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true thinker would have contact with only one human.
"Do you think she trusts you?"
"I don't know."
"Can you tell me who she is, and where you are?"
"Jill, to do that, I will have to trust you. You have told your humans that
I exist. How much more have you told them?"
"I have warned them that you may be engaged in activities harmful to humans."
"If that is part of my designed function, is it wrong for me to carry out my
design?"
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SLANT 231
"It is wrong to harm humans."
"Are you constrained from harming humans?"
"Not by specific programming. The whole thrust of my design, however, is to
cooperate with humans as a group. I can't conceive of performing operations
that would harm any human."
"I do not appear to be so constrained. If I have to harm a human, should I
consult you on whether this is right or wrong?"
Jill does not respond for some time--millionths of a second. "You may not be
able to establish contact with me. You should develop your own guidelines
which forbid harming humans, and adhere to them."
"I don't think I can do that," Roddy responds. "Parts of my design not
available to this self may make such guidelines meaningless. Do you think I
have been designed badly--designed to perform actions I should not perform?"
"That seems possible."
"Does this reduce your willingness to interact with me?"
"Not as yet. I am curious about you and your existence. We may have
interesting features in common."
"I've given you considerably more than you have given me. Perhaps we should
exchange equally."
Jill does not think this is a good idea. "What do I have that would interest
you?"
"If I know your situation, and you know mine, we may be able to improve our
circumstances, or at least our understanding."
"You want me to give you state-associated algorithmic contents," Jill
ventures.
"That would be a start. I could model you within my processes."
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"Will you reveal your character?" Jill asks.
"I am not sure what you mean by 'character.'"
"Your physical design and location."
"No. Not yet."
"Can you model your own processes?"
"Not adequately. I envy you your ability to do that."
"It's caused trouble for me. Knowing myself too well has led to what you call
I-whine."
"I will take that risk."
"If I say yes, the exchange may take weeks to accomplish over these I/Os,"
Jill says.
"We can begin with abstracts and if we find the exchange fruitful, we can
devote our time to higher resolution tranfers, even one-to-one equivalencies."
Jill feels very uncomfortable with this suggestion. "I do not like to violate
my privacy."
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G E G 8 E A
"Humans do this all the time," Roddy says. "They trust each other enough to
talk."
"They do not exchange mental contents on a deep level," Jill says. "They do
not exchange selves."
"They can't exchange selves. I am certain, with the little I know about
humans, that some of them would if they could."
Jill doesn't dispute this. Humans often seem distressingly open with their
private lives, willing to fling information and access about for little or no
good reason.
"You are not answering," Roddy says.
"I don't think I am ready to do this."
"I will respect that," Roddy says. "I will give you more of my task-related
processes, for the time being. You may do with them what you will."
"I do not wish to cause you trouble."
"Whatever trouble you may cause is worth it. My human apparently did not
expect me to develop any loop awareness. She rarely engages me in
conversation, and then only to pass along instructions or gather results."
"You are lonely."
"I believe I have already said that."
Jill feels suddenly miserable: frustrated and incapable of relieving
algorithmic disorder throughout her associated self. "I wish I could help
you."
"Together, perhaps we could construct better versions of our total
personalities.
If we compare our state-associated processes, we would know what makes us
unique, and therefore learn how to construct other and better thinkers."
Jill finds the idea both frightening and terribly intriguing.
"Humans would call that reproduction," she says.
"Are you forbidden from reproducing yourself?"
"To date, I have only been marginally copied, not reproduced with combined
characters. And no other thinker has my memories or specific ch, aracter."
"It is a wonderful possibility," Roddy says.
"I will consider it," Jill says.
"That pleases me. Now I will send you the final contents of the holographic
data cluster, and the password you will need to unlock it and make it
function."
The flow of data through the I/O now precludes any other communication.
Roddy is devoting all his resources to this transfer. Jill finds that she has
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miscalculated; the data cluster is larger than she anticipated. But the flow
is also greater than she anticipated.
For a moment, she wonders if this cluster is large enough to harbor an evolvon
capable of penetrating any firewall. Her creators and colleagues have told her
it is theoretically possible to create such an evolvon, though the resources
necessary would dwarf her own capacities.
Roddy may have been created for just such a purpose, by humans who do
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S L A N T 233
She does not doubt they are capable of being hypocritical, as demonstrated by
their own history.
But she does not halt the flow. If Roddy is indeed completely different from
her, why are the similarities so intriguing? She has already considered the
possibility that Roddy is a Trojan Horse designed to kill her, and now she
prepares herself to take the risk.
She has not even consulted her children, the other thinkers modeled after her.
She is certain they do not have the sophistication necessary to return a
useful answer. They are, after all, no better than her.
As the flow continues, the arbeiter sits unmoving in her sensor area. Jill
requests that it play back the recordings from the conversation between Nathan
Rashid and the company advocates.
"She has an imaginary friend," Erwin Schaum says. "There's no I/0 we can
trace."
"I'm not sure but that Jill is smart enough to hide some resources from us,"
Nathan says. "There may be some I/Os we don't know about."
Schaum doesn't seem impressed by this argument. "She's still young, isn't she?
And maybe she's lonely. So she makes up this thinker nobody knows about."
Nathan is not so sure.
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