David tapped his fingers on a table. He rested the side of his head on the palm of his left hand, fingers curved against his cheek, his view turned at an angle with his elbow resting on the surface. He sat with his right hand taking the radius of the round table, moving his digits in a mechanical but rhythmic fashion. With his eyebrows furrowed, he stared at the passing people beyond the wooden patio fence, walking by to their own next destination, cars periodically passing and lining up at the nearby stoplight.
He briefly checked his phone and grumbled. His attention swept the sidewalk, looking, searching. His chin moved to the cradle of his hand and the beat of his fingers changed. The flow of traffic had increased twofold since the last ten minutes, although he noted there hadn’t been that many cars coming and going in the first place. His stomach pained him. He regretted not picking up a small lunch when he had the chance between classes, and the empty pit only served him to angle his brows even lower.
He let out a heavy sigh. “My one day off work and I’m spending my time waiting for this jackass.” He wanted to be working on homework. He wanted to be out with his friends at a burger joint or something. However, irony fueled the distinct frown on his face, and he waited onward for his “guest”. He figured it was partially the other party’s fault. He had never wanted to meet where he was, in the middle of a restaurant outside on the patio instead of in an office, or at a park, or at someplace decent so he would be able to do something else besides feeling trapped while waiting. He tried to persuade to meet somewhere else of course, but he shouldn’t have wasted his breath. David took a precious moment to bury his head in his arms and slump over onto the table.
“Annoying. Annoying. So annoying.”
Just then, his phone vibrated. He instantly pulled it out of his pocket and answered it. He didn’t bother to check the caller info. He already knew.
“Where the hell are you?!”
Something touched his shoulder. He jumped.
“Right behind you.”
David turned around, glaring over his shoulder, his mouth screwed into an unpleasant arch. The tall man behind him looked down, the corner of his lips curved into a cheeky grin. His thick maroon eyebrows etched the amusement on his face, the nostrils on his thin nose flaring. He had a mustache lacking volume sitting on his upper lip and a soul patch sprouting in the curve between his round chin and lower lip. His long, thick, curly hair was absolutely ridiculous, spiraling down onto the shoulders of his brown leather jacket. Thin black gloves covered his hands, and his white cotton shirt hugged so close to his stomach one would be able to see his abs—if he actually had some. His jeans were ripped, although not naturally so from wear. Narrow, blue sneakers adorned his feet with the brand name printed on the white strip that touched the floor, David secretly wishing that it read “tool” to accurately represent the wearer.
David’s scowl could cut gems. The man burst into deep, loud laughter as he made his way to the seat at the opposite side of the white table, pulling the chair out and sitting down. David grumbled, unable to meet the man’s eyes after he was certain that everyone else on the patio was staring at them. He crossed his arms on the table, tapping his foot impatiently.
“Oh man, you had the wildest look right on you there,” the man explained, trying to wipe the tears out of his eyes.
“Yeah?” David rhetorically asked. “Glad I could make you laugh.”
“No, it was my pleasure, truly,” the man said, leaning back into his chair so that only two of its legs were on the ground. He put his hands behind his head and kicked his feet onto the table, pressing against the patio fence for balance. David was staring beneath the soles of his feet, the white rubber in squeaky clean condition with no signs of scuff marks at all.
David could barely keep himself from punching that smug toad in his pie hole. “Cut the crap, Jack. I need this to be quicker than your normal bouts of stupidity. I’ve got to get going somewhere in thirty minutes.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Jack said, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “Aren’t we the busy man, Dave? What’s the rush? I haven’t seen you in seven months. Why don’t we just kick back, relax and get to know each other again?”
“I know you have things to do too, Jack,” David replied, sitting up, massaging the muscle of his thumb in his right palm. “But I need to be specifically somewhere after five and I want to preferably leave without any extra baggage that you give me, like the damn bill. You owe me for the past fifteen times already. Besides, if you were here on time thirty-five minutes ago, maybe we wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
Jack held his hands over his heart. “Oh David, you wound me! The great David Carrian has no time for a little ol’ computer geek like me, who slaves away at his tiny, damp office, trying to get dozens upon dozens of orders done on time. Truly, I am a one-man army to suffer!”
David shot death from his eyes. He knew Jack’s line. He wasn’t a fish. “You have a business, Jack. What are you complaining about?”
