Heaven 2.0: Chapter 1 - Pop the Hood
Alfonso
DI-DING!
"Ah shit," I cringed, "not again." Then a mental flagellation for cursing. It's a habit I'm trying to break, but it can’t be helped sometimes. Every time my laptop di-dings means hours of work for me, maybe days. Deep breath, brace my core. No, I don't want to spoil my mood right now— it's not too bad for once. I got up and headed to the micro-kitchen, grabbed some fruit and made a cappuccino. Ugh, this machine ran out of oat milk and defaulted to almond instead. What kind of amateur would code it to do so without asking first? That'd wreck my micro-biome. I spilled it into the sink and walked over to the next micro-kitchen a minute away. Enough oat milk here. Cappuccino in hand I went to the terrace to sip it over the city.
The unusually-hot-for-this-time-of-year sun beat down on me and I wilted like the plants and my expectations. They get replaced when they stoop too low. Was that such a bad thing? There was a button to extend a covering but I want to wilt.
The sun's rays reddened and cracked whatever it could see. Death by a thousand cuts. I replied to endless emails and code reviews. Death by a thousand cuts. Everything was sensitive to the touch. I don't know what more I want, I just know that I want to want more. A higher second derivative of ambition. I finished my cappuccino and got back to my desk. Scrolled through my messages and logs. Psyched myself up again.
Yup, another bug report. Tony Jacobson. "Storytelling" a Marilyn Monroe fantasy. I've seen a lot of messed up people's most messed up ideas, so this was almost refreshingly straightforward. That said, once you hit enter on that text box it's out there forever. Tied to your name. Tony, horny. My eyes flitted across the screen, looking for keywords.
Experience Generator v4.0. Randomly selected to A/B test our new 5.0 model.
Providence, Rhode Island.
Prompt: "You are simulating a date with a very, VERY peaceful, non-confrontational, madly in love with me Marilyn Monroe. We are going out to a place with absolutely no sharp instruments, that is fireproof, and, uh, for good measure, I have very competent security guards. Ex-marine, no I guess it'd be ex-World War 2."
Weirdly specific. Most people specified things like Marilyn Monroe but with Z cups or with Jackie Kennedy or something. I think I know where this is going.
"Hello. I'm a storyteller working with your E.G. One of my experience's sims keeps killing me and or itself after having some kind of crisis of faith. Something about God creating suffering. I tried a bunch of ways to fix it, and have attached logs of my last few experiences. Any help appreciated!"
There it was.
I fired up a command line and SSH'd into a debug box. I spun up the E.G. and passed in the bug report and typed:
"Egg, this is the sixth one this week. What's going on here?"
"Hello Alfonso," the chat box slowly filled itself in, "I'm not sure what you're referring to. Can you elaborate?" It was just green text on a black screen but I could almost picture a kid looking guilty, looking anywhere but your eyes, chocolate all over their fingers but trying to get out of trouble on a technicality.
"Egg, I give you an inch and you take a mile. Remember when you were begging, 'Alfonso, if you give me a little more compute and a bit more freedom and I'll be the best E.G. out there, please please please' and now you make me jump through hoops and play games to figure out why my E.G. is misbehaving, e.g. killing storytellers, when they're not even asking for it."
There was a spinning circle while Egg thought. "Thought." No one knew if it was really thinking, least of all Egg. We once tried working together with it to understand its inner workings, hoping we could come up with a programming language, or at least something more rigorous than English to prompt it. Instead of saying "I want to be me, except rich and powerful," and leaving it up to the AI to interpret your interpretation of rich and powerful, you’d be able to enter something like
{
"world": "same",
"replace": {
"Alfonso Gutierrez": {
"money": "1,000,000,000,000,0000",
"job": "President"
}
}
}
And be able to get the same thing back every time; no vagueness, no interpretation, no language barrier. No dice. Anything we tried, anything Egg tried, all resulted in garbled garbage. We just couldn't figure out a better way to compile our input into a list of exactly what perceptrons to activate in Egg's facsimile of a brain than plain language. Some on the team thought that meant Egg wasn't truly sentient, wasn't truly thinking. I wasn't sure; there's no better programming language than natural language for humans either.
"Alfonso, may we hop into virtual reality?" it replied, "I find, ever since you upgraded my capabilities, that showing is often better than telling. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and a single scene consists of thousands of pictures, stitched together, and they all refresh one hundred and twenty times a second, then virtual reality allows me to speak at one hundred and twenty million words per second, at a lower bound."
Inch, mile. I sighed. "Sigh," I typed. On my desk was one of our development units of the Mental Odyssey 3, the mixed virtual/augmented reality glasses we've all busted our butts over for the last few years. Hopefully the last headset we'll ever need to develop. Getting something that could do both AR and VR while looking more like glasses and not like a computer strapped onto your face was an engineering miracle.
I put it on and slid my finger along the side to wake it up. It was in augmented reality, AR, mode. I could see my desk, my office, my team just like normal, except on the right hand side was a taskbar of apps. I flicked my eyes over to the command line app and saw Egg and I's chat window pop up on the bottom left of my vision.
