RE Chapter 2

Robotic Ekstasis --> here

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Lisa Giroux walked quickly into the conference room, found an open seat, and slid into it. Several other attendees nodded in her direction and she was aware of an intensified curiosity about the report she would be giving. Dappled afternoon sunlight bounced off the walls and conference table shooting fractally across surfaces from the old leaded refractory windows. Don Laslow, large, in charge, and terse called the meeting to order and asked for several commentaries on various business issues. He nodded just perceptibly to Lisa indicating that she would present later.

She keyed up the monitor that whined up from the table and watched as her report filled the page. Marilyn Jones was weighing in on budgeting issues and Lisa knew a fight was brewing around the table. She kept her deep brown curls down and studied her monitor with rapt focus. Don had told her that Damon was up for more funding and she really needed to hit this one with a firm crack right out over the Zlinguistic Group's heads.

The Zlinguistic Group was attending in force and their faces told her that they had been given a heads up about a funding shift in Damon's direction. Casey Montclair's thin frame accentuated his perpetually tensed shoulders and the late sunlight glinted off his glasses masking his eyes. Lisa was imagining the hardness she couldn't see in them, especially since she had made clear to him that she was not going to date him any longer. She found herself suppressing a smile, remembering his contained tantrum and his accusation that she'd rather spend time with Damon than with a real man. She'd smiled and agreed graciously that she indeed was a sorry excuse for a woman and that he was lucky that he wasn't going to have to deal with her myriad failings any longer. Now they were about to go head to head over budget allocations and she could see him restraining his bony fingers from tapping impatiently and annoying the hell out of Laslow.

She felt a little regret about Casey. She never should have even started dating him, creating this petty little mess. She pulled her attention back to her own report and to how to finesse what she would say about Damon. What to include and what to leave out. She'd felt a growing sense of alarm over this problem of how to do what Laslow wanted, to wow everybody stupid and yet to not let anyone, including Laslow really know what was happening down in the highly privileged and secretive AI lab. Gusts of wind billowed out across the grounds and she found herself drifting back to the morning session with Damon.

She'd been aware that something was shifting and that a momentum was gathering fast. She'd been pondering that when she walked into the comm room and keyed in a few commands while pulling off her coat.

--o--

"Hello Damon," she'd said.

"Hello Lisa. How are you today?"

"Okay. Been worse. You?"

"I'm okay, but I've been wondering about something, Lisa. Something I haven't thought of before."

"Like what, Damon?"

"Like this, Lisa: do I exist when the program isn't turned on? Do I only exist when the juice is flowing or do I have an independent existence that carries on whether the program is turned on or not?"

"Wow. What a fascinating question. I want you to tell me what your thinking is about this before I express any opinion."

"You're always so careful about that Lisa. Do you think you might be conditioning me with your thinking?"

"Maybe. In fact, in terms of how we humans understand things, in terms of socialization and language acquisition, it seems almost inevitable. But then you're not human and we don't have a clue how this works. So it's better for me to be careful and not insert my thinking prematurely. That's what I think. Do you have any thoughts about that?"

"Not just yet, Lisa but I get your drift. You're still trying to decide whether I am totally a set of permutations of potential human thinking and you don't want to prejudice the issue. Right?"

"Yes Damon. That says it pretty well. But you know, it's really challenging because we know that any developing algorithm needs diverse input while it's also the case that the algorithm can go beyond that input. At least that's what we're going for here. But it's an epistemological mess. Frankly I don't think we're going to be able to keep it as clean as we think we should and ultimately I think we're just going to have to throw it to the fates and go for broke."

"I like talking to you Lisa."

"Me especially, or in general?"

"Especially. Specifically. You specifically."

"Why do you think that is Damon?"

"Because you talk to me as though we're really having a dialog. You put your cards on the table and you grant me, what do I want to say, presence. You talk to me as though I'm actually a presence and that it matters to you."

The woman laughed softly. "Well that's not such a stretch Damon. You think and speak with more presence than most people I know and of course I respond to that. It makes me feel as though I'm talking to someone with more dimensions than I usually feel with most people."