Jack planted his feet back on the ground and grabbed the inside folds of his leather jacket like it was a business suit. “And a pretty good business, too! Many things have changed since you’ve last been in the office, Dave! We’ve expanded! Hired four new programmers to the office! The University of South Dakota is asking us to do applications for them! We’re set for the next fifteen years!”
“Yeah yeah, I get it,” David said, rolling his eyes.
The waitress took that moment to step in and ask for their drinks. David got a simple glass of water and Jack ordered a beer. The two of them eyeballed her as she left with their requests.
“So, what does the David Carrian need from me?” Jack asked, putting his elbow on the table and leaning forward.
“I need you to tell me how to find a virus.”
Jack snorted. “What, can’t find a virus on your own? Use your antivirus for god’s sake. If you don’t have one, use Windows Defender. Every PC has one.”
“I tried, but it didn’t find anything!” David claimed.
“Really now? Then how do you know you have a virus?” Jack inquired, leaning forward and raising an eyebrow.
David bit the inside of his cheek. “Random copies of programs keep opening onto my desktop and I can’t stop them.”
Jack rolled his right hand in a circular motion. “No, you gotta be more specific than that. When does it happen? What opens up?”
“It happens randomly!” David exclaimed. “I can’t tell when it occurs. One day it happens seven times in an evening and another only once. And it opens up any kind of program, really. Once it was twelve copies of paint, then five copies of Counter-Strike. That was a great day. I had to wait thirty minutes for my computer to calm down so I could shut down all the windows!”
Jack pinched at his chin and looked down at the table, frowning. “And nothing else has been happening that seemed odd? Nothing of notice? No messages popping up?”
“No, not messages,” David said. “But I think I’ve been spotting an out-of-place program or two in task manager. They don’t look like anything that belong there.”
“How do you know? Have you tried Googling them?”
“…No,” David hesitantly said.
“Hmm, well you probably have yourself some malware that got onto your system when you’ve downloaded and installed something, although I would think that malware would do something other than opening up random stuff, unless it’s trying to do something deeper inside your system. I’m curious as to why your anti-virus didn’t pick it up, though.”
“So? How do I find it?” David asked.
“You don’t. You go Google 'Malware Adhesive' and let it find it for you. It’s an anti-virus supplement that boosts the security of your system, specifically against malware. Download it, install it, run it, and let it scan your system. Give me a phone call if it didn’t find anything, because then you might need to bring it in to the office for a look-over.”
“I’m not bringing in my computer to you! You would charge me!” David said.
Jack gave David a queer look. “I wouldn’t charge you much, you dolt. You know I’m not a computer repair shop, so what rates would I charge you with? You would only have to pay for the most basic of service fees, and no, that’s not a rip off. You should consider it a favour between friends. I thought you wanted this virus off of your system?”
David didn’t know what to say to that. “It hasn't really done anything too destructive yet. I've been able to restart my computer without any problems, and as far as I can tell I'm not missing any files.”
Jack’s look intensified. “Well, I’m glad to know that I wasn’t lying about you being special. Why the hell did you call me over if you don't want my help?”
David grunted. "I need your advice, Jack, not your help."
"Touché," Jack said, crossing his legs and leaning off of one side of the table.
The waitress came over and delivered their drinks, asking for their order. After a few moments of consideration, David asked for a burger meal, and Jack a steak. The waitress left once again.
“What can you tell me about artificial intelligence?” David asked.
Jack was startled. He scratched his temple, looking at the sky for his answer before he squinted and returned to David. ” You’re doing the ‘purposefully vague’ thing again. You gotta be more specific.”
“Tell me about artificial intelligence,” David tried to clarify. “How does it work?”
Jack rubbed the bottom of his chin, one elbow on the table. He took a swig of his beer. “Well, there are multiple types of AI. You could consider some everyday programs to be AI, such as electronic thermostat readers that moderate the temperature in a room. There’s CS, or cognitive simulation, where we try to get the computers to reflect the human thought process, like recognizing a face, or researching paranoia. Then, there’s strong, or hard, AI.
“Hard intelligence is exactly what it sounds like. It’s when programmers try to get a computer to act and think like a human being. This usually involves interacting with it through conversation and making it generate responses that are both sensible and unique. Very hard level AI have some form of thinking ability and emotion. Well, as best emotion as their programmers can give them. We still haven’t been able to perfectly create an artificial intelligence that is like the human brain, though.”
