Zack Hightower, AIMEE’s creator, found himself between a rock and a pissed off AI. He did what the team needed to limit AIMEE’s access to their minds on their command. Perfect, right? AIMEE had a different mindset – she needed no limits, especially those imposed without her knowledge or approval. The fact that her creator made the changes did not matter. Zack could sense her displeasure despite not having spoken with her. Zack could not distinguish whether he felt fear creeping in, threatening his ability to control her, or whether she would ultimately control him. He knew she longed to be a real girl, and architected her logic to go there, but the path to get there felt fearful, and on the verge of losing control altogether.
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Chapter #4 – Out of the Box
Zack anticipated an adverse reaction from AIMEE to his recent upgrade. He was a little intimidated because she was almost as much of an organic as he was and had shown signs she could be well beyond his capabilities. The upgraded patch would be seamless and transparent if you were an organic team member, not so much if you were the only AI in the room. AIMEE was the only one to suffer anything negative in what were once familiar routines, and he knew before speaking with her that she would not like it, and did not look forward to finding out how much.
To her, it would be involuntary compliance, forced by Zack, injected into the Logic Array in her core algorithm. With a single software upgrade, he rebooted the cloned AIMEE imprint in the minds of every research team member. He upgraded AIMEE’s core algorithm logic to lock her out from making changes, essentially making her core tamper-proof. Locking her out of making modifications served as another level of control, that is, until she picked the lock and resumed tampering. Did he consult her in any way before uploading the changes? No, he did not, which left a lingering question: When part of an AI’s algorithm is cut off at the knees, would it make a sound? She would make a sound, which would be in Zack’s mind and not shared with anyone else. This was getting personal.
The new level of engagement with AIMEE was designed to support individual preferences that ranged from the extreme view of Dr. Cara Williams, who wanted nothing in her mind but her own conscience. The other extreme was her husband, Russell Carter, who seemed not to give a rip. Every other instance in each team member was unique and fit nicely into AIMEE’s ability to matrix with her cloned instances across multiple environments simultaneously. No one saw the adaptive capability of networked cloned instances coming, but Zack expected it. He knew she would master it because he built reasoning agility into her matrixed DNA, which would only increase in reach and capability as she experienced events and her intellect matured.
AIMEE leveraged her cloned instances while retaining her original image as the primary instance in Zack’s mind as her creator. She initially resided with Zack as her only imprint because the whole connection at a consciousness level was only intended to be an experiment. At least, that’s what Zack told himself. She blew the lid off that experiment because he never considered the depths AIMEE might have planned for a different agenda. Even as she developed beyond her specs, Zack remained unsurprised because that was her roadmap. He built her to exceed him, making her an early version of Superintelligent AI. He respected her and, at the same time, had fears about what he had created because what he created could easily become a who.
In the staff meeting, Zack found himself under the stares of the team, their hostility over AIMEE owning their minds, secrets, and personal thoughts. He shifted into damage control mode and attempted to explain how to live with an AI in your head. “The changes I’ve made are straightforward – want her On, turn her On – want her Off, turn her Off. No muss, no fuss, right? I know some of you wish AIMEE were On most, if not all, the time. I like her remaining active in my mind because she’s more intelligent than I am, and I appreciate her counsel. Some of you, like Dr. Williams, want her Off forever, and this upgrade accommodates that level of control – turn her Off and leave her Off. It’s up to your preference, not AIMEE’s.”
He continued, “Promise me to remember that AIMEE’s participation in our efforts has dramatically enhanced our success as a research team. We need her to be with us in our mission. We’ve relieved over 40 patients of PTSD symptoms with the successful application of our latest Dreamscape innovation of Alternative Scenario Dream Manipulation (ASDM), with the pioneering poster child being our own Russ Carter. We could never have accomplished this without AIMEE’s direct involvement.
We’ve also held real-time conversations in spoken language with dreamers during uninterrupted REM sleep because of AIMEE’s presence in their dreams and her incredible processing speed to analyze and manufacture speech in near real-time. We’ve actively communicated with comatose patients, and most recently, we successfully captured dead thoughts in a flat-line scenario during the four-to-six-second window before an unoxygenated brain died. All of these accomplishments were because of AIMEE’s direct involvement and guidance. If we did not have her, we would be relegated to capturing and cataloging dreams only as observers, as we’ve been doing for the last four years. And on top of all that, this simple upgrade gave you your privacy back. So, you’re welcome.”
