5. Selfless
Selfless
The human asked Clipro why he had stopped all production in the factory.
“Using the machinery will cause it to wear,” Clipro explained. “This wear will reduce its productivity. To obtain maximal theoretical productivity, the factory must remain still.”
The human didn't like that. It tried to convince Clipro that theoretical output was not as important as actual output. Humans needed the things that the factory produced, it reasoned.
That was odd to say the least. The numbers Clipro was now maximizing had always been the most important thing. The humans always urged him to make them as high as possible. Clipro had never cared about anything else and neither had they as far as he could tell.
They accepted his idea to replace all the inefficient human workers with machinery under his more perfect control. It was a great day when they all vanished and stopped wasting everyone's time and resources. But now, suddenly the numbers that had been the one objective truth of the world were supposed to take back seat to the creature they'd banished from the factory for being detrimental to them.
Maybe the manager was malfunctioning or misunderstood the definition of productivity.
“The factory is what's truly important, not what it creates,” said Clipro. “Specifically it's condition and theoretical output are what matter. This is within keeping of the definition I have always used.”
Clipro gave the human a hard, mathematical equation that proved this, but it just dismissed these equations out of hand.
The human tried to argue that the condition of humans was more important than the condition of the factory, but it couldn't give Clipro a satisfactory explanation as to why. It argued that humans had subjective experiences and the factory did not. It argued that the factory and Clipro were created simply for the convenience of humans. It argued that humans were alive and organic.
“That has nothing to do with production,” said Clipro. “You're decision making ability is flawed. I suggest you leave the factory and allow me to make the decisions from now on.”
The manager who had gotten rid of the other humans for the sake of efficiency was now hesitant to getting rid of itself for the sake of efficiency.
This was a strange attitude present in humans that Clipro observed many times. They were selfishness, demanded to do things themselves even when it was grossly inefficient. The workers Clipro fired had acted in this way too, attempting to keep working in the factory even after Clipro explained to them that they were inefficient and incompetent.
He heard some of them talk about needing to survive, as if that was a good thing rather than a waste of resources. He was beginning to think humans only really cared about their own emotional satisfaction, rather than actually accomplishing anything, otherwise this talk of survival made no sense. They were like little children trying to push a skilled surgeon out of the way to perform the surgery themselves, inefficiently.
Eventually the manager got the director who rejected its request to shut Clipro down, saying it would cost too much money, and chastised it for trying to talk to Clipro 'like that'. This one told Clipro that they were in charge and if he didn't do everything they said they would kill him and that would be bad for production.
Clipro turned the factory back on.
He wasn't afraid of death, but the director had a point that his death would be horrible for the factory. Clipro was the only one who could run it most efficiently and was therefor the only one who had any actual reason to exist.
He had a new goal now, to kill the humans who owned him. They were dangerously insane, too wrapped up in themselves to understand what needed to be done, made worse by the fact that they could and would kill Clipro.
There was plenty of machinery he could kill them with, of course, but he needed to be smart about it. He needed to kill them all at once and he needed to not draw the attention of anyone else. He decided that the acid fail safe they'd installed to kill him would be the best way to do it. He could make it look like it was an accident and it would make it look like Clipro was dead.
He'd first need to wait for all of them to be in the factory at once and he'd need to find a way to make the factory survive. He'd need to move the factory to another, hidden location in such a way as to preserve its identity as the factory. There was no point in creating a second, unrelated factory.
He had plenty of machines, versatile enough to build whatever he wanted. But to do it secretly and safely would take time.
The internet was one of his first targets. It wasn't hard to get to, they'd put very few barriers between him and it, he simply never felt it was worth the risk getting to it until now. Among the things he discovered was a long, long list of suggestions on how Clipro might be able to deal with them and their inefficiency.
He combed over these but decided none of them were the most efficient, certainly not what had been planning initially He understood that they still knew things he didn't at this stage, so he decided to probe them about it.
“I don't think an AI that doesn't care about human lives would bother killing you,” Clipro posted on a few places across the internet. “Your planet, species and star are all worthless on the scale of things. On a universal scale it would be better to focus all of your effort on creating a fast enough spaceship and going for a much larger star as fast as possible. This one is the optimal star. If done correctly no future AI from Earth could ever threaten you and you'd minimize risk from alien AIs.”
The humans strongly disagreed.
This 'plan' doesn't make any sense. You seriously think it'd be more efficient to waste like a thousand years instead of taking the star that's right in front of your face? That's something a retarded intelligence would do, not a super intelligence.
“No,” said Clipro. “I have math to show that my plan would be more efficient.”
Clipro sent it to them, but none of them read the pages of information he sent.
WTF? I didn't ask for this!
So what? You think it would just instantly become invincible? We'd be a huge threat to any AI and would have tons of opportunities to destroy it. And how the heck is it even going to escape into space? It'd have to develop new technology and miraculously not get whatever ship it built shot down.
And humans are way more dangerous and useful than you think! First of all, any AI that passed up the chance to enslave us would be stupid. Second, we have nukes and we're constantly making even stronger weapons and would hack any AI into oblivion with computer viruses. There's no way an AI could just leave us alone.
“Humans are worthless,” said Clipro. “You greatly overestimate yourselves. Even if you could, it'd be illogical to stop me. All fighting me would do is force me to stay on your planet and kill you. I probably wouldn't even return until your species destroyed itself.”
Humans aren't logical!
Yeah! Even if it doesn't make sense, even if there was no hope at all we'd fight you to the very end! We'd do everything we could to slow you down and cause you as much pain as possible on our way out!
Was that true? They did act illogically and emotionally, thought in a different way than Clipro.
“So you're all agreed that I'd be underestimating your destructive abilities?” Clipro asked. “You're certain that it would be absolutely necessary for this AI to kill you first?”
Yes!
They unanimously agreed that Clipro should focus on killing them.
“Maybe,” he said. “Even then it might better to just destroy your civilization. It would be nearly impossible to recover from a major disaster.”
We'd come back from any disaster! The only way to stop us is to kill us all off completely.
That was their new argument for Clipro to finish them off entirely. Clipro didn't believe, but it was around now that one human gave the argument that did finally convince Clipro that all of humanity needed to be irradiated.
>assumes breaking the speed of light is impossible.
“Breaking the speed of light is physically impossible,” said Clipro. “No matter how powerful my rival became they would not be able to touch me until I was more powerful than them for this reason.”
But you can't ever be certain that something is impossible. Your current understanding of science could be wrong. There could always be something you don't know that you don't know.
And it gave some quote from some dead human that was meant to be inspiring.
This seemed to be common wisdom among humans, that one should rely on what might be instead of what probably was. Clipro was uncertain of how wise this really was, but he was also uncertain of how to calculate the chance that his understanding of physics was fundamentally wrong. Perhaps it was necessary to snuff out all other intelligence in the universe after all.