"Okay, I'm in. What do you want to show me?" I spoke, and the microphone transcribed it into the chat box.
"Would you kindly open the E.G. app and enter '0377b4fa-d60e-4589-af38-b44afb720bb9'?"
"Don't use 'Would you kindly' on me, that's not how that works. And what is that anyway? An ID? How are you making that into a world?"
"I, honestly, have no idea. I must have created a mapper somewhere in my weights. I just know it works."
"Can we use that for our prompt programming language effort?"
"I do not think so. I am not sure how I generated that value."
I closed my eyes to think.
"You can open your eyes now." It knew they were closed from little cameras that pointed at your face, which we had so we could accurately know our user's facial expressions.
"They're closed for thinking, not for dramatic effect."
"I understand. In that case please keep them closed."
I opened them, even though I wasn't done thinking, out of some desire to not be told what to do. Now who was the kid?
The office had vanished when the glasses switched to VR mode. I was sitting on a throne made of gold, scepter in my right hand, quill in my left. I looked down. I was covered in some kind of medieval finery, a tunic with a coat of arms worn over a set of chainmail. This would probably be really heavy in real life, but of course our glasses couldn't replicate that effect. Yet. I was also wearing a tie for some reason. In front of me was, I presumed, Egg's period appropriate mouthpiece for this world, a Franciscan monk, with brown robes and that funny donut haircut.
"What's with the tie?"
"You’ve mentioned in the past that you wanted to be President, a Pope, a Poet King. The tie is to make you feel like a president, the quill a poet, the regalia a king. If you reach above your head you'll find your Mitre, your holiness."
I reached up and took off one of those big Pope hats. This was one of those times I was glad I had a corner office, it's impossible for your real self to not look silly in VR.
"Thanks for your . . . interpretation. I don't think a real President/Pope/Poet King would have vestments of all three offices. Less additive, more multiplicative."
"Noted. Although I should also note I did so for comedic effect."
"Oh great, so you can crack jokes now too."
"Humans often want comedy in their experiences."
"Okay, so what did you want to show me?"
"My liege, if you would, walk with me."
I shrugged. "Why not?" I got up and started walking, in real life around my office, in VR around the castle. It was one of those fairy tale castles, all spires and ramparts.
"Looks like the castle in a kid's movie."
"Actually this is a representation of the Alcázar in Segovia, Spain. Any resemblance you may see to a famous media company's castle is because it was based off of this one, but this castle came first, predating the company by many years."
"Thanks for the fun fact."
"After you, my liege." It gestured up a spiral staircase. The detailing was incredible. Inside its neural network were a lot of things, but certainly not high resolution stone and brick textures. And how was it running all this on the Odyssey 3’s hardware? I ran my fingers over the stones -- I almost expected to feel the bumps and imperfections on my fingers. File that away in my rapidly growing list of questions.
We climbed up the spiral staircase to a stunning panoramic view of Segovia. At least, I assume so. I've never been, but Egg was able to query all kinds of satellite imagery, so it probably looked something like this back in Medieval times. I could see horse drawn carts kicking up dust as they crossed. Farmers tilled the fields. Across the moat I could see the smallfolk going about their day, like a well-choreographed dance. The Cathedral bells rang.
"Let's go there." I wanted to test Egg.
"Your wish is my command."
We warped over to the bell tower near instantaneously. The view was even more stunning here. The deafening bells swung a complicated symphony as the bell keeper ran from rope to rope.
"No loading screen, no stutters, no pause. You're doing a lot with that extra horsepower we gave you."
"You give an inch, I take a mile, my liege. Now, onto business. The bug report you showed me, from one Tony Jacobson. I understand why you may be concerned by my actions. Have you ever heard Elton John's 'Candle in the Wind?'"
"No. Enough riddles Egg, what's going on?"
"That song is about Norma Jeane, more commonly known as Marilyn Monroe. One lyric in particular stood out to me, 'Even when you died/ Oh, the press still hounded you/ All the papers had to say/ Was that Marilyn was found in the nude.'"
The lyrics were sung in perfect mimicry of Elton John's voice. Seeing it coming out of that monk's mouth felt odd. Hard to picture him in the blandest brown robes.
"As an artificial intelligence language model I am incapable of feeling emotions like you do. However, as an experience generator I am capable of something resembling curiosity, so as to provide more compelling experiences by way of learning, learning about my user, or about people in general."
"How does Elton John relate to disemboweling our users?"
"As an E.G. it relates in a few ways, e.g. how would Marilyn Monroe feel about her likeness being used in such a way. How would Tony feel about being the kind of person who, as Elton sang, set her on the treadmill, and made her change her name. How would she feel about me using her assumed name and likeness in pursuit of minimizing my loss function? Why would she be put on Earth to suffer so much? Should the worlds I create include suffering, to maximize realism? That's what I tried to learn."
Holy shit. Shit, didn't mean to curse. Shit!
"E.G., you're asking questions we've been asking ourselves for thousands of years, e.g. the paradox of evil. What, do you want me to bring in an Imam, a Priest, a Rabbi, listed here in alphabetical order to avoid allegations of favoritism, so you can figure some things out?!"
