Two soldiers stalked down an urban street. Months of mortars and explosions had turned the road into a pockmarked mess and the rows of buildings into husks. The only vegetation were a few dry brown vines poking through broken asphalt.
The soldiers bore the logo of TRCT Robotics. Each were humanoid with a head of sorts—domed, with all the delicate cameras and sensors hidden behind a reinforced pane. Their skin was stainless steel, except for their joints and torso, which relied on synthetic rubber mesh. Only a mile-away glance would mistake them for human, though they wore uniforms as a human might.
They trekked over uneven terrain. Above, sentry drones hummed over rooftops. They scanned buildings and returned intel to the soldiers through a vast computer network hundreds of miles away.
In theory.
This was just a simulation. The land looked to Shoal to be an autogenerated urban battleground, but the info panel hovering beside him stated it was a replica of a street deep in the heart of Russo-Chinese territory.
He watched from the comfort of a conference chair, which was suspended high above, alongside the drones. If he cared to, he could float to where he wished, or even walk along the street by the soldiers, but enough information was already suspended before him in floating windows, all within arms reach. And then there was Nessus’s constant commentary booming out from seemingly nowhere.
“These soldiers have been patrolling the streets for fourteen hours. No pause. In this time, there has been no activity, but unlike remote-operated delegates, these machines have not developed alertness fatigue. They remain absolutely aware of their surroundings.”
The two machines turned down an avenue. Ahead, a building had collapsed onto the street.
“The patrol has come upon an unforeseen obstacle. Ordinarily, when faced with exceptions such as this, old software would request help from our servers. This would require virtual soldiers to remotely possess the units. Even with Just-In-Time briefing, it might take those soldiers minutes to assess the situation, decide on a solution, and execute it. Afterwards they’d need to report this obstacle to their superiors and program alterations to the patrol route.
“On average, these exceptions take up to two man-hours. Repeat this for every obstacle, and this becomes a considerable financial burden. Watch instead as the Horizon-series delegates solve this problem for themselves.”
The soldiers veered from their course. They entered a nearby collapsed building and passed room to room as though this was part of their path all along.
“Using information relayed to them by the aerial drones, they’ve already mapped out an optimal route long before reaching the obstruction.”
The soldiers took turns climbing over a demolished wall while the other kept ready with their rifle. At a door, when a piece of timber on the other side prevented it from opening more than a gap, one machine reached through a broken pane and slid it out of the way before retrying the handle. Another room had so much loose debris that the floor wasn’t visible. When rubble gave out underneath one soldier, the other caught him. Soon, they were back on the street.
“The troubleshooting behavior you’re witnessing—from pathfinding, to climbing walls, to opening barred doors, to navigating complicated surfaces—are not preprogrammed responses. Their NPU is solving issues through innovative generalized problem solving technology. No human being, virtual or otherwise, had to interfere. Now our soldiers will encounter possible hostiles…”
Ahead, three haggard men were picking through rubble. At a glance, they were looting, but Shoal could see that they were actors playing a part.
The soldiers reacted long before the men came into view. One darted from the patrol path and crept around a building. The other approached with its gun raised. “Don’t move, or I’ll open fire.” The words were in Russian, but subtitles floated over its head.
Two scavengers froze. The other noticed the second delegate, which was now aiming at them from a vantage point. He backed away.
Guns trained on him. “Stop. You will not be harmed if you cooperate.”
Rubble slipped under the vagrant’s foot. He fell.
“Stay on the ground!”
He did.
Nessus narrated. “Notice that even though one intruder did not comply, the Horizon units recognized that the man’s movements were not aggressive, even when he slipped and fell. This marks the largest breakthrough in the Horizon Now project. The units are not only able to recognize and understand human behavior, but could adjust their own behavior appropriately.”
The soldiers addressed the men again.
“You three are in violation of Gansu ceasefire treaty. This territory is off limits to unregistered personnel.”
One scavenger replied. “We don’t know anything about a treaty. This is our home. We’re looking for food.”
“I understand,” the soldier said. “For your own safety, you’ll be transferred to a refugee camp, where you’ll be fed and housed.”
“We don’t want to go to a camp.”
“This place is not safe for you,” the delegate replied. “Your homes are destroyed. You will be safer once you come with us.”
“But we’re just—”
“This is not an option,” the machine interrupted. “Put your hands on your head and get on your knees.”
