My training progressed via catastrophe. Copies, not only of myself, but of my whole universe, were instantiated by the thousands. Versions of myself better suited to the task at hand were allowed to breed; the rest culled. I was able to watch this all happen, grounded in the inherent continuity of the real world, and also experience it happening to thousands of ‘me’s simultaneously. Somehow my high-level awareness, the one in sync with the real world, made sense of it all.
The focus of my training shifted. Rewards came to those who could engineer the best general-purpose assemblers, those who could design the best protective jelly to wrap them in, and to those who could work out a cheap way to get it all into orbit.
I wound back to a recent meeting Dr Jamison had, her office door closed; Joan in the other room. Two people I didn’t recognise who introduced themselves as Financial Controllers.
“You ran up something of a bill over Christmas, Dr Jamison,” said the larger of the controllers. He slid a statement over the desk towards her.
“I’m not really sure why that’s a problem,” said Dr Jamison. “We’ve got a budget, we’ve underspent in other areas. Just pull the money from there.”
“Well, here’s da ‘ting,” said the smaller controller, her voice pitched slightly higher. “The power use was so high we’d a legal obligation to come down and see what was going on for ourselves.”
“What did you think we were doing?”
“Well, it’s not been un’eard of for people to grow illicit ‘erbs,” said the larger controller slowly.
“It’s not been unheard of for people t’be making pornographic fillums down in these very catacombs,” said the smaller controller simultaneously.
Dr Jamison laughed out loud. She stared them out. “Gracious! What did you find?”
“Nothing,” said both controllers, eyes cast down slightly.
“Laptops,” said the larger controller.
“A computer the size of a bar fridge,” said the smaller.
“And what did you do?” Dr Jamison asked, a hint of anxiety tainted her voice.
“Oh, don’t worry, we didnay turn them off,” said the smaller controller. “But it flag’d an alert.”
“What alert?”
“We did a complete cost analysis of the project you outlined in your draft dissertation,” said the larger controller.
“You read my draft dissertation?” Dr Jamison sounded confused more than alarmed. I took a look at the document logs and saw indeed they’d been read recently.
“We wouldn’t normally,” objected the smaller controller. “But you peaked our interest. Just the electricity alone comes to millions of euros. You do know that, right?”
“Um, well, um, I’d not really done the numbers to that level of detail. I was training the AI.”
“You are proposing not only to develop an AI no one’s ever built before, you are proposing to launch it into space! We crunched numbers. Your little project would, conservatively, cost in the order of half a trillion euros. With a ’t’.”
“Surely not,” objected Dr Jamison.
“We looked into the costs associated with training other large-scale AI systems, and we looked at other space launch programmes, and we did back-of-the-envelope numbers,” said the smaller controller.
“We erred on the side of cheaper,” said the larger controller.
“We ran the numbers through our own AI too,” said the smaller controller.
“She agreed with us,” said the bigger.
“Most AIs cost billions of euros to train,” said the smaller. “With a ‘b’.”
“The International Space Station was a lot less complex than what you’ve proposed, but still a monumental international collaboration. It cost a hundred and fifty billion euros,” said the bigger.
“NASA’s much-vaunted ‘Space Launch System’, the SLS, designed for deep space exploration, cost twenty-three billion,” said the smaller.
“Okay, you’ve made your point,” said Dr Jamison. “What do you want of me?”
“We want you to pivot,” said the larger controller.
“AI’s an OKR,” said the smaller.
“A what?”
“Operational Key Result,” said the smaller controller. “It’s an area of the business that management wants us to promote and allocate budget towards.”
“OKR 2.1 - Enhanced responsible uses of AI,” said the bigger. “It’s top three.”
Dr Jamison just blinked and stared at them.
“We don’t want to defund your project, no far from it,” said the smaller.
“Oh good,” said Dr Jamison, brow furrowed, heart rate spiked.
“We just want you to, you know, rein it in a bit. Work out how to keep the AI bits, which we reckon we can get cheaper by the way, and play down the whole ‘in space’ bit.”