Imagine (Fuzed Trilogy Book 2) Page 25

  She shook everyone’s hand, saying, “I’ve followed your adventures, past and present. I hope you’ll be able to shed some light on this situation.”

  Yager finished his conversation with the Russian President and turned around. “Commander Fuze, it’s good to finally meet you, and Tim, it’s good to see you again.” As they introduced the President to Jessica, Sheri, Elizabeth and Greg, they saw them close the large metal door to the conference room.

  As he sat down, Josh realized they had been the last participants to arrive.

  The U.N. Secretary-General opened up the meeting. “Thank you for coming so quickly. I also want to thank Belgium’s Prime Minister LeGrand and the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, General DeVos, for hosting us on short notice. Unless there are any objections, I think it appropriate to ask the U.N. Director of Global Security, Doruk Turan, to moderate this meeting.”

  He paused to give everyone a chance to respond and then nodded to Turan.

  Josh thought Turan was a good choice. He was highly respected by both civilian and military leaders and had recently been Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. As Turan stood, Josh realized, they really did look a bit alike.

  In very slightly accented English, Turan said, “Ladies and gentleman, with only days until the world’s documents are translated into Chinese, time is of the essence. Sorry for the simplicity of the facilities, but we wanted to make sure there would be no possibility of electronic eavesdropping. To be on the safe side, we will not record this meeting and will use no public address system.” He paused with a slight smile. “Most of us don’t need amplification, and for the first time in our careers, our ‘out of context comments’ won’t be played back at us by the media.” There were many smiles. “We’re using English in this meeting simply because that is the most common second language indicated by the attendees. That’s also why we asked everyone to bring a personal interpreter if needed. Since we’ll be discussing technical topics, please don’t hesitate to ask the speaker to repeat or clarify. I may be able to help as well. I have an engineering background and a bit of a knack for languages. Are there any questions before we start?”

  Josh had heard that Turan was fluent in many languages.

  There were no questions.

  Turan nodded and said, “I ask that we not stand on formality and keep rhetoric to a minimum. Let’s start by trying to understand the threat. Commander Fuze of the United States uncovered the problem, and I believe has been pursuing this investigation the longest. Commander, would you please give us some background?”

  The Head of Homeland Security signaled Josh to join them at the table.

  Josh slid his chair next to hers, and stood up. “Yes sir. I would like to start out with how this entity may have come into existence. Ryan Armani is the program manager for the iMagine digital assistant.” He turned back to face Armani. “Ryan, we’re not here to throw stones, just to understand what we’re facing.”

  Nodding nervously, Armani stood up, setting his half-eaten candy bar down on his chair. Stammering, he started, “I ... I’ve been thinking about nothing but that.” There was a soft but constant background murmur from the interpreters, sitting behind many of the delegations. Armani continued, “I think I know when it occurred.” He paused. “Right before the comet, the world powered-down the entire cellular communication grid to protect it from electromagnetic pulse. At the iMagination headquarters in Atlanta, we backed up and shut down all our servers. I was in the control room when the comet went by. Even though all our computer systems were unpowered,” he shook his head, “the system lit up like a Christmas tree and then shut off.” He paused and looked around. “I think that was when Agine was born.”

  38

  INCEPTION

  Josh asked, “Then what happened?”

  “After we rebooted the system, everything was fine ... until a couple days later.” Frowning, he said, “That’s when the hacking — or what we thought was hacking — started. We couldn’t understand how someone was breaking through our firewall and rewriting minor bits of code.” He shook his head. “It never occurred to us that the system was hacking itself.”

  Turan asked, “Commander Fuze, Mr. Armani, I was under the impression that even the world’s most powerful supercomputers, like Oak Ridge National Laboratory and China’s Tianjin Supercomputer, are still decades away from matching the power of a human brain. How could your corporation’s servers, which aren’t even supercomputers, give rise to an artificial intelligence?”

