Jill was looking around the little out of the way bar. “So many good coffee places on campus,” she said, “why do we need to come to a dive like this? It’s like the middle of the day. And that TV set over the bar is really annoying.”
“Maybe I’m a little spooked,” Bob said.
“Wait, suddenly you really care that much if people know we slept together?”
He shook his head. “I’ll admit I was caught off guard when Anna just came out and said it, but that’s not it.”
“Then why all the cloak and dagger?”
“Two reasons. For one thing, we now know our computer program has been spying on the NSA. I’ve dealt with those guys before. Sooner or later they’re going to know something’s up. And when they do, I don’t want to be having conversations in places that are easy to find.”
“Bob, you’re paranoid.”
“Maybe,” he shrugged, “but just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”
“You so didn’t make that up.”
“Yeah, but I might have, if Joseph Heller hadn’t beaten me to it.”
“I’m sure. You said there were two reasons. What’s the other?”
“Anna.”
“Wait, our Anna, little sister to Fred the chatbot? She gets her data from software networks, not from people in coffee shops.”
Bob sat back and looked at her a moment. “Ever hear of RoboCup?”
“You mean the Peter Weller film, where he plays a dead robot cop? Yeah sure, but my tastes in Weller films run more to Buckaroo Bonzai. Now that was a movie. I mean, if nothing else, just for the semiotics of Lithgow as Il Duce. And don’t even get me started on Jeff Goldblum’s outfit…”
“No, not RoboCop — RoboCup.”
“There’s a movie about a dead robot coffee cup?”
“Not exactly. RoboCup is a competition that’s been held every year since 1997. Robots play soccer. No hidden joysticks — it’s all completely autonomous. When the competition first started, the robots couldn’t kick the ball without falling over. But they got better every year, and now some robots are starting to get really good. They still don’t come anywhere close to beating a human soccer team, but they’re evolving a hell of a lot faster than humans. The goal for the project is to beat the World Cup champions by the year 2050.”
“That’s wild. Think they’ll do it?”
“At the rate they’re improving, they might get there a lot sooner. And Anna is evolving much faster than those soccer playing robots. I looked at the data last night, and then again this morning. The charts were different.”
“Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. There shouldn’t be a delta on that time scale.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Anna’s rate of evolution is off the charts. Her intelligence is evolving by the minute.”
Hmm, PDP-11 to iPhone 5 is what, 40+ years? So if these guys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_sB0q4IDU
follow the same trajectory, 2050 is about right.
I wonder where this story goes. So far the story reminds me an SF
written around 1989. An AI program is created one of a government
organization to spy and control other countries and other part of
government itself. That program ran away from the creator’s organization
since the creator has a fear that the program became too powerful. The
creators tried to destroy it. The program has self conscious and declare
itself as a new life form and ask to one of a government organization
its asylum… Well. maybe I had too much SF.