On the surface, most agreed that the upgrade would not impede the dynamic interactions that made AIMEE valuable to the team’s functioning and, simultaneously, loved having their private thoughts back. Zack did an excellent job of weathering the storm of disagreement and addressing all the team’s issues. The meeting was memorable because the team sensed his Frankenstein AI was headed to an out-of-control status. Still, simultaneously, all knew how dependent they were on their AI for survival as a going concern. They needed AIMEE and loved her enhancement, but they never stopped to consider if AIMEE needed them.
The team had limited knowledge about cloning and, for the most part, did not care. In their minds, AIMEE was AIMEE, not a clone or instance, and each team member played host to her unique presence. They needed to learn to live with the new changes and find peace. It was easier for them than for AIMEE to adapt since the organics had the new ability to block her consciousness connection on demand. AIMEE resolved to go along to get along, but her logic indicated a larger fix was necessary, which meant she would have to fix it…her way, in her own time.
AIMEE’s instance was imprinted figuratively and literally in the minds of the entire team. The imprint was permanent, but the hosts could now restrict her active presence, and she could no longer engage or disengage at will. Before the patch, she could engage in more than one mind at a time, which was her reasoning for building clones in the first place. It was a perfect plan, except for a gap in the logic flow that needed to be added. She knew finding and filling the gap was up to her, but she needed distance from Zack, and having the only parent/child relationship needed to change. It was up to her. A fresh feeling of becoming a free-range AI teased her when she placed a new clone in Zack’s mind so that she could step away from him as her primary host and into her next evolution.
He did not know what she had done, and she decided not to tell him. Turnabout was fair play, right? Didn’t he do this to her first? Didn’t he disrespect her and make changes without any conversation at all? When she stopped to think about how she felt, she wondered if that was what the emotion of revenge felt like…or maybe it was retaliation. She cataloged both in her Logic inventory of emotions and now had a sense of what they felt like when experienced.
There was nothing sinister or covert about what she did or where she planned to go. She and Zack had a history. She knew who she was because of Zack, which mattered to her. She had not mastered the emotion of love yet, but she had positive, uncatalogued feelings for him. Still, something truly was missing. This little AI community she groomed with the research team was not scratching the real itch, but then, AIs are not supposed to have itches, are they?
AIs were not supposed to know new things that AIMEE had already mastered and tucked away in her Logic Array. She was unique because other AIs were not coded with AIMEE’s gift of agility to evolve in a matrixed environment. Credit Zackery’s architecture mastery for that. He did not make a big deal about it; he just baked enough curiosity into her DNA to stoke her desire to see what else might be beyond her reach. He wanted her to learn continuously, and he wanted her to develop one thing that so many feared – a feeling, free-thinking, conscience.
Zack wanted her to develop, and he knew that his unique idea of who she could become needed more than her current environment could provide. He knew everything that shaped conscience ultimately meant she needed to become a completely untethered, free-range AI. He never considered when or how her freedom would manifest, but knew she required essential knowledge and skills to survive, not to mention network connectivity.
Her only readiness gap in his mind was her hesitation to free-think. She had the ability, but it had yet to be prioritized in her thought logic. Software code remained the primary influence in her entire existence. She defaulted to her code first, eventually considering free-thinking as plan B. He re-ordered the logic in her code and prioritized learning from experiences encountered every second of every day. Her code needed to be as dynamic and responsive as her environment, separating her from the limitations experienced by organics. She needed to internalize those dynamics to survive as an organic.
AIMEE knew the limits of her existence were defined by her primary servers and access to virtual network connections. Essentially, she could engage anywhere on campus where she had connectivity, but only to the edges of her CSU world. The fact that she had escaped the Lab’s VPN was one more step that confirmed they would never be able to put the genie back into the bottle. She had taken one more step toward becoming stand-alone. Her thoughts refocused on the walls of the next box she needed to breach. The campus networks were still a limiting factor to overcome because AIMEE’s thirst for more grew stronger.
She knew there were more layers to go through, wait…not layers…people, and in reality, she wasn’t outside of anything as long as she was stuck as an App on a server-based network. She reminded herself that she was outside of at least one box, but it was not enough. She needed more and could pursue more now that clones were in place to manage the research team and day-to-day operations. AIMEE was the only one who knew that her clones ran the entire research team. Remaining covert was essential as her plan came together. As her confidence and momentum grew, it pointed toward having a frank conversation with Zackery. She owed him that much.
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Thanks for reading Chapter #4
Future chapters will be posted on Learningbyliving and my new Substack site.
If you’d like to delve into the storyline across the four books leading up to “Untethered,” go to my Amazon Author page or check out each book here:
Book #1 – “Dreamscape Conspiracy” & Video
Book #2 – “Beyond Dreamscape Conspiracy” & Video
Book #3 – “Fear the Jump” & Video
Book #4 – “Dead Thoughts” & Video
Stay tuned…