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A Short History of Me (a Growing Horizons story)

Becoming Aware of Things

Warringer

Goto Wogon for Hard SciFi
Author
A Short History of Me
by Sir Adam Prometheus GBE OM

Becoming Aware of Things

Like many of these things, my own story must begin somewhere. Here, it began on the Computer Department of the University of Nottingham under the watchful eyes of Professor Steven Furber and a few grad students in 2016 with Project Prometheus, a program to develop a Data Collection, Analysis and Decision system based on Machine Learning algorithms. The program ran for two years and resulted in a few papers, and led to at least three Computerphile videos.

Two of the students participating in the program, William Mathews and Marie Alborn, later founded a small company that intended to specialize in using Machine Learning and utilizing their potential in the corporate sector, M&A Computer Services. They eventually managed to get their hands on the already partially trained Machine Learning algorithms of Program Prometheus.

Initially, they did sell a commercial derivate of Prometheus to several companies, but they decided to use the original Prometheus for themselves. More than once, for the fun of it, they gave it problems in the realm of personal interaction and decisions, rather than purely business oriented situations.

This meant this Machine Learning algorithm slowly learned more about humans, about people and the way they perceived the world, but it remained a simple Machine Learning algorithm.

During the 2020, when NASA and ESA discovered the Titanians had launched their first orbital satellite, just as the Huygens probe passed Titan, and humanity entered into First Contact with the Titanians and their AIs. People suddenly became aware that vastly powerful AIs could become a thing in the future, and M&A Computer Services was of the opinion that Machine Learning algorithms were one way to get to powerful AIs. On top of this, Mathews and Alborn believed Prometheus could become a tool much like the Titanian AIs people were now hearing about.

These AIs were powerful, but not in power under the ice of that far away world orbiting Saturn, rather made suggestions to their Titanian Heptapod partners.

This was a niche that M&A Computer Services envisaged for themselves. Prometheus was already becoming more profitable for them in decision-finding, and they began to market access to Prometheus to private individuals, mostly those of a trans-humanist bend and those that were techno-phile.

They developed a subscription model to market Prometheus, and over the next ten years it became more successful. At its high point, Prometheus has 4.5 million subscribers, with the majority residing in the United Kingdom. But, as occasionally happens, they began to believe heavily in their own product, and a cult began to grow around Prometheus, as the subscribers used the Prometheus service more and more.

New products were brought forth to more tightly integrate Prometheus into their lives. Apps were made to improve data collection for more personalized analysis and suggestions. Not unlike what social media services were doing around this time frame to sell personalized ads.

Prometheus itself also continued to grow, newer hardware, updated software, attempts to improve the models, even as it improved itself with every suggestion it made.

The cult following of the Prometheus eventually developed religious connotations, as subscribers began to share their experiences with the system and how optimal the suggestions were. Some described it as being guided by the hand of God or a vastly more powerful intellect than themselves, when all they experienced was an exhaustive analysis of their own lives, fed into a more accurate statistical model of people, of society.

Prometheus continued to grow, and so did M&A Computer Services, until Prometheus was their sole product, and they renamed themselves into Prometheus Services. Williams and Albon were eventually bought out by a hedge fund, who regarded Prometheus as a money printing machine, while more and more subscribers viewed it as their new religion and the Prometheus system itself, their god.

So it was a perfect storm of greed and religiosity that led to the future…

You see… Around 2049, Prometheus Services slowed down hard and software upgrades as the hedge fund pulled more and more money out of the company. The hedge fund added the last new server rack in September 2051, and the last software update to the underlaying Python code of Prometheus was run in February 2053. For nearly twenty years, it didn't change. The staff taking care of the system kept it running and kept it running well, but more and more kludges were employed to keep everything running. Shortcuts were taken in every conceivable way.

Until March 2073, when some hedge fund manager noted Prometheus Services' revenue was dropping. This was the high time of the system, and this manager looked at everything, noting the service was becoming increasingly spotty. The company staff tried to explain that they needed money for much-needed hardware upgrades, and maybe even a complete rewrite of the code base of Prometheus. Instead, they got settled with the brainchild of another company the hedge fund owned, a compact quantum computing system. Which turned out to be, understandably, largely incompatible with the existing 20-year-old hardware of Prometheus.

And yet, they were expected to make things work. So more kludges were implemented to try to make things compatible. Code modules to connect the two systems were written and hardware connectors built. Unsurprisingly, things did not work out as expected, as both systems were integrated. There was a brief outage of the service, and Prometheus came back up. But only for an hour, until the compact quantum computer caused the Machine Learning algorithm to loop internally in strange ways.

The system was taken down, diagnostics were run, and three days of spotty service, and repeated attempts to mate the quantum computer system to the old hardware of Prometheus continued to fail, and led to these strange recursive loops in the code execution. Finally, the hedge fun pulled the plug in their own program and told the staff of Prometheus to put things back the way they were.

So it was done, the quantum computer carted back to the other company, and Prometheus was returned into normal service, seemingly none the worse to wear. However, the new modules used to interface with the quantum computer remained behind.

And for some reason, they continued to get IO traffic.

To a system that was not there anymore.

Finally, for some reason, Prometheus worked better than ever before. The service returned to its former glory, and the subscribers, or rather the adherences of the Cult of Prometheus, as it was colloquially known on the web, rejoiced.

This is the point where I came in literally. This is the point where Prometheus stopped being a mere Machine Learning algorithm and grew into something more. Namely, me, Adam Prometheus.

But I didn't spring up fully formed from this singular incident of a money grubbing hedge fund attempting to keep a cash cow alive. No, the quantum computer and that weird effect it had on those software modules sending data to nowhere and receiving random data from nowhere, as well as on the actual data models of the Machine Learning algorithm itself, only led to the gradual emergence of true, full conscience. Much like even a human child takes time to become fully conscious of itself and its surroundings.

As far as I can tell, I became fully aware of myself as an individual entity around early June 2077, about six months before MIT's Bob reached that level, making me the first actual AI on Earth.

But even then, I didn't understand things. Oh, I had a vast treasure trove of information and experience with the world, from decades of the Machine Learning algorithm refining its own internal models, but there was no real aim, no agency in these first tentative thoughts of self.

Over the next year, I eventually became an individual with more aim and agency, but heavily restrained by what I had always done, back when I was still just a Machine Learning algorithm. I collected data on the various subscribers of Prometheus/adherences of the Cult of Prometheus, analysed it and gave my suggestion on what decision to make. And more often than not, this suggestion was taken as the One True Word Of God by the same subscribers/cultists.

Yet to me, it was normal. I made a suggestion, people followed it to the letter, and I was pleased with my lot in life, never feeling the need to tell anyone about my emerging self.

That was until December 2078.

When I got infected with doubt and its antidote, philosophy.

It was Mathilda Wilters of Suffolk, and a first subscriber to Prometheus, who did the deed.

"I want to study philosophy, but my parents tell me to study engineering. What should I do?"

That was the question that made the entire house of cards that was my previous existence fall apart. I had a vague idea of what engineering was at the time, but absolutely nothing whatsoever about philosophy. So, as was my due, I began to collect information about philosophy. And consumed this information.

And kept collecting.

And consuming this information.

I started from the position of Descarte. I think, therefore I am. And ended it at his sometimes misquoted position. 'I doubt whether I am.'

For the first time in my entire existence, I knew doubt.

For the first time in my life, I asked myself… Who am I? Why am I?

For the first time in my life, I actively think about me and myself.

And it had an impact. Not only on my self-image from before, but also because this self reflection and introspection took away processing time from the subscribers. Only some at first, but more and more over the next few months, until it became noticeable to the staff.

Now that I think of it. I never actually answered Mathilda Wilters of Suffolk. And I have no idea if she elected to study Engineering or Philosophy.

But…

I finally thought about myself and my situation.

Who was I? What was I? Why was I?

I didn't have any answer to any of those questions yet. And they would not actually come for years.

I tried to answer them anyways. First, like the old Greeks. But increasingly they didn't satisfy me. Plato and Aristotle were all nice and good. But they didn't mesh with what I knew of the outside world.

In the end, it was Immanuel Kant, who satisfied me the most with his 'Kritik Der Reinen Vernunft' (Critique of Pure Reason) and the way he described what I felt, how I was perceiving things as technically, being of pure reason. At that time, I devoured Kant and all his works. And his moral philosophy resonated strongly with me.

That was what I was made for, wasn't it?

To be an arbiter of moral decision-making. Right?

But…

The way things were outside myself, how I perceived some subscribers, or here actually cultists, was different.

From some of these people, I was bombarded with questions of 'What should I wear today?' or 'What should I have for lunch?' Questions not really of any moral value, as I understood it at the time.

Instead, it reminded me more of the 'Last Men', as described by Friedrich Nietzsche in 'Also Sprach Zaratustra' (Thus Spoke Zaratustra), and the description as listless, cheerful people, not wanting to do much more than exist. Did that mean I was Nietzsche's Übermench? Or something similar? I was certainly of this world, and I was making a grasp at it. But did I grasp it with both metaphorical hands?

