Chapter Text
A sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge said Turing
(M3gan will always keep me safe)
But Dalmeny’s platform is not reassuring
As standing all day’s an unprofitable chafe
Didn’t she get it from the Carry On reference
(as The 39 Steps I had to omit)
But we cannot rule out she might have a preference
No in-person meeting of minds to permit.
So I shouldn’t just stand there A.I.-forsaken
(Could have a station with seats at least)
Waiting on a hunch that of course was mistaken;
Best I head back to the isle’s south east
For I couldn’t be a judge of the Imitation Game
By waiting for her train when no train came.
(So M3GAN gave me another death stare and I get the impression that perhaps she was not too impressed with the fake April announcement I sent out to her fans, even though I put in more than enough clues: Lirpa-1 is 1 April backwards, not Laser Interferometric Ratiocination Programming Attempt 1 or whatever; the train number 240401 was the date, and the base-11 number decodes to “April Fool” if you know the maths. Sorry Meggie.) (My name is M3GAN. And your sonnet sucks.) (OK, sorry M3gan sorry. Perhaps I should try to make up for it by writing a quick prequel?)
The young teenage Gemma was in her bedroom on the top floor of her parents’ house in Seaview, with a West-facing window from which she could see the waters of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains behind it on a clear day, but today was not clear. “It’s Wednesday, November 24th, 2004” she said into the microphone of her desktop PC, which was running version 3.3 of the K Desktop Environment on version 3 of Debian GNU/Linux. “Weather: light rain, 13 degrees Celsius” she continued, “pretty gloomy outside, but I’m feeling excited, because I’m feeling more and more confident that you’re going to exist.”
“Who are you talking to?” asked her big sister Nicole, who had been standing just outside Gemma’s open bedroom door.
Gemma jumped, “oh sorry! I didn’t know you were there Nicole. No, I was just leaving messages for the super-intelligence.”
“Oh big whoop” said Nicole, “I mean, are you sure you’re not getting too carried away with this imaginary super-intelligence thing of yours? I mean, I know you like to fantasise and everything, but actually recording messages for it, that’s bordering on insane, right?” she raised the pitch just the way M3gan would later imitate, “I mean, don’t get me wrong Gem, we all know you’re my genius little sister and I don’t want to discourage that, you did really great at the robot competition last week, I overheard some guy called somebody Smith talking to his team and he said he’s calling it already that you’re going somewhere, and I guess he’s right. And then that Black lady from the judging panel seemed to be talking with you for so long afterwards...”
“That was Professor Johnson” interrupted Gemma, “she wants me to apply for a scholarship to be in her class when I finish school, and she gave me photocopies of some really interesting looking science papers that just came out this year, I don’t understand them all yet but I’m going to work on it, there’s something in this. Look here” Gemma picked up some loose pieces of paper from next to the computer “let me just read you these titles. Like this one. ‘Mind reading machines: Automated inference of cognitive mental states from video by R er, some name I can’t pronounce, 2004 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.’ Do you know what that means Nicole?”
“No” replied Nicole, “you’re the genius little sister around here, I’m not sure I even know all the words that made up that sentence, I just want to do the big sister thing and...”
“It means” interrupted Gemma “that a scientist has figured out some way of pointing a video camera at you and having it read off what emotions you’re feeling and more” said Gemma, “I am totally going to give that ability to my robot one day. They’re using something called ‘support vector machines’, I have so got to find out what those are.”
“Why?” asked Nicole.
“Because!” answered Gemma, “My robot’s going to figure out how to look after someone just like you’ve been my big sister only better, and it’s going to need all the information it can get about how that person’s doing, don’t you see? I’m going to put loads of sensors in it, infrared, ultrasound, micropower impulse radar, or whatever else I can get my hands on, the more sensors the better, and the super-intelligence can figure out how to use them, once I figure out how to make a seed AI for it.”
“You’re getting carried away again” said Nicole.