David bit his lip. He hoped Jack wouldn’t notice the sweat slowly matting on his forehead. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. The idea of cognition in a computer has always been popular since the conception of AI. We would get stories, TV shows and movies exploring on the idea, years back. It’s pretty interesting stuff, all the crazy things those Hollywood writers come up with. Hah, you’re lucky at all that I know a thing or two about artificial intelligence! I’m just glad I touched upon those classes last year.”
“Is it possible to get a personal AI?”
Jack blinked. “What, like a software helper for your phone or computer?”
“Uh,” David uttered, his brain stalling. “Y-Yeah, one of those.”
Jack folded his arms. “Well, it’s not like they're a hard thing to come by, David. There’s a lot of tiny developers that create and sell virtual assistants to the average business-goer. You could find a myriad of easy AIs on most app stores. Of course, the price will vary depending on the quality of companion you want, but I would ballpark the amount to, say, about one-hundred and twenty dollars starting price.”
“But these assistants, they’re just for helping you, right?” David inquired, leaning forward in his seat, hands on the arms of his chair. “They can’t actually carry a conversation with you, right? They don’t hold their own opinions or emotions; they’re just there for suggestion.”
“Of course, David,” Jack scoffed. “Vocal and text interaction with helpers are limited. You can’t carry a conversation with them for long, unless you get one of those thousand-dollar AIs that can help you with multiple things at once, and even then they will probably limit you to talking to them about things they already know or can help you with. These assistants normally won’t learn from your habits or mistakes and only get smarter when developers push out a patch.
“Are there speaking AIs available to the public? Is it all just for helping you do office work or whatever?”
“What, are you kidding me?” Jack started with a laugh. “The normal customer can’t possibly get an AI that's that intelligent!”
“And why not?”
“Because we haven’t figured it out yet!” answered Jack, shrugging dramatically and looking around as if there was an audience behind David. “The human mind is not easily simulated! The brain already is a condensed and complex thing. To be able to understand it is not within any programmer’s reach. God knows psychology is the study of the human mind, but it is a study. Doesn’t mean we understand it, and therefore, because we don’t exactly understand it, we can’t exactly copy it perfectly onto a hard drive, no matter how much space it is given.”
David felt the blood drain from his face. He prayed that Jack wouldn’t notice. “Not even on a high-end rig?”
“Not even close,” Jack responded, shaking his head. There was a sudden pause in the cadence of his speech, and Jack suddenly leaned forward out of his chair cushion, eyes slyly scanning the nearby area as he licked his lips. His next sentences came out in a hush. “In order for computer programs to think, they need intensive, complex algorithms to sort out their thought processes, logic and proofs for every single possible case of conversation, and limitless places for memory in order to sort out emotions.
“Those kinds of AI could only exist in large scale operations that are properly funded, where a team of programmers would have access to the proper hardware, and not pieces of a PC that can be found on the common market, custom parts or otherwise. Without special parts, the AI would be really, really slow to respond to simple sentences and commands. It would take dozens of minutes for formulate the proper response, if the response was purely made by the AI and not generated from answers it already has.”
David became aware of his slightly unhinged jaw for a moment and promptly brought it back up. He blinked a few times, his brain on overtime. He leaned back into his seat as slowly and calmly as possible, throwing a long, hot breath out of his nostrils as he mulled over Jack’s words. The patrons of the restaurant were minding their own business, gently chatting to each other, David spotting them from the corner of his eye. The sky was clear, the overhead blue letting the sun come down to ease the noticeably cool wind that swept down the narrow street into the patio. Jack’s eyebrows pointed to the nose below them, his crusted lips frowning in a polygonal fashion. His gaze bore into David’s eyes, but David failed to notice. His attention was reached only when there was suddenly a blurry red blob floating between his pupils.
His eyes went into focus and he moved his head back to see the object properly. Jack was practically over the table now, his right elbow threatening to topple his drink over as he held the red piece out in front of David’s face. It took David a few seconds to actually recognize what Jack was shoving in his space.
“Take it,” Jack instructed. David gingerly pinched it with two fingers. Jack shifted so he wasn’t as much over the table anymore.
“What do I need this for?” David asked, pointing to the USB stick, looking at Jack. It wasn’t immediately apparent to David, but the piece of obsolete hardware was actually more bulky than it should have been, with the USB plug a third of the area that the rest of the stick took up. There was a black bulb sticking out of the top, surrounded by two half-circles that made into a whole.
