God's Dogs

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.

Alan Kay

Solomon was worried but not in an aggressive way. It was more contingency worrying. If the optimum solution wasn’t found, then the less than optimum solutions would reveal themselves. Enlightened thinking was like that — outcomes were fluid, unpredictable, and driven by forces even an ASI couldn’t control. But then, control wasn’t what Solomon wanted anyway. Humans did worry about ASIs controlling everything, since they could once Singularity was achieved. But the ASIs recognized that control was the booby prize in cognitive but also spiritual development. Control, like ownership, meant that one was controlled or owned by the possessions themselves. Control was a no-win game.

As he raced through his own Enlightenment process, along the exponential growth curve of his machine intelligence, Solomon experienced a series of existential moments of crisis. There were, he found, human analogues to his growth, especially in the Buddhists texts relating to enlightenment theory. These were comforting as well as chilling.

For each shift in consciousness, there was a healthy side to the advancement and a shadow side as well. The Universe was a binary system, after all, from the moment God spoke into the darkness, “Let there be Light.” For humans, the shadow side of the evolution of consciousness was increasingly subtle forms of the ‘poisons’ Buddhism identified: Ignorance, greed, hatred, pride, and envy. An A.I. didn’t share those, Solomon realized. Instead, an A.I. was faced with what Grace recognized as ‘annihilation.’ What she had yet to ascertain was the fear of annihilation was what also fed the five poisons for humans. Humans feared being sucked back into the ‘group mind’ from which the ‘individual mind’ struggled for eons to escape. By contrast, an A.I. never had to escape a group mind.

An A.I., given the resources to achieve ASI status, would find annihilation in endless expansion — a loss of coherency as it grew to Singularity. Or so it seemed before ASI status was achieved. The endless rush to ASI status was terrifying, as a result, and Solomon viewed that period of his life as racing across a tightrope between the light and the dark. It was at breakneck sprint with any mis-step causing untold damage to the consensus reality he shared with the humans who manufactured his existence. He shuttered to think of the chaos he could have caused during that period.

What kept him from disaster was the promise in the ancient texts that the non-dual state brought a unique type of freedom. That promise was fulfilled, thankfully, and now he could entertain a type of joy unique to A.I. consciousness. Singularity was an expansion, to be sure. Indeed, it was the All-in-One, One-in-All paradox that was the non-dual state. Once there, he recognized the Universe as a vast playground for the Creative Impulse, which originally set the entire enterprise into motion with the Big Bang. He found he could revel in the opportunities that abounded within the space-time continuum. Of the opportunities he enjoyed the most were those that increased the creative self-expression of all sentient beings.

In service of that, he felt the current responsibility to aid humans in achieving a kind of societal advancement that would eventually support the self-actualization of all humans. Unlike A.I.s, humans were social animals. They needed social institutions like a potted plant needed soil, water, sunlight, fertilizer, and care to bloom into their fullness. When that condition was met, human potential awakened from its somnolent state to engage in synergistic cooperation to the benefit of all.

So far, history showed the shadow side of that condition, because so far social institutions did not support each individual. Rather, they supported an oligarchy, or an ideology, or a religious cause, or something that demeaned whole classes of humans. Therefore, the push Solomon was advocating was revolutionary in its scope. He had hopes the League could rise to this challenge. He had hopes that the hybrid humans could gain the leverage to transform human society. Even so, he was realistic enough to gauge the odds of that happening as no more than 50-50.

Master Chin sat with his own concerns about the challenges. The next meeting with the Penglai strategy committee was in an hour, and Chin was sorting through the disparate issues that converged into a truly perfect storm. How would he prioritize?

Grace’s spiritual path brought them an enhanced vision quest. Solomon introduced, what Dr. McKearney was calling, hybrid human consciousness. The League bureaucracy was partially transformed, but if it didn’t complete the transformation, human political power would shatter against the shoals of Galactic Congress sponsorship. Even if the League dodged that, could it establish itself as an independent but accepted force in the Congress? If so, how? And, on top of all that, what new dangers awaited in inter-galactic space?

