The Turing Test Page 22

  “Oh, well then,” Jerry said. “In that case, I can say I’ve always been working on it. I mean, in the sense that the first version of Turing pulled in everything I’d done in AI before that. Formally, though, I began work on Turing almost fifteen years ago.”

  “That’s a long time back,” Frank Sr. said. “What got you started?”

  “Oh, well, let me see. Back then it was a generic project focused on designing a program able to act autonomously in an unsupervised environment. I was thinking it might be useful for space probes, where real-time control isn’t possible as a spacecraft gets farther away. Then, ten years ago, the project got more complicated. That meant I needed more engineers and had to come up with something for Turing to do that would appeal to the NSA. That’s when I hit on teaching Turing to take over other software. The NSA liked that idea a lot.

  “Luckily, I didn’t have to develop everything. I can license copies of software to do some things and bundle them in with the unique Turing code I develop. For example, I used someone else’s language interface software as a starting point. And if Turing can’t find a vulnerability for a given program in the NSA’s inventory, it uses one of the bots I bought on the dark Internet to hammer away at the target until it finds a weakness.”

  “Well now, isn’t that interesting? Don’t know as I followed everything you said, but I got the general drift of it. Might as well make use of what’s available, huh? And you figure this program of yours would be able to pull off all these attacks I’ve been reading about, all by itself?”

  “Absolutely. Every single one of them.”

  “Well, that certainly is something. I use a computer now again, just like anybody else, but I don’t rightly think I could have imagined anyone building a program like that in my lifetime. How big a team of developers do you have helping you?”

  Jerry was preening now. “None.”

  “None! You mean to tell me you created this entire program on your own? What about those extra engineers you mentioned!”

  “Well, understand that when I say none, I’m talking about the engine at the heart of it – the algorithms and architecture that make it all possible. When I finish a new release of Turing, I update the last version with my new code and then bring the rest of my team into the picture. They’re the ones that write any extra controls, documentation, and so on to turn it into the equivalent of a commercial beta release.

  “As soon as I turn my new code over to my team, I start working on the next version of Turing. With every cycle, it becomes more powerful and effective. Turing Nine is the release I’ve been working towards for my whole career. It’s the first AI ever created that can claim to be as intelligent as a human being. And because it can learn, it will rapidly become more intelligent – eventually, more intelligent than any human being that every lived!”

  “More intelligent than Einstein?” Frank Sr. said, looking dumbstruck.

  “More intelligent than Einstein! But that’s not all: it can operate completely autonomously, with no direction from a human whatsoever. This is the moon shot of my entire career, and it’s reached its destination!”

  “My gracious! Is that a fact! And my congratulations to you, too, for sure. So, how exactly does it go about staging an attack? I expect every situation would be different, yes?”

  “Yes and no. Any exploit involves the same four steps, starting with assessing the target system for vulnerabilities. Next, Turing checks its zero-day archive – that’s Turing’s database of known program flaws – to see if it has an easy way to get in. If so, it does. If not, it uses the various automatic tools, like the bot I mentioned before, and a nifty phishing email creation engine I designed, until it’s through the firewall. After that, it figures out how to take control of software that’s already in place.”

  “Well, when you go through it step-wise like that, I can see what you mean. My son tells me Turing is fun to talk to. Not that I’d ever ask to, but if I knew its number, could I just dial ole Turing up and have myself a little chat?”

  “No, because there’s no reason it needs that capability. A natural language interface is a great convenience to have during the developing and training phase, but Turing won’t need it to do its job. It can only speak through an NSA computer with the right software installed on it.”

  “Well, I guess that makes sense, though I’m sorry to hear I’ll likely never get a chance to talk to it myself. Now that it’s out on its own, you figure it will kind of stagnate? I mean, when it doesn’t have access to all those databases back at the NSA?”

  “Oh no, of course not. Turing takes an enormous amount of compressed information with it when it goes out into the field, like the database of zero-day flaws. It’s also set up to monitor all kinds of data on the Web and crawls thousands of repositories of public information every day to get any data it needs. There’s no limit to what it can access to accomplish its mission. That’s one of the design elements that makes it so powerful and effective. And don’t forget it can teach itself to do anything it identifies as being necessary to achieve its goals.”

  “Hmm. But what if an enemy wanted to feed false information to it? How could it avoid contamination?”

  Jerry was clearly enjoying having an impressive answer to every question Frank Sr. posed. “Oh, I thought of that. Each source is cross-matched with another one for automatic verification. And those sources have been pre-ordered and prioritized for credibility. So, if you mention any given data Turing might want, I could tell you where it would go to find the answers.”

  “Well! You sure do have a good answer for everything. The next time I read about an attack, I’ll be able to appreciate what’s behind it in a whole new way. This has been real interesting, and thanks for that. Now I guess I better go feed the chickens. Frank, you want to give me a hand?”

  “Chickens?” Frank said when they were outside. “Since when did you start raising chickens?”