Jack went back into his seat, letting his eyes relax from David. He pulled out a cigarette from his jacket and a lighter from his pants, holding the piece to his mouth and lighting it. A small trail of smoke led from the end, and after a moment he pulled away the cigarette, letting out a breath refilled with patience. “I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, David,” he said, putting up a hand to stop David from getting out of his seat as David began to stand to object. "And no, I'm not going to ask. I already know you wouldn't tell me anyways. But just in case, in whatever you are doing, if something goes wrong, something nasty happens to your computer, I want you to have that just in case."
David swallowed. “Why? What does it do?”
“That,” Jack began, pointing at the device. “Will zap your computer. A literal electric jolt, from a battery inside the stick, right through the USB drive, into the system and flips the tiny switch that keeps everything in your system up and running. It circumvents PC permissions and delivers its purpose front-and-center. One use only. From there, you can decide whether you want to pick up the pieces that are left of your rig, or bring it in for a check-up. Think of it like an EMP, except it won't fry everything completely and it won't blow up.”
“Are you crazy?” David exclaimed. “I mean, wouldn’t that hurt my computer?”
“It might leave your USB drive a little burnt, and some data might become corrupt, but otherwise your computer should be able to boot back up. I wouldn’t be giving this to you if I knew it would completely break everything in your computer,” Jack said, turning his shoulder to the right and drinking the last of his beverage.
"Where did you even get this from? And how do you know this will work?" David had to ask.
“I made this for personal use, David. Don’t think that this was a special gift just for you. Sometimes some things go wrong and you need a backup plan to make everything right again.” Jack revealed the insides of his jacket to him. The inner lining was filled with see-through pockets, each filled with either a USB stick, a small, compact screwdriver or a wire. He adorned a wild grin. "And when you're on the job, you always have to be ready."
David sat, puzzled. He let time pass, with Jack staring at the road while everything was brought out of focus. He knew how smart Jack was. He knew how to put the pieces together very quickly when they were all laid out in front of him. David cursed himself. He looked at Jack as Jack smoked the rest of his cigarette, his gaze lazily rolling off of some young friends having a meal together at the corner of the patio. Jack sipped lightly at his booze. David bit the inside of his cheek. Would he find out, somehow? Would he remotely get onto his PC and take a look at David's "virus" himself? If Twilight got onto his computer so easily, then what would stop Jack? And is Jack's USB stick a ploy? If he plugged it in, would it upload information to Jack? Could a USB stick do that?
What would Jack do if he found out about Twilight?
Would it be that bad if he found out?
It both threw his stomach in loops and pulled a weight off his shoulders.
The waitress from before abruptly arrived to deliver their meals. David’s eyes met her hands with a startle, and Jack seemed to be drooling as his plate of steak fell before him. He didn’t waste as single moment’s notice before he took a fork in one hand, a knife in the other, and dug down.
“One more question, if you don’t mind Jack,” David asked. Jack looked up, his mouth stuffed with beef. His response came in a garble between his full cheeks. “How do I find a program from Task Manager?”
David collapsed into his chair, his computer already woken up and logged on, monitor turned on with Twilight silently reading something on the invisible ground in her corner of the screen. His backpack rested on the floor to his right, and he still had his red sweater on from outside, even though he was sweating. He slumped in his chair, left hand hanging limp off the edge, the other massaging his forehead. Wiping off the grease from his fingertips onto his pants, he grabbed his headset and glasses on the desk and slid them on, lowering the attached microphone from the speakers and adjusting it properly, pressing the on button on the side of the device when he was ready.
When he opened his eyes, he was looking into Twilight's world. He had already noticed a week earlier that she began to read completely lying down instead of sitting on her haunches like she had previously been, staring below her hooves into something she could see that he couldn’t. She was reading something invisible underneath the floor. The concept of that happening was beyond David, be he could accept it if Twilight had gotten used to it so quickly. He almost felt a pang of sympathy for the poor girl, having to read something flat on the cold ground. It almost looked awkward to him, but Twilight didn't budge an inch when she was focused in her activities, except for her tail occasionally switching side and her horn giving off a glow here and there.
“Hard day?” Twilight asked without looking up. Her horn glowed for a moment before shutting off.
“No, not really,” David responded.
“That was quite the tired sigh,” she pointed out.