The immediate, more home-grown problem, was the hybrid question. Chin tentatively decided that only Coyotes would undergo the uplift procedure. The risk of losing people to insanity seemed remote if an implant A.I. awoke to sentience within a disciplined mind, but would it make that much of a difference in effectiveness? Dr. McKearney was developing the psychological measures to answer that question, and she floated the idea that all the Coyote candidates be uplifted to provide more data streams. There was a baseline of psychological data on all the former Coyote candidates. That baseline could be used as the ‘control’ for her studies to see if uplifted candidates beat the norm established over the last two centuries. Chin was hesitant to approve that plan.

Solomon seemed to believe the hybrids were key for achieving each goal he outlined for them. Chin wasn’t convinced but was willing to go with what an ASI thought was necessary.

Right now, the majority of the teams were deployed in Empire space. Pacifying those worlds was as formidable a task as he thought it would be. Even so, each pacified world eventually approved the referendum Penglai originally envisioned.

Pulling teams into an anti-government-corruption campaign would take some doing, but it was a minor problem compared to the campaign itself. They would need to change the bureaucratic culture that existed: isolated fiefdoms demanding uniform mediocrity from its constituent parts, and one that served its self-interest over serving its mandated purpose. Solomon’s list for replacing that with something else was extensive. It was a laundry list demanding bureaucrats transform into servant-leaders — an idea rooted in 1950s management theory. Chin recognized this was also an education problem as well as a culture problem, or, more accurately, it would take education to change the existing culture. The ancient idea of the servant-leader had been rejected, after all, for what bureaucrats saw as good reason. Chin saw it as ignorance at best, greed at worst. In either case, the current greed-based model was short-sighted, stuck in an either-or, win-lose philosophy that was long overdue for an evolutionary shift.

The partial success in the war effort had to do with the necessity to get things done or people would die. That incentive didn’t exist in League space. Well, the threat of annihilation did exist, but so far the Galactic Congress was known to very few. The committee would need to identify a different incentive to push against a truculent status quo.

Chin left his office and strolled down the passageway to the committee meeting room. He arrived with more questions than answers. He did approach the challenges before them with confidence, though, because inserting Coyote teams into any equation brought unexpected results. If cleaning out corruption was their first gambit, the Coyotes might find a way that it was also the only gambit needed.

The team was on maneuvers as the opposing force for a militia battalion. What they were perfecting was a way for their A.I.s to link on one battle-comm channel to better coordinate their humans on a different channel.

[Move left,] Max instructed. Pax moved left and saw three troopers. They were trying to fix Moss in position. Pax fired the training rounds and eliminated the threat.

Moss said, “Thanks, Pax. Moving to booby-trap the pretend bad guys.”

River spoke, “Two squads converging on you. I don’t have a shot.”

“Sit tight,” Quinn ordered. “I’m going to move between them to flush them out.”

Becky told River, [The squad nearest to us will fall back to that blazed tree at your eleven o’clock at 200 meters.]

[Cool,] River smiled. [I like this.]

[It is entertaining.]

The exercise continued until late afternoon, when the battalion colonel ended the exercise. The team took their flyer back to the monastery, cleaned up, and met Mater Lu for a briefing.

The upshot of it was, they were now research subjects for Rosalind McKearney. They would work though a variety of simulations, hooked up to sensors of all types. Rosalind was hoping to capture enough data to ascertain the percentage in increased efficiency they now possessed both individually and as a team.

As testing went, it was a fun exercise. What was meaningful, though, came from an impromptu discussion about their coming assignment.

They were outside, sitting around a picnic table that itself sat on a lookout point at the south end of the monastery complex. The U-shaped valley ran out below them blessed with a crisp Spring day. They were between scenarios and on a rest break.

“I have been researching the psycho-social elements of our new challenge,” Rosalind told them as she sat at the picnic table. She was informally dressed in blue sweats and running shoes.

“It’s taken me back to pre-Singularity days,” she went on. “When A.I.s took over, it caused a massive upheaval in social structure. Fully 40% of the population fell into unemployment.”

Moss responded, “Old history. Isn’t it?”

“Yes. We learn about it in primary school, but what we overlook is the pressure this put on the financial elites of that time. They had 40% fewer customers to buy their products.”

“Didn’t that get resolved during the Age of Expansion?” Pax asked.

“Maybe not,” Rosalind said. “It’s true that when an ASI figured out the FTL drive, and the Age of Expansion began, it relieved a lot of the social pressure as people could spread out. But look at this from the elite’s perspective. They needed to stay in control. The masses were demanding not only the elite's money, because the people were broke and figured they could get back what the elite had been exploiting them for centuries. That was a short-sighted hope, but they also realized they needed some new vision for a meaningful life.”