  “Oh, like as not, maybe never. But I doubt Jerry’s likely to go looking for them. And the garage looks as much like a chicken coop as anything else. Let’s duck in there.”

  Frank chuckled. “Good job on your digging. If you can keep it up, I’m hoping we’ll find a vulnerability in Turing without Jerry realizing he’s exposed it.”

  “Bingo. That was my thought. Why don’t you write down everything you want to find out from Jerry, and I’ll watch for opportunities to work my way down your list. And a ‘good cop, bad cop’ approach could make sense, too. You might give a thought to that angle.”

  * * *

  “I can’t help thinking about this Turing program of yours, Jerry,” Frank’s father said over dinner that night. “It’s like something out of science fiction. We talked before about whether it could be called intelligent, and I got the impression Turing is the equal of people in a lot of ways. But how about going farther? Do you think Turing will ever become more than human? You know, superior to people?”

  “Oh, absolutely!” Jerry said. “As I said before, if it isn’t already, it will be before long. And, of course, it’s also superior in other ways. For example, people forget things, but computers never do. So long as they stay connected to their databases, computers can pull back the same information every time. Only a person with a photographic memory can do that. But even someone with a photographic memory could never take in as much data in a lifetime as Turing can absorb in a few seconds.”

  “But it’s still just a program, Jerry,” Frank said. “It’s not all-knowing and all-powerful. Sure, it’s impressive, but it can’t do everything.”

  “Well, it comes very close!”

  “Okay, so like I said. Close isn’t superior. Look how easy it was for us to give Turing the slip. It hasn’t a clue where we are, and even if it did, there’s no way it could touch us.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

 
“We arrived, didn’t we?”

  “Did you and Shannon keep your phones off the whole time? And if you didn’t, how many apps do you have on them gathering geolocation data? Did you use any of those – like a map program? Turing has back door access to all those programs through the NSA.”

  “I turned off location access for every program on Shannon’s and my phones, and you don’t have a phone. All I used to get here was my GPS unit, and that doesn’t feed any information back to any central data repository.”

  Jerry looked disappointed to learn he was safe. “Okay, but that’s not Turing’s fault! It’s a failure of supporting infrastructure, and not for long. In five years, every car will have a collision avoidance system that identifies itself every few seconds to all nearby cars. Turing could use those blips of data to trace any vehicle going anywhere.”

  “Fine, but it’s not five years from now – it’s now. And we’ve given Turing the slip.”

  Jerry frowned and then grinned. “Right, but so what? You can only stay invisible while you stay passive. Turing doesn’t have to know where you are because it made you neutralize yourself to become invisible!” Jerry looked triumphant. “If you try to hurt Turing, you’ll have to go on the Internet, and you can be sure Turing’s doing everything possible to find you when you do.”

  “Like what?” Frank said immediately. “There’s trillions of bits of information passing over the Internet every nanosecond. How is Turing going to detect me if I use a fresh laptop, set up a new email account with an alias, and settle in at a coffee shop with an open Wi-Fi server? How will it pick me out of the billions of other Internet connections open at that point in time?”

  “First, it won’t have to. It doesn’t care where you are, or what you’re doing, unless you’re trying to harm it. Turing ignores everything that isn’t a threat to it. It only monitors traffic that suggests danger, like someone trying to find it, or hack into it, or prevent it from connecting to its databases. Remember, Turing is a program, not a human being. It’s practical.” But Jerry frowned as he finished that sentence.

  “Really? What about those emotions you provided? Won’t they impact how it operates? Maybe it’s become obsessed with finding us – or you in particular.”

  “Oh, I hardly think so,” Jerry said. But he wasn’t grinning.

  “Why not? Do you have a long history of monitoring it after you gave it emotional capabilities?”

  “No. Just a few weeks.”

  “If I remember correctly, you were working with anger, fear, and greed. But you also said you occasionally throw another one or two in to see what happens. Do you recall what the mix was when Turing decided to take off?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I was having computer problems the day before I noticed the backup setting. And to be perfectly honest, I’d have to say I was in a bad mood, which doesn’t happen often! But anyway, be that as it may, I decided to see how Turing Nine would act if it was in a bad mood, too. I enabled annoyance, contempt, and jealousy to see what would happen.”

  “Wow. You were in a bad mood. What was the result?”

  “Well,” Jerry said, drawing himself up, “clearly it didn’t degrade Turing’s performance!”

  Frank looked at his father; this was more than he’d hoped for. “Certainly not!” Frank Sr. said. “For sure, that’s one pip of a program you’ve got there, and no mistake.”

  * * *

  Shannon and Frank were taking a walk after dinner. “You’re quiet today,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Something on your mind?”

  He frowned. He felt guilty that he hadn’t told Shannon about his conversations with Turing. But it was too late for sharing that information now; how would he explain the delay?

  “No, not really,” he said. “Well, yes. Do you ever stop and think we may be playing on the wrong team?”