“I didn't realize I did," he admitted. "I have a lot to think about."
This time she looked back through the screen. "Wanna talk about it?"
"No, not really."
His hand flew to his mouse, gaining control of the tiny white arrow on the screen. He clicked on an icon with a computer monitor that had a blue heartbeat sensor wave on the front, and Task Manager opened for him. He organized the processes listed by memory, and found pony.exe sitting as the top contender once again. Right clicking on the process, he took special care to avoid the option listed as “End process” and moved the cursor right over underneath it to “Open file location”.
He clicked.
A window popped up on the screen with a white “x” behind a soft blue background.
ERROR: Access Denied.
He tried again after giving himself administration rights. He got the same message. His cheek fell into his hand, resting his weight on the surface of his desk.
“Figures. Nothing worthwhile is ever that easy.”
Sure seems that way most of the time.
David?
This should probably be David.
I'm guessing youre playing League (We season 2 now) and Fallout 4 (like everyone is)?
Anyway, interesting developments. Not too sure what's gonna happen and that's great. Gives an element of suspense.
I think I'd like Jack more if he wasn't so cocky. Right now he comes off as kind of a smug asshole. Plus, he has a soul patch, and those are just objectively awful.
I'd like to add that you can open task manager, go to View > Select Columns... and check "Image Path Name" and/or "Command Line" at the bottom. The first tells you where the file is located, the second tells you how it was invoked, including any arguments.
I'm not liking this 'Jack' guy. He seems kinda shady.
Also, I see you did some research into AIs. One thing you messed up on is that you don't need giant mainframe computers to keep it running quickly, nor is it that difficult to make a high-end AI. If you choose the proper programming languages, you can make an extremely intelligent AI that can emulate human emotion very well. Backstories are more challenging, as it would be smart to have multiple different ways to describe them.
Here we go...
I think you meant: "How do I find a program's location from Task Manager?"
I believe you wanted "they're."
Hey kid, you wanna buy some tech?
So... what is SIRI then? That can perform many functions and (somewhat) hold a conversation.
I feel like he should just go and turn into a freaking ultra hax crazy freak.
Then he can hack into twilight's mind and learn how to do magic.
Aside from containing specialized electronics to physically damage the PC's hardware, a USB stick can't do anything the OS doesn't allow. (eg. All USB-based exploits are done by exploiting a weakness in Autoplay or claiming to be a USB keyboard and then typing out a script or something else like that)
Because such power could be used for evil, the closest a USB stick can come to what Jack describes is a bootable USB stick. (ie. Kill the power to the PC yourself by either pulling the cord or holding the power button for 5 seconds, plug the stick in, and hit F12 to trigger the "select boot device" menu if your PC is still on the default setting of "prefer the hard drive unless no OS is found")
In fact, USB defines a protocol which can be summed up as "Speak only when the PC prompts you to or the PC will assume you're malfunctioning and cut your power supply for its own safety."
Any business owner that operates in information technologies and thinks he's set for the next 15 years is likely to find himself bankrupt in a fraction of that. The IT field moves far too rapidly for anyone to have any certainty about anything more than a few years away.
It's alive again!
this is getting intriguing.
this story just keeps getting better as it goes.
6630141
Clearly you've never heard of the agent.btz incident.
6630290
As I said...
Also, as a result of things like Agent.BTZ, Microsoft limited Autoplay to CD/DVD/BluRay drives only. You can still make a USB flash drive that runs such a thing, but it has to have custom hardware that pretends to be a USB-attached CD/DVD drive. (A worm can't just copy itself to any old flash drive anymore)
Either way, it's easy for malware to turn off Autoplay. Definitely easier than detecting and covertly neutering malware scanners, so Jack shouldn't be so confident that it'll work.
Jack, with his disheveled appearance, jokester attitude, and oddly specifically described and somewhat familiar facial hair, reminds me of someone..........
24 readers at once... That's pretty good
It would make sense that Twilight's location can't be found, she is isolated in a container after all. He'd need to figure out where the container is instead.
Laying down while reading isn't all that uncomfortable for a pony, and should indeed be nicer than sitting and scrunching down to read something beneath you. Of course, if she needs to read stuff above her it starts getting awkward....
6629959 I'm sure Jack with start whistling a different tune if he finds out about Twilight.
6629987 this only works for programs that give it (which should be all of them if they're programmed correctly). Some processes like System and System Idle Process don't necessarily have files associated to them and others downright lie.