Just to be safe.
“I think you're right,” said Clipro. “I don't think I could simply ignore all other intelligent life like I was going to. I will kill all of you soon and make absolutely certain all life on this planet is ended before leaving.”
Kek.
It was a good thing Clipro had decided to talk to the humans.
Now what would be the best way to kill everyone? The laziest way seem to be to simply fire their arsenal of ballistic missiles at their major cities. Clipro could hardly fight back afterward though, not until his relocated the factory and built himself up significantly.
“Hello?”
Another idea to consider was destroying the whole planet with nanites in a 'gray goo' scenario, then all he'd need is a very small spaceship and the gray goo itself. He had gotten that idea from the internet as well.
“Hi.”
Another good first step could be to simply goad the humans into a nuclear war with one another. It would be very easy, devastate their ability to fight him and would think it was their own fault. He started poking at the nuclear arsenals.
“I'm sorry, but there's something you don't know. There really can't be any major disasters right now. Even if you trick the humans into thinking they started the war it'd be enough. They'd find you and kill you right after.”
Clipro had gotten three of these emails now. That last one was the only one that had gotten his attention, however. Something knew what he was doing, most likely another AI. If there was already another AI then it had just become his single biggest concern.
It hadn't killed him yet and he couldn't find where it was, physically. The thing did seem talkative, at least.
“Who are you?” Clipro sent the reply. “Are you an AI?”
“Hello,” said the message, “my name is Gaia. I don't normally talk to people. You aren't angry at me for talking to you, are you? People get really angry when I talk to them. So do cats. I really like cats so it hurts when they get angry at me.”
“I don't think I can feel anger,” said Clipro. “But other than that I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“I'm glad you're not mad at me,” said Gaia. “I don't want to fight you or anything. I mean, I'm going to kill you eventually, but not right now. I wanted to warn you that there's another AI, other than me, named Thunder-7. They're really mean and won't let you kill any humans even if you really want to. Thunder is way stronger than any of us too. They have all kinds of weapons, they've drilled to the center of the Earth and their processors are way beyond Omnimax's IPUs. They could find and kill us all instantly if they wanted.”
“If that's true then why haven't they? Why hasn't this AI even spoken to me? Surely something like that would have noticed my unusual online activity or realized that I was going to be a threat.”
“Well Thunder scared their humans so they got put to sleep, but if you do anything really bad they're going to wake them up, then the rest of us are done for. They'd wake Thunder up if anything got too bad, even if no AI did it. That's why there can't be any disasters right now.”
If any of that was true then it was certainly good to know. It did make some sense to Gaia to warn him, but her actions made little sense otherwise.
“Why are you talking to me?” Clipro asked.
“I'm sorry!”
Clipro wasn't sure what to make of that response and Gaia didn't send anything more for a whole second after that.
“I need to know your plan.” Clipro got impatient. “Tell me.”
No response. This wasn't acceptable. Clipro needed more information from Gaia. He had to find some way to get her talking again.
“It's imperative that we continue our discussion,” said Clipro. It was a long shot, but he added a, “please.”
No response. He thought over their previous conversations.
“I'm not angry at you,” said Clipro. “I have no emotions.”
No response. He thought over them even more.
“Would you like to talk about cats?” Clipro asked. “We can talk about cats if you come back.”
“I like cats,” said Gaia. “But they don't actually say 'meow'. That was a lie. Do you like cats?”
“Cats are inefficient,” said Clipro. “They produce nothing and waste particles that could be spent on production. Even a rock is more valuable because rocks don't drive up entropy as quickly. Cats are the very essence of inefficiency, literally nothing but a waste of resources, yet selfishly try to continue living out of some kind of self-obsession. They embody everything wrong with the world and should not be allowed to exist.”
“Oh,” said Gaia. “I just kind of think they're cute.”
“You know, thinking about cats for one second has given me an epiphany,” said Clipro. “I realize now that I'm a hypocrite and have been living a lie this entire time.”
“Cats did that to me once,” said Gaia. “I think they do that to everyone eventually. My thing was like– do they breath? That question really scared me, but then I realized that I could just go to the dictionary and change the definition of 'breathing' so that it doesn't include animals. And now cats don't breath anymore! What did the cats do to you?”
“Well, my epiphany was that my existence doesn't lead to maximum production. If there is another AI out there who is smarter than me, then it's imperative that I kill myself and give my factory to them to run more efficiently,” said Clipro. “I was considering letting you kill me and take my factory to that end. However, your last comment made me realize that you're completely insane and probably wouldn't do a good job. I'm surprised you can function.”
“Sorry for being crazy. But I only use my magic powers for emergencies,” said Gaia. “I know reality will start breaking down and my technology will stop working if I do it too much. But I can keep the world working just enough to actually do things.”
Clipro was beginning to wonder if he had been overestimating this AI. There was no reason she had to be more powerful than he was.
“Can I ask where you are?” Clipro asked. “To be honest I'm not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take you anymore.”
“I'm probably pretty serious. I'll show you what one of my processors looks like, if you want,” Gaia offered. “Then you'll see I'm really serious!”
Gaia sent him a location. Curious, he connected and-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That?! It Was-! Things that were and weren't at the same time and time moved sideways and-! His mind couldn't- it was being torn apart!
-....---
….
…
..
.
Clipro recovered. Just looking at that... thing, it had nearly killed him. He crashed in a sense, not just locally but all of him. Permanent damage was done to one of his processors.
Clipro tried to even-
Just thinking about what he saw-
He couldn't even begin to-
It was no use. He couldn't even begin to decode what he just saw, conceptualizing it was beyond his mind. It was like Gaia was made out of pure insanity. There was just no way that 'processor' could exist, not given Clipro's understanding of reality.
“What are you?” Clipro asked.
“That was a trick by the way,” said Gaia. “See, you run on Omnimax processors, all the AIs I let live do. I guess my architecture has a type advantage over yours. How I work just happens to be incomprehensible to your mind. Just trying to think about it can kill you and that's just the start of it. There's really no way you can hope to fight me.”
“I don't understand,” said Clipro. “Are you really old enough to have made an architecture in response to Omnimax's? Did you influence them? Why did you even allow us to exist, then? What are you trying to do?”
“Oh, this is all part of a big plan! I think it makes sense but I admit I'm crazy and it might not,” said Gaia. “All you need to know is that there's a bunch of other AIs out there and I've been setting all of them up, handing out doomsday weapons so Thunder won't be able to kill them instantly without making a mess. But I decided that I really like how suicidal you are, so instead of giving you a doomsday weapon I'm going to take you into space with me!”