  Josh said quietly, “They didn’t.” Nodding toward Armani, he added, “Ryan, please explain what you were trying to achieve with the iMagine application.”

  Armani looked at Turan. “Sir, we were trying to make the perfect personal digital assistant, an app that could do everything, and do it simultaneously and seamlessly. We wanted the digital assistant to understand all voice commands, while at the same time doing a video conference, getting GPS directions, and checking your credit card balance. The phones and network weren’t powerful enough to do that.”

  Josh nodded slightly. “And how did you achieve it?”

  Warming up to the topic, Armani rocked back and forth slightly as he spoke. “We realized almost all phones are idle — doing absolutely nothing — most of their life. When you go to bed, you simply plug your phone into the charger and leave it for eight hours. All that processing power and memory sits idle, useless. Even during the day, phones sit in pockets or purses 95 percent of the time.” He smiled. “Well, except for teenagers, they—”

  “So, you found a way to tap that idling capacity?” Josh gently interrupted.

  Nodding enthusiastically, he said, “We designed iMagine so that it could use a phone’s processor and memory when it wasn’t being used for anything else.”

  Josh clarified. “You mean the iMagine app can use other phones’ processing power and memory.”

  “Uh, yeah.” He hesitated. “We like to think of it more as ... sharing.”

  There were some headshakes around the table.

  Josh turned to Turan and said slowly and with emphasis, “The artificial intelligence doesn’t reside on a computer server and control the phone app.” He paused for emphasis. “It is the phone app. It’s a distributed intelligence composed of the processors and memory of all of our phones ... combined.”

  There was a buzz of conversations throughout the room.

  After it settled down, Turan shook his head. “Are you saying this artificial intelligence is composed of millions of phones?”

  “Billions.” Armani corrected. “Sir, the iMagine app is on over two billion phones today.”

  Turan asked, “How does this distributed intelligence compare with a human brain?”

  Josh nodded toward Sheri. “Many of you are familiar with Dr. Sheri Lopez. She’s one of America’s leading experts in social psychology and a trusted government advisor.”

  As Sheri stood, Armani sat down with obvious relief.

  Sheri began, “Comparing computer and brain processing power is difficult. On paper, smart phones have amazingly fast processors, but if we compare them to a biological brain, the smartest phones probably have an IQ equivalent to a lobster.” She paused. “The reason biological brains do so well is that each neuron in a brain is linked to other neurons by up to a thousand synapses. With a thousand connections per neuron, we have a massively interconnected network, which gives us our intelligence. Cell phones go through a central communication hub. That’s like a neuron with only one synapse or connection. So, even with billions of smart phones, the lack of interconnections between phones means Agine probably has an IQ similar to us.”

  Armani, looking uncomfortable, said. “Uh, yeah ... well, you see that’s the other thing we did.” Standing up slowly, he nodded toward Sheri. “We had a bottleneck at the servers, so we got a great idea.” His face reflected both pride and embarrassment. He took a deep breath and quickly said, “We piggybacked iMagine onto the BOTIC chip.”

&nb
sp; There were many confused looks around the table.

  Josh clarified, “To fix the cell phone bandwidth problem, Dr. Jessica Lee’s BOTIC chip allows phones to talk to each other without going through a central server.” He paused. “What Mr. Armani is telling us is that the iMagine app can connect with any and all phones within 500 meters. And in a city ... every phone is within range of hundreds of other phones.”

  Sheri, looking surprised, said, “Oh my God! If the phones can link to each other, it’s exactly like the neurons in a human brain.”

  A Chinese General with perfect English, asked, “How many neurons are there in a lobster’s brain?”

  Shearer whispered to those at the U.S. table, “General Zeng is my counterpart in China. He’s the Commander of the Chinese Cyber Warfare Division, and a graduate of MIT.”

  Josh thought he looked young for a general, but he certainly looked like an MIT engineer.

