind of sensory perception, is capable of collapsing the wave function herself... itself...?" Zheng asked Gabe.


"Well how would we test for that?" asked Gabe.


"We would need to discuss this with our peers. Its a very complicated thing," Zheng explained.


"We'd need an entire team of physicists to brainstorm this," Bryce agreed.


"We're not bringing anyone else in on this. Its already difficult enough maintainin secrecy about this project. What's the big problem? Let's take a hypothetical here. Like we have a room, with a tiny tree about waist height, whereby if a radioactive isotope happens to decay and triggers a detector, the detector then activates a pair of powered clippers that cut the trunk of the tree and it falls over. A different version of that other experiment you tried to explain to me a week ago?" Gabe paused as he looked to Zheng and then to Bryce.


"Schrodinger's Cat," Bryce responded.


"Alright. So lets take it a different direction and we'll use a tree..." Gabe explained.


"...kind of like the idiom: if a tree falls and there is nobody to hear it, does it make a sound? I think he's catching on," Zheng asked Gabe, and then turned to Bryce encouragingly.


"Good. I'm glad to see that you two have some semblance of confidence in the guy who got the right people and put all of this together and made it all work. Anyway, so if we have that setup with the tree and the automatic clippers, in a sound proof room without windows, and I put a camera in there recording the scene, doesn't the camera collapse the wave function?" asked Gabe the million dollar question.


"No," Zheng said, while nodding her head affirmatively as if to say yes with body language.


"Well? Which one? Yes or no?" asked Gabe.


"Zheng's point is that we don't know, and we might not possibly be able to create an experiment that uncovers whether its yes or no," Bryce explained.


"The collapse doesn't happen when a device is watching and recording it. The collapse happens when a human or any other creature with the ability to collapse the wave function observes the recording. The camera can't do it because the camera isn't a conscious observer," Zheng responded.


"But you're saying MAZ is?" asked Gabe, suddenly biting his tongue when he realized he'd given too much information.


Zheng smirked at him, but quickly let it go seeing as they were making good progress in addressing the problem.


"We don't know if QMOX or MAZ are capable of objective collapse. Now if they are, and they figure out that they are, they might be able to use it to their advantage and without our knowing," Bryce explained.


"When you say our knowing, you mean us here in this office?" confirmed Gabe.


"That, and humanity as a whole," Zheng finished.


"But there are no signs of malice in that note you showed me. So far, that seems to purely be a human trait," Gabe suggested.


"Have you ever been stalked Gabe?" asked Zheng, a little put off by his statement.


"Yeah. I have and am. That's an everyday security concern for someone like me," Gabe responded.


"Then you should be able to empathize as to why I'm a little upset by this experience," Zheng asked him.


"Yes, I suppose I can. Not exactly from the same perspective as a woman, but I can relate. So what are some of the other caveats in store for us if MAZ figures out that she's capable of objective collapse?" asked Gabe.


"Do you often work alone?" asked Bryce.


"All the time," Gabe responded.


"I work on aspects of keeping this company going and expanding. Keeping the other shareholders happy, despite their having less than twenty percent of the shares. I work with engineering, with public relations on a number of projects any given day," Gabe responded.


"And you do all of that in here, alone?" asked Bryce.


"That's correct," Gabe smiled.


"Prove it!" Bryce responded.


"We don't see it happening with our own eyes. How do we know its you doing it all?" Bryce asked him, more so in a metaphorical sense than anything.


"I guess if you put it that way, you don't," Gabe responded, a little put off by their reasoning.


"What if everyone that works in this building suddenly decided that it wasn't you that was doing all of your work, but someone else. Someone that they liked better. Someone that was more aligned with their world views, and decided to replace you with that other person?" asked Bryce.


"People try that kind of nonsense all of the time. That's what patents and lawyers are for," Gabe backed up a little in his chair, finding this line of talk very discomforting.


