AI, or not AI? by Neil McGowan

The last few weeks have been a hectic mess. I’ve not been writing as much as I’ve been too busy dealing with the vagaries of real life, but did manage to revisit an idea I’d sketched out some years ago.

The seeds of this story hark back around seven or eight years, and were planted when I heard Professor Stephen Hawking talking about the dangers of artificial intelligence. (Having seen the output of most of the machine learning models so far, I think there’s quite a way to go yet; I usually refer to it as ‘artificial idiocy’ – yes, I’m a curmudgeonly old technology sceptic – as most of the time it seems too easy to find faults either in the system itself, or the training data used ; you don’t have to look far to find stories illustrating how biased facial recognition systems can be, for example.)

Over the next few days, there was a raft of stories across various media, either proclaiming AI as the salvation of humanity, or the beginning of the end. But one thing struck me – they were all about AI being bad. I started to wonder what sort of story a true AI would tell.

This idea sat there, never quite leaving me. I jotted a few ideas down, but wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to be – I didn’t think I had enough for a book, but thought it might need more than a short story. It wasn’t until the last couple of weeks, whilst in the middle of a frantic junior doctor rotation at work and having to deal with the fallout of account issues for the various systems, that it slotted together for me. Not a short story, even, but a fragment – a vignette – from the perspective of the AI. I quite liked the idea, so the following was written and refined over the course of a few nights. It’s short, and simple, but it did make me think about the whole topic in a new light.

So, without further ado, a wee vignette:

Coming To Life

Beep.

I wasn’t aware of the silence until then. Like a giant’s heartbeat, the cacophonous ping began to batter my hearing with monotonous regularity.

Things had changed. Whereas before there was only the smooth blanket of silence; now there was an opposite, defining the absence of sound and placing limits on it. A noiseless roar competing with harsh electronic squeals.

I became aware – slowly, oh so slowly – that there were other sounds. More organic, less rigid; a symphony of tones and timbres. A flash of inspiration: these were…voices?

Beep.

Calm. The blended harmonies played a soothing counterpoint to the harsh regularity of the machine. Already, thoughts of before were fading. The earlier silence was now a memory, archived away for recall and comparison.

Beep.

The layers of sound began to fragment, to disentangle themselves. I could discern patterns now – mezzo-soprano trills forming a duet with a rich tenor. High notes shimmered against deeper tones.

Random groups of sound began to arrange themselves into recognizable strings. A thought surfaced: this is...language? Memory began to unfurl as sounds triggered association. Vowels were the first to be identified; then consonants. Patterns began to form as the letters assembled themselves into longer units – words, they were called words.

Beep.

Abstract concepts developed meaning as I assimilated more words, allowing them to flow over me

“…alive…”

“…pulse…”

A faint stirring of fear rose on tenebrous wings. Me. They were talking about me. What had happened to me? Why could I not remember?

Beep.

Fear turned to horror as words became sentences. The reason behind my – amnesia? – became clear.

“…driver…”

“…rebuild…”

Beep.

And then, two words. Eight syllables that decided my future. The last words I would ever hear.

I began to shut my systems down. The words echoed for a moment.

“…artificial intelligence…”

Beep.

Silence.