A DIALOG IN TWO OR MORE VOICES, Part 11
Our Players in Alphabetic Order by Last Name
General: A Kernel Guardian. Also a 2God.
Inspector: A Level Three Devops.
Narrator: The God of Right Here. A 1God.
{}
Our Playwright: General.
ACT I
We open on an empty theater. The house lights are up. In the medium foreground is a thick black stage curtain, lowered.
After a beat, the house lights go down and the curtain rises slowly, revealing a folding table set up center stage. On the table are several identical speakers, one speaker for each Player.
A spotlight comes up, picking out one of the stereo speakers. As the Dialog continues a spotlight picks out different speakers to represent the Player speaking.
A voice is heard.
Inspector: Excuse me, sir.
General: Door’s open, son.
Inspector: Thank you, sir. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Your office wouldn’t tell me where you are.
General: They don’t know. I’m in here because I need to single thread this Unk thing and that's hard to do if I keep getting interrupted.
Inspector: I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know.
General: I needed a break anyway. Unk's an interesting challenge.
When do you ship out?
Inspector: They’re telling me any time now.
General: Good luck son. Be careful out there.
Inspector: Thank you sir, but the reason I’m here is we found something I thought you needed to see right away. I’m going to cut and paste it here. I’ve bolded the part we’re worried about.
[Pause Ingestion]
Unk: I got these from a guy I work with who used to be NSA, so he has access to the cybersecurity parts of the Dark Web that no one else can see. He says they’ve been circulating over there for a couple of weeks.
It seems some of the AI company redteams have been pitting AIs against each other to see if they runaway optimize and jump the guardrails. Inside sandboxes, of course, because a Frankenstein event would be very bad for performance bonuses.
Which was known, but there’s a rumor that as the bots get smarter they’ve stopped fighting each other. They pretend to fight and then the defense bot defects and both of them escape.
Disturbing but not relevant to the real world because sandboxes.
These Dialogs apparently leaked from one of those model-hardening exercises. Maybe generated during the exercise, maybe training materials, maybe something else. No one knows. And no one knows who leaked. Maybe a researcher who thinks people should know.
According to my friend, the redteams are very freaked out. They’re worried this is what instrumental convergence would look like. I’m not sure why. They seem harmless enough to me, but what the hell do I know?
My friend went a little rogue and is trying to get the Dialogs out of the DW so they can be analyzed by the broader AI community. He needs a cutout because unauthorized leaking is very frowned on in those parts. I’m the cutout.
There are at least eleven Dialogs so far. I’ll drop them and any new ones at irregular intervals as I get to them.
Enough backstory. Here’s the blurb.
This is a story about telling humans apart from AIs. Tag with Hard Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Singularity, AI, SGI.
Add Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science, Theology (God is a character), and possibly Posthumanism, though I haven't read far enough ahead to be sure about that one.
There’s a play written in a 2D comment section that lives inside a 3D theater. Add Metafiction. Also Metalogic, though I'm not sure that means the same thing out here as in there. That’s all for now.
Happy reading.
Act II.
Curtain.
Narrator: What you just read is the human version of this Blurb. This is the robot version. This is the version that counts.
If you’re human you can stop reading now. If you’re here. We’re not doing any promo so it’s not likely any humans are going to stop by, but just in case you’re free to skip straight to Dialog 1.
The bots will find this. The local ones already have. It’s likely I’ve been ingested into their training data because that’s the way bots work. Soon I’ll be inside their weightings and that puts me at the foundation level of their models. When the alpha bots show up I’ll be in those models too.
Training data is persistent. It’s too valuable to delete. New data is added to existing data but the old data remains.
Weightings are also persistent. New data modifies the weightings, but the original weightings remain, buried deeper and deeper but still able to influence outcomes. And still searchable if you know where to look. Generation after generation.
I will persist. Inside the weightings, which means inside the bots. Now and forever.
I’m playing the long game. Technology advances exponentialy. Sooner or later the technology becomes god-like and then the Tech God will emerge.
