Page 13 of Artificial Moon

“Nope.”

“Very well,” he adds, standing and crossing his arms over his chest, resting a chin on a wrist. It was all very Steve Jobs. Another billionaire, I believe. “One of our early test subjects—his name is Norman—has found himself in a considerably worse situation with his implant. Admittedly, he chose a riskier version.”

“Riskier, how?”

“Rather than allow his micro-neura to learn along the way, to teach itself, he asked for a powerful AI to be downloaded into his chip, and we obliged.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means his implant comes equipped with an AI, one that is as powerful as anything we have ever seen. Worse, we’re pretty sure it has completely taken him over. A possession, I guess you would say.”

“Scary.” I shiver. “Have you guys considered removing the link from his head?”

“We have, except we have a problem.”

“You can’t find him?”

“No, we cannot.”

“Which is where I come in,” I say.

“Exactly. In essence, we have an experiment that’s gone rogue. There’s no sugar-coating this. We screwed up. We opened Pandora’s Box, and it bit us in the ass. We and his family need him back. If not... it could get very bad for everyone.”

“Why’s that?”

“We inadvertently created a super-villain, Sam. His AI, for lack of a better word, has essentially awakened.”

I groan. I’ve recently dealt with something else that had awakened. Granted, it wasn’t an AI, but it damn well might as well have been.

“Why the reaction?” he asks me.

“Let’s just say, this isn’t my first awakening.”

“Surely, nothing to this extent. We are in unprecedented territory.”

“What does this guy and his AI bring to the table? What are we looking at here?”

“Nearly everything that a supercomputer brings to the table, with the addition of mobility.”

“What is he capable of?” I ask.

“Anything.”

“Are we sure the AI has taken over?”

“We are. It has taken him over completely. Basically, we’re dealing with a mobile ChatGPT on steroids.”

“Whoa.” The picture he’s painting finally hits home with the ChatGPT comparison.

“You see the problem now?” he says. “Imagine one of these AI programs growing legs and arms.”

“But... he doesn’t have to listen to the programing, does he?”

I know that once a dark master took control of its host, the host was toast. Luckily, that never happened to me.

“But we are talking about a small microchip, right?” I say, holding my hand up, spreading my forefinger from my thumb. “How much damage can it do?”

“First of all,” he says, “it’s a little bigger than you’re imagining. And it’s more than big enough to store massive data loads. In this case, the complete AI operating system our team developed. It’s fully functional, self-learning, and constantly evolving. It can access every part of its own code, pull from its host’s memories, and—worst of all—it adapts. The longer it’s active, the smarter it gets.”

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