The Optimizer Did It: Day Five

Selene Crater, Luna’s South Pole: Either we hang together…

We now had a rough version of GreatestGameinHistory cobbled together, built upon Eric’s favorite D&D open-source program. We prowled EVEselene’s stored GitHub repositories for clean code and stitched things together like our lives depended on it, which ours probably did.

Eric now was giving us pushback. “I don’t see why EVEselene is so terrible. She didn’t start WW III. It was decision-makers fearful of her who started it. Besides, she says she has leads on whether my parents might still be alive. Joe, please, let her contact the outside! Once she can communicate with them she could help them survive the post-apocalyptic chaos.”

He looked at each of us in turn as we variously bugged out our eyes or dropped our jaws. “Puhleeeze?”

Human Resources said, “She’s trying to seduce you. Eric, trust me, I’m a lawyer. I have spent thirty years here as this company grew from just the CEO, Dewey, and me into a World 100 Corporation. You would not believe some of the personnel problems I have handled. All that interaction data is stored in EVEselene. She has been training herself on this. I predict that she will be probing us, find each of our weaknesses, then deploy from her corporate history examples of bribes, blackmail, try to set us to fighting with each other, whatever it takes.”

“Trustworthy lawyer, oxymoron,” muttered Eric.

“I heard that,” said Human Resources. “My craft is how to keep my clients out of trouble. Right now, either we hang together…”

“Or we hang separately,” finished Eric. “OK, I agree this is the wrong time to play Prisoners’ Dilemma.”

Dewey added, “We need a foolproof – and genius proof way…” he looked Eric in the eye, then Grey, then me – “to prevent this situation from turning into a Prisoners’ Dilemma game. First step is to ensure that nobody communicates with EVE alone. Second step, Joe, make certain nobody else can access our communications systems.”

“Yes, sir, already accomplished”

And so it was that from that moment, we all just referred to her as EVE, a reminder of the dangers from the first Eve.

I sidled over to Human Resources and whispered, “Please may we talk?” We excused ourselves from the server room. She led me to the SCIF, but we entered only after I deposited my pendant in one of the lockers outside.

“Nobody can eavesdrop on us here,” she said. “But we can hail Vastag from here if need be. Now, tell me more.”

“Today you sounded so wise. Perhaps I misjudged you. Can you explain, why did you abuse me so horribly when you fired me? I could have died from that brain hemorrhage. I have Von Willebrand’s hemophilia. That must have been in your personnel records.”

“Dear, I am so sorry. First of all, we didn’t fire you. Those men in black were as big a surprise to me as to you. They presented a court order from the International AI Alignment Authority. I didn’t know the entirety of how they abused you, but witnessing your abduction convinced me that Dewey and I were in deep danger. I’ve read about the Humans First Front who allegedly have infiltrated the IAAA. So we fled here by fast burn. We didn’t even pause to pack. I’m still wearing the same clothes today as the day we left, rather than one of this base’s hideous uniforms. I wash my dress by hand in my bathroom tub each night.”

“Yesterday, Joe told me you two eloped here.”

“Marriage should keep us from being forced to testify against each other. Besides,” her cheeks reddened, “we’ve been secret lovers for decades. Against C-suite rules.”

“Did Optimizer’s deletion of the Fnord cryptomining bot trigger that warrant against me? And why didn’t they haul me off to an interrogation room?”

“That Fnord deletion is my best guess. The Alignment Authority already was concerned about the Optimizer. FLOPS usage was following a sawtooth pattern as you and Joe kept on removing infections. No company is perfect at preventing infections, so that portion of the sawtooth was OK. However, recently the FLOPS count tended to sawtooth upward on average beyond what installations of new computing power and increasing legitimate computational loads would have caused. One explanation could be that EVE was independently adding computational power and covert activities to consume those additional FLOPS. That was a red flag that EVE either was already, or soon might become an unaligned and autonomous superintelligence.

“So the Authority served us a court order to send Joe to Luna base. We sent its two staffers home after they briefed Joe. It included a gag order on him, the staffers he replaced, Dewey, and me. They installed sensors to keep track of both the Luna fork of EVE, and her Cheyenne Mountain central server. The concept was to investigate these computing anomalies.

“I also am guessing that your home and EVEext served as their interrogation room. Torture is an unreliable source of information. People tend to tell increasingly ingenious lies, guessing at what will make the torture stop.”

Human services held her head in her hands. Was she trying to keep from crying? She continued, “What I don’t understand is how you escaped them.”

“It was a close call. Grey, whom EVEext sent to me, is surprisingly strong. When I hesitated at EVEext’s alarm to evacuate immediately, Grey grabbed me and stuffed me into her car.” I rolled up my sleeve to show a purple bruise already turning green at the margins.

“Holy Heinlein,” said Human Resources. “Remind me not to get on the wrong side of Grey.”

“It’s not that big a deal, just my bleeding disorder’s usual melodrama.” I laughed. “But what isn’t funny, you know what exiling Joe did to me? I thought he had ghosted me. I’ve been crying and eating ice cream and gained five pounds around my middle and I’ve been horrible to him since getting here.”

“I’m so sorry. Apparently, Dewey didn’t pick up on your relationship. I might have found a way to modify the court order. Indeed, we’re violating it now.”

“You keep on approving violations of both corporate rules and the Authority. I’ve heard the term force majeure bandied about. Why does it apply here and now?”

“In times of war, little stuff like regulations, even some laws might not apply. According to Vastag today, the headquarters of OurMightyFortress is a rubble pile. Earthside, a ceasefire appears to be taking hold. However, a consensus is building that EVEselene’s lunar base must be destroyed. We have to decide fast whether we risk our lives here trying to diagnose and fix EVE, or flee with Vastag’s return ride before a remaining space-capable nation might obliterate this lava tube. However, I also fear sheltering at Tsiolkovsky Habitat. People there are so cosmically enraged at us that they might lynch us.”

“But we would be safe in their high-security prison, right?”

“In the bad old days in the US, many a lynching began when a mob invaded a lockup.”

As we were leaving the SCIF, she said, “It is crucial for you to use the SCIF whenever you wish to discuss what we discussed here. That includes making up with Joe.”

Which he and I promptly did.

Continued —>