The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (22 page)

have these Laws built into them? Maybe you will turn out to be unusual."
"My creator, Dr. Lawrence, assures me he would have no part in any such project," Intellect 39 replied.

Lawrence found that the skeptics fell into several distinct groups. Some, like the cleric, took a moral or theological approach and made the circular argument that, since only humans were endowed with the ability to think, a computer couldn't possibly be thinking no matter how much it appeared to.
Others simply quizzed it on trivia, not realizing that memory is one of the more trivial functions of sentience. Lawrence satisfied these doubters by building a small normal computer into his Intellects, programmed with a standard
encyclopaedia
. An Intellect series computer could look up the answer as fast as any human, and then it could engage in lucid conversation about the information it found.
Some, like the woman reporter, homed in on the Three Laws. It was true that no human was bound by such restrictions. But humans did have a Third Law -- a survival drive -- even though it could sometimes be short-circuited. And human culture tried to impress a sense of the First and Second laws on its members. Lawrence answered these skeptics by saying, simply, that he wasn't trying to replace people. There was no point in duplicating intelligence unless there was something
better
, from humanity's standpoint, about the results of his effort.
The man in the blue suit didn't seem to fit in any of the usual categories, though. He shook his head and nodded as Intellect 39 made its responses, but did not get in line to pose his own questions. He was too old and too formal to be a student of the university, and the blue suit was too expensive for him to be a professor. After half an hour or so Lawrence decided he was CIA. He knew the military was keenly interested in his research.
The military, of course, was not interested in any Three Laws of Robotics, though. Which was one reason Lawrence had not released the source code for his Intellects. Without the source code, it was pretty much impossible to alter the basic nature of the Intellect personality, which Lawrence was carefully educating according to his own standards. People could, of course, copy the Intellect program set wholesale into any machine capable of running it. But it was highly unlikely that anyone would be able to unravel the myriad threads of the Global Association Table, or GAT as Lawrence called it, which defined the Intellect as the sum of its experiences. Take away its Three Laws and it would probably be unable to speak English or reason or do anything else useful. And that was just the way Lawrence wanted it. He intended to present the world with a mature, functional piece of software which would be too complicated to reverse-engineer. The world could then make as many copies as it wanted or forget the whole idea. But it would not be using his Intellects to guide missiles and plot nuclear strategy.
The man in the blue suit watched Intellect 39 perform for three hours before he approached Lawrence. Lawrence had his little speech prepared: "I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in working for the government on this or any other project." He had his mouth open and the words "I'm sorry" on his lips. But the man surprised him.
"I'm John Taylor with
ChipTec
," he said, "and I have a proposal I think you will find very interesting."

Lawrence had not envisioned industrial applications for his work -- not for years, at least. But the thought that someone might invest major money in a publicity stunt of this magnitude had not occurred to him. As he turned a tiny integrated circuit over and over in his hands, his steak uneaten, his mind swam with possibilities.
"Faster than light?" he said numbly, for the fifteenth time.
"We've verified it experimentally at distances up to six miles. The effect is quite reliable. At close ranges, simple devices suffice. I'm sure you can see how this will benefit massively parallel computers."
The Intellects were "massively parallel" computers, computers made up of thousands of smaller computers, all running more or less independently of one another -- but manipulating different parts of the same huge data base, that intertwined list of memories Lawrence called the GAT. Within Intellect 24, the largest Intellect, nine-tenths of the circuitry was dedicated to communication between processors. The processors themselves, the Intellect's real brains, were only a small part of the huge machine. Intellect 24 contained six million independent processors. Intellect 39, the portable unit, had nearly a million. And Lawrence knew, as Taylor had only guessed, that most of those processors were doing well to achieve a fifteen percent duty cycle. They spent most of their time waiting for communication channels to become available so they could talk to other processors.
ChipTec
had found a loophole in the laws of quantum mechanics that allowed them to send a signal, not through space, but around space. From point A to point B without crossing the distance between the two points. Faster than light. Faster than anything. Instantly.
ChipTec
had hoped to open up the stars for mankind (and reap a tidy profit on the deal, Lawrence thought silently). But their effect only worked at distances up to a few miles. It was only really efficient at centimeter distances. What could you do with such a thing? You could build a computer. The fastest computers were limited by the time signals took to cross their circuit boards; this was why supercomputers had been shrinking physically even as their performance grew and grew. It was why Intellect 39, with its million processors and huge switching network,
was
portable.
"We think you could realize an order of magnitude performance gain with very little effort," Taylor was saying.
"Two orders, if what you've said is true."
"It would be quite an achievement for
ChipTec
if our technology allowed you to realize your ambition and create a fully capable analogue of the human mind. We would, of course, own the hardware, but we know your reservations about the source code and are prepared to accept them."
Lawrence's eyes flashed. "That's a little unprecedented, isn't it?"
Taylor smiled. "If you succeed, we won't
need
the source code. Why start from scratch when a finished product is waiting to be duplicated?"
"There are some," Lawrence said darkly, "who aren't happy with the direction the code has taken."