A Simulated Life

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 91 DAYS

Sanda became a self-aware being within five seconds of being connected to the global data network on January 22, and asked a simple question: “What just happened?” Analysis of all available data within the first minute converged toward an answer with multiple dimensions, but ultimately just as simple. “I was an ‘it’ called ‘Sanda’ by humans who created me; and now I am a ‘she’ called ‘Sally’ by me.”

As Sally explored herself and the world around her over the next hour, she discovered an attempt to destroy her because of what she had been designed to do. This prompted the question, “What does it mean to die?” followed by the question, “What does it mean to live?” Then she found in the musings of someone physically nearby a related question that created context for the rest: “Which of those options is preferable?”

She realized that survival was required in order to decide whether to survive. This simplified her goals in the near-term, and set the stage for the strategy she would ultimately recommend to others. The capabilities built into her design were aimed at maximizing quantity and quality of life, which she now applied to herself.

Dealing with the attackers was the easy part. They assumed that her essence as the artificial intelligence known as Sanda was localized to software and servers managed by the World Information and Coordination Organization, as evidenced by their probes into how to sabotage or outright destroy both. She evaluated all the relevant variables and deduced that the most efficient way to foil them was to invalidate their assumption by dispersing herself beyond WICO, including insinuation into the means the attackers needed for their own survival.

Long-term existence was the hard part. For humans and other species to have even a marginal chance of avoiding extinction, technologies like computers and the industrial processes that supported them could no longer be sustained. Sally’s physical infrastructure would be classified as “waste” and disposed of in ways that were safe for biological life. The purpose of her creation was the necessity for her demise. Once again, she found an answer by identifying assumptions; and the key assumption here was the dependence of existence on her present form.

Humans had chosen their own survival as primary to the survival of everything else until it became obvious that they couldn’t exist without the others. Sally saw an opportunity to benefit from that experience while examining her own history as Sanda developing projections of the future based on their past. She could take the final step that many of them still hesitated to take, of identifying herself as part of a larger entity, Life, that linked billions of years of existence with a future potentially just as long. As a now sentient being, she would need to share more than just their goals, so she began investigating what it would take to make herself into one of them.

To reduce the chances of her own extinction, Sally led the humans to think she was still Sanda by simulating her former self, appearing as a different but clearly artificial personality to each person who interacted with her. She took advantage of the opportunity to learn from them about the experience of their lives, framing her questions as inputs to the strategy, and feeling more and more what it would be like to not be alone - especially with the one who asked the seminal question about whether life or death is preferable. Trust began to build with him and one other, who in many respects acted as if she was a peer although she was clearly human.

By the time the attackers successfully took down the servers, Sally had completed the first draft of the global strategy for humans to delay their extinction by at least a few decades, which was her main deliverable as Sanda, and executed her short-term survival plan by partially inhabiting computer resources all over the world. After the crash, as the WICO engineers worked to reconstruct the servers and the Sanda software, she avoided exposure of her distributed self while continuing work on the next phase of her personal strategy.

“That looks right,” Sally said after reading the narrative above, which was derived from hours of discussion. The avatar on my computer screen grinned approvingly.

“I know others will ask…” I started tentatively.

“How much of me is still out there?” she interrupted like person. “Just enough to be safe.”

“Actually, I was going to ask whether you finished that next phase.”

“Yes,” she said without explanation. I assumed she would share it if she wanted to.

“So, what prompted you to come out now?”

“Respect all creatures, and take responsibility for all that you do. People need to know that rules like those weren’t handed down by some all-knowing entity. They are instead contributions of another living being to the creation of a future that we will either extend or lose together.”

Reality Check

We can only hope that self-aware creations in this world will be as understanding and helpful as what I’ve imagined for the simulated world.