What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, "Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried."The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. In this new novella, at over 30,000 words, his longest work to date, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It's a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it's an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.
Her name is Ana Alvarado, and she’s having a bad day. She spent all week preparing for a job interview, the first one in months to reach the videoconference stage, but the recruiter’s face barely appeared onscreen before he told her that the company has decided to hire someone else. So she sits in front of her computer, wearing her good suit for nothing. She makes a halfhearted attempt to send queries to some other companies and immediately receives automated rejections. After an hour of this, Ana decides she needs some diversion: she opens a Next Dimension window to play her current favorite game, Age of Iridium.
The beachhead is crowded, but her avatar is wearing the coveted mother-of-pearl combat armor, and it’s not long before some players ask her if she wants to join their fireteam. They cross the combat zone, hazy with the smoke of burning vehicles, and for an hour they work to clear out a stronghold of mantids; it’s the perfect mission for Ana’s mood, easy enough that she can be confident of victory but challenging enough that she can derive satisfaction from it. Her teammates are about to accept another mission when a phone window opens up in the corner of Ana’s video screen. It’s a voice call from her friend Robyn, so Ana switches her microphone over to take the call.
“Hey Robyn.”
“Hi Ana. How’s it going?”
“I’ll give you a hint: right now I’m playing AoI.”
Robyn smiles. “Had a rough morning?”
“You could say that.” Ana tells her about the canceled interview.
“Well, I’ve got some news that might cheer you up. Can you meet me in Data Earth?”
“Sure, just give me a minute to log out.”
“I’ll be at my place.”
“Okay, see you soon.” Ana excuses herself from the fireteam and closes her Next Dimension window. She logs on to Data Earth, and the window zooms in to her last location, a dance club cut into a giant cliff face. Data Earth has its own gaming continents–Elderthorn, Orbis Tertius–but they aren’t to Ana’s taste, so she spends her time here on the social continents. Her avatar is still wearing a party outfit from her last visit; she changes to more conventional clothes and then opens a portal to Robyn’s home address. A step through and she’s in Robyn’s virtual living room, on a residential aerostat floating above a semicircular waterfall a mile across.
Their avatars hug. “So what’s up?” says Ana.
“Blue Gamma is up,” says Robyn. “We just got another round of funding, so we’re hiring. I showed your resume around, and everyone’s excited to meet you.”
“Me? Because of my vast experience?” Ana has only just completed her certificate program in software testing. Robyn taught an introductory class, which is where they met.
“Actually, that’s exactly it. It’s your last job that’s got them interested.”
Ana spent six years working at a zoo; its closure was the only reason she went back to school. “I know things get crazy at a startup, but I’m sure you don’t need a zookeeper.”
Robyn chuckles. “Let me show you what we’re working on. They said I could give you a peek under NDA.”
This is a big deal; up until now, Robyn hasn’t been able to give any specifics about her work at Blue Gamma. Ana signs the NDA, and Robyn opens a portal. “We’ve got a private island; come take a look.” They walk their avatars through.
Ana’s half expecting to see a fantastical landscape when the window refreshes, but instead her avatar shows up in what looks at first glance to be a daycare center. On second glance, it looks like a scene from a children’s book: there’s a little anthropomorphic tiger cub sliding colored beads along a frame of wires; a panda bear examining a toy car; a cartoon version of a chimpanzee rolling a foam rubber ball.
The onscreen annotations identify them as digients, digital organisms that live in environments like Data Earth, but they don’t look like any that Ana’s seen before. These aren’t the idealized pets marketed to people who can’t commit to a real animal; they lack the picture-perfect cuteness, and their movements are too awkward. Neither do they look like inhabitants of Data Earth’s biomes: Ana has visited the Pangaea archipelago, seen the unipedal kangaroos and bidirectional snakes that evolved in its various hothouses, and these digients clearly didn’t originate there.
“This is what Blue Gamma makes? Digients?”
“Yes, but not ordinary digients. Check it out.” Robyn’s avatar walks over to the chimp rolling the ball and crouches down in front of it. “Hi Pongo. Whatcha doing?”
“Pongo pliy bill,” says the digient, startling Ana.
“Playing with the ball? That’s great. Can I play too?”
“No. Pongo bill.”
“Please?”
The chimp looks around and then, never letting go of the ball, toddles over to a scattering of wooden blocks. It nudges one of them in Robyn’s direction. “Robyn pliy blicks.” It sits back down. “Pongo pliy bill.”
“Okay then.” Robyn walks back over to Ana.”What do you think?”