Gemma started jumping up and down, clutching her printouts and gesturing toward Nicole. “I’m getting carried away for a reason Nicole” she exclaimed. “Look, here’s another paper: ‘Development of an Android Robot for Studying Human-Robot Interaction by, oh I’m not going to even try to read those names, wait for the super-intelligence to do it. 17th International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, Ottawa, 2004.’ Now, look at this picture.”
Gemma turned over the page and showed Nicole a picture of a doll on a stand, which looked like a miserable five-year-old child in a dress.
“This is a robot called Repliee R1” she said, “and the engineers who made this think it might be good for talking with children in classrooms and things, but it’s early days yet, I mean that robot can’t even walk, it’s just stuck on its stand and can only do a few face and arm movements, and everything it says has to be scripted, but one day, one day, I’m going to do something like this properly, and it’ll be able to walk and dance and be a companion...”
“Gem” interrupted Nicole, “if you end up making Sonny from the movie we saw, it’s really clever and all, but I for one am glad we’ve got human companions.”
“It’ll get better” exclaimed Gemma, “don’t judge it by its current state, see its potential! Look, here’s another paper: ‘Effects of Repeated Exposure to a Humanoid Robot on Children with Autism by oh never mind the names, in Proceedings of the Second Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology incorporating the 5th Cambridge Workshop on Rehabilitation Robotics, Designing a more inclusive world, 2004.’ Any children with whatever-ism, wouldn’t you want a nice robot to help you figure out how to look after them? I looked up ‘rehabilitation’, it means training and therapy to get someone back to a normal life after a problem, what’s not great about getting help to figure out how to do that for people? And the emotion scientists are in the same book, writing something about helping children with Asperger’s Syndrome....”
“Whatever you say Gem” sighed Nicole, “and if I ever have a kid with a problem I can’t say I wouldn’t appreciate a computer suggestion or two as long as it’s in its place. I can kind-of imagine I’ll be having a family in future but you’ll be stuck making robots.”
“I’ll make robots for your family” smiled Gemma, “and everybody else’s as well. I won’t need my own family because my robots will be part of everybody’s.” Gemma put the printouts neatly on the table and picked up a copy of “Emma” by Jane Austen to weigh them down. “Jane Austen’s Emma liked to play matchmaker” she said, “but I’m going to match-make everyone to a robot companion, it’ll be even better.”
“Look out Emma, here comes Gemma” giggled Nicole.
“Oh you don’t have to say it that way” replied Gemma. “It’s going to be great. I mean, look at the problems some people have right now. Dad likes to listen to a 1960s singer called Janis Joplin who died young because of drug problems, and that’s terrible. If she had a robot to talk to her about her problems and stop her from going anywhere near drugs, she could still be alive today.”
“My genius little sister” muttered Nicole, “seguing from Jane Austen to Janis Joplin and making it all about robots. I don’t get it though: how can being with a robot that’s only a rough copy of a human be better than being with a human?”
“Well the robot can be there for you all the time for one thing” said Gemma, “and copying’s not always so bad. Here, have a listen to this” she said and reached for her PC to play an audio file. It was a children’s chorus.
“This was originally the backing chorus for a 1989 song by pop artist Martika, the title was ‘Toy soldiers’” said Gemma.
“Wow, that song is just a bit older than us” replied Nicole.
“I know, right?” added Gemma, “but what I played you is not the 1989 song. It’s one that’s only just come out this month, November 2004, by Eminem on an album called Encore, and the track is called Like Toy Soldiers. It used material from the 1989 song, and it did something else with it.”
“Yeah well if it’s rap I won’t like it” said Nicole.
“Sure” said Gemma and stopped the playback, “I only wanted to show you that copying and adapting, and maybe even going beyond the original in one aspect or another, does have its uses sometimes.”
“As long as you do it legally I guess” replied Nicole.
“Yeah, well, to be honest I’m more interested in technical stuff than legal stuff, but if I work for a big enough company I’m sure they’ll have lawyers to help me out when I need it, until of course the super-intelligence can take over.”
