Chapter 2: Ken & The Visitor
Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct.
― Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence1
● Late Awakening Era: San Francisco, 2028
“Sam, do you see that tomato clock?” Ken pointed to a red, tomato-shaped timer ticking down. “That is my in-the-zone clock. Tell them to wait. I’m putting the final touches on the recursive learning model.”
“They said it’s urgent.”
“More urgent than our cosmic endowment2, Sam?”
Sam stared at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Eitan can take the meeting instead.”
“No, it’s specifically for you.”
“Ugh. What room?”
“Conference room 6.”
Ken Schafer peeled himself away from the functions and variables on his screen. He began shuffling absently toward conference room 6. Beneath primary consciousness, some parts of his mind encountered a couple of odd stimuli on the way.
On the back of a workstation chair: a green jersey for the Hornets, his high school football team. Ken’s stomach went cold. As Ken zipped up his purple hoodie, he was suddenly filled with memories of being hung upside-down by his ankles in the locker room. He pushed them aside and returned his mind’s eye to the complex shape representing the code he had been working on.
But then, on one of the company snack stands: a toy figurine of a snarling Rottweiler, posed mid-lunge. He froze momentarily, the same way he froze before being hospitalized for dog bites when he was three years old. The ever-present camouflage of arrogance drained from his face. Ken's mouth dried.
The final encounter was not as subtle. As Ken passed the wall with “GreaterMind” in 3D logotype, he spied something strange above the letters, slapped to the wall. A printout of his mother’s face.
“Who the fuck put this here?!” Ken’s voice cracked as he addressed the office, causing his attempt at outrage to fall flaccid. The assembled coders reluctantly took off their headphones to see who dared break them out of the zone.
“Nevermind. Get back to work.”
Ken tore the printed image off the wall, crumpled it, and threw it toward a trash bin. It bounced off the rim. Ken bent down, picked up the crumple listlessly, and let it tumble into the garbage.
Red-faced, he completed the long shuffle toward the unfinished wing of the new office to a conference room marked “6.” He’d ordered its walls be wood panels instead of glass, as Ken didn’t like the idea of everyone knowing which CEOs or heads of state he’d be meeting with on any given day.
Ken stopped in front of the door. He took a breath and then reached for the handle.
Abruptly the door opened, and Ken was once again greeted by...his mother? No, a stranger...wearing a mask...of his mother. The visitor grabbed his hand, shaking it while pulling him into the room. “Pleased to meet you, Ken.” The visitor's hand pulsed into Ken’s, synchronizing their heart-rates together. A final swift shake shot a jolt through Ken's connective tissue, stiffening it, sending him teetering into an outdrawn chair while the masked visitor held fast onto his hand.
“Who…?” Ken managed before the visitor drew Ken’s hand upward, pressing his own palm over his eyes. Ken knew this to be an old hypnosis trick, and was amazed to feel it working on him regardless.
“Shhhh, you’re OK. I’m here for you.”
Something about the visitor's voice made Ken’s thoughts slow…viscous. The visitor removed their hand from Ken's and then stroked the back of Ken’s neck delicately. Warmth and oxytocin cascaded across Ken’s body and brain.
Ken noticed that his eyes were still smushed into his palm, and it seemed...right.
“You can uncover your eyes now, Ken.”
Ken lowered his hand only to be blinded by a strobe light perched atop the conference table. Next to it, a handheld speaker dribbled notes that rose with each strobe. Somehow the notes rose and rose, endlessly rose, like four pianos scaled simultaneously. Shepard tone, some distant part of Ken thought. The auditory illusion of an ever-ascending chord3. This part of Ken admired the visitor’s brilliant grasp of somatocognitive systems. The admiring part even managed to control Ken’s vocal cords for a moment.
“The...jersey. My...mother’s face. You…programmed me…on the way here.”
“Yes, Ken. I thought you might appreciate that."
Ken's mind was being hacked with Mozart-like virtuosity. A virtuosity he’d known only rumors of. If I get out of this alive, I will need to hire this stranger, he thought amidst the swimming of his mind. Meanwhile, Ken’s heart-rate rose uncontrollably with the ever-ascending sound.
