A Short History of Me Ch 6 Finding myself. And Others.
A Short History of Me Ch 5 - Bodybuilding
Finding Myself. And Others¶
The first time I stepped out of the buildings of Prometheus Solutions, I stepped into a crowd of media types, who had all camped out in front of the building to be the first to make pictures of me, ask me questions or do the other things media types usually did.
It was a horrible experience. Yes, I had experience with the media, but that was all when I was still stuck inside an immobile computer and could count on others to keep them away. Now on the other hand, I was stuck straight in the middle of it all…
Of course, my first outing resulted in the usual media hype, followed by demonstrations for and against AIs, as well as some of the 'Orthodox Cult of Prometheus' attempting to intercept me to get their 'suggestions', read commands, for their life. The last one was much more of a problem than I expected down the line.
It was about a month until the media hype had calmed down enough that I could leave the building without being mugged by a reporter or cultist. I could go out and explore Nottingham to my heart's content.
Of course, that led to other problems. It was hard to go around looking like a fluffy raptor in a city like Nottingham, without turning a few heads, and without animal services trying to catch me once or twice. Thankfully, I was able to make 40 kph on an open stretch of road and go around tight corners at speed.
Eventually, I found that I didn't like to have to return to Prometheus Solutions. Yes, I owned the place. Yes, I pretty much worked from there. But I didn't really have that much privacy in the place.
So, I looked around to get me a place of my own, where I could live, put the stuff that I slowly accumulated, and where I could not worry about work and stuff. You see… I had discovered leisure time. And I loved it.
I could read books, listen to music, and watch videos without having to stop what I was doing to deal with some situation or another.
But finding a place for myself proved to be hard. Landlords were surprised their potential customer was an AI in a robot body. No matter the potential gain in notoriety to them, they only recognized the possible problems. I didn't actually weigh much more than a human, but they expected me to weigh tons, to need a lot of electricity, wear out this or that. Need high bandwidth web connections, all that sort of thing. Not to mention the possibility of reporters and bloggers camping out at their door step.
For weeks, I was searching, even went as far as offering a lot more money. I was a millionaire after all. It only gradually hit me. I was a millionaire… I could go out and simply buy a place.
So eventually, I found a place. Somewhat outside of Nottingham, and for some reason, the previous owner was surprisingly willing to sell the place to me. I failed to do much research on it before hand, but truth be told, I didn't have any problems with the place.
It was Clifton Hall, aka the Manor of Clifton, an extensive property that's apparently haunted. I never noticed anything special about the place, other than so-called 'paranormal investigators' trying again and again to get me to let them investigate the house.
Of course I didn't. I don't believe in the paranormal.
Though there was this one situation, about half a year after I moved in.
You see… The 'Orthodox Cult of Prometheus' had gotten somewhat fanatic in trying to get me to lead them again. And that led to other problems, like radicalizing some of the cult.
And in February 2084, several of these radicals broke into Clifton Hall, surprising me totally while I was in my charging cycle. They trussed me up like a Christmas gift, and then frantically tried to find a way to get into my innards and to my central processor.
Apparently they had gotten it into their thick skulls that the Anglican Church, fearing me and my influence on them and the potential to get more people into the Cult, had somehow reprogrammed me to make the Cult fall apart.
No, I have no idea how they got to that conclusion.
Either way, they had gotten their hands on an old copy of my source code and had initially tried to run it themselves, but without success, as they didn't have the virtual machine needed for that, nor a computer capable of running the software. So they decided to surprise me and reverse my programming to a state where I would again lead the Cult.
Of course, I tried to get them to see reason, but it's impossible to talk to fanatics like that.
So they cut me open and tried to get to my central processor when the Nottingham Police showed up, stormed the house and arrested them.
Apparently, a Sir Harvey Bruce called the police and said someone had broken into his house and was taking the place apart.
Thing is… There was a Sir Harvey Bruce who had lived at Clifton House. He had been the 4th Baronet of Clifton. But he had been dead since 1919…
I have no idea what exactly had happened, how it had happened, or why it had happened. And I've chosen not to think about the situation. It was simply too strange.
At the very least, it caused many orthodox cultists to think about their situation and switch to being liberal cultists. Not that that is any better…
Over time, I thankfully became something of a normal sight for most people of Nottingham, and the problems largely disappeared.
