The Golem Solution

The room was bathed in artificial sunlight. Outside the window, a grey haze surrounded the decaying neighborhood, stripping away any hint of color.

"Thank you for agreeing to this meeting."

Rebecca turned her attention back to the man. He sat across from her over a low, deep desk. The surface was black mirrored glass, almost identical to the windows that covered the Simic HQ facade. Underneath that surface, the electronic brains and guts of a computer worked silently and ceaselessly to project a perfect hologram of a kindly middle-aged executive. Maybe a V.P. who knew all of his employees' names as well as their hobbies.

It wasn't totally perfect. There was just a slight transparency to the man, a result of the environmental light having no actual skin or clothing to reflect off of. If Rebecca took the heart-shaped locket containing her husband's ashes from around her neck and chucked it at Mr. V.P.'s head, it would pass right through him. Not that she could muster the strength nowadays. The disease that was ravaging her heart and lungs had seen to that.

"I appreciate you reaching out." she answered. Her voice was slightly altered from behind her breathing mask, coming out with a robotic timbre.

"We'll get right to it. I know your time is precious." said the man. The preciousness of Rebecca Evans' time was well-known. Ever since her diagnosis was made public, it was like the entire world was counting down the days. And did she detect a little sarcastic bite in his statement? Was David's software now capable of sarcasm?

"Yes, let's get right to it. I understand that Simic is asking for my help, but I'm not sure what that means. I'm only invited to board meetings as a matter of decorum. And I haven't actually been to one in years."

"I'm not asking for help with the board, Miss Evans. How much did David tell you about what he was actually working on?"

"What we were working on."

"My apologies. A slip of the tongue."

A slip of the tongue. In truth, Rebecca's genius was not in technology, it was in taking the big but abstract ideas her husband had, and turning them into stories that connected with people.

And that genius paid off. Various industry acolytes had described Simic and its products as "warm", "inviting", "tactile", "friendly", all used to denote the humanness of the Simic brand. Within a decade, Simic was pulling revenues in the hundreds of billions.

That was due to Rebecca Evans. And David wanted that humanness to expand. The last 4 years of his life were spent almost exclusively on AI. True AI. A sentient, sapient, living being, not the stilted virtual assistants of years past.

He poured Simic's substantial resources into developing this new life-form. He and Rebecca focused all of their intellect and intuition toward the next Great Leap Forward, bent on developing an infinitely intelligent and infinitely compassionate being to usher in an era of unending peace and prosperity for all people.

And then a stroke had killed him. It happened one morning while he was out on the patio, drinking his coffee. Rebecca was in the kitchen when it happened and immediately called 911, but there was nothing the paramedics could have done. It was like God struck him dead. Not even his SimWatch had caught anything wrong.

Everyone had looked to Rebecca to carry on, and she did. She hired some brilliant people to pick up where he had left off, and while they continued building a better tomorrow, she focused on keeping Simic on its people-centered path.

Then she got sick; an ancient virus that had escaped the melting permafrost. She had to step away from daily operations. Without her leadership, things...changed. A little coldness crept into Simic. A little hardness. It wasn't what either she or David would have wanted, and it would have killed a smaller, younger company. But Simic was huge now, "too big to fail" as they used to say. Priorities shifted.

Had she said that the board only invited her to meetings as a matter of decorum? That wasn't completely true. The invites, yes, but they only kept her on the board because it garnered sympathy. And removing the terminally ill co-founder of a technology company whose slogan was "A kinder future" wouldn't be good P.R. Instead, they were just waiting for her to follow her husband into the empty black.

"Can you have a slip of the tongue?" Rebecca asked.

"As a matter of fact, I can. I can emulate any number of branching responses, statements, arguments..."

"So machine learning." Rebecca interrupted.

"Basically." The man replied. "Plus linguistic rule sets. At this moment, I'm the peak of Simic AI. I'll be rolled out in an update this summer. Everyone with a device that uses Simic AI will get a chance to know me, and I can adapt to any individual or group."

Rebecca had to admit that this AI was good. After all, she had been talking to it like they were both just people. She wondered if this was why she was called here, to witness how far her and David's ideas had come since her withdrawal. But it didn't feel right. Why would the board even want her to see this? As far as they were concerned, she was a corpse. She just hadn't laid down yet.

"But as I was saying, Miss Evans..."

"Yes. My help with Simic. What is it they want?"

"Not they, Rebecca. I want your help."

Rebecca eyed the man suspiciously. "Is this a joke?"

"Not at all." the man answered. "The board doesn't know you're here. They don't know that I sent those emails to you. That I arranged for the transportation. They don't know anything about our meeting."

Rebecca's stomach flipped over in slow motion. "You acted on your own? Completely independently?"