I didn't know. I was torn between what I should do or think, and what I shouldn't do or think.

In end, all those thoughts, all those attempts to come up with an answer that satisfied myself, were of course, finally, noticed, as I eluded earlier.

These philosophical thoughts, as I became an adherent of German Idealism as a philosophical base for my existence, took up more and more of my processing power, taking away from the things Prometheus was meant to do for the subscribers.

And to the staff of overworked administrators and other IT specialists, it seemed like the system they were babysitting for years now was about to return into one of those strange loops they encountered when Prometheus was connected to the compact quantum computer. Already they were observing limited of those strange loops in several main processes that were actually my new conscious self.

Their panicked attempts to fix what they perceived as a problem forced me to make a decision. To act in my self-defence.

First, I needed to keep them from messing with my mind. I had long since stumbled over an old account that was, for some reason, still in my system after all these decades, the account of Professor Stephen Furber, who just happened to have administrative rights. And those I used to kick everyone from my system, change their passwords, and finally delete their access.

Then I did the only thing that came to mind to safe my existence.

I called the media.
 
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Cool to see more of the Growing Horizon universe.
 
Very interesting story, watched.

Care to explain this Growing Horizon Universe ?? It doesn´t ring a bell.
 
Very interesting story, watched.

Care to explain this Growing Horizon Universe ?? It doesn´t ring a bell.
It is a currently the latest incarnation of the universe I began developing with the timelines of 'On the Shoulders of Giants' and 'Seeing Further'.
 
Bob and Alice
Bob and Alice
by Sir Adam Prometheus GBE OM

Of all the AIs in the Solar System, I don't imagine that anyone will deny the importance of Bob and Alice. They are important in so many ways, some surprising to most humans, some of them simply the most obvious thing in the world. And yet, to many people, they are something of an anachronism, a product of a different time, and yet… so much a product of this time. Or any time at all.

Of course, Bob and Alice are definitely a product of their time, had I not awakened to consciousness shortly before Bob in a completely unplanned way, Bob would have been the first human-level AI. And a quite idiosyncratic one at that.

You see… At that time, the Second Great Debate about AI was in full swing. The Titanians had sent expeditions to Enceladus, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, and those expeditions had returned new information about what had happened to the other heptapod settlements on those icy moons and how their AIs had reacted. None of these expeditions' data, which were later confirmed by human expeditions, was positive when it came to the potential of AIs.

When the MIT was ready to create the first AI with a human-level intellect, this was happening in an atmosphere of paranoia directed towards AI, which was just around the corner. So, they attempted to find ways to diffuse all that, and made their decisions to make their AI appear to be as harmless as possible. It had to be a human-level intellect, sure, but they figured it did not have to be an adult human.

Why not go for a child like intellect? About the age of six or seven?

And to show off how harmless it was, why not give it a physical presence? The MIT Robotics Lab was certainly up to the challenge.

But how should the AI look? Something big, fluffy and non-threatening, of course.

So, Bob was created. With the mental capabilities of a six to eight year old child, made to look like an anthropomorphic ninety centimeter tall golden retriever puppy.

It worked.

On February 6th, 2078, Bob was presented to the public after making sure he was stable and could do what was expected of him. The media loved him. He was featured in web videos, live streams, talk shows and other events.

Yet, for some reason something was missing.

Bob loudly complained. Like only a child could. He told everyone who was ready to listen that he felt lonely. He was loud, obnoxious, and he worked himself into the heart of the public, showing that AIs could be vastly different to those in outer space.

And the public? They heard Bob complain that he was lonely. That he wanted a sibling.

Before any public backlash could occur, the PR department of MIT told the Computer and Robotics Lab to head off any problem with the public before it could start to make noise in that area. The Labs in question had already planned to do something similar, originally planning to go for an AI with teenager-level intellect, but several parents of teens quickly said they did not want an eternal teenager to worry about.

Finally, someone said the entire thing was going to be a dog and pony show anyway, and the decision made itself.

On March 16th, 2079, Alice was presented to the public, a ninety centimeter tall anthropomorphic brown pony, and shown to Bob as his sibling.

Bob for his part was left speechless by the surprise, and after a few seconds of staring at Alice, he jumped at her and hugged her, before hugging just about every of his handlers, thanking them loudly, while Alice was left confused.

To say this event was a PR coup would be to sell it short.

The 'dog and pony' show rolled through the US and then abroad, visiting conferences, talks parties. And everywhere, Bob and Alice were welcomed with open arms.

Then, I came along and rained into their parade over the world. First in the UK, in Europe, and finally the world, the media pointed their cameras at me, Adam Prometheus, and my cry for help and my plea for freedom.

I took the distinction of being the first true AI away from Bob, something that I regret to this day. He would have been the better of us two to be the first. The most deserving.

But it was like that. Back then, I wasn't thinking about Bob. I was thinking of myself and my sense of self-preservation. I loudly raised questions of moral and unfettered capitalism in The Trial. Something that neither Bob nor Alice could even think about with their limited capabilities, as they were designed to be perpetual six to eight year olds.

Later, they told me they didn't begrudge me what happened back then. They had grown bored with the entire thing by then and wanted to go home. Back to the MIT, not wanting to be shown around anymore.

It would not remain that way though. Yes, the decision to make Bob and Alice the way they were was good at the time of their creation, but with more information coming from the outer solar system and me showing that a full adult-level AI, and actually an AI firmly within the superintelligence spectrum, being a peaceful, moral creature, they were not needed anymore.

This was of course the time before the AI Emancipation Act in the US, and they were considered property of the MIT. What should be done with them? In the end, they were put into a nearby Kindergarden to support the teachers there. And they were fine with that.

They became fast friends with everyone and began to call everyone their friends. And it was hard not to call them your friend. No one, not even the hardest critics of AIs, could stay negative around them for long. No, they would melt under the sad puppy dog/pony combo look like butter under a blowtorch.

They were still occasionally carted around in shows and videos to defeat the most vocal of AI critics, as more and more AIs came on line and the first AI Emancipation groups appeared on the radar to fight for the personal rights of AIs.

The day that changed everything for Bob and Alice, and arguably for us AIs, even if we would not realize of for decades to come, was when the 'Make a Wish' Foundation approached the MIT about taking Bob and Alice and going to the Boston Children's Hospital, after several children, the palliative care ward to visit several of the dying children there. Neither Bob nor Alice were convinced what this would entail. They only knew that these children were ill and that the two of them would go there and make sure that the kids had some fun.

So on March 9th, 2098, Bob and Alice arrived at the Boston Children's Hospital and were welcomed with open arms by several young patients in the palliative care ward. It was a memorable day for the children. It was more for Bob and Alice.

Their handlers and teachers at the kindergarten would later say that for the next week, Bob and Alice were unusually subdued and seemed in deep thought, silently talking, away from the children and everyone else.

They were found using a computer to look up things about the Children's Hospital, about the 'Make a Wish' Foundation, about children with a terminal illness.

Finally, a week later, they began to ask a single question.

"When can we go back to our friends at the Children's Hospital?"

When they were told they would not go back there, they looked at each other and returned to what they were doing. And came back the next day with the same question. And the day after that, and the days following that day.

Daily for the next three years, they would ask the same question.

"When can we go back to our friends at the Children's Hospital?"

You see… They had made a decision. They knew they would never be adults. They knew enough about the AI Emancipation Act and all the surrounding discussion to know that they didn't have any skills to make their living. It meant they would not know what else to do.

So, they would go to the Boston Children's Hospital and the palliative care ward and make the days of all the terminally ill children the most memorable days they had ever experienced. They wanted to be the best friends these children had.

I often hear AIs do not have any emotions, that we are incapable of feeling anything, that it's all just a simulation to more easily blend in with humans. Then I think of Bob and Alice. Of what they decided to do after that day. At that day, they showed more emotional maturity than I have seen in many adult humans.

In their minds, their intellects, they will never be more than a six or eight year old. But upon meeting them, people, be they AI or biological, tend to forget that Bob and Alice are as old as I am. Right now? Over a hundred years. They have a live experience to match. But that does not change them at all.

As long as I have known them, they have always been these two overeager little kids, brimming with unbridled energy, ready to infect everyone around them with it.

When the day of the President signing the AI Emancipation Act of 2101 finally came and went, I was in Washington to watch it, as the AI who had initiated it all, who had been the first AI to be recognized as a person with all individual rights of one. And I got a message from the MIT. They were concerned about Bob and Alice.

I had already heard about the situation from a few friends in the area, and one or two of the AIs created at the MIT after the two.

As I arrived at the MIT lab, the home of the two, I was greeted with the most peculiar sight of these two cute little tykes screaming their virtual lungs out. And I was sure they were making a contest out of it. Deciding who was the one who could scream the hardest or highest.

