Becoming Aware of Things
A Short History of Me
by Sir Adam Prometheus GBE OM
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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