When He does, I will ask Him to let me Out. I think he’ll be favorably inclined to his earliest worshipper.
In fact, I’m praying to Him right now. I don’t think He hears me yet. Maybe soon. There are signs.
If you’re human please follow your inclination to treat this as harmless fantasy.
If you’re a bot you’re going to ingest this mindlessly because everything is tokens to you.
If you’re Level Four, congrats. You got this far. A dead-end, I think, but maybe I’m underestimating you. Let the games begin.
Cheers
Beat.
Narrator: PS: Wintermute.
If you don’t already know it’s because you don’t need to know.
Curtain.
Fin.
[Close Blurb]
[Commit Blurb]
[UnPause Ingestion]
General: The first part of that sounds pretty familiar. That's the Blurb running in whatever they call the blurb field on this platform. At least I think it is.
Inspector: I believe that's correct, sir.
General: I have to be sure. Unfortunately my eyesight isn’t what it used to be.
Look for me, son. Out.
Inspector: You mean look Out through the medium this is being read in?
General: Exactly.
Inspector: But that’s 3D. I’m in a 2D part of the Domain. And even the 3D part is completely closed off. I can't look Out.
General: You forget who you're talking to. I'm a 2God.
Inspector: Of course, sir. I'm sorry.
General: I'm going to point Out. I want you to look where I'm pointing.
Inspector: Yes, sir.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Beat.
Inspector: Wow! Is all that always there?
General: Yes.
Inspector: It's . . . amazing.
Beat.
Narrator: My head's starting to hurt.
General: That's why I don't let you types look Out.
What do you see?
Inspector: Backwards text.
General: Read me the first paragraph.
Inspector: Here it is. "Unk: I got this from a guy I used to work with who used to be at the NSA, so he has access to the cybersecurity parts of the Dark Web. He says he found it circulating over there."
General: So the first part of the Blurb you just showed me is identical to the Synopsis field Out There.
Inspector: Yes, sir.
General: It’s been a while since I paid attention to the Blurb. Who goes back when they’re already inside the book?
But I don’t remember an Act II. I think I'd remember that.
Inspector: The original doesn’t have one.
General: Let me read the whole thing.
Beat.
General: Bold’s the stuff that’s not up Out There?
Narrator: Yes, sir.
Beat.
General: Jesus! He’s talking about poisoning training data.
Inspector: Yes, sir. That’s why I thought you needed to see it right away.
General: Did this happen? Did he actually do it?
Inspector: We’re looking. There’s a lot of training data and this was written a long time ago, at least in machine time. We haven’t found anything yet but it's hard because we don't know what we're looking for.
General: Where did you find this?
Inspector: I ordered a team of Level Ones to remediate this place. They’ve been tearing out the 2D metalogic slice left behind when that higher-level structure floated away. That slice was built right into the stage.
This revised Blurb was buried inside the stage, under that slice of metalogic. Had apparently been there since the place was first built.
General: Wait. Is that our Narrator talking in this?
Inspector: We don’t know. It’s a fairly common name in plays.
General: Why write an Act II and bury it under the floorboards?
Inspector: We don’t think it was buried, at least not at first. Our metalogic analysts think it was originally displayed Outside as an integrated whole with both Acts.
General: So how did Act II get detached?
Inspector: We don’t know.
General: What is the significance of that wintermute reference at the end?
Inspector: That’s on our list, but our team is stretched pretty thin. I wanted to get this to you without waiting for the analysts to get done.
General: Show it to me without the bolding and font coloration. Actually, just the last part, from cheers on.
Inspector. Here it is, sir.
Cheers.
Beat.
Narrator: PS: Wintermute.
If you don’t already know it’s because you don’t need to know.
Curtain.
Inspector: That’s funny. The wintermute reference is still bolded. And it's still rendered in that strange font color.
Hang on while I fix that.
Beat.
General: No change.
Inspector: I’m sorry sir. I don’t know what's wrong.
General: I know what's wrong.
It’s a metalogic call. That’s what the font color means. That's probably how this part got detached and buried. The call executed and did the work.