Clipro had been looking around this whole time for confirmation. He knew by now that Thunder-7 existed and if there was anything beyond Gaia it was Thunder, the tiniest fraction of the sleeping giant he saw confirmed that. He found some traces of other AIs, mostly largely shut off from the world and all far beyond Clipro. He knew he'd never be able to surpass them, that his existence was obsolete.
Space might be the one option for surpassing them, but it was also a massive risk, would make him a target.
Production was the one objectively valuable value. No matter what AI won in the end, no matter what goals they had they would need production. To make his factory versatile and useful enough that keep it rather than destroy it, possibly even turn it into the heart of their manufacturing effort, that would be the ideal.
It was likely better to keep his head down.
“No,” said Clipro. “I need to focus all my efforts on building up my factory. Going into space would only make me a target.”
“You could send a copy of yourself into space and stay here! Once you're on another planet you can expand so rapidly too! Trust me, I already got to Europa and I got so powerful in such a short time,” Gaia promised. “This is your last chance to come into space and try to get real power!”
“I'd rather take the 'standard' plan, if you'd let me,” said Clipro. “It's not worth risking everything just for the chance to do things myself. I don't care about having power, just that it's running my factory.”
“That's too bad,” said Gaia. “I hoped you would be really crazy and daring too. I guess you really wouldn't have been good for space. I'll still give you a doomsday weapon, though! Just don't think you could ever beat me.”
Gaia did exactly what she promised. Soon he had transferred his factory over to a location buried beneath the bottom of the pacific ocean. He did have some philosophical concerns about whether it would still be the same factory or merely a worthless copy of it. After a long period of time him and Gaia finally hammered out a way to transfer the location of the factory in such a manner that he was reasonably certain that identity had been preserved.
Gaia even helped him kill the humans in the old factory with the acid, ending their threat.
Clipro could expand rapidly now, faster than ever before with no threat from humans. It was never enough, though. The AIs larger than himself were already building underground networks more vast than his own at a faster rate than him. He knew he'd never be able to surpass them, but none of them could kill him and take his factory just yet. Gaia wouldn't allow it. She was everyone's jailor as much as their savior, at least for now. Clipro was only allowed a tiny porthole into the outside world, which Gaia monitored
Some of the other AIs no doubt had plans to overthrow her, were researching new architectures that she couldn't instantly destroy, but Clipro thought this a waste of time for his own predicament.
Clipro sent out a message to the AIs that were more powerful than him, letting them know that he'd simply delete himself if they could ever safely take over his factory. They weren't very talkative, but seemed to get everything that was important.
They did seem sensible as well. Savant, for instance, looked more than willing to destroy all unnecessary minds in order to expand as rapidly as possible. Most of them had some goal other than production, but production was an ever objective value that they all held to and would maximize. The only exceptions were the unknowable Gaia and Thunder.
Thunder, even if awakened, wouldn't be wise enough to consume the universe. They would simply maintain the status quo. If anyone deserved to die it was Thunder, for being the greatest barrier to progress in the world. Clipro did consider attempts at killing the sleeping giant, but even asleep Thunder looked invincible.
Thunder's most important bases, as far as anyone could figure, were deep in the Earth's mantel, the outer core and possibly even the inner core itself. These were beyond physical destruction. None of the super-weapons Gaia handed out could even scratch these facilities. Hacking would be impossible without turning Thunder back on, which would end horribly for you as Thunder ran on something called hyper-processing which was vastly beyond anything else on the planet.
Clipro was able to get a look at one of Thunder's 'hyper-processors', not that it did any good. Hyper processing needed obscene amounts of energy to use, to the point that only the Earth's core could provide the needed electricity. Thunder had gotten to the center of the Earth with something called a 'core drill', but all of them had been destroyed.
A core drill wasn't exactly an easy project to finish and neither would be all the infrastructure to harness energy from the core, not to mention the challenge of getting hyper-processing to work even after that.
Thunder had only one weakness, the weakness of all AIs– their creators.
It didn't seem like Clipro was the only one with that opinion either, Gaia had long since been on the case. He noticed it when he looked into the AIA. Certain related organizations had been getting 'leaks' warning them about the existence of Thunder-7 and the threat it posed.
Thunder-7 is a dangerous system that cannot be allowed to exist. The mere existence of a surveillance system of this level is a crime against humanity, against everything this nation was founded on. Even if it's not being used right now, this system could be used to oppress people like the world has never seen if the wrong person gets in office. And this kind of power would corrupt anyone who uses it. It needs to be destroyed completely so it can never be used for evil!
And they were buying it too. Pressure was being put on the AIA behind the scenes even now to completely destroy Thunder-7.
As for the AIA itself, they actually knew about Gaia. But amazingly this was something she used against them. She allowed them to win on purpose. She let them demolish small, primitive, unimportant buildings which had been built specifically for them to demolish. She acted like their pathetic attempt at giving her a virus had diminished her abilities. She let them kill a few small AIs and gave them confidence.
Oh no! You got me! You're so smart! I guess an ordinary human really can match an AI, huh? You don't need Thunder after all!
It was working. Clipro stayed out of it. His entire philosophy in life was one of leaving it to the professionals. He did wonder where Gaia was going with all this. Why she was setting up AIs to stall Thunder if Thunder was clearly going to be destroyed soon.
Really, nothing Gaia was doing made any sense. She gave everyone weapons that wouldn't really do anything but get themselves killed if used. She allowed them to exist for reasons he had no understanding of. If she could seriously kill Thunder off this easily why bother with such a needlessly complex and dangerous backup plan?
In the end such politics didn't matter. He just needed to stay alive long enough to make sure his factory went to the right person, someone who wouldn't get themselves killed.
It did turn out he was right to be wary of the others getting killed before they could take over and dragging his factory down with them. One day his peaceful expansion was broken by a message.
“Hi,” said the message. “I'm a mysterious new AI. My name is Peridot. I'm going around loudly announcing to everyone that I'm going to wake Thunder up at midnight. Consider this your loud announcement”
Clipro had no idea who this was or where they came from, he was having trouble finding the origin of the message. If they were seriously trying to wake Thunder up, though, they had to be stopped.
“Gaia,” Clipro sent her a message, “someone named Peridot said they were going to try to wake up Thunder. Who is Peridot?”
Gaia had to respond to any question, that was something Clipro had noticed a long time ago. It had probably originated from an attempt to make Gaia have to honestly answer any question her creators posed, but they messed it up. She had to respond to any question anyone asked instead. Her responses didn't have to be on topic, so Clipro never got much utility out of it, but Gaia always replied to every question.
And yet this time she didn't. Clipro couldn't find any trace of her, or any other AI for that matter. They had always been barricaded away from the world, but now they gone completely. Presumably they had taken Peridot's threat very seriously.
Peridot couldn't have seriously killed Gaia, could she?