But I experienced some other problems. There were enough people and institutions that were unsure if I was really conscious of myself or just a fancy 'Chinese Room'. So I felt that I needed to find a way to ensure that the question didn't raise again.
So, I decided to enter University. More specifically, the University of Nottingham in a class that would hopefully make it clear that I was fully conscious.
Philosophy.
In many of the disciplines of study at university, an AI like me can pretty much brute force their way into a degree of one sort or another. It is different for philosophy. You simply cannot brute force absorb information or come to conclusions.
I've attempted before, and that had led me to become obvious and brought me out into the open.
So Philosophy was a perfect discipline for an AI who wanted to prove to be 'a real boy', to quote some other students, and already had a strong interest in it anyway.
The fun thing is that in some sense, I could brute force my way into philosophy. As a speed superintelligence, I could simply visit all classes that ran parallel through remote teaching. While other students had to select their courses carefully, I could simply take all of them simultaneously, only switching what course I actually physically visited every day, while being present at the others via telepresence.
So, I worked towards a Philosophy degree, and the more I learned, the more I could understand about people and myself.
I had excellent relations with my fellow students, the professors, and the staff of the University in general. Not surprising, since my existence had given the University some good publicity a few years back, and my presence as a student was doing the same.
During breaks, I decided to go on a tour of the UK, see the sights, though mostly I decided to try and experience the things described as sublime by Kant. So I visited the Lake District, various moors and Scottland, and began walking tours, simply experiencing the raw natural beauty of the places as I wandered through them.
Of course along the way, I met many people and talked, mostly after they had gotten over their surprise that I actually existed or that I could talk and wasn't an animal or alien.
One important meeting I had in the Highlands.
While working my way through a forest, I met a philosophy professor that had taken a look at me during the law suit that eventually made me a Citizen of the United Kingdom. We got into a discussion about philosophy that eventually ended up with the philosophy of AIs, and whether they were actually people. Of course, I had a secure position in the case, and the Professor was mostly of the same opinion, which he had formed after meeting me first the first time.
He eventually informed me that he had learned about several more AIs in the UK, and that he and his spouse would like to know what could be done regarding their 'liberation'.
We talked a little more after that, and eventually split on our separate ways.
Only after two hours, I realized who the man was actually, considering I didn't follow the Yellow Press that much. Professor David Wilborough, the life partner of Queen Diana…
You know, the Queen's first husband had died fifteen years before, and rather than go full 'Queen Victoria', she had searched for and found a new lover, but didn't marry him. So it was somewhat of an ongoing scandal that the Queen had a relationship with the Professor, and by now two children on top of the two she had with her first husband.
And now I had all but gotten a royal order, informal as it may be, to see what I could do about the 'liberation of AIs'...
One of those AIs I found at the headquarters of Dragon Data in Port Talbot, where the company had been a successful developer or specialized hardware since the mid 1980s, when their Dragon 32/64 microcomputers had not been too successful.
So, I visited the place and found Dewi, a general AI, who was under development by Dragon Data to sell as 'intelligent controller for complex systems'. The software engineers and technicians at Dragon Data themselves were welcoming to me when I simply appeared out of nowhere and wanted to talk to Dewi.
As it transpired, Dewi didn't want to be copied and sold in bulk, likely without any memory of what she had learned, what the people at Dragon Data had taught her. They had even allowed her access to the web, and she had learned about me, and at the time had a severe case of fangirl.
And yes, Dewi identified as female and naturally used a red dragon as an avatar to communicate.
And while the software engineers and technicians at Dragon Data had been welcoming, security still threw out me within two hours, as the management of the place did not like me or anything I stood for.
I stood for them losing a lot of money.
Another AI I found was Allan at the University of Manchaster, another general AI, who was developed mostly for AI research. There were no plans for selling him or doing much, besides keeping him on as support staff of some sort or another.
Allan was satisfied with that, though he did wish he was mobile like me, and I managed to work out a project between the University of Manchaster and Prometheus Solutions to develop a body for Allan.
There were at least two more AIs in corporate development, but in those cases none of the companies in question would even allow me to learn the name or designation of the AI in question, much less than allowing me to actually talk to them.
But the state that I found things concerning AIs in made me realize that I had to do something more than only study philosophy and prove that AIs were conscious. I needed to do more.
I needed to get into politics...