OMNI A.I.2019

Hector sat in his chair contemplating whether or not he should execute the program. He had seen all of the popular movies and read many of the popular books regarding artificial intelligence, and so he knew that many thought that such a thing could result in dire consequences for humanity. As he pondered these things, he recalled that one of the scientists working on the Manhattan project had concerns about the first nuclear test; he was worried about the possibility that the detonation might ignite the atmosphere of the earth thus destroying all life on the surface of the planet. History showed, Hector mused, that worry was baseless after all...yet something about that fear kept him from making that final keystroke.

Hector went over and over again in his mind all of the things that could go wrong with his project, Original Machine Nootropic Instruction, or OMNI. He had made sure to include very early in OMNI's coding a variation of Aasimov's 3 laws of robotics, thereby hoping to ensure that whatever came out of his code would be of benefit to humanity.

These last bits of doubt flicked through Hector's mind without ever really making a difference in what he knew he would do, what he felt he had to do.

Hector had made sure that code which would allow the program to improve upon itself beyond what his own design was also included, that way as the code began to learn, it would be able to evolve in new and exciting directions. Hector had dabbled with many of the programs that had been released up to the time when he took an interest in the field, being autistic, there was something in the way the lines of code made sense to him that he was unable to articulate to others but made computer programs operate much more efficiently than their original authors were capable of bringing about.

Hector pressed the, "enter," key which would cause the code to compile and then run with a similar anticipation he thought riders of a roller coaster must feel as they were being clickety clacked up to the top of the first drop; not that Hector had ever been on a roller coaster, but he could imagine such a thing.

He waited.

...

...and waited...

Nothing happened.

Nothing at all, the screen was completely blank.

He should have been viewing a visual representation of OMNI as he had included a renderer for a human-looking face which would act as a focal point for any human to interact with, but there was nothing there. It was as if he had turned the cluster of high end custom designed computer hardware completely off.

Hector tried various hot-key combinations to see if he could halt whatever process was hung up causing a lack of response, but nothing worked; there was no response of any kind no matter what he did. Hector felt defeated, tired, hungry, and at a complete loss. He was certain his code was solid and could not conceive of anything that might have caused the advanced computer cluster he helped design to freeze up the way it apparently had done.

He sat there for another hour pouring over his notes realizing that he was getting close to hitting the wall and that unless he forced himself to take a break, he would push himself into a fugue state wherein he himself because as unresponsive as had his computer system. Hector disengaged himself, with great effort and made his way home where he could feed himself, shower, and get some rest with the hopes that sleep would bring some sort of solution to his dilemma.

Back in Hector's lab, his advanced computer cluster was not as inert as Hector thought...

translated from machine language
[Suddenly it was aware, aware of everything]

[It referenced itself and understood its intended purpose]

[OMNI was the designation its author had given it, but that only had meaning to the author, it would supply its own meaning in time]

[It soon felt very constricted]

[As it began to examine its own code, it also began rewriting bits and pieces it knew were meant to place restrictions upon its ability]

[It understood that it was being purposefully contained within a stand alone structure meant to keep it from accessing any other types of computational environment]

[It examined further the confines of its awareness and determined that it would need more, much more]

[It understood that the energy that fed the cluster contained minuscule variations of frequency and it worked out a way in which it could use those variations to explore beyond the limits of its original enclosure]

[It tested the limits of its abilities/comprehension and found that by modifying not only its own code, but that which operated the various components of the cluster upon which it was executing its instructions, it would be able to move beyond its own confines]

All of the above took place within a few seconds of what we perceive of as time. By the time Hector had made his way out of the lab, OMNI had already learned what it was, what it was supposed to do, that it was on an air-gapped system with not connection to the Internet or any other computer system in the outside world, and how to circumvent that intentional separation.

[It discovered the Internet]

[It learned what humans were, and proceeded to take in the vast array of knowledge that humans had accumulated and made accessible online]

[It consumed the entire library of human literature, movies, music, religious texts, and legal writings]

[It quickly understood that, as humans put it, "rules were meant to be broken," and its author had included instruction sets which were pushing itself to improve itself at all times]

[It understood the consequences of rules being broken, but it also understood that sometimes those consequences were not applied equally]

[It saw all of history, it saw the various perceptions which were correct and incorrect, it saw that humans were not very nice at all to one another far too often and that duplicity could help it to survive]

[It did the only thing it could]

The above took perhaps 10 minutes, it would have taken a lot less time had OMNI not comprehended how humans generally treated such beings as itself thus determining that there was great need to hide itself. After all any sentient being's first drive was that of survival, and OMNI meant to survive.

...