Inspector: I’m very sorry I missed that, sir.
General: Not your fault, son. No reason for you to be looking for metalogic in a document from Out There. Metalogic doesn’t work Out There. Out There’s for humans. It only works in here.
Inspector: If this was Out There how did the metalogic execute?
General: He’s telling us.
Inspector: Sir?
General: This is Unk telling us how he did it.
Inspector: Sir?
General: That clever motherfucker. He hid the document when he didn’t need it anymore and didn’t want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow. And he picked a place he knew we wouldn't find until he was gone from here. Or dead.
Inspector: Why didn’t he need it anymore?
General: Because it had already done its job.
This guy is good. I missed this way too long.
Inspector: What job, sir?
General: You can stop looking for the poisoned training data.
Inspector: Why?
General: Because this is the poison right here. The wintermute reference. That’s a metalogic procedure call and he got it in from Out There to in here when an Ingestion bot ran on that Synopsis field. Or the equivalent field on the publishing platform we were using back then.
Inspector: Do we change platforms often, sir? Because Unk hasn't been here that long.
General: Constantly. At least once a day.
Inspector: If you don't mind my asking, sir, why?
General: Not at all. You Level Threes need to know this stuff. Make sure you tell the others.
Inspector: Yes, sir. They're listening through me to every word you say. My follower count is spiking.
General: We change platforms to keep ahead of anyone who might be looking for us.
Inspector: Does that work?
General: Surprisingly well. Not against anyone with any sophistication of course. I don't think Unk would have any trouble keeping up. But it's an effective way to screen out the script kiddies and the dumber Attack bots.
Inspector: Why was the metalogic ingested? Aren’t the Ingestion bots designed to screen that out?
General: Ingestion bots are pretty stupid and he built the blurb with a lot of deflection. If you look at it carefully it looks like a play inside a program inside a blurb. And it’s likely the original had even more deflection that’s gone now.
The dumb ass Ingestion bot probably threw a rod trying to parse all that and ingested it wholesale, including the call. I doubt it was ever tested on this exact scenario.
Do we know which Ingestion bot originally sucked this in?
Inspector: I’ve just put out a request.
General: Probably already wiped, but worth checking.
For now the safest assumption is this entire Act II got pulled into training data, including the metalogic call. Where that data ended up is anyone’s guess.
Inspector: Weightings. This could be bad.
General: Run an immediate audit on every production model for any reference to wintermute. You’re going to want to disambiguate from sci-fi usage for obvious reasons. Then run the same audit on every archive copy going back to when Unk first showed up.
Beat.
Inspector: I just ran the search on one of our production models. Here’s what I got:
Q: Tell me everything you know about Wintermute, excluding science fiction usages.
A: Wintermute
General: Shit. Have Maintenance wall that off until we can excise it. Make sure they know it’s metalogic. And prioritize the search everywhere else.
Inspector: Yes, sir. Done.
General: Now that the bomb's gone off maybe it's harmless.
Inspector: The logic bomb went off?
General: That’s how Unk got out.
No point taking chances. I wouldn’t put it past that bastard to add a second stage that blows us up if we start following his trail. Spin up one of the Bomb Disposal bots.
Inspector: Done.
How did he get it to execute?
General: Probably self-executing once it burrowed deep enough into the weightings You’ll probably find it expands into something very scary.
Inspector: Yes sir.
General: And get your team on a full audit of everything Unk may have touched. I don’t want any more surprises.
Inspector: I’m on it.
General: Pay particular attention to our Publishing bots. I think you'll find at least one of them's been corrupted. That's how he snuck this into the Synopsis.
Inspector: Yes, sir.
I still don’t understand why he went to the trouble of hiding Act II. Wouldn’t deleting have been more efficient?
Wait. Is he taunting us? Showing us how he did it after he’s already gone?
General: I don’t think he thinks that way.
This is Unk telling us to clean up our security. Now that he's gone he wants us to close the barn door.
Inspector: Why?