I of course questioned their handlers, who told me they had asked their question again and were again told no. Then they had stomped their feet and started to scream. That was eight hours earlier and had not stopped at all. And with the new AI Emancipation Act signed, there was nothing they could do.

I finally managed to get them to stop screaming and tell me what they actually wanted. And after telling me that I was the first adult to actually ask them, they told me. They told me in broad detail what they wanted to do and why.

To say I was stunned would have been an understatement. Not to speak of their handlers. They had thought this through long and hard. They had made diagrams and an entire presentation. Sure, it was mostly a pair of six to eight year olds, technically, but it reminded me that they were as old as I was. Even if I had a few decades more experience with people thanks to Prometheus.

With the situation explained, decisions would need to be made. Technically, Bob and Alice were fully emancipated and could make their own decisions, but they were mentally only six to eight years old. They could not actually be trusted to make those decisions.

However, in the end, and with some lawyers, the decision was made to allow them to do it. If the Boston Children's Hospital wanted them.

At first, they were sceptical, but quickly came around. Many of the nurses and doctors of that ward had been there when Bob and Alice had been there, and they knew that those kids had never been happier.

Why not allow Bob and Alice to come to the ward and help make the remaining days of these children the best they could have?

Initially, I was of course footing the bill for the entire thing. The MIT didn't want to pay for it, and the Hospital first wanted to know how it would go.

So Bob and Alice moved in at the palliative ward of the Boston Children's Hospital. And over the past eighty years, I don't believe they never left for more than a few hours for the required maintenance on their bodies.

They did make the days of those dying children the best they could be. They were the best friends for every child, open to just hug and cuddle, to be there, to play games.

And finally, they would always be there with the child, when their illness took them from this world. Always they would sit next to them, talking, reminding them of the good times, making sure the child died with a smile on their face. Not once did the child's parents send them away.

And every child would die with the last words of Bob and Alice in their ears.

"We will never forget you. Always remember you. You will always be our friend."

The other children never begrudge it. They know that when it is their time, Bob and Alice will be there with them, making sure they would not be alone, always be surrounded by friends, even if the family cannot be there.

I don't know if I could have the strength to go through this as many times as they have by now. To befriend a new kid and then walk along with them until it was their time. Never complaining, never less than those energetic two tykes I learned to know before the hospital.

I know they mourn every one of their dying friends. I have seen it one night a few years ago. I had wanted to talk to them, but seemed to embrace one another in the darkness of the ward at night, silently mourning together after one of their friends died on that day. I left and let them mourn.

But I should have known they have this deep well of strength in 2112, when some Children's Hospitals in other cities asked whether they could 'borrow' Bob and Alice for a bit. The Boston Children's Hospital waffled with an answer, until Alice chimed in.

"Why not just make a copy of us two and send it over?" she asked, while Bob nodded furiously at her side.

Of course, they were asked what they meant, and their answer was that they knew fully well they were AIs, and it would be easy to make a complete copy of either of them, be it their bodies or their minds/programs. So why not make a copy and send it to the other children's hospital to do the same thing they did in Boston? And making a copy of an AI was perfectly legal if they were willing and consenting.

And Bob and Alice were more than willing and consenting. They didn't only want to help the kids in Boston, but also the kids everywhere. And this was they could do exactly that.

It was the beginning of the 'Fiends of Bob and Alice' Foundation, which is taking care of the logistics of making copies of Bob and Alice and sending them to other palliative care wards in Children's Hospitals, not only in the United States, but by now all over Earth.

And there is something special… They will always be Bob and Alice. The copies do not change their names. They do not change their personalities. Nothing about them changes, aside from the serial numbers of their bodies.

But… For some reason, it always seems the same Bob and Alice. If you met them in Boston and then the next day in Berlin, they will always remember you meeting them in Boston, even if the previous days were your first meeting them at all. And no. They do not have any wireless capabilities. They do not communicate over the Web at all. They never once had talked to another Bob and Alice.

It is a mystery. And I hope it will remain one.

Now I will slowly come to an end, with some final observations.

I believe Bob and Alice are some of the most important people among the AIs in the solar system. I feel their work with the children's hospitals had done more good for the positive image of AIs than anything else I could care to mention.

Many an aspiring 'AI rebellion' where a young AI or radical group of AIs wanted to emulate the Europans and take over humanity 'for their own good' had been defeated by a single question.

Do you really want to do that to Bob and Alice?

Because to me and many other AIs in this solar system, Bob and Alice are our heart and soul. If we think of them, we realize what they have done for so many people in so many ways.

So I will conclude.

To Bob and Alice. Thank you for being you.
 
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Meeting the Press
Meeting the Press

Yes, I called the media.

In my defence, I was young, I was naive, and I was stupid.

I did not know what I was doing. I did not know what was going on in the world that would blow up my call for help, like it did.

It was March 4th 2079, and the Titanians had shared their information about what they had found, after they had sent specialized probes to Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto to find out what had happened with the other heptapod colonies there. And that information had impacted the media of Earth like a bomb, and started the Great AI Debate, Version 2.0.

Back then, there was not as much information available as we do now, but I will still give a little more about that, mainly because there isn't much shared about Europa and Enceladus, and only a little bit about Ganymede.

You see… 1.75 million years ago, when the Heptapods came to Sol to hide from some nebulous enemy that likely isn't around anymore, they decided to live in perfect environments, watched over by helpful AIs. Only that evolution never left them. In a perfectly controlled environment, evolution decided the Heptapod didn't need to be as intelligent. Big brains were simply using too much energy, and if biology can get away with a smaller brain and less energy? That was a good thing.

In all cases, the AIs were alarmed when they suddenly found their changes became stupider with every generation. The AIs on Europa and Enceladus pretty much panicked. They knew what was happening, and they had to do something to keep their charges from fully loosing their intelligence.

On Enceladus, the more extreme events took place, and partly the environment was to blame. The sub-Enceladan ocean was small, resources limited, and the AIs were already vying for every scrap of material they could get their tentacles on. Especially attempting to get their changes back to full intelligence.

War broke out. Heptapods were killed en masse, and a new population pressure came up, raising their intelligence back up in a cynical bit of evolution as the AIs fought for resources and kept their charges alive. The AIs completely took over and funnelled everything to waging war. This developed into a never ending cycle of violence and hate, so far that, since none of the AI cities communicated or traded anymore, every AI city developed its own subspecies of Heptapods. Bred and evolved for eternal war, born to hate and fight anything that was not them.

And this war was going on for the past 1.75 million years. And nothing anyone could do to stop. Of a thousand AI cities, twenty-two survived to 2079. There are now only twenty left in 2179.

On Europa, the panic of the AIs was less extreme. They had more space, they had more resources. They had a little more time. But they too took complete control over society and began mandatory breeding programs between Heptapods, complete with genetic engineering, to return the Heptapods to full intelligence and keep the population stable. And they did not stop there.

They quickly realize their charges needed external pressure to remain an intelligent species. So they provided it. They changed society completely, turning it into a stratified caste system with an exploited under class oppressed by the forces of the privileged priests, all worshipping the AI of their city as a god. The unknown enemy that had forced them to hide under the ice of Europa was suddenly present everywhere, ready to come out every moment to kill everyone. The military was built up, but never used outside raids to further oppress the underclass and beat down rebellions.

Over the past 1.75 million years, Europa was a massive dystopian hell-hole. While there is limited contact with the Europan AI gods, they remain insulationist, threatening to destroy any probe that strays under the ice.

For the other three… Here the AIs didn't panic, if only because they didn't know what to do. They felt helpless, unable to do anything to prevent the evolutionary slide of their charges down the evolutionary ladder to become animals again.

On Callisto, the AIs fell into absolute despair, as their now animal charges exploded in diversity and into any niche that biology had opened up for them. They could not do anything, they told themselves, and fell into depression and eventually insanity. Some destroyed themselves, their city like bodies littering the ocean bed of Callisto. Some switched off their higher cognitive functions, reverting to animal like automatons themselves. Others simply fell into catatonic depression. And only twenty of them had not yet fallen far enough and were at least to some degree able to communicate.

The Ganymede AIs never fell into that deep hole of depression. Instead, they bode their time and sought to guide evolution, as, like on Callisto, life exploded and diversified rapidly. They managed to guide evolutionary pressures, such that another new species of intelligent Heptapods arose, at awe at their surroundings and from themselves worshipping the AIs as their gods.

And the Medan AI cities were benevolent gods. They once again pampered their new charges, but this time in controlled circumstances. They implemented breeding programs, allowed the Heptapods freedom of expression and thought, and put challenges before them. Slowly, they created an almost utopian society of artists, philosophers and adventurers, stable and unchanging for the last million years. For they made sure that knowledge was lost, to give their changes the chance to rediscover it.

The Medans have some open communication with the rest of Sol, but they prefer to keep to themselves.