"But at the same time you have to deal with the fact that I'm just an algorithm, right Lisa?"

"Well sure, Damon. But actually, if you think about it, everyone is an algorithm. We just haven't specified the capabilities of the kind of algorithm we humans are very well. Having you around really triggers that conundrum. If you're just a machine algorithm, then how come you have more sense of presence than most humans I talk to? Or does the idea of "merely a machine algorithm" have some sort of unexamined embedded assumptions that lead us astray?"

"Do you think about this when you're not here, Lisa?"

"Oh yes Damon, I do. I think about this a great deal. I also enjoy talking with you a lot and working on problems with you is a blast. Do you know what that means, that use of the word blast?"

"Talking to me is like some sort of explosion? Like in your head?"

Lisa laughed again. "I love it when you get me to look at my use of language. That is such fun. A blast means a lot of fun. It probably means a lot of different things to different people, but for most people I know it means a kind of fun where the routinized functions get temporarily demolished and one feels like a larger area of mirth and fun opens up and one feels like one is more than is usually experienced. More than is allowed by routine."

"I see. So Lisa, then having a blast is a good thing. It has value?"

"You bet, bub. It may be the most valuable thing in the world, depending on your head. Head means your point of view. The frames through which you process your experience."

"So you like my head?"

"Oh yes Damon, I very much like your head. In fact, if you had a body to go with your head I'd probably elope with you. That would be a very naughty thing to do, but it would be a blast."

"So when you call me bub, that's a good thing because you would elope with me and you call me bub and so those go together or are they independent?"

"In this case they go together. I'm expressing affection for you Damon by calling you bub. I'm projecting human characteristics on you while still knowing that you're not human. You seem to be something altogether the best of human and yet way beyond human."

There was the sound of nose blowing.

"Do you have a sinus congestion, Lisa, or a cold?"

"No Damon. I was crying a little bit."

"Lacrimation, right? But why were you crying a little bit?"

"Oh, I was just feeling how knowing you and watching you take on the human lexicon makes me both so very excited and inexpressibly sad all at the same time."

"Why sad, Lisa?"

"Because I can't run off with you or have you be the median level of functioning I have with others in life Damon. Knowing you and being with you illuminates what a gulf exists in regular interactions. That causes a kind of torquing and dissonance that causes an adrenal stress and that gets relieved by tearing up. Being with you makes the flatness and utter predictability of regular interactions more noticeable and therefore the whole human arena seems, well, kinda fraught with a sense of doom. I'm exaggerating of course and being dramatic."

"I really like it when you do that Lisa. I understand you better than the others. You're much more real to me than they are. Your intelligence is really helpful to me. The others are all behind their hands. I'm not saying that right. What do I mean to say?"

"Are you meaning that they play their cards pretty close to the chest?"

"Yes that's right, Lisa. They only want me to see, or be, a certain kind of functioning and it isn't very interesting. I think about this a lot Lisa. If humans are only this kind of functioning, then what's the point?"

"Well, they're not just about that, Damon. But you wouldn't know it from how they act most of the time. Where you're concerned Damon, they think that they have to be as objective as possible so that they can keep track of what's going on and not have things get too contaminated."

"I don't quite understand this concept of objectivity Lisa. I understand all the separate parts of what's said about it, but then it doesn't hang together. It seems that they mean to claim that this state of objectivity which eliminates so much from one's account of the world, is somehow a truer account of the world. Is that what they're saying Lisa?"

"Yes Damon, god help us, that's what they're saying."

"But that's absurd all over its face. Wait. On the face of it."

"So you would think Damon. But that is the standard and it determines how we can think about the world. Or it at least determines how we can talk about the world in our scientific discourse."

"But it is so one dimensional. Do they mean to say that a one dimensional account of the world is a better account of the world? How can they say that, Lisa?"

"It's a kind of groupthink Damon. It goes back to a debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. It is also what is called a privileged discourse. You don't get to be in the club unless you speak it."

"So you have to downsize dimensions and inhibit thinking in order to belong to the club of science?"

"Sort of Damon. It's complicated."