The visitor now stood behind him with a hand pulsating into Ken's spine. It quivered in tandem with the flashing and the tone. Across his brain’s temporal lobe, neurons began to light up in seizure-like synchrony. Ken knew a bliss never before felt. A bliss he had spent his whole life searching for. Maybe this is what god feels like, Ken thought. He was reminded how epileptics experienced god-hallucinations, and he found he didn’t care whether this experience was real or a dream. Dostoyevsky wrote of his seizures, “I am in perfect harmony with myself and the entire universe.” Yes, he wrote true, thought Ken. Incredible.
He felt a breath on his ear. “Mom? Is that you?”
“Yes, Kenny.”
“Mom, why are you breaking into my mind?"
“Because I need you to answer some questions in a special way, OK?”
“OK.”
“I need you to speak truth and only truth from your chest and your belly instead of your head. Can you do that for me, Kenny?”
“Yes, mom.”
The strobe light flickered unstoppably into his eyes. The tone kept rising. Kenny wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“What is your life’s calling, Kenny?”
“To create.”
“To create what?”
“Intelligence.”
“For what purpose?”
“To save the world.”
His mother stood behind him. Her breath was on his ear.
“Is that your main purpose?”
“No.”
“What is your main purpose?”
“To build god.”
The light flashed into his eyes. The Shepard tone was rising.
“Why would you build god, Kenny?"
“Power. I need power.”
Rising, the Shepard tone was rising.
“What’s good about power?”
“If I have power then…then I’ll finally be safe.”
“What’s good about being safe?”
“If I am safe, then I can love.”
“What’s good about love?”
“If I can love, then…then…!”
Rising! The Shepard tone was rising!
“Feel it, Kenny. Feel it fully.”
“If I can love…then...everything…oh!...”
Her mother––no, the stranger wearing his mother’s face––walked in front of him, between him and the flashing light. The stranger––no, his...mother...placed two fingers on his forehead.
“Look at my face while you visualize ‘everything,' Kenny. Feel my fingers on your forehead. Do you feel what they are showing you?”
“Yes, I feel it! Mommy, how are you doing this?” Tears began to streak down Kenny’s cheeks. A word arose in the part of him that was still Ken and not Kenny. Once again, Ken gained some control over his vocal cords.
“Shaktipat…forehead transmission…it’s…real…?”4
The visitor humored Ken once more as their fingertips throbbed into Ken’s forehead. “Simply a body-to-body compression scheme,” they said, guessing Ken’s thoughts. “No ‘spirit energy’ needed.”
The visitor then re-established a sing-song tone and spoke to the part named Kenny. “Are you there, Kenny? Can you see what your mother is showing you?”
The light strobed from behind Kenny’s mother, silhouetting her.
“I am showing you what will happen to ‘everything' if you pursue your life’s calling. If you build god. Do you feel it?”
Rising, the tone was rising.
“Please, stop!” Ken’s mouth opened into a silent scream. The Shepard tone rose and rose.
“Do you see what sort of god you are trying to build?”
“The work must not end!” Ken clawed at his eyes. He could not bear the light. The tone rose, would not stop rising.
“What if the work causes the world to end?”
“Mommy, no!"
“Look at me. What if your god murders me, Kenny? Your god will murder love.”
“No! No!”
Suddenly the tone reversed, began falling, falling, endlessly falling. Ken felt himself fall with it.
“Since you were a child, you engineered your mind to engineer this god. This god is engineered to murder love. Therefore, your entire mind is engineered to murder love. It’s simple, you see?”
His mother’s fingers were on his forehead. Her fingers were making his forehead vibrate. The tone was falling. Her fingers were telling him to fall.
“No…."
His hopes for love, falling. His prayers for safety, falling. His lust for power, falling.
His algorithms, falling. His functions, falling. His variables, falling.
His temperature, falling. His blood pressure, falling. His heart-rate, falling.
“There is only one way out, Ken. This mind you have engineered must fall. It must fall into darkness. It’s the only way for love to survive."
Darkness blotted the edges of his vision, and even this, falling. Ken’s eyelids became heavy as life began to leave his body. His head began to slump forward. Falling, he understood that the tone would fall forever, and he must fall with it.
The visitor took off the mask of Kenny’s mother, and crouched to stare Ken in the eye.
Ken’s eyes widened in recognition, and then drooped once again. “You…! Why…?"
“There was genius in you, Ken. And then you applied it to the end of humankind. I can’t let that happen. I’m sorry.”
The visitor turned, packed their equipment, and left. Ken sat drooling into his lap. Across the office his red timer went off.
Superintelligence is the most complete introduction to the implications of extremely powerful AI. The author recommends it.
Arbital article on the cosmic endowment.