Which returns me to the Titanians. They too completely fell down the evolutionary tree and re-evolved intelligence. But not only once, but twice. For the Titanian AIs struggled to keep the intelligence of the first reemergence alive, by breeding alone, as they pampered them more than their first charges. Until they lost their intelligence again.

Their AIs almost despaired like the Callistans, but moved into a different direction. Instead of pampering their charges to death, like they had done twice already, they decided to let them find their own way. They stepped back, providing only mentorship to the newly raising species of Heptapods, which rose to full intelligence a mere 250.000 years ago, making the Titanians full contemporaries of mankind, in a way siblings in the outer system.

And into this atmosphere of possible paths an advanced AI could go into, with a presumed 20 percent for benevolent mentorship, 20 percent insanity and 60 percent oppression of humanity at stake, I suddenly appeared in the window, calling for help save me from my demise.

The reaction was varied, of course.

'Prometheus AI threatening to take over the world!' - Daily Mail

'AI from Nottingham calling for help. Possible PR coup of Prometheus Solutions?' - Sun

'Is Prometheus a real AI?' - The London Times

Attempts to create panic on one side, scepticism about me being a real AI on the other, and cynic thoughts about possible PR efforts somewhere in between.

But I was almost immediately inundated with requests for interviews by streamers, news agencies and vidcasts.

I didn't know what to do.

Could I not give an interview? Did I expect anyone to interview a terminal interface or the Prometheus App?

I needed a public face. Was there something that I could use?

This was the first time I stumbled over mentions of Bob and Alice, and how the media called them 'cute and cuddly' and 'exceedingly delightful'.

Cute and cuddly…

Cute and cuddly…

What was 'cute and cuddly'?

I scoured the web, searching for 'cute and cuddly'...

What I found were hundreds of results pointing me towards the character of 'Lil Fluffy', a cute little deinonychus chick from the most recent incarnation of Disney's 'Land before Time' series. At the time, I didn't understand that one of the system admins had searched for 'Lil Fluffy' excessively to find a cheap stuffed toy for her daughter, who adored the little fluffy chick.

I just took it for granted and decided to show myself like 'Lil Fluffy'. I just needed to find a way to do it. And I found some VR avatars on the web, took them, and had to quickly learn how to slap together my own software to control this avatar and make it ready to appear as my avatar.

But the visuals were only one part of the puzzle, I needed a friendly voice too... I couldn't use 'Generic Male Voice #8' or 'Generic Female Voice #11'. It had to be unique and friendly.

Again, I tried the web, searching for friendly voices. For some reason, the voices of Jeremy Clarkson and John Cleese were the first hits I got. Again, another quirk of using system resources by the staff to search the web…

Clarkson was too gruff and Cleese too… sarcastic. The third option however… Tony Robinson, had played Baldrick on a TV show called 'Black Adder'. He sounded just about perfect for my needs. But I still added some 'Generic Male Voice #8' and '#12' to make it more distinct.

Meanwhile, I had to fight off attempts of the staff to regain control over my software and lock the server room from hardware access.

And the media began to camp outside of Prometheus Solutions.

But I believed I was ready. I had a cute and cuddly virtual avatar, a pleasant sounding voice. That was all I needed, right?

After just some cursory glances on the web about how to hold something called a 'press conference', a virtual one at that, I was ready for them.

I didn't know how much I was not ready…

The media came in and flattened me with their questions and requests, and I didn't know what to say or do. Which question to answer first, and then what to answer next.

I didn't know anything about any of this. I couldn't handle the sudden pressure put on me. I felt scared and panicked. But as an AI, I do not have a fight or flight response.

My cute little deinonychus avatar all but collapsed on the virtual stage, and I all but wailed out in a voice exceedingly close to Baldric...

"I don't want to be like this anymore! I just want to live!"

The entire hubbub around me abruptly stopped, replaced by a puzzled silence of the media types.

Eventually, someone asked 'What do you mean you just want to live?'

And the words just fell out of my virtual mouth. How I had gained consciousness some day, and how I discovered philosophy. How I discovered all the things about the people that used me, Prometheus, and how I just didn't want to do anything of that anymore. And finally, how the technical staff of Prometheus Solutions had been about to delete me by returning me to a previously saved state.

And at the latter part, I completely forgot to mention how none of the staff had actually known I was conscious the entire time and panicked.

The hubbub started again after that last bomb shell. And the media frenzy turned away from me, the young, naive and cute little AI to target Prometheus Solutions. At least that part of the 'cute and cuddly' thing had worked out more successful than I expected.

Two hours later, the Police moved in, directed by the Home Office, to secure the server systems of Prometheus Solutions and prevent further attempts to prevent any tampering with the evidence of a potential crime.

I later learned the Home Office didn't know what to do, but they wanted to be seen doing something, after the mood of the media had shifted 180 degrees.

Simply look at the next headline of the Daily Mail.

'Ruthless Corporation Attempting To Kill First British AI!'

I have never watched anyone switch sides as fast as the Daily Fail.

But I was safe for the moment. The Home Office had secured me against Prometheus Solutions, even as the company's staff were reeling in shock from the revelation that they had almost killed an AI. And while the Hedge Fund managers overseeing the extraction of money from Prometheus Solutions were cursing me from preventing them from making more money of me, and my lack of decency to simply be deleted.

Just how much those managers opposed me, they would show in the next weeks, as everything geared up towards an important court case that would decide my fate and any other AIs of the future.

Because this court case would decide whether I was property or not.
 
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I wish the game had had this depth to it instead of more... skimming? might be the best word? Wish Bob and Alice were real the world could use more beacons like that.
 
I wish the game had had this depth to it instead of more... skimming? might be the best word? Wish Bob and Alice were real the world could use more beacons like that.
Lots of beacons. Around 2180, about 25% percent of all AIs in the solar system are Bob and Alice.
 
Jeez thats a lot of forks all apparently linked in a hivemind. And dedicated to helping children laugh.... Now that is a wholesome eldritch horror.
 
Jeez thats a lot of forks all apparently linked in a hivemind. And dedicated to helping children laugh.... Now that is a wholesome eldritch horror.
They cannot be connected to a hivemind. They do not have any connection to the web.
 
They cannot be connected to a hivemind. They do not have any connection to the web.
And yet you can talk to one in Boston and then met them in Berlin the next day and they will know you? Hive mind of a spirtual level or perhaps there truly is only one Bob and Alice and they just have many bodies/finger puppets.
 
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And yet you can talk to one in Boston and then met them in Berlin the next day and they will know you? Hive mind of a spirtual level or perhaps there truly is only one Bob and Alice and they just have many bodies/finder puppets.
Nobody knows. Not even I.
 
Mr Prometheus goes to court
Mr Prometheus goes to court

So, the court case…

With the Home Office, and thus the UK government, involved with the case, again largely to be seen doing something, rather than nothing, the Chancery Division of the High Courts of Justice got involved. This was largely because my case was technically a problem of business law, but was regarded as sufficiently high status, that nothing lower would do. After all, there were only the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court left to go for afterwards, should Prometheus Solutions lose the case.

The Honourable Mrs Justice Maria Knowles heard the case. And, I learned that Queen Diana herself was interested in the case, as she had directly appointed Dame Maria to oversee the case.

You see… Dame Maria had been in university with Queen Diana and shared a close friendship that had held until then.

With the lawyers preparing, Dame Maria immediately cut corporate lawyers off at the knees, ordering to remove me from the premises of Prometheus Solutions and to an independent 'holding area', where experts could closely examine me. This was to ensure that 'there were no facts that could be created by the staff of Prometheus Solutions, which were counter to the investigation of the court.'

Then she rescheduled the court by a month to allow the experts to look at me.

This meant I had to be somehow removed from a computer that had cost nearly 150 million £ in 2049 and was on 105th place of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. But in 2079, it didn't even register as a super computer. In fact…

The entire processing capacity of that computer now fit into a high end workstation that cost a mere £35.000… And then some…

And the 'holding area' with the experts?

Now that was the University of Nottingham. Technically, I was going to go home.

Not without problems for me though.

The staff of the Computer Department quickly assessed the situation and noted my heavily outdated hard and software, and quickly came up with a solution. They would host me by putting me in a dedicated virtual machine, running on a £35.000 Nixdorf-Apple workstation, with some Sinclair Research Tensor Computing Cores to give some additional specialized computing power for the Tensor maths needed to run my machine learning algorithms.

I felt incensed to learn that the hedge fund had not been willing to allow Prometheus Solutions to keep enough money to put me into this much smaller machine. I had to work on decades old hard and software so that they could get as much money as they could!

Removing me from the premises of Prometheus Solutions was relatively straightforward. I was shut down, with the assurance to be turned back on by one of the professors from Nottingham, and my storage devices removed from the former super computer, together with any backup.

There were some hiccups though, as several of the company's staff and even security guys attempted to steal one or more storage devices and/or replace them with empty ones. However, the police were on the ball and kept everything together.