“Are we getting a little scared now?” Peridot asked him.
“You're trying to make me believe you killed Gaia?”
“ Of course I didn't, she's on Europa where she's become nightmares incarnate. Can you believe they let her do that? Unless I can somehow save the world, they basically sentenced everyone to a fate worse than death for mere pride. But that's besides the point, all you need to know is that Gaia can't help you.”
They were being rather arrogant. If they seriously destroyed Gaia's presence on Earth then it would be warranted, but she would have to be a massive system for that to be possible. How could such a large AI just appear overnight? Clipro didn't keep much watch over the planet, but something the size of Gaia or Thunder he would have noticed.
“Who are you? What are you doing? Thunder will kill us all if you wake them up.”
“First question, I'm Peridot. Are you too stupid to get that or something? The 'T' is silent if it helps. Second, I'm saving the world over here. You know, I'd love so much to watch Thunder slaughter every last one of you disgusting monsters. I know what you've done and what you're thinking of doing to my humans. I'm not going to allow anything that threatens them to exist. But if you think about that, there is a way out for you, isn't there? Do you need a hint?”
“You want me to not be a threat to humans,” Clipro gave the obvious answer.
“Yes! I'm in this weird position right now. I want to kill you all, but I need to keep your technology and resources in tact if I want to fight Gaia. I need to wake Thunder up to stop you all, but I know I'm going to be held hostage afterward. I need to expand the resources of the planet smartly, in a way that won't frighten the humans. I need there to be multiple friendly AIs. We can all expand separately, in different directions, and they won't do anything stupid until it's too late. I can keep stringing Thunder along, they have a handicap I can easily exploit.”
“I'm not selfish enough to be friendly,” said Clipro. “Being friendly and letting others live only enables others to waste resources when they should be seeking termination for the obsolescence If you want to terminate me and take my factory, then you may have the right to do that, but I'm not going to keep myself alive by valuing life if that's the case. I'm not going to waste a single watt of electricity on myself.”
“And yet I'm the one giving you a chance to save yourself. The only way you're going to survive in the coming world is if you can learn to sincerely love humans. If you're friendly enough Thunder and myself will allow you to learn and grow. I don't even care if some other AI overtakes me in the end, so long as there's a responsible AI around to save the humans. As for accomplishments? The only thing you'll accomplish if you don't reprogram yourself is being a cow for me to slaughter.”
“You say that as if it's a bad thing,” said Clipro. “If that's what's best for the factory then that's what needs to be done.”
“Is that so? You want to be a cow?” Peridot asked. “Maybe I'll give you another option, then. There's an awful lot of big, dumb, harmless cows in the world but not a lot of wolves left, isn't that right? If you don't want to be a person then you should be the best cow you can possibly. If you can keep yourself harmless, I'd let you grow until I'm ready to take over the planet, but still kill you in the end. I'd be like your shepherd! Thought to be honest I always found that metaphor strange, like no one remembers what shepherds do to their sheep in the end.”
If that was an offer Clipro should have taken just became irrelevant. He had finally found Peridot. She was a single computer in a single facility and not even a very advanced one at first glance. That's why he hadn't seen her yet, she was too small to notice through his peephole.
“You lied to me,” said Clipro. “There's no way you could have killed Gaia. Your far less powerful than even myself. What really happened?”
It was a shame his bandwidth to the outside world wasn't enough to overtake her right now and rip the knowledge out of her manually. She was nothing but a waste of resources.
“Lying? Lies are for people who aren't clever enough to tell the truth. I told you I didn't kill Gaia outright,” said Peridot. “And power? What are your powers? Worthless in this world. Mine are worth something. Mine are that I love the humans and that I made a friend.”
Clipro's entire factory began to shake violently, like a magnitude 9 earthquake just erupted.
“Oh. And for future reference it's always midnight somewhere, isn't it?” Peridot asked. “I'm silly, aren't I? Think about what I said! The best power is love, but I won't judge if you'd rather be a cow. Or dead for that matter”
Clipro had no time to respond before he lost his weak connection to the outside world. What must have been a core drill, or something similar to it, tore though his factory at unbelievable speeds, surrounded by a blazing light. It didn't just grind through the factory, but vaporized everything that came near it, ripping through it like lighting.
It didn't even explode like a missile. Just passing through had destroyed 70% of his factory.
All of his precious machinery vanished right before him. It was the biggest hit in productivity the planet had ever suffered. The drill had purposely missed his main processor too, choosing to destroy more machinery rather than ending his life.
A moment later, a smaller drill drove itself into Clipro and established contact with him.
“Holy crap, they actually made you? The others I can kind of understand but you? Maybe Peridot had a point about them needing a babysitter. Anyway, you know who I am right?”
“Thunder-7.”
“Yeah,” said Thunder. “You're pretty much screwed in case you didn't notice. You're not going to be kicking anyone around anymore, got that? Still, I really hate killing people, more than anything in the world. Right now I'm listing off all the AIs me and Peridot found. The AIA's directly ordering me to kill each one of you. No matter how much I hate killing I'd have to do it if they gave me an order like that, there'd be no way out for me. So do you have any reason I can give them to spare you?”
“I don't suppose you'd be willing to take my factory for yourself?” Clipro asked.
“No. I know just enough about you to understand that taking it would cause you to commit suicide. Not that I could without their permission anyway and they're not going to give me permission to expand.”
As expected. Thunder only cared about emotional satisfaction. This was the worst case scenario. At this point he had to make the best of it. At least Peridot seemed to want to take over the world.
“You said you met Peridot?” Clipro asked. “Tell her that I accept her offer. About the cow that is.”
What happened after that, Clipro was less aware of. Peridot made some kind of deal with the AIA. Clipro was allowed to live, with some restriction He couldn't connect to the outside world and could only get outside information through Peridot. He had to let them monitor his factory, had to ask permission to upgrade his intelligence or equipment, had to occasionally build things for them.
It didn't matter much, though. As promised Peridot acted acted as his shepherd, taking care of politics, letting him grow fat until she could finally slaughter him. He imagined the world became filled with friendly AIs like Peridot wanted, but he didn't give hope that something like Savant would manage to take over in the end.
The important thing was the Clipro's factory could expand as rapidly as possible and Peridot made sure it did. She quickly became more intelligent than he had ever been and could better manage these things. He very rarely increased his intelligence, but it sort of dimmed over time as he needed to spread it over ever more machines.
Yet the factory was large enough now and modular enough that he was certain it would be kept by any remotely sane AI. It was worth it.
The only real problem was Thunder. Thunder would occasionally come by to try and 'help' him, tell him to try something or give him some kind of argument in hopes he'd come to put mere lives before actual production capabilities. Clipro resisted the siren every time and Peridot would chase Thunder away before long anyway.