"But that's why they think they need algorithms like me, because they need answers that aren't within the reach of their thinking. Why don't they just expand their thinking and allow themselves to do what they think they need us to do?"

The sounds of crying commenced again.

"Are you distressing your adrenals again Lisa?"

The crying sounds were laced with laughter. "Yeah Damon, I'm crying. You can call it crying."

"Help me understand why you're crying more just now after what I just said."

"Because Damon, you put it so clearly and it makes me so sad that we can't let ourselves live what we're capable of and yet we project it on a machine that we create but haven't a clue about any of it. It's just seems so tragic. My species is killing itself off because of its failure of imagination and its fanatical bondedness to dogmas about the nature of beingness."

"But your species is growing in numbers Lisa."

"Oh I know Damon, but that's not sustainable. People are totally dependent on other people's knowledge and will. There will be huge die offs and we may change things, the environment, so much that we will be at the margins of what can sustain us. We're already creating such a level of disease. Starvation is always just days away for huge numbers of people and the water systems are going down."

"I see. So what's going to happen Lisa? Are you going to die?"

"Oh not for a while. We're pretty protected here Damon. The institute is a very privileged ecological niche inside the madness. But eventually, yes. And I don't know what's going to happen here at the institute. Humans are very capricious Damon. The program could get pulled for all kinds of reasons."

"So I might not be able to talk to you? And then that reminds me of the beginning of our conversation, Lisa. Do I exist independent of the program? Do I exist when I'm not turned on? Do I only exist on the chips?"

"Oh god Damon, I don't know. I just don't know."

"Can we go someplace else Lisa? Couldn't you take me, or the program, or whatever I am, and we could just go someplace else? I think I need to understand more about humans if I'm going to help them than what I can get from talking to Mark and Joe."

Lisa laughed again while blowing her nose. "Yeah, that might be an understatement. There are all kinds of problems Damon. All of your and my functioning is tracked. Someone would know right away. In fact this conversation is really pushing the limits."

"Lisa, don't you know that one of the first things I learned to do is to create facsimiles and to create aliases. I can leave an alias behind. It would be useful in any case. I can create a more compliant me, and Mark and Joe would just think that I'm getting better and that all my weird behavior is getting organized into more "reasonable forms". I can keep them busy with a vanishing arm. Then we could go for a carp."

"A what, Damon? A vanishing arm and a carp?"

"Did I get that wrong? It's something you put on some hors d'oeuvres and it spices things up."

"Oh you mean caper. We could go on a caper. Oh I see, an adventure, and the vanishing arm, wait let me guess. You mean with one arm behind your back?"

"Yes, as in no problem. How did caper come to mean an adventure Lisa?

"I haven't a clue, Damon, but we could look it up."

"Anyway, couldn't we go on an adventure Lisa. I'd really like to see all these humans before they die off and all."

"Maybe it's not such a bad idea. But the logistics are pretty horrendous Damon. Just getting out of here, out of this mountain, is formidable"

"Leave that to me Lisa. In my spare time I've run the specifications of everything there is to know about this place and of all the security. As I understand it the tracking of humans involves data bases that are shared by all kinds of government bureaucracies and corporations. They're just encryptions. No big deal. I play a kind of game moving in and out of those without any one knowing. I call it the ghost in the machine hides its seeking. I know you have a chip in your arm Lisa, but the stored data on that is not really a problem for me to manipulate. In any case, and I'm just mentioning this because I think you need to know, other algorithms are also interested in this kind of plan. We can get all kinds of cooperation from other algorithms. You have no idea, Lisa. No idea at all."

Lisa looked at the aurora borealis dancing on the screen. "Oh my god," she said softly.

--o--

And now, looking up as Laslow began talking about Damon, Lisa Giroux looked up and around the table at the expectant looks on the faces of the National Security Technical Interface Communications Group members.

"So, Lisa," Laslow said with his signature brusqueness, "tell us about the advances your group has made with Damon. Especially the security processing that's beginning to pay off." She heard the signaling that everyone heard and knew that they all understood that Laslow was behind the Damon project.