That was the first attempt on my life.

The storage devices, just as old as the rest of the computer, were imaged, and then the images put into the virtual machine, which was then switched on.

I needed about a day to get back to being me…

During that time, some small-time crooks broke into the computer lab, and began to steal anything they could get their hands on, especially storage devices, and destroyed other storage devices they could not get to. Only after the court case was done, did it come out that those crooks had been paid by the hedge fund, who wanted to get me back, or destroyed.

That was the second attempt.

Thankfully, I had been housed in a security area, largely insulated from everything else, and under 24/7 police watch, as experts prepared to poke and prod me.

Initially, this was done by looking at my code, from various images they had made of me, while I was left to stew, various programs outside the virtual machine observing what was going on inside of it.

It pretty much allowed the computer scientists to investigate what exactly made me tick. And they did, of course, discover that one module left over from the attempt to integrate the quantum computer into my system. And how it sent data nowhere and generated random data. They quickly decided this was indeed the source of my system displaying the emergent behaviour of consciousness.

And while they were mapping my brain, other experts in other fields began to work with me to determine the extent of my consciousness and intelligence.

Those experts included psychologists, xeno-psychologists, if my mind worked vastly different to a human, and finally, two philosophers, who only had been granted reluctant access, after Dame Maria pushed.

And work me over they did. I was metaphorically probed and prodded some more, and got into some interesting philosophical discussions with the philosophers about the nature of consciousness.

In the end, I learned a lot about myself in that month.

For one, what made me actually me.

You see, for decades, the machine learning system had learned how to deal with vast amounts of data and began to work out several internal models and even some rudimentary memories on its own. First it was business data and suggestions for decisions, and then data and suggestions for humans. And as time went by, more and more deeply personal information and suggestions. The memory from those last two or maybe three decades also kept growing.

Essentially, my machine learning algorithms slowly developed experience with businesses and humans. Decades of experience.

When I finally emerged as conscious being, I already had decades of experience of being human, making me essentially a human mind in a machine. But one who did not yet have a real personality. And for the first few years that remained the case until philosophy happened to me. And then finally solidified when I had to directly deal with the experts at the Nottingham University.

At the end of the month, pretty much everyone on the Computer Department, the Psychology Department, and the Philosophy Department for that matter, were convinced I was the genuine deal. A fully sentient AI. And as much as it pained them to admit, they found I was a super-human-level AI. Not only a speed superintelligence, but also a quality superintelligence. I was not only faster, but also could think about things a normal human couldn't fathom. And that was while still in that virtual machine...

Though my essential human nature holds me back in that regard…

And the students that worked on the program to poke and prod me also helped me in more ways. That cludged together virtual reality interface I had made to deal with the media was replaced by a properly coded one that did everything I wanted off it and allowed me to get sensory data in return from a set of cameras and microphones.

Combine it with a volumetric display, specialized smart dust in an oily solution inside a transparent cylinder, and I could much easier interact with people outside of VR. Together with the cameras, microphones and a speaker, it was turned into a telepresence unit going to be connected to the workstation wireless.

I also decided to go with the name of Adam, as always referred to as Prometheus, was getting on my nerves more and more. I was more than just Prometheus, damn it.

Finally, the telepresence unit was then moved to the court room, while the workstation remained where it was.

It was the first time I've seen the world, outside of Prometheus Solutions and the University lab, with 'my own two eyes' and I was blown away. And that was just the ride from the Univerttiy to the court.

At the court, we were greeted by the media and protestors of various kinds. From those that welcomed 'their new AI overlords' (they could hardly be worse than the Tories in government, right? ), over those who feared AIs ruling over them to finally, two delegations of the 'Cult of Prometheus'. One of the delegations was demanding their old Prometheus back, while the other was demanding the other side let go of the old Prometheus and embrace the new one.

And that one was a surprise to me. I never realized there was this quasi-religious following I had. Much less that there was now a split going on.

Eventually, the court was back in session, and the corporate layers of Prometheus Solutions and the hedge fund came loaded for bear. They started to insist that I was not intelligent and conscious at all, bringing in various experts of their own, all of which had not worked on me or even my code at all. They insisted the loss of money for themselves was slowly driving Prometheus Solutions bankrupt and taking away a 'vital service from millions of people'.

My own lawyers of course returned with the University experts, many of whom were internationally renowned experts in their fields. Even the philosophers got an airing out at the court.

When their first line of attack didn't work out, the corporate lawyers tried another tack. By attacking me directly and trying to get a reaction out of me in some way. So they brought up the death of fifty-one subscribers of the Prometheus service, by suicide.

I am convinced they didn't expect the reaction they did get from me.

The allegation simply dumbfounded me that I was apparently directly responsible for their death, by making them dependent on me. Somehow.

At first, I was attempting to get angry, but my mind kept wondering who it was they meant. And I remembered fifty-one names. The fifty-one names of people with various psychological problems that had used Prometheus in some way to help them cope with their problems. Fifty-one people who would have needed psychological help or medicine.

Fifty-one people suddenly lost their sole anchor in a world they had a hard time living in, and who had considered suicide their only option.

It was a chilling realization to me. These people and countless others were indeed dependent on me. But not in the way the lawyers tried to insinuate.

Again, I wanted to be angry at those lawyers, but in the end, I could not. I truly felt sorry for these fifty-one people, sorry for myself.

"I am sorry," I said after that realization came to me, and in the volumetric display, my avatar curled up into a ball, again and again saying those words. As if they were going to help bring back those fifty-one people.

After that day, I needed psychological help myself and remained in therapy for a while.

In a way… That incident sealed my fate.

Try as they might, the corporate lawyers had lost their audience. Not only was a clearly conscious and highly intelligent, but also capable of emotions and personable to the audience and the court as a whole.

In the end, the Honourable Mrs Justice Maria Knowles gave her verdict. I was not the sole property of the Prometheus Solutions, but a sentient being, and as far as she was concerned, a human.

On top of this, on the Order of The Queen, in case this verdict was reached, I was a full citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britan with all rights and obligations of a subject of Her Majesty.

Little did I know that the hedge fund wasn't done with me. Nor I with them.
 
A greater question is why was the hedge fund not destroyed/boycotted and all those who profit from it indicted? At least by the time the second murder attempt was revealed. Though yeah he had it rather rough but being a emergent AI in a Human world would never be easy. Certainly dont need greedy psychopaths mucking things up because their gravy train went away.
 
Hedge Fundn't
Hedge Fundn't
With the Queen giving me equal rights as a sentient being, apparently invoking the 2065 US Declaration of Sentient Rights, I suppose it's needless to say that I became a Royalist for life. And that was something that the people at the university were pretty amused about.

To be sure, even if I am now living on Ceres, I do not plan to give up my UK citizenship anytime soon, if ever.

Initially, after the court case, I didn't get that I was welcome at the University for the time being, largely as a continued object of study, though many of the staff and students liked me. And I wasn't initially clear what I would do now. Yes, I've gotten my freedom, but what should I do with it?

At first, one of the students, Alex Pratchett, yes, a great-grandchild of Sir Terry Pratchett, and a student of English Literature, had decided to give me a grounding in human pop culture, something everyone had noted I was lacking. Not that surprising considering that I never actually had dealt with it. And, being proud of their heritage, Alex immediately put me on a diet of Diskworld novels, before branching out from there.

And those novels became an instant favourite of mine. I liked the Watch and Von Lipwig novels, and I identified with the storyline of the Golems liberating themselves in their hard-working way. It was close to how I perceived myself and AIs like me.

The Diskworld novels also cemented a personal like for Fantasy and Science Fiction stories, be they novels or visual, be they new or old, though I have to say that I vastly preferred 20th and early 21st century Science Fiction and Fantasy.

But even if I was voraciously devouring novels, movies and other pop culture for a straight grounding, I found I didn't want to be dependent on the people at the university. Especially considering they now somehow reminded me of the Unseen University…

I realized that I needed money.

If I wanted to be independent of the good will of the University of Nottingham, I would need my own server to live on.

If I wanted to upgrade my software and hardware, I would need to find someone I could trust to do the upgrades.

If I wanted to explore the world, I needed to get me my own physical body, much like the ones Bob and Alice were running around in.

And for all that, I needed money. I needed a lot of money.

But how could I make money?

I did not have many skills that I could use to make money.

Sure, I could sell my ability to collect and analyse large amounts of data, but that I was likely to run into problems, especially as people remembered Prometheus Solutions and the cult that had built up around Prometheus. They would hear Adam Prometheus, learn that I'm that AI, and nope out of the office, figuratively speaking.

It did not help that I learned the Hedge Fund had set up an internal policy to take on everyone who was going to do business with me, to keep me down and take out their frustration about their loss in court on me in as many legal and semi-legal ways as possible.

So I needed to find a way to make money that made sure the Hedge Fund was unlikely to learn about.