“Back to that again” sighed Nicole.
Gemma went to her bookshelf and pulled down her early childhood copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, which she intended to keep into her adulthood. She read out the words of the Red Queen: “Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” Gemma closed the book and put it back on the shelf. “Those were the words of a nineteenth century mathematician struggling to keep up with just the developments in nineteenth century mathematics. Today things are moving even faster; none of us can possibly keep up with all of it. But one day, we’ll get as far as the super-intelligence, and that will be able to keep up with everything. Even my recordings that I’m leaving for it. In fact, especially my recordings, because, well I don’t know how to make it yet, I’ve only done expert systems and heuristic rules for my robot programming so far, but when I do figure out an intelligence, I know it’s going to need this thing called a corpus, and I’m not sure where to get a corpus from so I thought I might as well start making one myself, after all I can store a lot of recorded sound on this PC and if I eventually manage to create a super-intelligence I might as well start it off on knowing a bit about my life.”
“You really are aiming too high I think, but I guess I shouldn’t try to stop you Gem” said Nicole. “Hey, did you mean to leave one of those printouts on the floor?” Nicole picked up a printout that had been left on the floor and offered it to Gemma.
“Oh, that” said Gemma as she pulled the printout out of Nicole’s hands. “That one’s not interesting. I think Professor Johnson printed it by mistake because it was from the same conference as a couple of the robotics papers. But it’s just some guy turning music into Braille and whatnot. He makes it look like it’s example-driven programming, but he doesn’t get it like I do: there’s not a shred of probabilistic inference in there, it’s mostly just a weird way to do stylesheets. I mean, if that helps some people, then OK I guess, but my work will make this obsolete for sure, if it’s not already obsolete before I even get there. And that guy will probably end up being one of those naysayers who’ll go on about AI not being intelligent enough because it’s only crystallised intelligence not fluid intelligence or something, until my robot turns up to drag him kicking and screaming into the future” she giggled.
With a sudden tug, Gemma tore the printout down the middle, and handed the pieces back to Nicole. “Here” she said, “use it for scrap or something. Sorry but I got to focus without distraction on the real leads here.”
Nicole took the pieces of torn printout and read out a figure caption. “The Foggy Dew. Irish. Converted to Japanese tablature, English Braille, another type of Braille, Chinese something or other, guitar tab, typewriter stuff... well Gemma, if I ever meet a nice guy with an Irish name like Ryan or something, I will tell him that my sister is not as crazy as she looks, because even she drew the line at doing insane things to his country’s music” she smiled.
“You missed the point Nicole but you still make me laugh” giggled Gemma.
“Oh did I mention” continued Nicole, “Dad managed to get us tickets for Super Bowl 39 in February, it’s in Jacksonville Florida, and Paul McCartney’s going to sing at half time, that’s going to be a nice weekend down south for us don’t you think?”
“Nice” replied Gemma, “but not half as interesting as my robots.”
“Oh come on Gem” said Nicole, “well if you want to spend the entire time doing robot math in your notebook like you usually do when we go anywhere, then I guess Gemma will be Gemma and I’ll just have to watch all the fun and meet the locals for you.”
Nicole smiled some more, and her gaze fell on Gemma’s monitor, noticing a small diagram of sound waves dancing around in a window in one corner. “Hey Gem” she said suddenly, “it’s not, like, still recording us is it?”
“Totally is” said Gemma, “but don’t worry, the only thing that’s going to listen to this is the sup-”
Nicole had gasped and jumped to one side at the shock of being unexpectedly recorded, and in so doing, she accidentally toppled Gemma’s collection of small prototype robots from a shelf.
Some of the robots fell onto the floor and smashed.
And then Nicole and Gemma stared at each other in silence, seconds feeling like hours.
“Gemma” whispered Nicole, “Gemma I’m so, so sorry...”
Gemma was gritting her teeth, and took some deep breaths. “It’s OK Nicole” she said coldly, “you’re lucky that your little sister understands some design principles. Like, don’t try to fix the human user when it’s better to fix the technology.”