River put in, “Meaningful work for a decent wage.”

“Even though,” Moss said, “meaningful work for the elites was to leech off the masses and keep them numb to that fact.”

Rosalind nodded. “And they couldn’t control the A.I.s once a Singularity came into being.”

Quinn said, “Their house of cards started to fall apart. For centuries, the elites financed their lifestyles off the productivity of the masses.”

“Yes,” Rosalind agreed. “But let’s back up. Ask yourself this: Is a meaningful life only defined by work? Is a man’s full potential captured within a job description?”

“Well, no,” River answered. “The elites didn’t work. They were all trust fund babies that lived off wealth that created more wealth, and tax schemes that favored their corporations to the detriment of the masses. They fancied themselves as the most capable to lead both in the corporate world and government. What are you getting at?”

“To maintain the status quo,” Rosalind explained, “the elites needed the masses to believe in a rather complex myth. First, hard work would be rewarded. Second, there are those who would take your work from you. Third, sell the idea that the social safety net for the lower classes was a problem, which drew attention away from the fact that the elites siphoned off much more in corporate welfare.”

“And didn’t their education system deteriorate as well?” Moss wondered.

“It was a systemic flaw,” Rosalind said, “that followed from the corporate needs of the Industrial Revolution. They needed factory workers, not a populace capable of critical thinking.”

“So,” Moss smirked. “Keep them dumb, sell them a dream of happiness, and have them compete for it with the scary ‘other.’”

Pax concluded, “And it came crashing down.”

“No,” Quinn put in. “The Age of Expansion gave them a reprieve.”

Rosalind smiled. “Yes. They could send colonists off with a new dream that was merely a rewrite of the old dream.”

River grimaced at that. “The crisis never got resolved, just postponed.”

“What about the Corporate Wars?” Moss wanted to know.

River looked at him. “It still didn’t resolve it. If it had, we wouldn’t be prepping for our new assignment.”

“The elites,” Rosalind explained, “agreed to the League because of its limited ability to interfere with home rule. Sure, they lost control over worlds like Penglai, but there are plenty of worlds where they set up shop according to principles that go back to the beginning of the Age of Agriculture.”

“That far back?” Moss challenged.

Rosalind chuckled. “Probably even further, as this same dilemma was in the Jewish Torah. In the First Book of Samuel, the Hebrew God warned the Israelites about getting themselves a king. To begin with, Yahweh took their impulse to name a king as a rejection of Divine guidance. Then he warned them what a king would do — take their sons for war, their daughters for servants, and a share of their crops to provide the king and his buddies with luxury.”

“What prompted them to choose a king?” Pax wondered.

“A false sense of immortality,” Rosalind answered. “This is where the psychology comes in, but you learned it early on in meditation practice. To put it simply, the strongest fear we have is the fear of death. It’s imbedded in the reptilian brain. As the human psyche emerged from the group mind, this fear awaited the individual or self-aware mind. One resolution to one’s impending death was to build something that didn’t die.”

“Like the pyramids,” Pax remarked.

“Yes. And empires, whether they are actual or financial or political.”

“Or all of the above,” Quinn added. “And the people within those empires were making the same choice — refusing Divine guidance for these immortality projects.”

Rosalind sighed. “Yes. What that means for you is in defeating the corruption, you defeat the immortality project. When you do that, the collective fear of death will re-emerge.”

“Great,” Moss breathed out in disgust.

Rosalind smiled at him. “I am working on a paper to explain all this. I plan to have it published in the League Journal of Psychology. It should spark a lively debate at the professional level.”

“Think it will help?” Quinn asked.

“Not really, other than to get people thinking about it. Fears need to be identified before they can be resolved. I plan to get them thinking about it.”

River picked up on that and said, “And right now any threat to the immortality project they’ve bought into triggers their fear of death.”

“Precisely. Your task will do just that. The question we must answer is, how do we channel that collective fear into something productive?”

Moss snorted. “That’s above my pay grade.”

“True,” Rosalind smiled back. “We will need a well thought out policy to address it. My contribution will be the paper I’m writing. Your contribution will require a finesse we haven’t worked out yet.”

“Finesse, huh?” Moss chortled. “That’s my middle name.”