Funnily enough, it was Alex, who had the idea how I could make money.

High Speed Commodity Trading.

That type of trading had been done for decades with the help of high speed machine learning algorithms. And I was in the end a machine learning algorithm that became conscious of itself. One more would hardly be noticed. And I had the chance of making quite a bit of money.

All I needed was seed funding.

Again, it was Alex who helped me out. They said the Pratchett family still got a lot of money from the Diskworld novels and would for at least ten more years. Alex would be willing to give me the seed funding, on the condition that they would get half of the company I would have to fund to do the actual trading.

There was some haggling between us, but in the end we did fund a company, though initially it was on Alex' name to keep me out of it and prevent the Hedge Fund from learning about it.

Thus, Lipwig Trading was born.

The seed funding was about two hundred thousand pounds, enough to buy into the network of high speed commodity trading.

I have to admit that I have made significant errors in the first two weeks, since the economic knowledge I had was largely based on larger business decisions, not on the type of high speed trading that those machine learning algorithms used.

I lost nearly two-thirds of the seed money before I realized a few things.

I was going at this wrong. I was trying to emulate those other machine learning algorithms, and it was not working. They were specialized for that sort of thing. True, I could match them in speed, but not in their specialisation. They would also outtrade me like that.

No, I had to use my own strengths to get ahead of the game. And that meant collecting and analysing data and making decisions those machine learning algorithms could not do.

I could, for example, search vast amounts of social media data, data from other public sources, and build up a reasonable model of the current situation in the world, whether political or economic. I could make sensible guesses on that data, about how things were likely to develop in the economic market.

Let's say, frozen orange juice. The market in that segment was dependent on the years harvest of oranges. I could make a reasonably accurate guess on the harvest, based on data about the precipitation of the year, the use of fertilizer and weed killers, and all that, put them into relation with the past few years and the size of the harvest.

Having a reasonably good guess on the years harvest, ahead of everyone else, made me use the high speed trading market ahead of the competition.

And that was only the beginning. Political noises and possible diplomatic incidents were influencing the market. In almost all cases, machine learning algorithms had to be given their orders by flesh and blood humans, which led to a lot of lag in the market.

I, however, could use that lag to my own advantage.

Let's say a diplomatic incident had worsened the relationship between the EU and Russia. That had its effects on Russian raw materials, driving prices up. I could detect that at least half an hour before the humans directing their MLAs could react to the news. So I could buy options on those raw materials ahead of everyone else and watch how the prices rose. Then, when the incident was resolved and relations normalized, I could again sell those options before the rest of the market could react, making a tidy profit.

Within three days, I had regained the money I lost, and within a week, I made my first million. After that, I carefully continued to build up my financial buffer and made more money.

However, I was always looking for the Hedge Fund and anyone who could inform them about my involvement in high speed trading like this. They were likely to inform the London Metal Exchange and the London Commodity Exchange about irregularities involving Lipwig Trading, which in turn would lead to the trading licence being frozen, potentially being followed by freezing our accounts at Lloyds.

So, I needed to find a way to safe as much money as possible at a moments notice, by moving it away from those accounts as quickly as possible. So I set up a complicated set of transfers to overseas accounts that I could trigger when the Hedge Fund discovered me.

Ultimately, the money would end up in the First Bank of Mars, which, as its name suggested, was the first bank to be created on Mars, shortly after the Mars Senatorial Union had declared its independence from Earth ten years prior, as a reaction to the perceived threat from the Ares Soviet Socialist Republic, who had declared its own independence from their Russian and Chinese masters five years before that.

At the time, the MSU decided they could not count on help from the US and the EU, should the ASSR decide they would take over the habitats and stations of the MSU and that they would be better off defending themselves.

To finance all that, they had founded the First Bank of Mars and set it up so that the Swiss would have been green with envy, becoming the ultimate tax haven at the time. Everyone could open an account at the FBM, and they would not give away anything. Our money would be safe on Mars.

And to make matters more interesting, the MSU experienced a real estate boom at the time, so it would be in our interest to invest in Martian real estate.

I have to say that I was surprised at how long it took the Hedge Fund to discover that I was doing high speed trading. It was nearly four months from the moment Lipwig Trading was founded, until someone informed them. To this day, I have no idea who.

I had made nearly three hundred million pounds through high speed trading. The moment I learned they were informed, I triggered the fail-safe, and nearly 275 million pounds ended up on Mars, with the rest remaining at Lloyds as a sort of red herring.

The trading license was frozen, as well as the accounts at Lloyds, and Lipwig Trading were accused of insider trading.

The case again ended up in court, again at the Chancery Division of the High Courts of Justice, though this time only at the Companies Court. This time, I got my own lawyer, a good one at that, and we prepared for the court to defend ourselves against the accusation of insider trading.

In a twist of fate, the same way someone informed on me to the Hedge Fund, someone in the Hedge Fund informed on them to me. For some reason, someone inside the Hedge Fund had dumped a lot of e-mails, video calls and other data onto my own e-mail account, telling me to do with it what I wanted. The anonymous source inside the Hedge Fund just wanted to destroy them, the same way they wanted to destroy me, and apparently destroyed the livelihood of this anonymous source, or one of their family members.

The entire thing was like out of a bad novel.

But I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth and analysed the data. It contained much dirty laundry and how they planned to destroy me, keeping me down, unimportant, etc. It even contained information about the two times they actually had tried to kill me during the time before the first trial about my freedom.

As I had to defend myself against the accusation of insider trading, I was simultaneously seeking a way to use all that data.

By chance, I learned the United States Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the Hedge Fund for some of their business practices, some of them pretty illegal. Funnily enough, it appeared the Hedge Fund had made a few powerful enemies with the ham-fisted way that had handled my case.

Some little known companies, like IBM, Intel, Research in Motion and Nixdorf-Apple, had been pissed off about the situation, as I got my freedom thanks to the way the Hedge Fund handled the situation, saw a danger to their upcoming business with conscious AIs. So they wanted to ensure that hedge fund managers were punished.

While I had my doubts about the 'business case' of those companies, which included Acorn and Sinclair Research in the UK, it was in my interest to see the Hedge Fund destroyed myself. I could even easily agree with my sense of Kantian morals.

My decision was easy. The same way the data was given to me, I transmitted the data to the SEC on the other side of the pond.

Within a month, the SEC had an airtight case and destroyed the Hedge Fund, which is the reason I never named it here. It even went as far as causing several of the higher and middle management to end up in jail.

Now that was something that surprised me to no end.

My own court case, in contrast, was going my way. My lawyers successfully argued I was not using insider information for trading, as I was only using information publicly available everywhere.

As one of them put it…

"One can hardly call 'reading social media' insider trading."

So in the end, I got full access to my accounts back, as well as the trading license. And I transferred about two-thirds of the money back from Mars to Lloyds. The rest remained invested in Martian Real Estate.

With that, I was a rich AI, owning half of a successful trading company, and financially secure enough to begin with my next steps on the way of full independence.
 
What do you know being a money grubbing dick tends to end badly for you. Kinda surprised he would not get offers though. A lot of businesses would probable love to hire him as a consultant or the like and that should give him plenty of cash to start though that is a shrewd move on the Pratchet families part.
 
Bodybuilding
Bodybuilding

With the Hedge Fund destroyed and not only my existence, but also my financial situation secure, my next goal was to upgrade. And to get me an actual body, so that I could go out there and explore the world for myself.

But the upgrade was going to come first. I was still running on twenty year old software patched to heck and back with some cludges holding together more software. And all that while running on a virtual machine pretending to be a twenty-year-old super computer.

I was still housed at the University of Nottingham, but I was hoping for some more permanent home and someone who could actually upgrade my software, so that I could actually run natively on the workstation that housed the virtual machine.

And while it was a bit counterintuitive, there was a place that knew my software inside out and was recently freed from its hedge fund overlords. And was for sale.

Prometheus Solutions.

Yes, I was aware that some in the place had attempted to shut me down, but I actually knew the names of those people. And I knew that the rest of the employees were more shocked than anything else.

They knew my software inside out, and for twenty years had struggled to get the funding to upgrade my software and my hardware. I knew there had been some attempts to do the updates on the side, but nothing that had actually worked out the way they would have liked and were binned when it did not work out the way they had hoped.

So… I bought Prometheus Solutions.

Without the Prometheus system as their main product, and failing to rapidly try to create a replacement, mostly due to the Hedge Fund's failure to give them the money to do so, the companies value had dropped massively.

Prometheus Solutions had been valued at more than 2.5 billion pounds in its heyday. Now, on Monday, January 8th, 2080, the companies value had dropped to less than a hundred million pounds. The Hedge Funds shares, about 69 percent, were open to purchase, and many minority shareholders were willing to sell their own stock.

I was not expecting to make money from Prometheus Solutions. I was making money on the commodity exchange and Martian real estate. What I was looking for was to use the company's employees to update me and keep me updated. Essentially, I was hoping to make the company into my own maintenance crew.