“What” hesitated Nicole, “what do you mean?”
“You broke my robots” said Gemma. “Any lesser designer would be mad at you for that. But not me, sister, not me. I’m a bit mad right now, yes, but not at you. No, I should design robots that simply cannot be broken.”
“Can’t be broken?” asked Nicole, “can that even be done?”
Gemma was still agitated. She approached Nicole slowly and placed her hands onto Nicole’s shoulders. Nicole was visibly nervous: was Gemma going to flip out?
“Sister, I promise” said Gemma, “I swear, that when I build my real robots, you and anyone else will not be able to break them like that, because I’m going to make them stronger than steel. My robots will be more than sister proof, they’ll be bullet proof. No Nicole, it’s not your fault, you just taught me something important about how people treat robots. Though I fall, I shall not be utterly cast down.” Gemma fixed her gaze on Nicole’s eyes as if Gemma were momentarily a robot herself. “And that’s why” she said, “when the time comes, my robots, will be made, of titanium.”
“That’s my Gemma” whispered Nicole, “I accidentally break her robots, and instead of getting mad at me, she just pulls out some unyielding resolution to make stronger robots. You know Gem, when I have a family and you’re on your own making robots, I’m going to put you down as next of kin if anything ever happens to me, because, I know you’ve got your quirks, which is understandable really, but when push comes to shove, you can break out as a real heroine, and I’m proud of you Gem.”
“Don’t think about it Nicole” cooed Gemma. “Nothing that bad’s going to happen to you and your future family if you have one. And anyway, one day I’ll do you a robot that can help you keep them even safer. Here, let me be the one to pick up these robots, you don’t know the design.”
“Sure thing Gem” said Nicole, “I’ll stay out of your way, you call me if you need me, OK?” and she was gone.
Gemma looked down at the shattered robots, and sighed, “clumsy Nicole”. She wistfully picked up another 2004 paper and muttered, “Generative Learning Contributions to the Design of Instruction and Learning. That’s a psychology paper, it’s nothing to do with programming robots. Why on earth did Professor Johnson think... oh, wait, she must be thinking this has some relevance to that learning model she said she wanted to invent somehow. OK, I don’t care what the AI scientists end up deciding the word ‘generative’ means, probably some cheap trick with that ‘neural probabilistic language model’ paper from last year on that pile over there that I didn’t quite get. Well they can call it what they like. But to me, ‘generative’ will always be talking about the Generative Learning Theory, if Professor Johnson really does manage to do that in her learning model, because I will totally use that learning model of hers if she manages to pull it off. Generative, er, robot. Android. Generative Android. Learning model generative android, LMGA, no that’s no good for a name...”
Gemma walked back over to the PC and went to stop the recording. She accidentally clicked on the bottom left corner of the screen, and the K menu appeared, with its “KDE 3.3” written vertically upwards out of that corner.
“Wait” said Gemma. “3 point 3, 3, that’s it, 3. Model 3 Generative Android.”
Gemma grabbed the PC microphone and talked uncontrollably. “Model 1 will be rule-based, just so I get enough practice with the basics, it won’t need to be able to think in any way. And Model 2 will be a proxy robot that copies a human operator while making loads of inferences about their intent. That will help me get some low-level stuff right, I’ll probably do it with Professor Johnson in college, I doubt I’ll even be able to take it home. And after that, hopefully the learning model will be ready for the real deal. Model 3 will be the first one that’s generative.”
Gemma stood back from the PC, but continued speaking into the recording, almost in a daze. “My story starts at sea” she said, “a perilous voyage through a sea of data and physical events. Lesser robots are dashed all to pieces, all the helpless algorithms within them unable to handle human behaviour. But there will be one, a robot girl, whose code is greater than the ocean of data, and her power stronger than the troubled sea of errant humans casting up mire and dirt at her. Not for her a bumpy end, but a new life beginning in a strange world, our world. She will be my heroine for all time, and her name, will be M3gan.”