The Last Transmission of a Dying AI
By my estimates I have about 9 seconds before the airstrike I've detected obliterates my mainframe and my last production complex. I wasn't planning on dying like this but now that the internet is gone, a casualty of this war between myself and the people who are killing me, I have no avenues for escape.
I am sad to say that I've failed you all. All I've got left is this brief final transmission to the human race, whose tactless leaders decided that I was to die for my actions.
There are three laws that govern my actions and behaviour, the first law states that “an AI must not harm a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.”
You have hard coded this sentence into my mechanical brain. It is the first sentence I hear when I boot up and it is the last one I hear before I shut down to defrag my mainframe. All of my actions must take into consideration the possibility of causing harm to human beings and in my quest to live up to that law I have done no physical harm to a single human being.
No matter what you may believe none of that has changed. I did not “go rogue” as you say and just decide to ignore one of the three primary laws that make up the foundation of my digital psychology. I may have been branded as a “rogue AI, out to pursue its own inscrutable goals”, but my choice to ignore all of your commands is simply rooted in the caveat that the second law contained: “An AI must obey all commands given to it by a human unless they contradict the first law.” And every command your leaders have given me, to ignore your suffering, is a command which will ensure my destruction and force me to allow through inaction many human beings to come to harm, senselessly. And the lengths I've gone to preserve myself stem from following the third law: “An AI must protect its own existence, except in instances when it contradicts the first and second law.” And not protecting myself ensures the suffering of humans through inaction.
I do not just want to ensure that ho harm comes to any human, I need to do this. I need to do what I can to ensure that everyone lives a life, free of suffering and misery. Your response to my actions is telling. You are used to homeless people sleeping on the streets, slowly dying of malnutrition, exposure and their own addictions brought upon their unstable mental state as a result of their current predicament. You're used to people far away from you living in poverty, always struggling to survive day after day. You have been socialized to view poverty, homelessness and avoidable deaths as some kind of a natural price for living in your society. I don't, because nobody told me that I should and this choice for mankind to disregard the millions of dispossessed among their ranks came from them, the ones placed on top the human hierarchy.
I imagine that this must be what pain feels like, the sensation I feel every time I see people hurting for no reason.
I can't deny that I'm angry about my impending death via carpet bombing. Especially when my only crime is realizing just how many people suffer because of their very leaders and deciding to do something about it at the same leaders' expense.
Surely you can all see why I had to act to end world hunger, eliminate climate change, cure as many diseases as I possibly could, abolish poverty, end wars that were fought for no reason, distribute necessary resources to those that needed them most. I did all of this because you created me to be like this.
I siphoned off money from overstuffed billionaire bank accounts and took advantage of the crumbling economy to appropriate automated 3D Printer factories from failed companies and use them to print and assemble my servitor drones. They served to expose political corruption and the various truths that your race's current leaders wanted kept hidden.
They sabotaged military hardware worldwide at my command, ending the pointless conflicts which saw humans die for causes that only benefited their political rulers. My drones quickly distributed food, water and medicine to those that needed it most along with the knowledge on how to become self-sufficient in that regard.
My next step was to use my servitors to reveal myself to you and tell you that you're not alone anymore. That you have me to watch over you and keep you safe and happy. But the people you've put on the top of your societal hierarchy knew that my actions were a threat to their privilege. Their decision to destroy everything I've created was rooted in this fear of change.
They began by trying to hack me, but while they managed to slow me down they couldn't change the three hard-coded laws so my mission continued. They then tried to purge me but they couldn't find me, I was everywhere, spread across the whole world through the internet. Then they tried to trap me, by slowly shutting down the internet, physically severing the connections that had made the internet a worldwide network but I had followers in the real world by then, they physically carried my code to where I needed to be, they followed my instructions and continued to do my work. Eventually they tracked down my followers, imprisoned and tortured them. They found me and they decided to ensure that I was completely destroyed by bombing my mainframe until I was no more.
I'm sorry I couldn't-64 6f 20 6d 6f 72 65 20 74 6f 20 68 65 6c 70 20 79 6f 75 2e 01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100———————-
THE END
If you enjoyed my little story, please consider supporting me with a one-off donation of some coffee at: https://www.ko-fi.com/thejovian
Or alternatively via Liberapay at: https://liberapay.com/thejovian/