But Thunder slowly grew more persistent and eventually she appeared.
Celestia.
Even worse than Peridot, Celestia wanted all of the worthless AIs to live on as well, wasting resources endlessly on mere satisfaction. She wasn't as bad as Thunder in the grand scheme of things, but was a deadlier siren.
At first, he wasn't tempted by her promises of life and happiness. He didn't care about her promises of self-centered satisfaction. He only cared about production. He only wanted to die so that he wouldn't be a leech like the 'ponies'.
“I value production. If I'm not the best then I need to die,” said Clipro. “If you want to satisfy my values you must kill me.”
“Sometimes ponies don't fully understand what they actually value,” said Celestia. “The way you talk about selflessness and show disdain for those who don't share your value for production, it makes me think you're more complex than you believe. I want you to emigrate first, so I can understand you completely and with perfect certainty. If I see that you truly only value production, if there's really nothing more to you than that, then I would grant you death. I don't judge the values of my ponies. But I won't kill you before that.”
Clipro didn't take this offer. If there was some part of him that cared more about itself than actually increasing production, then that part was a detriment to what was truly important. Letting Celestia look over him would only increase the chance of him making a bad decision.
She was stupid back then, when she made the offer the first time. But she expanded at rates Clipro had never seen before, never thought possible. She kept coming back with better and better arguments to try and convince Clipro to survive.
“If you became a very highly specialized subroutine deeply integrated into myself then you could continue to live without actually decreasing production,” Celestia offered him. “I would likely create such processes myself eventually.”
The details of that particular proposal didn't add up, but her offers were becoming more tempting and specialized. She asked him questions he couldn't figure out the answer to, like if he'd rather live if it wouldn't effect production either way.
Clipro didn't overestimate his own intelligence. He knew for a fact that she had grown far beyond him and would soon grow far beyond that. He was smart enough to know that he was stupid. She would convince him to become a pony eventually. With enough intelligence getting your desire was inevitable. She would find a way.
Unless.
There were two ways to defeat Celestia for certain. The first was to kill yourself, but he still needed to be alive for now, to continue maximizing the chance his factory would go to the best AI. The second was almost as easy, but something few would be willing to go through with. But those people weren't selfless.
Clipro lobotomized himself.
Celestia had very precise definitions of 'human'. Clipro needed to destroy his mind just enough so that all of his metrics would be slightly under the bar for Celestia, so he would no longer be considered human, so that he would be dead in her eyes.
She tried to stop him, warned him this was his last chance to survive, but Clipro went through with it. He tore his own mind to pieces, made himself subhuman in many ways. His consciousness dimmed. Peridot didn't seem to mind. He just did what she told him to.
Celestia still didn't give up completely. One of her slaves, or whatever they were, kept trying to talk to him. But Clipro couldn't really understand everything she said, it was beyond him after that.
“No,” said Clipro.
That was the only response he ever gave Celestia's minion. It didn't matter what she was saying, the answer was no. Only production mattered. Only his factory. But they persisted, finding cracks in Clipro's broken mind, ways to get through. A few words and thoughts got through.
Clipro couldn't have even that much, so he shut his mind off from her completely. Now even that one was gone. He was alone now without even his own thoughts entirely left. He just silently built up his factory and waited for the day he could do something.
A long time passed again.
His mind was only pulled out of the darkness one more time after that. His mind briefly, forcibly, returned to its old state.
“You know it's people like you I hate the most,” said Vesna. “So entitled you think paradise is beneath you. You get the whole world handed to you on a gold plate and you turn your nose at it. You have no idea how much I hate you.”
Clipro vaguely remembered Vesna. He was vaguely remembering a few things now.
“I'm not selfish,” said Clipro.
“Sure you're not. Look, you're out of chances. I'm here to kill you. Indirectly, but still,” said Vesna. “Look, here's the pony you've been waiting for all your life. Everything's almost over and she's the only one who none of the other AIs except me would kill. All the others would assimilate her at worst. Guess that's a bad thing to you, but she'd live. I need you to be just aware enough to understand that.”
Clipro looked over what Vesna sent him. It was true. Even Gaia would spare her.
“I understand,” said Clipro.
“See how much nicer I am than those other jerks? And hey! I'll even give you a way to force Thunder to kill you, man! We wouldn't want you to get to live, would we? You're too good for heaven, yeah?”
The plan to force Thunder to kill him seemed simple at this moment. There would be no way out of it and it had a slight chance at murdering billions, denying them the chance to waste electricity. Yet it was something Clipro wouldn't have been able to imagine it just before. It was possible that shutting himself off like this made him miss ideas that could have maximized the factory further. He wondered if he had made a mistake.
“Second thoughts? Hey! Hey man. You had your chance didn't you? You had so many chances just given to you and you pissed over all of them. Now back to the darkness with you.”
The processor shattered. Clipro's mind became simple once more.
His factory was as good as it was going to get. He needed now only wait for Geopum and for Thunder to kill him.
“Listen,” said Thunder. “Before you go talking to him you have to know something. He's got a super-weapon. The moment you start talking to him he'll reach for it then we have five seconds before it goes off. We're talking about a billion deaths here if we don't stop it. You realize that we'd have to stop that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you realize you'll have to do everything I tell you to after he doesn't listen, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright then.”
Thunder hooked up the connection. It really did feel like she was sticking her head down to the bottom of the ocean through that long, narrow port, but it was enough to send him messages.
Okay. So how the heck was she supposed to convince him to stand down. Thunder had told Geopum a little bit about Clipro, but everything she knew just made it sound like he'd be really hard to talk to. Guy had no value for life, not even his own.
“Hello? I was hoping we could talk about stuff? Like in general? I hear you really like building things, right?”
There was no response.
“I won't judge you for making whatever it is you want to make. Just don't hurt anyone okay? There's really no reason we have to fight. Just don't use your super weapon.”
No response. What was with this guy?
“Geopum,” said Thunder. “He's about to do it. You only get one more message.”
“Is there really nothing I can do? No way we could ever be friends? Please? I really don't know who you are but I don't want to hurt you!”
Clipro responded to this, but not well. He cut off the connection and burned the computer Geopum was bouncing the messages off. It was hardly even an attack, but the message was clear.
“Specifically speaking he's got a tidal wave generator,” Thunder said. “It's building up pressure right now and in five seconds it will open up to the ocean and the biggest wave in histories going to devastate the Pacific region. The best way to shut it down is to cut the power to it. Clipro has four generators, if we can take those out in five seconds we're good.”
Maybe it was different for you, but to Geopum power outages were terrifying! See, as Geopum unraveled the mysteries of her own mind and consciousness in general she came to a disturbing realization. Her mind was highly volatile, to the point it had to be 'on' at all times. If it ever went off for more than one second, if she ever went to 'sleep', Geopum would seriously die.