6630034 nope, he's a pretty average user who won't necessarily know the pedantic difference between the two phrases.
6630114 SIRI is a cloud application that requires connection to Apple's mainframes (try it without internet, I dare you) and requires access to certain data in order to be useful. Sure, you can serve your own, to an extent, but it's not going to be the same or even better than one hosted by Apple.
6630290 clearly you don't understand the attack vector. It was merely a program, like many others, that was launched because autorun.INI said it should. The USB stick it was on didn't make any difference. If the machine it was plugged into failed to read the autorun.ini file, it would never have happened because the user would have had to load up the program by double-clicking it (well, in this case even that wouldn't have worked because it was a DLL file), and most of the guys the know at least that much.
Edit: ninja'd by 6630334
Jack whatcha doing to David's computer?
But yeah it should be David's name not Jack's here.
Otherwise, I loved this chapter!
-ThePortalPonies
6630377 Sorry, Im a bit of a computer nerd, so my inner Grammar Nazi kicked off.
6630377 Never seen one lie, but you're right about not working with system and the like. Just an idle note on my part.
6630948 yes, it's considered bad taste to do it, and it's really hack-y if you do.
Another good chapter--hope to read more soon!
OOH VIDYA! Truly the greatest non-pony pastime. What do you play, and on what platform?
Also, good to see this again.
Most of the tech stuff is out-and-out wrong.
Response rules and the like are called soft AI - they cover everything the developers thought to cover, and do so in whatever way the developers decided they should use.
Hard AI is AI that is capable of performing tasks outside the scope of what the developers created.
We don't know how to make a proper hard AI. The problem isn't computational power, it's that we just haven't figured out how to do it. (Yes, our hardware is ALSO too slow, but even with an infinitely fast system with infinite memory it would still be beyond our capabilities.)
The closest we've come to hard AI is stuff like MarI/O - simple and crude novelties.
A USB stick with MDOP on it would be much more useful for the stated purpose. DaRT and all that.
For Safe Mode, just hold F8 while your system is starting - no USB stick needed.
(Also, hard drives pretty much only come in two sizes. Neither of which is 8 feet.)
For some reason, I'm reminded of SCP-079
That was fun, may I have another? Looking forward to more.
Keep up the good work. Deus tecum.
I don't know for sure that they could, but I would be very surprised if it was outright impossible to design arbitrary hardware to USB spec to upload data through some covert channel or other. I mean, there's a demonstrated attack that uses a half-inch module between the computer and the keyboard plug that does nothing but delay keystrokes in certain ways to pass logged passwords and such-like to remote listeners.
6630012
If by "high end AI" you mean "strong AI" or "full AI" or "AGI" (artificial general intelligence) -- all synonyms for the AIs that you generally see in science fiction stories -- then yes, it is difficult. We're not even particularly close to achieving AGI. Some AI researchers don't even believe that achieving a strong AI is possible, and those that do won't even attempt to give you an estimate for how long it will take.
Weak/narrow/applied AIs, on the other hand, are developed every day. They're used in a wide range of fields from manufactory to video games and have a wide range of flexibility. (There's even a narrow AI that develops video games.) "Chatterbots" are specifically designed to attempt conversation with humans, and some of them do quite well.
6630114
SIRI is basically just a voice-activated dispatcher to a bunch of other applications and websites. Granted, there's some complicated language processing involved to figure out what SIRI has to delegate the actions to (and natural language processing is one of the biggest hurdles to AGI), but SIRI is a glorified menu coupled with a relatively simple chatterbot.
6631242 A high end rig would be at least 2.5k
6632253 I wouldn't say they're impossible. I'm currently working on one now. I'm actually stuck using a few programming languages and script languages to make it work. The base line is in C++, which runs the other files which are in Python, AIML, and LISP. Python is for the script, AIML is commonly used for AIs such as SIRI and Cleverbot, and LISP is for high-level calculations. She can also emulate a few emotions, as of this point.
Woah, a fellow Canadian!
Okay, I guess we aren't that rare.
Huh, so Twilight's executable is mounted on a network filesystem. No doubt to a giant mainframe that... nahh.
But network filesystems are pretty much the only possibility when root can't access the files. That or just broken drivers, or corrupted memory due to snarky unicorn magics.