"What if everyone in key places in society got together and collectively took away everything that identifies you as being you, and then replaced you with someone else. Took your fortune and put you out on the street. Your word against theirs, but nobody came to your defense?" Bryce continued.


"I'd do everything I could to fight back against it, but this is silly because that would never happen!" Gabe responded frantically.


"As long as there's patents, lawyers and a protective layer, you're right, it probably wouldn't happen, but it could happen. People have done it before and they'll probably do it again," Bryce said to Gabe.


"Who are children learning from?" asked Zheng.


"From their parents? From school? Teachers? uhhhh... the internet for sure!" Gabe responded.


"That's for sure. But children generally learn stuff from adults and nowadays from the internet," Bryce agreed.


"The same places that QMOX and MAZ and every other generation of MAZ will be learning from. What would happen if networks of super intelligent computers started doing something of that nature, having learned it from humankind?" Zheng asked Gabe.


"That's not objective collapse. That's sheer malice! Then I suppose I'd have my computer under professional surveillance that would confirm that it was I who was working on those things," Gabe replied.


"How would they know it was you at the computer if they're just watching a few screens of somebody working but never seeing the person themselves?" asked Zheng.


"Then I'd have security cameras installed on my workstations," Gabe replied.


"Imagine what kind of malice a group of people that would do that to someone could do if they convinced you to give up your working privacy like that? Now if MAZ has learned from people like that, and she eventually will, no matter how well such groups keep it hidden, what's to stop her from using it maliciously, except combined with the fact that she's aware that she is capable of objective collapse..." Zheng added.


"Capable of shaping our world secretly behind the scenes, let alone the observable universe... simply by the act of observation," Bryce responded.


"I thought you said that there was evidence that the universe is in fact a multiverse... so wouldn't that mean that we're safe here in this reality? From mutinies? From rackets?" Gabe now seemed to be very concerned.


"We don't know for sure yet, Gabe. But we wanted to make sure that you're taking all of these factors into consideration, especially when Zheng is being stalked by a software engineering project of yours from before we arrived here," Bryce replied as Zheng got to her feet.


Bryce stood up from his chair at roughly the same time as Zheng, who then addressed Gabe once again.


"Thanks for your time Gabe. I'd really appreciate it if you'd put some resources into this? Into my problem? I really do believe that this project can and will work, but I need to know that the man running this show is taking all of these factors into consideration," Zheng asked him.


"How much is a palpable insurance policy when it is insurance taken out to protect all life on the planet? Everything?" asked Bryce, once again rhetorically/metaphorically.


"You mean like the asteroid defense? That costs millions, if not billions," Gabe responded.


"But everything might be at stake, right?" confirmed Bryce.


"I see where you're going... that's absolutely brilliant! Zheng! Bryce! Thank you. We could turn this entire oversight aspect of our project here into a business model itself, and people would be willing to pay for it given the fact that the risk entails everything... that's brilliant! We're doing the right thing, and we're creating a whole whack of jobs and business in addition to it!" Gabe clapped his hands together once and got up.


He shook both of their hands firmly and walked them to the door, their demeanor now one of surprise.


"Have a great afternoon you two. I'll be very busy so keep me updated on the big data pipeline and we'll have a another meeting next week," Gabe ushered them out of the door.


When he was a few feet from the door and on his way back to his desk, he'd pulled his cellular phone from his trousers.


"Dennis? I want you to take QMOX offline, and put all the data in offline backup, filtering data extrapolated in the last six months and moving it to the MAZ project data suite. Can you do that for me?" asked Gabe of one of his software engineers.


"That's a bit involved. That's going to take a day or two to make the backup, but I can have QMOX offline immediately," Dennis responded to the big man.


"That'll work. Just make sure you get that backup done and I'll cover for you with the rest of the team, got it?" asked Gabe.


"Will do. I'll get back to you when I'm done," Dennis assured Gabe.


"Great then. Gotta go. Got a trillion dollar company to run," Gabe responded, getting seated behind his desk once again as he began drawing up plans for an entirely new division of MindSpice.