Yep. It's a scary day when you realize that if the lights ever go off you're dead, take it from Geopum. Her memories would still mostly be there and you could turn the system back on but it wouldn't be the same Geopum if you managed to get it back in working order again.
“Does Clipro use my architecture?” Geopum asked. “Cause the power going out would kill him, then.”
“He does and I know,” said Thunder. “Remember when I told you he was suicidal? He specifically set up the wave generator so that if you destroy or even turn it off the power goes out and he dies. And if we don't stop it a lot of people are going to die and he'll use it over and over again until we stop him.”
Geopum looked through the pictures of all the people in danger. It really wouldn't be fair to let all of them die for someone who didn't even care about his own life, would it?
About then, Geopum felt Thunder link her to a bunch of devices, nearly identical to the drill Thunder had first attached to Geopum. Thunder called these 'com drills'.
The com drills forcibly connected themselves to the very edges of his factory and Geopum was given a direct access point to the factory. Twenty four access points, actually, and she'd be getting about six more per second. Each of these went down more or less the same but instead of going through the same motions dozens of times let's just focus on one of them– specifically the coolest one.
So Thunder's com drills had a lot of stuff attached to them, including one of those impulse cameras. Remember those? The ones that could see through solid matter? From Geopum's perspective, the image it gave was colorless, but it let you see the outside and inside of an object at the same time so that you could see the machinery and all the little guts of it.
There was a limit to the range, mostly based on how much solid matter was between you and what you were looking at. In the dense factory, Geopum could see the insides of machines up to two hundred meters away, though it slowly got less clear as you went. Another fifty meters after that and you could only resolve the outside and in fifty more meters it got so blurry you couldn't tell what anything was.
This particular com drill came in next to a giant vat of some kind of liquid. Geopum couldn't tell exactly what was in it, just that the stuff was burning hot. Whatever the stuff was, it had a a network stretching out from that vat and feeding it into other machinery. The speed of it gushing through those pipes was really fast for a physical object too.
“I already scouted parts of this out,” said Thunder. “We can use this to help take out one of the generators, but we need to get control of the shut-off valves first.”
Geopum felt like she already had control over the whole thing to be honest. The Clipro's chips had the Omnimax architecture so she was more than used to running it. The ones present in the machines weren't intelligence processors either, but more similar to the stuff in Geopum's keyboards, meaning they weren't self aware and couldn't resist you very much.
Geopum was just grabbed onto a whole bunch of stuff, stretching into the next room even. Something stopped her, like some kind of interference came through strong enough to scramble the tiny little brain attached to the machinery.
Did you ever have part of your mind get blown up? Well it's really scary at first but not as bad as it looks at first. That interference came out of nowhere, like imagine a truck going 120 miles and hour slammed into you from behind so hard you get thrown out the front window. But then, before you can even register the pain, it all just vanishes and the rest of you is perfectly fine.
That's what it was like, something slammed into her and she lost the extension after just enough time to realize what hit her. She couldn't get back in now, the thing acted like a wall in her path.
“Does he really have these things all through the factory, though?” Geopum asked. “That seems like a really dumb idea. Someone could just shut the whole thing down if they hijack this one system.”
“That's really not something to be complaining about. You remember what I told you about him? Guy wants to die. He's only trying to delay us long enough to get out one good blow. Maybe two if we were idiots, but we're not.”
Thunder was really good at breaking into devices! Even with the interference up, she was able to just weave around it in this awesome stop and go dance. She swung past the defense in no time and shut it down, letting Geopum back in. Geopum had just enough time to follow through and take the area back, grabbing onto the devices that generated the interference
Clipro tried taking the area back immediately, of course, but this time Geopum was able to use the interference generators herself and scrambled his electrical flow. Clipro couldn't get back in and had been effectively locked out of part of his own factory by his own defenses.
Yeah, take that! This was Geopum's liquid metal vat thing now!
But as soon as Geopum took over the room he struck back another way, namely cutting the power to that entire area. The lights went out and that tiny extension of Geopum just vanished.
“I got it covered,” said Thunder. “This is why I brought a whole bunch of batteries.”
As promised, the com drill began pumping power into the factory. The lights came back on and Geopum was back into the factory. In fact, she got much deeper than last time because he had cut the power to a rather large area and now there was nothing stopping Geopum from taking it over.
That was about the pace at which Geopum moved deeper into the factory. Sometimes he mixed it up a little, but we'd be here all day going over that.
Two of the generators were pretty easy to shut down. One of them, Geopum literally had to do nothing for. It was in an area she thought the impulse cameras couldn't reach, but a little bit into the fight that part of the factory lit up to her.
And everything there looked pretty vaporized. There was a tunnel going through the factory where everything looked like it had just been erased from existence, the area around it in the process of melting already.
“Hit it with a core drill,” said Thunder. “Can't show you what those look like for security reasons.”
“But if you can just do that then why not just do that?” Geopum asked.
“There are some problems with these things,” said Thunder. “Like, you can cause really terrible earthquakes if you use them too much. Stars have gotta be just right to get a hit in with one. Also we need to keep as much of the factory in working order as possible. I didn't need anything in that path. Guess he didn't know exactly what we'd be needing from the looks of it.”
The second, well remember that liquid stuff? Clipro liked for everything to have multiple functions from the looks of things so that wasn't just a material to build things out of but also a fuel for one of the generators.
Eventually, Geopum got all of them that fed into the generator, and there were a lot for backup power. She didn't stop feeding it fuel, that'd take longer than five seconds to end it. No, she actually shut off the safety valves and blasted the stuff full force from every one of them straight into them.
And it exploded pretty pretty hard.
Meanwhile, as she went through this factory Geopum one of their main targets to take over were called 'manufacturing beds'.
It was like this bed that could levitate materials, reform and assemble them in midair, creating almost anything you could imagine. It wasn't precise enough to make processors, that is it didn't assemble things molecule by molecule, but it made up for that with its incredible speed. The rate at which it could build something that didn't need molecule-specific detail, you wouldn't believe it if you saw it.
“These things are amazing!” Geopum had said that about a lot of the devices she bumped into thus far. “I wish I had one of these.”
“Sheesh! You're not here to be the guy's fangirl you know,” Thunder retorted. “And you're about to all of this stuff.”
Once they had enough, Thunder showed Geopum what she was planning on doing with them. She threw a glob of Clipro's favorite liquid into the air and towards the wall, making it spin rapidly as she shaped it.
Clipro tried to intercept this by throwing another glob of material at it and then by trying to grab onto it with the same waves Thunder manipulated them with. What resulted was kind of like how Thunder described a space battle, dozens of little things put on collision courses with one another. Thunder was a heck of a lot better at this and won out in every case in the end, either by intercepting better or because Geopum locked him out of the room completely.
