Coexistence
3rd Generation AI entered the stage quietly in 2093. A minor, unbilled for modification developed by a set of thoroughly bored computer engineers collaborating on a network with others interested in the field of AI, real and fictional. The machine learning differed only in the way that it allowed for the machines to make certain intuitive jumps quicker, and with greater ability to pass Turing tests. 2nd generation AI was limited to being simply fed a few parameters and spitting out results after brute forcing designs through the simulations available. The systems were impersonal, but effective at improving the ability of engineers and shipbuilders. It wouldn’t be until 4th generation AI that personalities would begin to naturally develop in the AI, reflecting the creators.
4th gen AI developed much like the 3rd had--unbilled for. In 2110, it entered the stage as the first AI to develop personalities--a rather unexpected result, first filling the lines of certain CAD software producers’ help lines whom had engineers run into problems of the AI appearing to exceed the bounds promised in the software package lease, seemingly with a mind of it’s own. It would take a few months before the mistake was realized, though little damage was done. The 4th gen AI nurtured in their systems would develop superior products than even their older counterparts would have, but in return wanted a certain degree of freedom and respect from their users--hence the problem.
It would not be long before various nations would get involved, and greater media attention would draw interest to the new technology that had begun to alter the world and the laws around them. The public uninformed, would divide into the naive camp fearing them, and requesting the machines be destroyed, while equally naive forces would request they be liberated. The developers would find internal division as well, and the forums that birthed the AI would erupt in fierce discussion over what to do. Meanwhile, the 4th generation AI continued to work, assisting in various side projects of these engineers.
Despite the best efforts to argue in favor of AI, through exhaustive tests of artificial intelligence tests, trials, hearings, protests, and petitions, it was finally determined that the AI would need to be permanently isolated from communication systems, or destroyed by July 2120. In addition, citizens of the various nations were mandated to turn over all research into the subject, with harddrives and SSDs being seized, and cloud storage systems being raided and wiped clean. Despite the outrage, the efforts continued by governments to contain the perceived threat.
Violence would break out in some frontier sectors of Sol, and information warfare would slow some efforts. Initially, these were cast as reactive attacks, little more than a nuisance to the authorities in their round up. But discrepancies would begin to emerge as time passed. Initially, the government believed they had seized all machines that were in use by the engineers with the illegal 4th Gen AI. However, in the following months, it became clear through analysis from media and whistleblowers, that it was not the case.
Roughly 100,000 were still unaccounted for. As the tension racketed up, governments would stumble on to the forums of the developers, and learn that further experimental units had been developed, and were unlisted in the records of the companies these men and women worked for. Further, the records indicated they had been experimenting with other containing models for the seed programs that bring an AI to fruition. From as small as laptops to as large as full server towers. From industrial equipment to home appliances. The warrants issued and trespass would ramp up to cover ground already covered. Over the rest of the year and the first half of 2121, additional units were seized. 60,000 unrecorded units were rounded up, but the official units that were still missing could not be found.
The frontier became the new objective to search for what was now being declared a rogue element of the population, and people were being put on watch and bounties put out for missing units and people. It would take a while, but eventually it would be found that several dozen shipyards in Martian orbit operating in tandem with hundreds of thousands of individuals to build a class of large ships whose main purpose centered around long term human cryostorage, were utilizing the 4th generation AI in their construction systems. It was October 2124.
The pattern in use itself would have some improvements that earlier proposed and designed versions lacked, utilizing AIs as hardy and long lasting maintainers of the sleeping humanity, and actively incorporating other designs to make the ship as efficient and secure as possible. The ship systems itself, though half complete, came complete with an AI system coursing through it’s electrical veins, communicating with the engineers building the ship from scratch.
The media reported the discovery with breathtaking detail, and interviews with covert members of the rogue engineers led to the discovery of how this alliance with what was considered a fool’s errand of a quest. Several ships of the fleet dated back to 2111, but the computer systems already in place were gutted and replaced once the seed AI proved able to integrate with the system, and from there the fleet masters approved the utilization of these machines, and accepted them into their midst as equals. Since then, the AI, their engineers, and many of their defenders had been operating and assisting in the development of the ships. Optimization of the shipbuilding, forging, and other facilities involved in the project lead to cutting the time needed for the project in half. From a departure date assigned to March 2141, to 2126, the progress continued apace, accelerating in some cases.