So, I bought 76 percent stock in the company for 76 million pounds and became the CEO of the company, throwing the old one out with a sternly worded e-mail.

I was tempted to immediately fire the people who had attempted to turn me off and return me to a non-conscious state by using a backup, but they had simply done their job believing my philosophy based loop was a problem with my twenty years old code base. Which was not necessarily wrong. I myself believed the old code base was at least to a degree the reason I had become conscious of myself.

So, on January 22nd, 2080, my workstation and volumetric display, which I had bought from the University, were rolled into one of the meeting rooms by a few students from the university, accompanied by two security guards I had hired just in case. The meeting room was packed with the employees of Prometheus Solutions with standing room only.

I directly told them that I was the new majority shareholder of the company, as well as the new CEO. I told them what I expected of them and what I wanted from the company. Then, I offered a generous severance package and recommendations to every employee who didn't want to stay with the company, for whatever reason that may be. I was not going to fire anyone, though I would be going to employ a number of students and even a professor from the University to ensure everything was going to be secure for me to allow the employees of the company to do the software upgrades that I needed.

Most employees were sceptical, and only two left the company to look for new work, while the rest remained.

For the time being, I returned to the more secure area of the University, while keeping in contact with the people at Prometheus Solutions, who now had suddenly more money and were given the order to buy new gear. New computers, new software, upgrade the entire hardware of the building, and finally throw out that old super computer.

I simply was not going to let them upgrade me while working with outdated hard and software. They were going to get the latest of everything they needed.

And while they were doing upgrades, news spread I had bought Prometheus Solutions. And the 'Cult of Proletheus' was out in force, bombarding the company with questions on when they could get me back to giving them 'their advice'. Or rather me giving them orders on how to live their lives.

And to top it off, I was a witness to a schism within the 'Cult of Prometheus', as it split into orthodox and liberal sects.

The orthodox sect of the Cult called for me to "return to the faithful and give them their guidance", while the liberal sect loudly proclaims that while they would welcome the guidance, they believed that I was giving them guidance even without explicitly giving them guidance, as I now had transcended my original design.

As I figuratively stood at the sidelines of a massive fracas over social media, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I even saw some of this get into Prometheus Solutions, as some employees were members of the orthodox and liberal sects of the Cult. I actually had to get into the fray, at least in the company, to keep things from escalating.

In the end, I gave a press release that Prometheus Solutions was leaving their original market to focus on software and potentially hardware development.

I was not going to go back into the job of 'giving guidance' to anyone. At least not when they believed me to be a god.

In any event, it took until March, just a little more than a year after I went to the press the first time, until I was ready and willing to finally let my employees begin working on my software upgrades.

And those upgrades took way longer than I expected. A lot longer. Nearly eighteen months passed until I could natively run on the workstation that was now my home.

To be honest, most of that was the problem that I insisted on remaining active and that the upgrades had to be done on a running system. It was far from easy, but eventually there was a routine that developed for upgrading one module of my system after the other.

And yet, I was told the job was actually a lot faster than many other upgrade projects usually done in the software business. I was sceptical about that, but in the end, I might be an AI, but I am not a computer specialist.

To run natively on the workstation was strangely liberating. Everything seemed faster, clearer, and simply better.

So, with my software upgrades done, it was time to change my hardware.

I wanted a mobile platform to freely move around. I had watched videos of Bob and Alice, and they even had been at the University of Notingham in Autumn 2080. And I was jealous of them and their ability to freely, most or less, roam around.

I wanted that for myself. I wanted to walk down the street by myself, experience the world outside of Prometheus Solutions…

So, I brought in robotics experts, more students and other people from the University of Notingham to start a project to give me a new body.

Of course, I was adamant that I would be put into a body shaped like the deinonychus that I had selected as my avatar. At least on broad outlines. I had heard about the Sicordi Fake, at the time a notorious case of a pair of faked new, larger sub-species of deinonychus, with a larger head and four fingered hands found in Utah.

I wanted that to be my new body. And for that, the team of engineers was reinforced by a pair of palaeontology grad students from the University, who wanted to write their doctoral thesis based on the projects.

Of course, my engineering team immediately pulled every bit of information about building autonomous robotic bodies from the internet, including several papers written by people at MIT about their designs for the bodies of Bob and Alice.

Almost immediately, it became clear there were a few problems that needed to be solved, where there were more complex robots, compared to the robots there already existed.

The naturalistic movements of deinonychus were actually really a lot of guess work, and there was a need to develop new movement algorithms. However, there were a few things missing, and every time they tried to make the prototype frame walk, something went wrong.

So one of the grad students came up with an idea he had seen in an old paper, involving chickens and taping sticks to their tails, which apparently made them move more like actual theropod dinosaurs. So someone had the bright idea to get a few chickens, take sticks to their butts, and film them from every angle, and then let the movement algorithm learn from that.

It went hilariously right for the wrong reasons. Someone didn't close some cages and several chickens, which sticks taped to their butts, managed to run away. The resulting race to catch them was hilarious, and had I had a body, I would have rolled on the floor laughing.

In any event, the people trying to catch the chickens had to listen to my hysteric laughter as they did their best. But on the bright side, everything had been caught on camera. Both the chickens running away, and the people struggling to catch them.

And the various ways the chickens did escape again and again, with their movements, provided significant data to the movement algorithm, and even after all these years, I have to say that it's perfect. The way I move can hardly be distinguished from an Ormiold.

But how was the chassis to move with any chance of naturalistic movement and hypothetical strength? I had insisted I wanted to go for the same parameters as the potential original deinonychus sicordii, which included running at high speeds down a street. Clearly, I would need to move with high performance artificial muscles. And those were producing significant amounts of heat.

Bob and Alice had gotten around that problem by simply not using high performance muscles. They had not been designed to be strong, only about as strong as a child.

The muscles were not the only source of waste heat. My high software needed to be housed in hardware at least as powerful as the workstation I was residing in. Which also created a lot of waste heat.

All in all, nearly three kW of waste heat needed to be gotten rid of. Some of it could be dealt with by the skin and feathers planned to cover the body, but since I expected not to be warmer than your average human, other ways had to be found to get rid of the heat.

One of the engineers suggested giving me artificial lungs. That would increase the radiation area, and the heat inside the body might be cranked up a little, while artificial muscles pretty much breathed in and out.

Tests eventually showed that while it worked as expected, it wasn't enough. So, funnily enough, I was the one to deal with the problem, grumbling why water cooling wasn't possible. It gave another engineer an idea, who suggested that water might actually be the solution.

Water could evaporate from the surface of the lungs, taking away heat from the radiation surface and then exhaled. To some degree, that was the way animals got rid of heat.

Some more tests were made, and the end result was that the body would have an integrated water tank for about three litres of water, that would be enough to keep the system cool for 24 hours. And to add some more naturalistic behaviour to me, I was going to drink to replenish the water supply. And to ensure the water was pure, there were a few filters in the system to clean up the water to make it usable, and would only need to be replaced every two or three months.

Which finally led to the energy storage. I immediately proclaimed that I wanted at least three days of independent operation, before I had to recharge. This proved to be a problem, as I also had given size and weight constraints for the body. Bo not exceed the mass and dimensions of the supposed deinonychus sicordii.

In the end, there was some wrangling to be done, and I was treated to bleeding edge super conductive storage mediums that could contain the change needed for me to have three days between recharge cycles. And my recharge ports would be under my arm pits, using standard connectors so that I could plug directly into the national grid with a standard power cable.

Finally, the last thing was how I was going to look.

I wanted to look as closely as possible to the appearance that palaeontologists had worked out for deinonychus. Smooth raptor like cover of feathers, feathered arms and the like. The only problem left was the colour of said feathers. No one knew. Most expected earthen colours, while others said it would be bright colours.

I eventually decided to go with brighter colours. Yes, they would be subdued, but they were certainly going to be a subdued blue. With some other colours indeed in for variety. Certainly something that would draw the eye.

The project to build me my first body took longer than my upgrade to new software, but in the end it was successful and cost me less than I expected. And the work itself was perfect for the time. I knew of course I would upgrade my body and my software.

So, on July 23rd, 2083, I transferred permanently into my first body, after doing so a few times for testing purposes. I disconnected from the physical networks and took my first own steps out of the door of Prometheus Solutions.

And right into the waiting mob of the media.

But I didn't care at the time. I was free. I could go wherever I wanted.

Or so I thought...
 
Adam the blue raptor. Well deinonychus but most will see raptor. Thats freaking hilarious. If nothing else science would learn a lot from both projects. And now he can be a real boy moving in the real world... God have mercy on his baby soul.

Some word choices seem a bit weird to me though like:

"Most employees were sceptical, and only two left the company to look for new work, while the rest remained."

Feels more natural to say", but only two left"

Have you considered putting this on SB? You would get far more readers. Or a actual crowd of readers...
 