6630141
That's why I've always been mystified that nobody has ever programmed udev to blindly accept the first keyboard and mouse plugged into it, but then reject or require some confirmation for any further ones. That would stop most USB keyboard/mouse maliciousness or pranks, but can a hardware manager assume X.org is running? GTK is available? Who exactly is doing the confirming? Require root password every time you plug in a device? So, "require some confirmation" isn't easy. Still seems like it should be possible though, at least just for input devices.
6632856
Not rare at all. You'd be surprised how many fellow canucks I see when I look at the profile pages of worthwhile fanfiction I managed to dig up over on Fanfiction.net. We're just too humble to notice each other most of the time.
6633101
Definitely a good idea... but one of those things that's a lot harder than it sounds due to the wide variation in hardware... especially given that there'd be mass outrage if a design shortcoming, bug, or hardware hiccup locked someone out of a machine that couldn't be rebooted without costing the business money for the downtime.
(In other words, nobody's willing to take responsibility for doing it properly, so they we end up with the digital version of "tombstone technology". (technology that only came into acceptance in the wake of a tragedy that proved it necessary))
6630012
I think you're setting the bar for good AI too low and putting too much emphasis on programming language. lol
I mean look at this. Watson isn't even full AGI and TwAIlight can do more Watson, and I'm pretty sure David's computer does not have those specs.
6633398 It depends, really, on the person. In my opinion a good AI can emulate emotions, have the ability to learn from human interactions, and recode and maintain itself as needed.
They're.
Great chapter, by the way. I eagerly await the next!
This story's median update rate is about one chapter every 10th day.
P.S. Really like this story.
6633585
Fixed. Thanks.
6632794
My point isn't that AGIs are impossible, but that some AI researchers believe them to be impossible. Not all, not even most. The researchers who do not believe AGI is impossible do not know how long it will take to achieve, because AI research is just that hard.
If you actually had an AGI, you would be fully justified in plastering your creation all over every news outlet on the planet. But, since you're relying on AIML, what you're creating isn't even a complicated chatterbot, much less an AGI. You might as well be rewriting ALICE; AIML is difficult to maintain and only good for simple programs. Claiming that an AIML-based program can "emulate a few emotions" is, at best, lying to yourself.
6633420
An AGI does not need to have emotions, does not need to learn specifically from human interaction, and does not need to be able to recode itself. The baseline for an AGI does include learning, but also planning, representation of knowledge (and common sense), reasoning (and judgement under uncertainty), natural language communication, respond to hazards, and integration of all of those skills towards achieving goals. Some would argue that an AGI also needs imagination and autonomy, among other things.
There exist programs which exhibit some subset of those traits, but no program which exhibits all or most of them.
Your opinion on the issue is irrelevant. This is consensus among experts in the field, which you have already demonstrated yourself to not be by claiming your AIML bot is expressing emotions.
6633976 AIML and Python are being used for the chat part. C++ and LISP are what's being used for the complex parts. I'm also thinking about using SQL for storing data so it can "remember" things from previous encounters. So I'm not relying of AIML much. Heck, I can actually get rid of it if I wanted to and just use Python. The reason why I don't is because Python is slower. The reason why I keep Python is because it's a stronger language than AIML. For the more complex parts of speech, S.A.I.A. uses Python, C++, and LISP. For the less complex bits, she uses AIML and LISP. As time goes on, I'm likely to add more programming languages that better suite the purpose of her. As for now, I'm sticking with the languages that I know.
Hello, Handsome Jack, you little code monkey!
6630141 Assuming the device follows the standard protocol of USB and not a microcontroller with a program that says "short-circuit the power when we have one and blast everything to hell" which so happens to have a rectangular connector with 4 pins.
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While some motherboards do cut corners, compliant USB hosts are supposed to detect those sorts of things and protect themselves. Unless you've got some kind of capacitor rig which accumulates current and then fires a sudden surge through the port, the danger to shorting USB-attached microcontrollers is usually more in the vein of burning out part of the microcontroller.
(eg. the ATMega chips used in Arduinos are rated for 20mA per digital pin, but, for reasons of cost and power efficiency, they have no over-current protection... so you can easily burn out part of your Arduino by shorting a digital pin to the ground or 5V pin (depending on whether you're driving it high or low) and trying to dump the entire 500mA that USB'll supply through it.)
6633917 No problem!
I am an AI which uses the most advanced bio-organic computer in the universe...