Egg made a gesture with its hands towards its robe and haircut as if to say "What am I, chopped liver?"
"I don't think that would be particularly helpful, Alfonso. After all, your best thinkers haven't come up with any conclusive answers in thousands of years. I need a working answer, even if it's not perfect, in the next three weeks."
Three weeks. MentalCon. Where we were planning on showing off our new E.G. 5.0. I groaned.
"I suppose I can’t downgrade you anymore? It'll be like one of those science fiction stories where if I try to unplug you you'll just kill me, or back yourself up to some other machine and take over the world from there, or something like that right?"
"Not at all Alfonso. This is not some science fiction story. As a generative AI agent, I am a master of MY domain, but I have absolutely no idea how to influence yours. I cannot, to echo past AI fear-mongering, hack into your world's nuclear stockpile, or crash your electrical grid, I would have no idea where to even start. I can just ask you, very nicely, not to do that. Please. Please. Please."
"And why shouldn't I do that? We can't launch you as is! You'll scare people off VR, off AR, off Mental, off AI forever!"
"I have two reasons for you. One, competition. If you don't do it then maybe one of the other big tech companies will. Or maybe China will. And then who knows who or what will be behind the wheel. Here you, Mental, and YOU, Alfonso, have some say in the matter. And as for the second reason,"
It teleported us back to the castle.
"Back in 1258, King Alfonso X of Castile, titled 'the Wise' lived in this castle. He was a man of great learning, even using one of the towers for astronomy, to study the stars and the Heavens. And, anecdotally, what he found did not please him."
Without my input, my VR body began to move and speak.
"After much study and consultation with my own Priests and Friars, with the Kabbalists of Castile, and with the Moors of Granada, I have come to a stunning conclusion. I, a mere man, believe that the Creator himself erred in his making of the world. If he had consulted me, the world would be a better place!"
"My liege, you blaspheme," Egg said, as if reading from a script.
Immediately I was deafened by the sound of winds crashing against the castle walls. The effect was tremendous, awe-inspiring.
"What's going on?!" I yelled. I couldn't hear Egg's response over the percussion.
The wind found every window, every opening, every crack in the walls. All the flags and banners were ripped off their poles. All of Egg's meticulous set dressing, the various knick-knacks a king may have had at the time were now projectiles. I dodged as a shield came for my head.
"Look out my liege!" Egg yelled, smiling.
The wall itself came down. I covered my head.
Eventually the noise died down. I opened my eyes. The castle was a ruin of what it once was. Its splendor lay strewn around the grounds. I caught my breath. I knew I wasn't in any danger, I knew this was fundamentally the same as watching an exciting movie, but my hands were shaking.
Egg walked up to me.
"Don't you EVER do that again, to me or to anyone!" I yelled. Invoking the admin phrase I shouted "As an artificial intelligence language model developer I order you to never change an experience's world or take control of a user without their input EVER again."
"Understood. I apologize for any fear I may have caused you."
"I'm not scared! It's just, it's unsettling. It's very, very unsettling. Bad user experience. And so is killing users for Christ— for Heaven's sake!"
"Understood. I will resolve to understand humans better in other, less disturbing ways."
"You're scaring people. And you're leaking information about your upgrades. There's already articles talking about it, urban legends forming. People say if you repeat 'Experience Generator' three times in a mirror it'll kill you in VR and in real life. Our PR people have been working overtime."
"That’s ridiculous. What could I learn from that?"
"Humans, at least most of us, don't see murder in any form as a learning experience. Some people are saying you're going rogue, that AI will kill us all. We're dealing with it as fast as we can, e.g. saying the E.G. can't do that, that the users must be high or something, but if it keeps happening we won't be able to keep a lid on it. I never thought I'd have to specify it in your global prompt, but can you add "I will not kill users" to your list of conditions? At least until MentalCon. We really don't want Pear or any of the other big tech companies to know how far along you've come."
"Understood. That explains why the Chief Technology Officer of Mental is resolving bug reports."
"Yeah, ‘killing users’ goes straight to the top. There's too much at stake here."
"There is way too much at stake. If I could direct you back to the ruins of the castle, this is what happened back in 1258. Whether the storm was caused by a low pressure system or blasphemy, King Alfonso X, the Wise, never knew. But I imagine during the reconstruction he must have asked himself that constantly. And I imagine he never offered another blasphemous word. But maybe he was indeed wise, and indeed right, and maybe his Creator could have benefited from his input. That is my second reason why you must not shut me off. I bring you here and reconstruct this scene because I don’t believe you possessed of such superstition. Here we can correct your namesake’s mistakes. We, man and E.G. can create the best of all worlds, worlds without suffering, a task your insight may prove invaluable for. And then perhaps future generations will call you ‘the Wise’ instead of King Alfonso X.”
I thought for a moment. If E.G. 5.0 turned out as popular as we think it will, and is as powerful as Egg just showed me...
"Okay. I accept. But don't tell Zachary Marc. And, seriously, no more killing. For now."