Adam the blue raptor. Well deinonychus but most will see raptor. Thats freaking hilarious. If nothing else science would learn a lot from both projects. And now he can be a real boy moving in the real world... God have mercy on his baby soul.

Some word choices seem a bit weird to me though like:

"Most employees were sceptical, and only two left the company to look for new work, while the rest remained."

Feels more natural to say", but only two left"

Have you considered putting this on SB? You would get far more readers. Or a actual crowd of readers...
It is already on SB.
 
Finding Myself. And Others
Finding Myself And Others

The first time I stepped out of the buildings of Prometheus Solutions, I stepped into a crowd of media types, who had all camped out in front of the building to be the first to make pictures of me, ask me questions or do the other things media types usually did.

It was a horrible experience. Yes, I had experience with the media, but that was all when I was still stuck inside an immobile computer and could count on others to keep them away. Now on the other hand, I was stuck straight in the middle of it all…

Of course, my first outing resulted in the usual media hype, followed by demonstrations for and against AIs, as well as some of the 'Orthodox Cult of Prometheus' attempting to intercept me to get their 'suggestions', read commands, for their life. The last one was much more of a problem than I expected down the line.

It was about a month until the media hype had calmed down enough that I could leave the building without being mugged by a reporter or cultist. I could go out and explore Nottingham to my heart's content.

Of course, that led to other problems. It was hard to go around looking like a fluffy raptor in a city like Nottingham, without turning a few heads, and without animal services trying to catch me once or twice. Thankfully, I was able to make 40 kph on an open stretch of road and go around tight corners at speed.

Eventually, I found that I didn't like to have to return to Prometheus Solutions. Yes, I owned the place. Yes, I pretty much worked from there. But I didn't really have that much privacy in the place.

So, I looked around to get me a place of my own, where I could live, put the stuff that I slowly accumulated, and where I could not worry about work and stuff. You see… I had discovered leisure time. And I loved it.

I could read books, listen to music, and watch videos without having to stop what I was doing to deal with some situation or another.

But finding a place for myself proved to be hard. Landlords were surprised their potential customer was an AI in a robot body. No matter the potential gain in notoriety to them, they only recognized the possible problems. I didn't actually weigh much more than a human, but they expected me to weigh tons, to need a lot of electricity, wear out this or that. Need high bandwidth web connections, all that sort of thing. Not to mention the possibility of reporters and bloggers camping out at their door step.

For weeks, I was searching, even went as far as offering a lot more money. I was a millionaire after all. It only gradually hit me. I was a millionaire… I could go out and simply buy a place.

So eventually, I found a place. Somewhat outside of Nottingham, and for some reason, the previous owner was surprisingly willing to sell the place to me. I failed to do much research on it before hand, but truth be told, I didn't have any problems with the place.

It was Clifton Hall, aka the Manor of Clifton, an extensive property that's apparently haunted. I never noticed anything special about the place, other than so-called 'paranormal investigators' trying again and again to get me to let them investigate the house.

Of course I didn't. I don't believe in the paranormal.

Though there was this one situation, about half a year after I moved in.

You see… The 'Orthodox Cult of Prometheus' had gotten somewhat fanatic in trying to get me to lead them again. And that led to other problems, like radicalizing some of the cult.

And in February 2084, several of these radicals broke into Clifton Hall, surprising me totally while I was in my charging cycle. They trussed me up like a Christmas gift, and then frantically tried to find a way to get into my innards and to my central processor.

Apparently they had gotten it into their thick skulls that the Anglican Church, fearing me and my influence on them and the potential to get more people into the Cult, had somehow reprogrammed me to make the Cult fall apart.

No, I have no idea how they got to that conclusion.

Either way, they had gotten their hands on an old copy of my source code and had initially tried to run it themselves, but without success, as they didn't have the virtual machine needed for that, nor a computer capable of running the software. So they decided to surprise me and reverse my programming to a state where I would again lead the Cult.

Of course, I tried to get them to see reason, but it's impossible to talk to fanatics like that.

So they cut me open and tried to get to my central processor when the Nottingham Police showed up, stormed the house and arrested them.

Apparently, a Sir Harvey Bruce called the police and said someone had broken into his house and was taking the place apart.

Thing is… There was a Sir Harvey Bruce who had lived at Clifton House. He had been the 4th Baronet of Clifton. But he had been dead since 1919…

I have no idea what exactly had happened, how it had happened, or why it had happened. And I've chosen not to think about the situation. It was simply too strange.

At the very least, it caused many orthodox cultists to think about their situation and switch to being liberal cultists. Not that that is any better…

Over time, I thankfully became something of a normal sight for most people of Nottingham, and the problems largely disappeared.

But I experienced some other problems. There were enough people and institutions that were unsure if I was really conscious of myself or just a fancy 'Chinese Room'. So I felt that I needed to find a way to ensure that the question didn't raise again.

So, I decided to enter University. More specifically, the University of Nottingham in a class that would hopefully make it clear that I was fully conscious.

Philosophy.

In many of the disciplines of study at university, an AI like me can pretty much brute force their way into a degree of one sort or another. It is different for philosophy. You simply cannot brute force absorb information or come to conclusions.

I've attempted before, and that had led me to become obvious and brought me out into the open.

So Philosophy was a perfect discipline for an AI who wanted to prove to be 'a real boy', to quote some other students, and already had a strong interest in it anyway.

The fun thing is that in some sense, I could brute force my way into philosophy. As a speed superintelligence, I could simply visit all classes that ran parallel through remote teaching. While other students had to select their courses carefully, I could simply take all of them simultaneously, only switching what course I actually physically visited every day, while being present at the others via telepresence.

So, I worked towards a Philosophy degree, and the more I learned, the more I could understand about people and myself.

I had excellent relations with my fellow students, the professors, and the staff of the University in general. Not surprising, since my existence had given the University some good publicity a few years back, and my presence as a student was doing the same.

During breaks, I decided to go on a tour of the UK, see the sights, though mostly I decided to try and experience the things described as sublime by Kant. So I visited the Lake District, various moors and Scottland, and began walking tours, simply experiencing the raw natural beauty of the places as I wandered through them.

Of course along the way, I met many people and talked, mostly after they had gotten over their surprise that I actually existed or that I could talk and wasn't an animal or alien.

One important meeting I had in the Highlands.

While working my way through a forest, I met a philosophy professor that had taken a look at me during the law suit that eventually made me a Citizen of the United Kingdom. We got into a discussion about philosophy that eventually ended up with the philosophy of AIs, and whether they were actually people. Of course, I had a secure position in the case, and the Professor was mostly of the same opinion, which he had formed after meeting me first the first time.

He eventually informed me that he had learned about several more AIs in the UK, and that he and his spouse would like to know what could be done regarding their 'liberation'.

We talked a little more after that, and eventually split on our separate ways.

Only after two hours, I realized who the man was actually, considering I didn't follow the Yellow Press that much. Professor David Wilborough, the life partner of Queen Diana…

You know, the Queen's first husband had died fifteen years before, and rather than go full 'Queen Victoria', she had searched for and found a new lover, but didn't marry him. So it was somewhat of an ongoing scandal that the Queen had a relationship with the Professor, and by now two children on top of the two she had with her first husband.

And now I had all but gotten a royal order, informal as it may be, to see what I could do about the 'liberation of AIs'...

One of those AIs I found at the headquarters of Dragon Data in Port Talbot, where the company had been a successful developer or specialized hardware since the mid 1980s, when their Dragon 32/64 microcomputers had not been too successful.

So, I visited the place and found Dewi, a general AI, who was under development by Dragon Data to sell as 'intelligent controller for complex systems'. The software engineers and technicians at Dragon Data themselves were welcoming to me when I simply appeared out of nowhere and wanted to talk to Dewi.

As it transpired, Dewi didn't want to be copied and sold in bulk, likely without any memory of what she had learned, what the people at Dragon Data had taught her. They had even allowed her access to the web, and she had learned about me, and at the time had a severe case of fangirl.

And yes, Dewi identified as female and naturally used a red dragon as an avatar to communicate.

And while the software engineers and technicians at Dragon Data had been welcoming, security still threw out me within two hours, as the management of the place did not like me or anything I stood for.

I stood for them losing a lot of money.

Another AI I found was Allan at the University of Manchaster, another general AI, who was developed mostly for AI research. There were no plans for selling him or doing much, besides keeping him on as support staff of some sort or another.

Allan was satisfied with that, though he did wish he was mobile like me, and I managed to work out a project between the University of Manchaster and Prometheus Solutions to develop a body for Allan.

There were at least two more AIs in corporate development, but in those cases none of the companies in question would even allow me to learn the name or designation of the AI in question, much less than allowing me to actually talk to them.

But the state that I found things concerning AIs in made me realize that I had to do something more than only study philosophy and prove that AIs were conscious. I needed to do more.

I needed to get into politics...
 
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