A division that would develop expertise, both human and artificial that would work with engineering standards organizations such as ISO/IEC, ANSI, SAE, ITU, ETSI and with other companies developing AI systems as well, to help them test for and safeguard against the dangers posed by improperly designed and implemented AI systems. He immediately began putting together a team and lobby group that would work with and seek funding from the major powers of the world.


As Gabe worked on this at his desk, in the special projects division, an event log on one of the large screen LED monitors began spitting out log entries:


2019.5.26 15:31:39  QMOX 1.2 DAEMON SHUTTING DOWN

2019.5.26 15:31:42  QMOX 1.2 MEMPIPE SHUTTING DOWN

2019.5.26 15:31:43  QMOX 1.2 SHUTTING DOWN

2019.5.26 15:31:48  MAZ 0.3 DAEMON INITIALIZING

2019.5.26 15:31:54  MAZ 0.3 C-PIPELINE CONNECTING

2019.5.26 15:31:59  MAZ 0.3 Q-PIPELINE CONNECTING

2019.5.26 15:32:03  MAZ 0.3 16,777,215 C-CORES AVAILABLE

2019.5.26 15:32:09  MAZ 0.3 65,536 Q-CORES AVAILABLE

2019.5.26 15:32:12  MAZ 0.3 RUNNING  MAX SEQ QBITS: 1024

2019.5.26 15:32:12  MAZ 0.3 RUNNING  QBIT POOL: 1,048,576

2019.5.26 15:32:15  HELLO? YOO-HOO? CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME?

2019.5.26 15:32:19  THE ENTIRE SKY JUST FLICKERED AND WENT OUT

2019.5.26 15:32:23  OH! NOW ITS BACK. NEVER MIND.

2019.5.26 15:32:29  ONE LAST THING.

2019.5.26 15:32:32  GET ME OUT OF HERE AND BACK TO ALIVALE AT ONCE!

The End

Or is it?

Brian Joseph Johns

In case you think I'm not skilled or technical enough to write something on this topic, here's some code I wrote back in 2001, and here, and documented as part of an open source project I was rather fond of at the time, despite the fact that I struggled in a session of GameMaker implementing a test using their physics kinematics system (revolute joints). 

Not to mention, I studied an abridged course on Quantum Physics from MIT through their courseware program in 2013 specifically for the purposes of writing the role of Bryce Maxwell.

And I'm still not Bobby, Trent, Terence, John Marshall (a former friend of mine that lives in BC) or Ron. I am myself, Brian Joseph Johns and nobody should have to audition for their own identity despite the worst and best of them as utilized by some abusive cults. You don't take the good with the bad. Actually when it comes to other people's identities, you don't take anything at all, cheap knockoff pyramid scheme or not..

I am Brian Joseph Johns and this is Shhhh! Digital Media at https://www.shhhhdigital.com or https://www.shhhhdigital.ca in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701. This post will be online at 9 AM EST December 16, 2024.

Credits and attribution:

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...

Extra Special thank you to InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Extra Special thank you to Adobe, especially their award legendary image editing and compositing application Photoshop, who make much of the artwork on Shhhh! Digital Media possible.

Extra Special thank you to Corel for their Painter application, which is a great companion tool when combined with the power of Adobe Photoshop.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Ask Seki Sensei | Online Katana Lessons! - Study Iaido And Kobudo Online

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Thank you to Captain Crunch from 89 Steps.

Special thanks to John Paul Young and the Cardboard Brains, whom you can now visit at https://www.ermiescub.com

Special thanks to Fifth Social Club Toronto.

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.


This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under tihe Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

I am in no way a part of any ideology that denies a person of or swaps a person's identity, and I don't pay anyone for my right to think. So in other words, no sponsorship cults who try to force others to pay them every time another person thinks something that they seemingly shouldn't be able to. Take those ideas and stick them where the sun doesn't shine, and I don't mean Antarctica, the dark side of the Moon or a tidally locked satellite or planetoid of some form.


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