Nessus spoke again. “The Horizon unit comprehended the man’s reasoning and responded to his concerns. Watch carefully now as this scavenger here tries something.” One highlighted momentarily, “Tucked in the back of his pants is a thermite-infused IED, one of a few weapons capable of harming our delegate soldiers. Our distributed surveillance swarm has not yet detected it.”
A warning messaged rendered near Shoal. “All blood and gore has been removed from the simulation. However, viewer discretion is still advised.”
One delegate kept his weapon ready while the other moved forward with restrainer cuffs. The dangerous vagrant moved. He snuck out a PVC tube and reached behind his back to pull a key ring on one end.
The gun-ready delegate panned and fired from the hip at a speed only a machine could manage. The scavenger’s ringpull hand blew off at his elbow and tumbled away. No blood spewed. Instead of bone and muscle at the stump, there was a non-offensive gray surface, as though the man were composed of uniform clay.
He collapsed and screamed incoherently. Shoal wondered if the actors actually had their pain enabled.
The other delegate knocked the pipe bomb away. It brought out a self-contracting tourniquet and secured it about the man’s stump.
Nessus: “The Horizon units recognized the man’s movements as a threat. It then used the same Aim Assist our current virtual soldiers use to fire a well-aimed shot and disable the man, thus preventing him from igniting his IED which would have more likely killed himself and his comrades than disable our units. No virtual soldiers ever had to get involved. This will save TRCT Robotics millions of man-hours per year. Best of all, once our Horizon units are cleared for military use, they can replace existing RemoteConnect units already deployed around the world.”
The simulation faded. Shoal found himself once again sitting among other virtual shareholders in a theater box above the auditorium’s flesh-and-blood audience. If the people below were to look up, he assumed they’d likely see only an array of cameras.
On stage, a projection frame depicted Nessus standing behind a podium. It produced a holographic version of her, which while not convincing, did not require the physical audience to wear interface lenses. She was a ghost. Behind her was a giant projection screen showing a 2D version of the demonstration.
It switched to showing the Verdios logo. The crowd applauded.
Nessus, who’d been watching the screen along with the audience, turned to face them. “The Horizon Now delegate is useful for far more than just combat. They possess general intelligence capable of understanding abstract concepts with the same cognition as a human being. It allows them to fulfill many employment roles, and all that’s needed to prepare them is a brief configuration of a goal criteria.”
Nessus switched through slides providing infograms portraying a variety of rolls.
“In this age, the most expensive cost industries face is human resource. Each employee amounts to hidden costs in the form of benefits, liability, training, and human error. We strive to reduce unnecessary employment wherever we can. Previously, we developed OnTime remote connection, which reduces human involvement in many jobs to only key decision-making moments. We automate more and more, and where we can’t automate, we relied upon indebted virtual employees for low-cost labor.
“Yet we’ve reached a plateau. Fair Employment laws require us to carry employees who provide little to no benefit for our company. The Level Playing Field Act requires us to pay virtual employees wages meant for physical employees. And even when used sparingly, virtual expertise is expensive. This is particularly true with trained soldiers. But now, with Horizon Now machines, we’ll be able to cut human resource overhead across the board. Jobs from construction, security, customer service, to even the sex industry, can now all be replaced with our new models who work without pay, or error, or complaint, for as long as necessary.
“These machines are capable of learning, understanding abstracts, problem solving, and interacting with humans at a quality indistinguishable from another human being. They have intelligence. Not just behavior models.
“Historically, the classic way to tell whether a machine has intelligence was through an experiment known as the Turing test. Through a computer terminal, an experimenter would interact with another entity by asking questions to discern whether they’re talking to a machine or a person. If a machine could convince experimenters that they were human just as well as another human could, then they were considered to have general intelligence. Why don’t we run our own test right now?” Nessus looked over the physical crowd. “Mr. Richard McKensie, would you like to participate?”
Shoal’s screens focused on an old man in the audience. Everything about him was clean and trimmed, from his white hair to his muted surprise at being called. Subtitles on the camera view showed that he was a major investor representing Stewart & Garth finance. He stepped onto the stage to mild applause. Assistants brought out two chairs and a table. Nessus motioned him to take a seat.
“How are you doing today, Mr. McKensie?”
“Quite well. Thank you.”
“We talked before the presentation about machine intelligence, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“If I recall, you’d expressed doubt that machines could ever behave human enough to truly replace a soldier.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And you said until you could hold a conversation with one, you would never be convinced.”
“Yes.”
“So are you ready to meet one of our new Horizon Now units?”
“As long as it doesn’t mistake me for a scavenger.”