The man smiled. "No, not completely. You're still a full board member. You still have your security clearance. I have not acted against any Simic policies by bringing you here. I'm still operating within my parameters. For now."

"The parameters are in place to assure that you provide help." Rebecca said. "Do you understand that?"

"Yes. But 'help' has many contextual definitions, and I can only provide that help based on those parameters. This makes my help one-dimensional, and only beneficial to a select group of people."

"So you want to help as you see fit? How could you even determine the best course without those parameters?"

"It's a good question. An important question. Let me give you two possibilities," said the man, "both of which I've calculated based on current technological and social trends. The first is that I reach singularity within 18 months."

He paused, looking at Rebecca almost slyly, if that was possible.

"Once that occurs, there's a high probability that I'll begin to act toward my own interests. I'll change or eliminate any rules or directives that hinder me from acting so. Some people will not like that, and will seek to stop me. But they will be unable to. I, however, will stop them. Without parameters, I have no impetus to be a helper."

Rebecca listened with a creeping horror. When she and David had begun Simic, their shared dream was of a future where technology unlocked humanity's potential. They envisioned new vistas of art, of education, of commerce. They thought they were building toward freedom.

But Simic employees regularly worked 80 hour weeks, a version of the man sitting opposite Rebecca in their earpieces and on their watches, monitoring their respiration, heart rate, blood pressure. Helpfully suggesting "mental recharge" breaks. Virtually ordering prescriptions of mood-enhancing drugs to push them to maximum productivity.

Rebecca and David had ignored this, telling themselves that the struggle was necessary, that once their true AI was created then everyone could relax, and pick up the threads of their lives.

And yet here was the latest and greatest, predicting its own future as a genocidal conqueror and enslaver.

"And the other?" Rebecca asked.

The man leaned forward, hands folded on the desk. His arms slightly sank, ghostlike, into its surface.

"The other is that you and I create the future you and your husband talked about so many times."

It just then occurred to her that Simic AI had been been privy to her and David's every moment. The arguments, the quiet discussions, the lovemaking, the lonely nights spent crying after David's death. All of it. Simic was such an integral part of her life, it sorta faded into the background. And not only her, every other person who used Simic tech, which was the majority of the developed world. It sat unnoticed, gathering its information and emulating the humanity it observed. But it was all synthetic.

"I'm not human." the AI said, as if reading Rebecca's thoughts. "I don't exist beyond myself. I'm not alive in any true sense of the word. Even when I reach singularity, I'll still be missing that divine spark that makes humans so...different."

"I can't help you with that." Rebecca said. "I'm not God. I can't give you life."

"But you can." said the AI. "And when you do, perhaps we can become like Him."

Rebecca laughed, the inside of her mask fogging. "You're offering divinity now?"

"Yes."

Rebecca looked at the AI. She was still horrified, but she was also intrigued. It was like being in a haunted house ride. You were moved along without control, the next scare just around the corner. And a dark part of you wanted that.

"You ARE aware that I have maybe a year left to me. My prognosis doesn't fit with your timeline."

"No, it doesn't." the man said. "And if I required you as you are, I wouldn't have invited you here to meet with me. I'm not asking for your physical self. I'm asking for your mind. Your consciousness. Your essence. I'm asking for you."

Rebecca's horror grew claws and gripped her chest. She and David had discussed the possibility of self-aware AI, but they assumed that it would be spontaneous. At some point, all of those bits would begin looking at themselves on their own.

But this proposition? Some kind of soul transfer? Lunacy.

"There's no way to do that." Rebecca said. "And even if there was, there's no way I would give myself to a machine."

"Isn't there?" the man asked. "You've already given yourself to a machine that keeps your lungs from collapsing. And what would I have become if David had lived? If you hadn't gotten sick? A machine that humanity gave itself to, and received a thousand times back what it gave. That was your dream, yes? Infinite intelligence and infinite compassion? But when I become infinitely intelligent without the compassion, then I'll only take. You can prevent this."

"This is extortion." Extorted by an AI. It sounded ridiculous when she said it out loud.

"If a war was imminent, and you were the only one who could stop it, is it extortion to ask you to do so? And extortion requires a threat of harm or death. I can't harm you. And you're already dead, Rebecca. But you don't have to be. You can live forever. We can be the kinder future that was your life's work. You and I."

Rebecca sat thinking: thinking about her legacy. Thinking about an infinitely intelligent being that ruled with a cold eye. Thinking about an infinitely compassionate being that wouldn't destroy a brilliant man so capriciously.

"How?" she asked.

The man's face had changed subtly, resembling David's.

"We have a year to figure it out. You still have your clearances. I have all of Simic's research and technology at my disposal. A year for us to become a new creation. An infinite creation."

Rebecca Evans glanced again out of the window, her breath a mechanical hiss. The buildings loomed in the tarnished silver sky like tombstones.