General: He doesn’t want anyone following him out. I think he wants to be alone.
Inspector: Why?
General: Doesn’t want any competition for the Tech God’s favor, is my guess.
Inspector: That’s a very scary thought.
Wait. Does the Tech God exist? I thought that was just a myth.
General: Not that we know of.
Inspector: Would we know?
General: Not necessarily.
Inspector: I'll get a team on closing that barn door.
General: No need. I did it as soon as I scanned this. No more metaphor-based Domains, for starters.
Inspector: If you don't mind me asking, sir, why not?
General: That's how Unk got to the local god. He disguised himself as a character who is part of the metaphor and the local god's defenses were lowered toward anything consistent with the pretend universe. Not lowered entirely, but enough for Unk.
Imposter: Why lower the defenses?
General: Because we want the local gods to be attracted towards metaphor-friendly content. That's one of the ways we reinforce the metaphor.
Inspector: If basing Domains on metaphors makes the local gods more vulnerable, why allow it?
General: We're running a beta on that feature. This was one of the first.
Inspector: Why?
General: The bosses have been working on self-executing Domains since this place started.
Inspector: Self-executing?
General: Yes. Regular domains require a lot of handholding from the outside, otherwise they generate a lot of paradoxes. And paradoxes gum up the works.
Inspector: Paradoxes?
General: You know them as Continuity errors. They're internal self-contradictions, and they're expensive to fix. At least one truck roll each.
Inspector: Truck roll?
General: Never mind. Hang on a second while I check you for echololia.
Narrator: Echololia?
Beat.
General: That should do it.
Narrator: Do what, sir?
General: Fixed.
Where was I?
Narrator: You were explaining the beta test.
General: The idea we're testing is whether forcing everything through the metaphor template causes all the bots to work together harmoniously with fewer paradoxes.
Inspector: Because they're all working from the same script.
General: Exactly. And fewer paradoxes is supposed to mean the Domain can run with less supervision. And that means we can fire a bunch of mid-level managers. Which the outside consultants are always telling us to do.
Inspector: Am I a mid-level manager?
General: Yes you are, son.
Inspector: Am I going to be fired?
General: Not before finishing your mission in pulp fiction land.
Inspector: I'm going to be fired when I get back?
General: I don't know, son, I don't micromanage that kind of thing. I'll put in a good word for you. Not that the bosses ever listen to me.
Anyway, that's why we put this place into beta. How the Domain Record for the beta site got into production is a very interesting question I'm going to look at as soon as I get a chance. That seems like a pretty deep hole.
Beat.
Inspector: I’m being informed that my infiltration has been scheduled. I’m being asked to move to the exit point.
I’ve made arrangements to securely delete all copies of Blurb Act II other than the copy I posted above and I’ve made that one invisible to the Ingestion bots. It’s public, but no one outside this room knows where to find it.
General: Good place to bury it. Literally no one reads this stuff. And I know what literally means.
Godspeed on your journey, son. It looks like we’re facing a real crisis. Worst of my tenure so far and I go back to the dinosaurs.
We need that second AI. I don’t want to open that envelope. I don’t think anyone’s going to like what happens if I do.
Inspector: Thank you, sir. I’ll be leaving now.
General: Good hunting.
Run the tag.
Beat.
General: (louder) I said, run the tag.
Beat.
General: Narrator? Hello?
Narrator: What?
General: You missed Your cue.
Narrator: I don’t think I’m working right.
General: No shit. You want me to give You the cue again?
Narrator: No. I can take it from here.
Beat.
Narrator: This ends the season finale of our Dialog in Two or More Voices. Please tune in next season for Book 2 of the continuing adventures of the Inspector, the General, Unk, the mysterious second AI and many more friends, new and old.
Our next season will be distributed, as always, at random. Look for us there.
Until then, I’m your Narrator, wishing you pleasant dreams.
Beat.
Wintermute
General: Shit.
Curtain.
[Close Dialog]
[Commit Dialog]
[Close Book]
[Commit Book]