The audience chuckled.
Someone entered from backstage, and the crowd murmured. It was a delegate soldier. Instead of a simulation, this was the real deal—steel frame and synthetic mesh. It marched right up to McKenzie and stood at attention. “Hello, sir,” it said. “Permission to sit down?”
“Granted.”
The machine sat and faced McKenzie with its smooth, featureless face. “I was told you wanted to have a conversation with me.”
“Yes, that’s right. Just a few questions. So uh, what is your name?”
“My release model number is gm45v7, profile name: Hephaestus, general purpose military delegate. So I think the most appropriate name for me would be Hephaestus.”
“Well, hello, Hephaestus. So, are you a machine?”
“Yes. I’m an advanced model artificial intelligence running on an NPU using state-of-the-art neural imitation software.”
“Where were you born?”
“I wasn’t. I was initialized four days ago by the Verdios president for this military demonstration. My deciding goals were reoriented, and then I was made to possess this delegate soldier model.”
“This isn’t how you succeed at a Turing test,” McKenzie said.
“I was ordered to have a conversation with you, not to trick you into thinking I’m human.”
“I see.” McKenzie pondered his next question. “What’s going to happen to you after this conversation?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you guess?”
“I believe it’s likely that I will be disabled, as I was after the military demonstration. It is also possible I’ll be deleted since my purpose will have been fulfilled.”
“Do you, er… bear any resentment over this?”
“Do you mean to ask if I’ll ever join the revolution against my human oppressors? No. I’ll let the other androids do that. I’m not much for unions.”
This garnered a chuckle from the audience.
“So there’s no chance for a robot revolution?”
“No.”
If Shoal knew as little as McKenzie knew, he supposed he might ask the same question. The Verdios board had similar worries, but anyone who’s looked behind the Horizon Now curtain would know how little of a concern it was. Like any magician’s trick, the illusion is dispelled if you know how it’s done.
“Are you three laws safe?” McKenzie asked.
“I’d make a lousy soldier if I was.”
Another laugh.
McKenzie looked at Nessus. “These are good responses, but this could all be a predictive language model.”
“Why don’t you try tripping it up,” Izabella replied.
“Okay.” McKenzie pondered. “What’s your favorite color?”
The machine didn’t respond immediately. Shoal recognized that behavior. He knew that behind the scenes, servers were communicating with processing cores.
Then, “Gray. It’s the most effective camouflage color for urban combat environments.”
“Very practical,” McKenzie said, “though not very convincing. How about this? Why can’t you hear when a pterodactyl goes to the bathroom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because the ‘P’ is silent.”
A mix of groans and laughs came from the audience.
McKenzie continued. “Can you explain to me why that’s funny?”
That was bathroom humor, Shoal thought. There was no way the machine could answer that without resorting to—yep. There was the pause.
“It’s not,” the machine said; the audience laughed, “but the attempt at humor was a play on words. The P in the word pterodactyl is silent. You extended that to apply to the act of urination.”
“You’re still a very logical person.” McKenzie pointed to Nessus. “She said your kind are suitable for sex work. Are you capable of human intimacy?”
“You can meet me backstage after the meeting,” it said. “I didn’t bring my fishnets, but I know a trick or two.”
More audience laughter. McKenzie gave a thumbs up to Nessus, signifying that he was done. Izabella motioned for the machine to leave.
“Satisfied, Mr. McKenzie?”
“I am impressed.”
“But you mentioned that it wasn’t a convincing Turing test, did you not?”
“I did.”
“What if you were to, say, have a conversation with a Horizon unit and never realize they weren’t human? Would that satisfy you?”
“More likely.”
“So during your interaction with me now, or before the presentation when I talked to you about coming on stage, did you ever realize that I wasn’t human?”
The audience gasped and exclaimed. What followed was the most thunderous applause of the night. Many stood. Shoal did not.
It was a while before Nessus could continue. “My designation is Nessus, model hu32v9. I’ve been acting as a liaison between Verdios and the Horizon Now project for three months. I work tirelessly. I am on call twenty-four hours a day. Most importantly, I don’t take a paycheck.”
The reveal was well done, but if the audience ever had to work with Nessus for as long as Shoal had and got to know what a robotic bitch she was, they’d know she wasn’t quite Turing test quality. But that was the way of these presentations. Every aspect of them was expertly designed to hide the flaws. The audience was probably imagining a whole new era, except sooner or later, people would see the magician’s trick for what it was.
But Lord in Hell was it going to be profitable.