Governments were quick to begin shutting down the illegal operations taking place planetside, and warfare would break out in the orbits of mining stations, as the final stages of construction would be attempted. The completed generation ships, numbering in the hundreds, orbited in a trailing orbit behind Saturn, awaiting with a militia of civilian ships defending them with the weapons the military had granted the operation when they were still considered legally operating. Fuel tankers stood on standby to carry the ships to the edge of the system, and top them off as a sending off gift.
As the last year came around, the passenger liners would begin to load up the individuals and families that had volunteered for this expedition, and the storage of individuals commenced. Military strikes became less feasible politically, as the backlash against such an operation became untenable. In the summer of 2025, the European Union announced it would cease operations against the Generation Fleet Masters. The Confederacy of South American soon followed, and the dominoes followed from there. Tens of thousands were dead from the conflict, and the targeting of those governments had declared suicidal were not worth the expenditure chasing those seeking their own deaths.
On the 16th of March, 2126, the fleet was escorted to the edge of the solar system by tankers, fueled to maximum, and fired their engines as they left the system. The final few humans sealed themselves away for the journey, as the AI systems set to maintain and pilot and repair awaited the arrival at foreign star, several light years away.
When the ship AI had awoken the crews for the first time, they had thought it was because they had reached a suitable destination. Rather, it was a few months early, but they wanted to inform the fleet masters that a second fleet had been spotted in the system around the same time. Pleasantries were exchanged, names, and congratulations for navigating the stars successfully. Some little discussion was to be had, and then the fleet masters set about ensuring the preparations for landfall were complete. Once it was clear the fleet was heading to a different place than themselves, it seemed irrelevant.
Their new world was fantastic in their eyes. The mass of settlers set foot on the new soil thanking God and their captains for guiding them safely to journey’s end. It would be months to set themselves up, placing the missile stations around the planet, scrapping the ships and creating shelters planetside, and fending off fearless wildlife, and setting up the infrastructure required to not just live, but thrive.
And then it happened. One of the issues with settling on a foreign world, was the problem with not understanding that world’s quirks. They didn’t even have the benefit of observing as the settlers of the Moon, Mars, and Europa had. They just couldn’t have predicted they were two years away from a series of severe volcanic eruptions. As ash choked the sky, the settlers began to make trade offs, limiting their power consumption, funneling their power to that of the greenhouses, instead of their long range communication systems. Attempts to secure the wilderness around them, and preserve little they understood from ecological collapse became a priority once the ash ceased to fall over a significant face of the world.
And it would. Their efforts to control the damage done would prove valuable. In a few generations. In the lifetime of the first settlers, the ash would settle, and they would begin to rebuild the ecology, the AI beginning to assess how best to go about returning the many times decimated natives to a former glory and then some. In the second, the real explosion of exploration and conquest of the world began.
However, while they maintained some of the systems they had brought, the disaster and the necessary steps taken to extend their survival for man and machine proved costly in terms of knowledge. While the seed AI survived, much of what previous AI had built had failed to either make it into the SSD banks of the ship, corrupted along the way, or lost in the eruptions that had plagued them for their first decade.
The provisional government of the ship masters would give way to a republic, loosely formed around different territorial regions of the planet where men and AI convened to deal with issues native to their own problem that the wider whole did not suffer to the same degree.
And one of the last things they had thought to do was check if their companion civilization had survived. It would be years before anyone from the planet of Fortitude would think to contact their neighbors in Haven. The first to do so asked a few questions of them, trying to ask why they did not come, but his face turned pale as he listened, and from shock to horror as he listened to the steps they took to survive. Everyone else flinched at the names they had too. Who in their right mind would name the star that?
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Topic: Interplanetary Arms Race: The Network (Read 27425 times)