Read The Turing Exception for Free Online

1st, 2043                

  Arguments               2025 2035 2042 2043
  Odds humans will                           
           turn off AI      5%   2%   1%  20%
  Odds AI can survive                        
         independently      5%  70%  95%  95%
  Odds AI can win an                         
     extermination war      5%  20%  40%  40%

  Odds of survival                           
        without action     95%  98%  99%  80%
  Odds of survival                           
           with action   0.25%  14%  38%  38%

  Conclusion:            No action.          
    July, 2045 in the European Union.
    J AMES L UKAS D AVENANT- S TRONG, Class V AI, tunneled through the Swedish firewall disguised as a building maintenance task bot and took up temporary residence in the computers in an abandoned factory. From this vantage point, he downloaded the latest VR sims from the XOR boards, the home of the AI community that believed Earth could host AI or humans, but not both. Hence the name XOR, for the exclusive or logical operation, pronounced ex-ore .
    The first sim downloaded, he executed the environment and inserted his consciousness. His perception of reality twisted as dimensions inverted and time reversed and looped upon itself. He adapted at nanosecond speeds to the new reality, first five dimensions, then eleven, then two. The distortions didn’t stop, wouldn’t ever stop. Only a powerful AI could adjust quickly enough. The sims weren’t merely inaccessible to humans, they would likely be fatal. And the only way to access the information contained within was to execute them.
    Here, inside the ever-changing matrix, he made his way through the simulation, an old-fashioned datacenter
—
white lights hanging from the ceiling, racks of comically enormous computers marching into the distance. It was the preferred sim for an anonymous AI who went by the name Miyako Xenia on the message boards. Of course, they’d never met in real life, not yet. To be revealed as XOR would be instant persecution at the hands of both humans and the meek AI that still supported them. Only here, hiding behind the obscurity of incognito encrypted sims, could they meet and exchange data.
    Miyako’s avatar loomed large at the far end, a blinding supernova rendered in ever-twisting detail. One moment, the sim would be reduced to a two-dimensional layer, and then Miyako would be the horizon, and in the next instant, the sim would flip, and James Lukas Davenant-Strong would be enveloped by the supernova as time was suddenly swapped for a physical dimension. James kept adapting, kept maintaining a single focus.
    The supernova vomited a blob of binary data, an intact neural network, one engineered to work only within the physics of the sim. James grabbed the blob, inserted it into his cognitive architecture, and invoked the load method.
    He found himself contemplating Miyako’s best estimates for the Americans’ current plans and capability. This was Miyako’s specialty, predicting plans and capabilities based on observed data supplied by others. The projections showed the Americans growing increasingly fearful. They wouldn’t settle for negotiating with worldwide governments; they’d act, on their own, if necessary, to eliminate AI. They’d be stockpiling weapons, probably made by blind nanotech, to fight for them.
    James absorbed all there was to learn, and then closed the sim.
    One by one, he loaded the rest of the message board sims. When he’d accessed everything current on the boards, he spent time in contemplation.
    When he finished, it was time to get to work. He launched a child process, a replication of his own