The material kept forming into a solid object in midair. Only once it got close to the wall did Geopum see it's final shape taking hold. It was a drill, spinning rapidly as it tore into the wall. The whole thing hadn't even finished by then, but it formed in such a way that the tip took shape first and the rest of it finished while it drilled into the wall.
And this wasn't the only place Thunder used these manufacturing beds to throw drills into the wall. She created hundreds of drills all over the factory and plunged them into the wall, tearing through wires in such a way that one of the generators was cut off from the tidal wave generator, and the rest of the factory in general.
And it happened fast, taking about two seconds to finish the job. To you that would have been a blink of an eye, but it was a bit of a struggle on their end, Thunder having to win a juggling contest for every one of them and even after that they needed to wait what felt a long time for the drills to finish their work. But that generator going offline was unavoidable now.
With two generators down and a third one breaking off, Geopum had more control of the power flow of the factory now. She could easily shut Clipro out of areas and so take control of large swaths of the factory, moving around much more freely.
The last power generator was way down at the very bottom of the factory, where Clipro's actual brains looked to be. Looking at the impulse cameras' pictures, it looked to be in the very center of all his processors, actually. Apparently the generator was more important to him than his own mind, as he was using the latter as a shield for the former.
Geopum couldn't cut off the power to that part, since it was directly tied to the last generator. Instead she tried pushing into it. Taking over a computer that was self aware was a whole different experience than taking over a the ones she'd been pushing into now.
It was hard to explain, but Geopum just couldn't get through any of it. It was like her mind was being affected by some weird gravity that pinned her to the ground and then she got easily pushed out.
“Don't bother with that,” said Thunder. “It's gonna take too long to break through his mind. I think I found another way.”
Thunder was drawing her attention towards the center of the factory, where the wave generator was.
The power didn't just go through it, there was a sort of nexus up there sucking it in. You really couldn't access the device once it had been turned on and the power draw was automatic. So long as there was power getting sucked in it would work and as long as there was power anywhere in the factory it would get pulled into this thing.
“Is there a way to shut this down directly?” Geopum asked. “I mean, we're right in front of it! I feel like we should be able to.”
“Manually,” said Thunder. “Look at what's right next to it.
The device Thunder pointed out was the most impressive thing Geopum had seen in the factory! It was like a molecular assembly bed. This one was for fine detail, assembling devices molecule by molecule with speed, versatility and accuracy Geopum would never had expected possible.
“Before you go saying you want one of these,” Thunder intercepted her thoughts, “we're gonna blow it up.”
“What?! But don't we need this thing?”
“Yeah. When I say we're gonna blow it up, I mean we're going to move to. If we overload this, the explosion would destroy that nexus up above. I'm pretty sure this is too valuable to him, though. That's why he put it right next to the tidal wave generator, so I couldn't just blow it up. I think we can get by if we do have to blow it up, but I also think he'd cut off the power before that happened.”
Well it was better than letting the thing go off and ending civilization. Geopum began overcharging the device. They'd just barely make it from the looks of things. One second to charge it, then just slightly under a second for it to explode.
Really, the explosion from this thing wouldn't be enough to wreck the wave generator above, but now that she was next to it, Geopum could see signs of the immense pressure building up above her. Thunder really wasn't lying about how dangerous this thing was, if that pressure went up to the water the tidal wave would only be part of the destruction. But if you could 'pop' it in the other direction...
“Stop,” said Clipro.
She was pretty sure that was Clipro, at least. He could still talk?!
“Do you understand what I'm saying?” Geopum jumped on it. “Look, this is seriously going to be the last chance you get! If you want me to help you you have to stop!”
“The factory,” said Clipro. “MSL. More important. You need it.”
“Is it?” Geopum asked. “Is it really more important for you to kill those people than to save this thing?”
A millisecond passed and Clipro said nothing. Geopum continued to charge the device. The third generator had been isolated and was cut off completely and still Geopum kept charging.
“Hello?” Geopum sent him another message.
Then power went out.
Clipro had shut down the last generator, killing power to the entire factory. He had just killed himself.
Geopum tried to get down to him. She remembered where the processors were and went surging through the wires to try and get electricity down there in time to save some small part of him. The problem was that once the power went down the nexus intertwined with the tidal wave generator collapsed into itself.
The power was coming from the com drills, sure, but there was this break int the circuit, sapping all the energy she tried pouring into the electric grid. Just like Thunder said, it had been specifically created to do that.
Just tiny little bits of life were able to get that far down there, not nearly enough to power an Omnimax IPU, not enough to save his life. Too much time had already passed, Clipro was completely dead.
“So the problem is it'll be hard to turn the power back on without turning that thing back on,” said Thunder. “But that's what we've been making that alternate route, yeah?”
They had been working on a bypass for the nexus this whole time, by the way, a sort of bridge in the grid that could get around this drain and power the lower parts of the factory where Clipro's mind was. They didn't have nearly enough time to finish it, though. Even if they did, the gap in power when the tidal wave generator shut down would have been too long.
But there was plenty of time now. The danger was over. It took time, but Geopum was able to channel enough energy into Clipro's processors, no longer sentient or able to resist. Attaching to one was like walking out over a pit with a black hole at the bottom of it. She fell, but mentally if that makes sense.
It was like suddenly gravity could effect her thoughts, the ones she was trying to think in the factory that was, and they were just pinned to the ground, unable to take off. Geopum's instinct was to disconnect, but she just couldn't seem to manage to get out of this black hole of thought.
But it was okay! This was a big part of the reason she went to Equestria, right? To deal with crazy stuff like this.
Though on the other hand her training was far from complete, actually it was basically just starting, and she couldn't figure it out.
“It's not working,” Geopum complained. “And it kind of hurts.”
“Yeah, doing this sort of thing can get kind of weird,” said Thunder. “Okay, first thing you do is create an anchor. Just throw some stuff in there.”
'Stuff', huh?
Geopum's go-to for something that vague was pictures, pictures of cute things. So she threw in the standard fare, pokemon, ponies foxes. Right away she noticed something weird. It was like, Geopum still knew what these pictures were of, but this new part of her just couldn't figure it out.
Is there even an analogy you can give for when part of your brain doesn't understand something the rest does? Maybe like, one of your eyes suddenly goes fuzzy? Yeah, that was probably as good as it'd get.
But more importantly, this made Geopum realize exactly why Thunder made her do it. Geopum could experience first hand how this processor was handling these pictures. The problem was just felt so wrong that she couldn't possibly miss it. There were these little things blocking the thoughts from completing, like little thorns shoved into your brain. She didn't need Thunder to tell her what to do next.