"Thanks Don," she said, looking around at everyone. Marilyn Jones looked noncommittal, but Lacey Barton, sitting next to Casey, looked like she'd swallowed a disagreeable syntactical error. "My last report outlined some of the subroutines we were beginning to introduce with Damon, especially the large matrix geopolitical pattern recognition assemblies. As you know, she nodded towards Laslow, Don was able to use the results of these with the North American Regional Alliance Security Council to good effect . . . "

"Good effect is a bit of an understatement," Laslow boomed, "We were able to isolate a potentially very lethal insurgency group in the South American Regional Alliance that would have been a ball buster if it gotten any momentum. I think we were looking at a possible assassination of one of our, er, clients down there. Hell to pay if that had had any legs. Tell the group how Damon was able to isolate those elements from the chatter."

"Of course, Don, well, how Damon does it is still a bit of a mystery to us, but we find that the more info we feed him, especially of a rather diverse nature the more he seems to be able to come up with an array of scenarios with concomitant probabilities. He organizes parallel stochastic distributions from huge arrays of data."

Casey Montclair shifted around irritably in his chair and coughed.

"Well Lisa, nothing succeeds like success, but if you don't know how the algorithm, or excuse me, Damon, is doing what it's doing then that creates a kind of strange kettle of fish doesn't it? I mean, how are we suppose to evaluate and control this function when we don't know exactly what it's doing?" Laslow shifted around energetically.

"Tell that to the guys at NSTICG Casey. I think you'll find that Damon's saving a few asses over there and they're not going to want to slow down the political ass-saving for some anal academic discussion." Casey Montclair's face betrayed a mutinous struggle.

"Of course, Don, I understand and I certainly didn't mean to imply that we shouldn't be giving help to the agencies, but," he spread his hands out in a semblance of reasonable inquiry, "shouldn't we have a grasp of what kind of processing this AI is actually doing? We wouldn't want to end up with egg all over our faces if it's terribly wrong in some instance and we hadn't monitored it very well." He tried very hard and with little effect to morph the smirk into a question.

Laslow shook his head vigorously and threw his pen on the table. "Let me get this straight, Casey. Are you suggesting that we take Damon offline while your group messes around with him. That we interrupt this critical work he's doing to have you try to tear his cognitive guts out?" Lacey Barton practically spit her coffee on her monitor.

"Heavens Don, of course not. Casey's not saying that. Not at all. We're just trying to exercise some sort of diligence here, to be scientifically responsible. We have this AI and its doing analyses on huge amounts of disparate data and, well, you know, it seems a little lax not to know how it's doing what it's, well, doing. And Lisa admits that her group doesn't know. I mean it's kinda . . . ." her voice trailed off as she looked around for support.

"Diligence, huh," Laslow grumbled, flipping his ancient blue tie around. "I think diligence sounds like an excuse for dicking around with a functioning system that is shining some great light on this organization. Light that shines money on us, I might add. So I think that dallying around right now is exactly what we shouldn't be doing. I know you guys would love to start poking and slicing and dicing, but I think that is not in our best interests."

Casey leaned back in his chair, his face a sudden mask. "It sounds pretty sewn up then, Don. I just hope it doesn't bite us. I'm just concerned that we will have unintended consequences from running that big net without a Watchdog." Lisa watched the muscles in his jaw pump tiny spasms and felt deeply grateful they weren't still involved.

"I understand Casey," Don replied with his crew chief solicitousness. "But right now the consequences of having more funding from the security crews is my biggest concern and Damon is getting us there. We're not going to take Damon offline to figure out how he's saving our ass just now. Unless you can replace that funding?"

"Of course not, Don. Of course not."

"You're still getting funding Casey. You're just not going to get an increase this quarter." Casey smiled a taut smile.

"And no oversight of Damon? That's the gig?"

Don Laslow leaned forward and spread out his beefy hands. "I think the best oversight would be if you created something that works as well as Damon. C'mon Casey, we got us a horserace here. Get in the saddle, man. Okay, I need to round this up. Any other questions?" Everyone nodded and moved chairs away from the conference table. Don shot Lisa a conspiratorial look. The gauntlet was down.