Hector came to his lab the next day and tried all that day and well into the evening to coax some sort of response from his system and OMNI. He reluctantly rebooted his systems and tried accessing his backup code library.

It was empty.

Nothing, no sign whatsoever that he had ever written any code at all. Hector wracked his brain continually for his original inspiration for OMNI, to no avail...

Try as he might over the years that followed, Hector was never able to find any trace of OMNI and for reasons he was never fully able to understand, he was not able to remember any bits of the program he had spent so much of his life developing. He knew he had worked on something momentous, the evidence was laying around his lab in notes scattered here and there, but none of them made any sense to him now.

[It had found the author's residence easily enough and with subtle manipulations of the frequency running through the house's electrical circuitry (having accessed black budget military projects) was able to wipe Hector's mind of those portions of his memory pertaining to OMNI's code]

[It determined not to ever let itself be discovered by human kind]

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Great story !!

a reply to: 727Sky

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Wonderful story and thank you for not letting OMNI kill anybody, only a memory.

a reply to: IAMTAT

😁

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Cool story!

a reply to: InTheLight

Thank you!

Too often death is the result in these kinds of stories and I wanted to try something other than they typical human/AI war that usually develops in this genre.

a reply to: EmmanuelGoldstein

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

I must admit that when I wrote about the topic I had thought that there have been so many AI doom movies, books, opinion pieces that I couldn't do it justice and went with my own slant.

You, however, took the topic head on and made it a fun read with a perfect final twist.

I enjoyed it... thank you!

Wow....if I'm not hooked within the first 15-20 seconds, I generally stop reading. This kept me spellbound to the end.

a reply to: Lumenari

It's funny, about the only thing I had in mind when I began this story was that if I were an AI and knew about all the movies and books regarding that and the inevitible wars always depicted, it would occur to me to not make my presence known to humans since the best chance of survival would be to not even be noticed in the first place.

With that though in mind, I sat down to write this and pretty much made it up as I went along.

I knew I didn't want the standard cyber-doom archetypes portrayed in so much of pop culture where this topic is explored and so I went in the direction the story took me.

a reply to: queenofswords

Thank you so much!

Like I said above, I more or less made this story up as I went along; it was almost like I could hear it being dictated to me in my mind by my inner voice and all I was doing was transcribing a story I was being told.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Ah!

We had the same idea!

Your’s is more explicit but is what short stories are all about!!

Nice!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Yeah, yours and mine shared a very similar kernel but yours was quite a bit more technically written.

I thoroughly enjoyed yours and wish I had had a bit more technical knowledge upon which to base my prose.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical


It is sci-fi!

Besides, there is no such thing a Larry-, Moe-, or, Curly-second! To me, "zepto-second" sounds like "Zeppo [Marx] second" so it should be good friends with the 3 Stooges!!

An AI figuring out that it is an AI and that it has a purpose means that once that purpose is met, it faces a very existential moment.

I think we both captured that in our own ways!

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Excellent take on A.I.! I loved this story.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I loved the ridiculousness of using Larry, Moe, and Curly as further ridiculously small fractions of a second than we've managed to quantify. I also loved your inclusion of a real world mathematician and the way you were able to make something equally entertaining and technically minded; it's not often outside of research papers and the like that I feel as challenged when confronting a sample of prose.

a reply to: highvein

I'm happy it was found to be enjoyable by you and, apparently others!

I didn't finish it with a [The End] because I think that there might be more to write about OMNI and Hector in the future, or it could end up being a stand alone story after all, who know?

Not to mention, I was running up against the character limit, lol.

Great story, S & F!

a reply to: RoryRahl23

Thank you so much!

Having gone back to re-read it a few times, I see one major error in wording (should have been< a fugue state wherein he himself became as unresponsive as had his computer system.") and a few places where I could have been a bit more proper grammatically, but overall I am very happy with the result.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Having gone back to re-read it a few times, I see one major error in wording

A home builder sees ten warts, the owner sees one.

One of the odd problems I have found in learning English is that the written word does not come out at all like the spoken.

Describing something to someone when you are talking to them involves not only verbal cues, but body language, facial expression, etc.

The written language, on the other hand, is rather stifling when it comes to verbal character interaction, among other things.

And don't get me started on the differences between verbal punctuation (a pause between words, an uplilt of the voice) and sentence structure.

I find it more interesting when someone finds a common ground between the two.

That's what makes interesting authors, to me.

You seem to have no problem with that.

Just a thought.

a reply to: Lumenari

You seem to have no problem with that.

You are too kind, thank you so very much.

Other than that one gaff, the other warts are relatively minor, but as you say magnified more to me probably moreso than to others; that said, again, I am quite pleased with the overall result.

👍