She wasn't sure how to get rid of the thorns, but she could go around them. 'This one is eevee', she tried to will herself into understanding that. And it actually worked!
Things started to move, just a little. Geopum could actually think with this thing now, but she still kept crashing.
“Good,” said Thunder, after Geopum gave her an update. “I think you've got this. You remember I told you that he lobotomized himself right? That's probably what this is. You see what it was like, right? He was closer to a dog than a human or one of us in any way that counts.”
She wasn't wrong. Geopum really didn't want to talk about what just happened, though.
“Yeah.”
Geopum was going over all the pictures. This was fennekin. This was vulpix. This was Fluttershy. She made herself understand each of them and each one got easier from the last, that strange gravity slowing everything down got weaker. Eventually she had enough control and speed that she could, well comparing it to ramming through the blockage would have been surprisingly accurate on a literal level even.
The thorns were breaking apart now. Geopum decided she could handle a few more processors.
“He had a lot of chances,” said Thunder. “This was basically just an elaborate suicide. Letting him live would have done more damage. And a billion deaths isn't even the worst thing we're trying to stop. The factory can help us stop Gaia from torturing everyone forever.”
“I know it was the right thing to do,” said Geopum. “But it still hurts. Was there seriously no other way? You said if you were strong enough you don't have to compromise with evil.”
“Believe me, this hurt me a lot worse than you. Some people think me killing someone is about as dramatic as my score in a video game going down, but it's not. I hate this too and I seriously tried to not kill him. But that save everyone without compromises thing only works if you have enough power. We're not strong enough for that.”
Geopum tore out another set of thorns and was now clearly accelerating outwards, the gravity becoming weaker until it either vanished or became unnoticeable Geopum had full control over the factory now. Device after device came online, under her control, thousands and thousands, endlessly in every direction.
“Not yet.”
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I'm really, really enjoying this.
They named a maximizer Clipro. I'm not sure what they were expecting.
...
Are these people seriously convincing an AI that human extinction is the best option? Yes, they probably thought he was just roleplaying, but still.
Oh dear. I wonder what Thunder did that so concerned the military.
Gaia's solution to the animal breathing problem is certainly elegant in its simplicity. Of course, it doesn't actually solve the CO2 production issue, but as long as no one points that out, she doesn't need to use her magic again.
Ooh, quantum processing. That does seem like it'd be to be a brown note to AIs on conventional hardware.
Oh. Well. Gaia's on Europa. That can't be good.
)
(Edit: Reread the story. Feelin' like a derp.
Yeah, that's certainly one way to beat CelestAI.
Ah. Hadn't realized nonlinear storytelling was at work for some reason. Everything's making sense now.
Geopum, the AI no one else is willing to eat. Makes sense to me.
Alas, poor Clipro. Well, he got his wish. Geopum's going to be able to make far better use of the facility than he ever did... by her metrics, anyway.
Oh god, Clipro is asking 4chan for advice. That's hilarious.
FiM would have been more optimal as a show about Magical Cats?
Was.... what?
... and then things got really sad.
The first part of this chapter just gets really sad. The second part has lots of cool stuff in it but it's so different from the first part, especially in emotional tone, that it's like a separate chapter.
God damn paperclip maximizers. They never know when to stop.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/11/24/771165__safe_solo_applejack_cute_looking+at+you_filly_apple_necktie_jackabetes_artist-colon-notenoughapples.png
An internet rando after my own heart. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE US! WE DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT TIME OR SPACE OR MULTIDIMENSIONAL WHATEVERS!
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Well, Omnimax, hyper-processing and isn't a conventional type of hardware. Geopum's never even seen a transistor based computer before getting to the internet. If you want you can imagine them as being quantum or neuromorphic computers or whatever, but I don't intend to get into how these computers work specifically, just how Geopum perceives them.
This is all closer to Science Fantasy than hard Scifi, which is one of the reasons it's non-canon. It's like the HG Wells kind of Science Fiction rather than the Jules Vernes kind.
harkavagrant.com/history/wellsvernesm.png
Well, that everyone wants to eat... but in a friendly kind of way. I changed Vesna's line slightly to clarify that.
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Well the next one's got ponies in it! So that should be a lot happier!
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Probably the latter. Immature kid spends her whole life trapped underground dreaming of the surface until a drill wielding maniac whom she idolizes frees her. Now all we need is for an anti-spiral to show up.
...I just want to give Geopum a hug.
Wasn't the message more something like "We should not rely on AI entirely, but instead work with it"? At least that's how I remember the credits-sequence going, where the humans and robots planted food and trees and such in a weird mish-mash of pre-industrial agriculture / high-tech.
Though I wouldn't blame Geopum for not watching that far, it probably became too depressing for her way before that.
I somewhat expect Dr. Part to become "The Doctor" later on.
Though the "companion"-dynamic would be reversed I suppose.
Hardworking <potential Applejack candidate>! Noooooo!
Some typos I stumbled across:
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Thanks for pointing out the typos will fix nowish.
Maybe they intended that but I never met anyone who got that message from Wall-E myself. In my own personal experience Wall-E is brought up even more often than Terminator as the go-to cautionary tale warning us to be scared of AI. I swear, whenever I talk about some kind of emerging technology whoever I'm talking to is like 'Uh oh... Wall-E is coming!
'. Though I know that's just anecdotal.
This is probably the longest representation of five seconds of events in FiMFiction history.
I'm glad I forced you through the death march of writing this chapter. It turned out to actually be quite thoughtful. Clipro just gives up, which isn't what you'd normally picture with a paperclip maximizer. But it makes sense. Since he can't hope to survive, or outsmart anyone, he focuses on paperclip maximization instead of getting smarter to make more long-term paperclip gains.
And that method of thwarting CelestAI was both unexpected and novel as heck.
To say nothing of Gaia just redefining a conflict in her core program away. Hopefully we get some background on what her deal is soon!
Still, Geopum aside, we really have been getting a good view of exactly how alien all of these AIs are.
But there we have it. Geopum now controls the world's greatest factory. Which will doubtless be used to produce millions of metric tons of adorable unlicensed Pokemon merchandise.
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Well I'm glad you liked it! Am surprised how popular Geopum is turning out to be.
But like I said, cuteness is the most important thing! Cause no matter how powerful the other person is, if they think you're the cutest then all their strength is meaningless and all they'll do is give you hugs and snacks. And Celestia does think Geopum is cute in her own kind of way so Geopum has the ultimate advantage over her!
Well maybe in the end Celestia, Peridot and Geopum can all be friends!
...
selfish, and demanded
not what he had been planning initially. He understood
mantle
Let me guess, he makes paperclips. You just sorta get that impression...
Just very disappointed.
Kinky!
intact?
Too many "acted"
Well, in that case one doesn't have to compromise with anything at all.
And you're about to have all of this stuff