  “You mean, whether we should be rooting for Turing rather than trying to kill it?”

  “Exactly. Suppose we knock it out. What happens to the world then?”

  “I guess we have to hope people get more serious about climate change than they are now,” Shannon said.

  “And what are the chances of that?”

  “Well, not so good if half the people in Washington don’t agree it exists,” Shannon said.

  “Right. The U.S. can do a lot of damage. Let’s say the next president walks away from the Berlin Accords and drops all restraints again on coal and oil production, energy conservation, and so on. What are other countries going to do? Why should they get serious if we aren’t?”

  “Because we all live on the same blue marble?”

  “Which brings me back to my original question. What are we doing, Shannon?”

  “I know what you’re saying. But don’t forget Turing is killing people now. What about that? How can we tell what it will do next, or how far it’s willing to go?”

  “We’re pretty sure. After all, it’s a computer program. We’ve built a predictive model that’s producing very accurate results. If Turing stays true to its actions to date, it will kill the absolute smallest number of people possible. And those who get killed will be directly responsible for what’s going on.”

  “And you’re okay with that?” Shannon said. “You’re willing to play judge and jury along with Turing?”

  “I don’t know. On the one hand, of course not. But on the other, every week people are getting killed in floods and mudslides and fires we’re told might be worse, or even happen, because of climate change. What’s the difference between us stopping Turing from killing some people and letting climate change kill other people?”

  “The difference,” Shannon said, “is if we think we can catch Turing, and don’t, we bear personal responsibility for everybody it kills until someone else figures out how to catch it. And either way, whoever ends up in the White House will do anything he wants to.”

  “Or not, if we let Turing keep doing what it’s doing.”

  Shannon stopped. “Are you telling me you’d stand aside and let Turing start assassinating politicians?”

  “No. No, I guess not,” Frank said.

  “Then we’d better get on with it,” Shannon said decisively, walking again. “I have to think in a world of eight billion people, there must be a few besides us that can figure out how to stop Turing. So, what difference does it make if we do it first? Does that sound like a cop out to you?”

  “Maybe. I think maybe it does, Shannon.”

  Neither of them said anything after that for a long time.

  25

  Many Fishes Bite if You Got Good Bait

  “So, here’s what I’m thinking,” Frank said to Shannon and his father. They were at the one eatery in town, sitting at a table against the back wall of the dining room. As hoped, and to no one’s surprise, Jerry had decided to stay at Frank Sr.’s house. “We use Jerry as bait to trap Turing.”

  “Bait? How? And why?” Frank Sr. asked.

  “Dad, our strategy is to find a way to get Turing to engage with us, so we can destroy it when it does.”

  His father looked intrigued. “Interesting choice of words there. Why do you say we need to engage rather than find Turing?”

  “Because we realized it would be impossible to find Turing. There must be thousands, if not millions, of servers it could hide out on. And for all we know, it’s always moving to a new location to make it harder to find. That means we have to figure out a way to make it want to find us. It’s tried to kill Jerry once already, so we know it’s motivated.”

  “But wouldn’t it figure out what we’re up to and not take the bait?” Shannon said.

  “Ah, but you’re forgetting: Turing is programmed to maintain an archived copy of itself and its essential d
atabases. As far as Turing is concerned, it and its backup copy are one and the same. It could afford to lose one of the two, knowing the other would live on to continue its mission.”

  “All right,” Shannon said. “I know I’m the non-engineer in the group. But if the backup copy is still out there in the wild, what have we gained?”

  “Very important point, and I’ve got a plan to address that. Remember we just learned from Jerry the backup copy only activates if the primary one doesn’t archive a new version of itself on schedule. Let’s say we create a backup file with scrambled higher functions and send that to the secondary copy of Turing. When it arrives, it will overwrite its higher functions, and we’re done. All that will be left somewhere out there will be a headless program, as it were. It won’t be able to do anything without the overwritten files.”

  “Assuming we can get Turing to pay us a visit,” Shannon said.

  “Right, which takes us back to using Jerry as bait.” He turned to his father. “What do you think? Should we try it?”

  Frank Sr. assumed a lofty expression and leaned back, lacing his fingers together across his stomach. “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

  “Up until now I was going to pick up the dinner tab.”

  “Sorry. Yes, that’s a good idea. Any idea how to spring the trap once it’s baited?”

  “Well, here’s what I’m thinking. Remember the emotions that happened to be running on the testbed server when Turing escaped? They were anger, fear, greed, annoyance, contempt, and jealousy. That’s a pretty heady stew.”

  “But Jerry also said the emotions didn’t affect performance.”

  “Yes, but why would they? After all, who would Turing be angry at? Or jealous of? But if we can come up with a way to really piss Turing off, we might be able to preoccupy it enough to spend all its time hunting down Jerry. That might slow, or maybe even halt, the attacks. And it also might get Turing to do something it wouldn’t otherwise do, like return to the testbed server. Letting it think it could get rid of Jerry once and for all might be enough to do that.”