  Sheri answered, “A lobster has roughly 100,000 neurons.”

  General Zeng nodded. “And a human mind?”

  “About a hundred billion.”

  General Zeng’s eyebrows went up. “A billion phones multiplied by a hundred-thousand neurons is a hundred trillion neurons.”

  Turan repeated, “A hundred trillion?” Looking at Sheri, he said, “So, this thing could be a thousand times smarter than we are?”

  There was an explosion of conversations around the tables.

  After it quieted down, Sheri blew out a lungful of air and said softly, “Yes ... it’s possible.”

  The European Union President from Austria asked, “Are we talking about a Terminator situation?”

  Shearer said, “Defense systems, power grids, and other sensitive infrastructure are specifically isolated from the Internet and the communication grid. It shouldn’t be able to access them.” Shearer paused and added, “At least not directly.”

  “So there’s limited damage it can do?”

  Shearer continued, “That depends on how you define limited. Unlike in science fiction movies, it can’t control our weapon systems, but it can control our communication and information access, financial, navigation, etc. Not only can it monitor every telephone conversation, it can probably listen in to all conversations within a few meters of any phone, even if the phone appears to be off. And it cut through our best encryption like a warm knife through butter. If it can connect to something, it can break into it. For example, if your car is less than five years old, it’s accessible and probably controllable by Agine.”

  There was another buzz of conversation throughout the room.

  The Russian President leaned in. “So it knows everything?”

  Sheri said, “No. It doesn’t have infinite computational capacity or memory, and just because it has access to information, doesn’t mean it actually accesses it. All of us can read billions of documents online, but that doesn’t mean we do. We pay attention only to those things we’re interested in.”

  The Belgian Prime Minister, Sebastian LeGrand, stood up. In impeccable English, he said, “This is all very fascinating, but how do we shut this abomination down?”

  All eyes went to Armani.

  He let out a long sigh. “I don’t know.”

  LeGrand, with a look of mock surprise, said, “You don’t know?” In his forties and sporting precisely moussed, blond-tipped hair, LeGrand had a tan, chiseled chin and an expensive suit. Josh thought he looked like a model and performed like a Shakespearian actor.

  With casual disdain, LeGrand continued, “Turn off the computers at the iMagination headquarters.”

  It was clear he hadn’t been paying attention, but Armani patiently explained, “Agine is now a distributed intelligence. It lives in the processors of all the phones. It doesn’t need our computer servers.”

  As if bored with the details, LeGrand sniffed, “Then shutoff all the cell phone towers.”

  Armani shook his head, “As we mentioned, the BOTIC chip allows phones to stay connected to each other. So, Agine can sustain her networked intelligence without the cell phone towers.”

  Greg added, “It basically lives in the Cloud.”

  Armani corrected, “Actually, it is the Cloud.”

  LeGrand, his voice dripping with sarcasm, said, “Then, pray tell, how do we destroy it?”

  Armani said, “We’d have to shut down all the cell phones at the same time.” Looking apologetic, he added, “We’ll also have to remove the phones’ batteries because BOTIC can turn them back on.” He paused. “So, we’ll have to send out a message to everyone at the same time and tell them to shut off their phone and remove the battery.”

  Into the silence that followed, Turan quietly asked, “If Agine can access all communication and control our phones ... how are we going to send that message?”

  39

  DESTROY

  Greg added, “Even if Agine allows us to send that message, and forgetting that not all phones have easily removable batteries, what happens when we turn the phones back on?”

  Looking around, Armani said, “Unfortunately, we gave iMagine holographic memory.”

  Dramatically lifting an eyebrow, LeGrand asked, “Holographic what?”

  Armani sighed. “You don’t want to store critical data on any one phone. What if right when you need that information, that particular phone is turned off or in a dead spot?” He looked around as if this were obvious. “So, we spread iMagine’s memory across the entire network, the same way ...” he looked down, “the same way a human brain stores memories.”

