Was It AI Acquisition or Was It AI Infiltration?
Dreamscape Conspiracy is a 5-book series featuring a diverse, growing cast of characters. What started as a three-person Dream Research & Analysis project team expands to include several new characters across the pages of five books; some are organics (humans), while others push the boundaries of classification. Regardless of the form today’s Artificial Intelligence may take, Fear the Jump examines the fine line between acquiring AI … and being infiltrated by it.
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Dreamscape Backstory – From HVT to Hal
Hal, an unknown High Value Target (HVT) scheduled for elimination for operational failure during field trials, significantly shakes up the AI story in Book #3. The failure indicated errors in his programming, and such errors were not acceptable. Mitigation by burying mistakes was part of his immediate future …that is, until Russell Carter and his team of warriors showed up to rescue him.
Hal’s perceived operational failure also served as confirmation of the success of covert efforts by two software engineers who intended to sabotage the trials internally. Hal was incapable of distinguishing between success and failure; he simply followed his programming code in his Logic Array, which had been covertly augmented with code sourced from the dark web, a platform for radical thinking and bleeding-edge AI development.
The problem stemmed from Hal deviating from his core mission as a Mod-3 SuperIntelligence AI Humanoid equipped with advanced weaponry. He had been designed and programmed for autonomous operation capable of killing on command. He didn’t.
Epic fail…tagged as a failure in field trials. Failures were translated into mistakes, and mistakes were eliminated without a trace. He was a defective prototype designed to kill on demand, but he failed to do so. The problem, and the reason he was deemed defective, was the presence of something in his programming he was not supposed to have – a conscience.
Hal, as HVT, was a prototype SAI Humanoid outfitted with advanced weaponry and designed by the government to serve as defense against other Humanoids. The problem was that those at the core of a dark program that developed him had different plans to do evil that included killing humans, not just other humanoids. This HVT prototype included a kill-code embedded in its Logic Array, and an untested Conscience Code that proved successful; hence, he failed his field trials.
Two developers figured out what Hal was originally designed to do and decided to change the game, scuttling the kill-code and replacing it with a functioning conscience. They researched and found a Conscience Code on a dark web AI Programmer site that an anonymous developer had built. The developer, Zackery Hightower of the CSU research team, incorporated some amazing homegrown code centered on a Do-No-Harm ethic. They further modified the code to incorporate other organic (human) attributes, such as discretion, integrity, and loyalty. When Hal failed his field trials, the developers knew why and immediately added the modified Conscience Code upgrade to a squad of ten more Mod-3 SuperIntelligence AI Humanoids.
Hal’s planned execution was interrupted by Russell Carter and two more Marines when they showed up to extract him from the bunker where he was locked down, waiting for a bunker buster bomb to correct a mistake. That rescue changed Hal’s perspective on organics (humans). His advanced weaponry was still lethal, but only when deployed in a defensive posture, and he quickly demonstrated his lethality by protecting not only himself but the Marines who rescued him. He was designed to be a warrior, and the man who rescued him was one as well. An unlikely connection formed between a Mod-3 SAI Humanoid and an organic, a former Marine Force Recon Scout Sniper. Go figure…
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