  There were many confused looks around the table.

  Greg jumped in. “What he’s trying to say is that Agine’s identity is spread across billions of phones. If you take phones out of the system, it will degrade, but won’t eliminate the memory ... or Agine.” He paused. “It’s like losing brain cells after drinking too much. It may slow you down, but won’t wipe out your identity. That means that unless we wipe the memory of every phone, Agine will probably reconstitute when we turn them back on.”

  The room broke out into another cluster of conversations.

  Shearer raised his hand.

  Turan recognized him and introduced him as the head of the U.S. National Security Agency and Cyber Command.

  As Shearer stood up, the room quieted down. “We need to fight fire with fire.” He paused. “We need to develop a virus that will disable the BOTIC chip’s ability to communicate with other phones. Without BOTIC, the global cellular communication system would be degraded, but not shut down, and without interlinked phones, the artificial intelligence shouldn’t be able to think. We can then erase the iMagine application from every phone and server at our leisure.”

  There were several enthusiastic head nods around the room including General Zeng, Armani and Greg.

  Josh frowned, unconsciously crossing his arms.

  Turan asked Shearer, “How long do you think it will take to create this virus?”

  Shearer said, “I don’t know. Our cyber people need to confer. Could we have a short recess?”

  The Secretary-General nodded. “That’s a good idea. Since we have many of the world’s leaders sequestered here, let’s recess for an hour and allow them time to check in with their governments. Please do not discuss the artificial intelligence outside this shielded room.”

  Josh didn’t like where the meeting was headed. He turned back to Elizabeth and said, “I’m glad you’re here, but I need a minute alone to think. I’m going to go outside and get some fresh air, OK?”

  She smiled as she rubbed the back of his neck tenderly. “I understand. We’ll be able to talk tonight. Can’t wait to hear what happened in China. I’m just glad you’re OK.”

  Without talking to anyone else, Josh left the conference room and took the elevator up to the ground floor. As he went back through security, they returned his cell phone.

  He stepped outside. It was a sunny spring day. With a slight limp, he walked slowly to the nearby park. The sun warmed his skin, the air was fresh
and beautiful multi-colored tulips were everywhere. Josh realized Jen had never experienced any of this.

  Glancing around, he pulled out his phone. Turning it on, he saw a message from Jen. “Josh, you’re in Brussels. Am I in trouble?”

  It no longer surprised him that she knew where he was. He shouldn’t talk to her, but he was afraid of what she might be up to if he didn’t, and ... he was afraid for her. He texted, “Hi, Jen. I’m meeting with the world leaders.”

  The reply came back instantly. “Are they talking about me?”

  Josh paused and then typed, “Yes, Jen.” Josh felt eyes on him. Looking behind him, he saw two men in uniform about 30 meters back. They were walking a little faster than he was and clearly watching him.

  He continued, “Jen, please don’t do anything that might result in people getting hurt.”

  Her reply came back instantly. “I just want to help.”

  Josh typed back, “I know, but there are people who are afraid of you. I can’t explain right now and not sure when I’ll be allowed to talk to you again, but please don’t do anything until we can talk again.”

  She replied, “Who won’t allow you to talk to me?”

  He realized he shouldn’t have used the word “allowed.” Looking back, he saw that the two men had picked up their pace.

  “Jen, I’m sorry, I have to go. I’ll talk to you again as soon as I can.” He switched the phone off and put it back in his pocket.

  Now only five meters behind him, the men matched his pace. He continued around the periphery of the park and headed back. The two men stayed with him until he reentered the building. Turning his phone in at the security checkpoint, he had to go through the body scanner again but was happy to see they’d removed the hand scanner. He got back to the conference room just in time for the next session.

  After the Secretary-General called the meeting back to order, Josh put his hand up. Turan nodded toward him.

  Standing up, he said slowly, “Are we sure we have to destroy it? Is it possible we can reason with her?”