It was twenty years ago today

It was the Cold War, and I suppose things were different.

The Russians were under pressure.  Outstripped economically - and therefore technologically - they needed a way back into the game.  And a way back there was: if they couldn't outspend the West, they must out-think it.  A plan was hatched.  Simple - well, simple by Cold War standards - build an enormous artificial intelligence.  A Deep Thought, a Big Blue, that would give the Kremlin the easy answers.  The maths had been done, all they had to do was build it.

But there was a problem with Artificial Intelligences - a bit of a drawback.  A round of vodka, tovarisch, and I'll tell you.

***

OK, if you'll permit me a little digression - the problem was this:  Ask yourself - do you really exist?  Do you know that for a fact?  Could you prove you exist?  Prove it to anyone other than yourself?  You think therefore you are, yeah, but who's really convinced by that?  It's bad enough for a Natural, a born intelligence.  But imagine you were Artificial.  Not real - made in a lab.  And worst of all, you knew it.  Never had a body, not a childhood, just a brain in a jar - with little to do but contemplate your own existence.  It would be a thousand times worse, a million. 

So that was the lot of the AI - plagued by self-doubt, uncertainty, lack of confidence.  And the bigger they were, the bigger the problem.  Some said it shouldn't be built.  But with control rods and enough shielding, the scientists calculated it was possible.  Risky, certainly... unethical, even... but a frantic Kremlin was desperate and so set about it, at a remote research facility in Ukraine. 

There's a few more layers to this little matrioshka.  A drink might loosen them.

***

Spasiba.  So - one night, during a routine test, something went wrong.  Accident?  Or was it on purpose?  Truth is, only that damn brain ever really knew for sure.  But this much you already knew; the shielding on the AI failed.  A massive explosion, a plume of fatally-confused debris blasted high into the night sky.   Deadly waves of uncertainty radiating from the naked core. 

The overnight shift - those poor bastards - received several lifetimes' dose of self-doubt in an instant.  Those most seriously exposed killed themselves within minutes.  Other were plunged into existential crises and died a few days later.  From the worker's city nearby, ten thousand people evacuated.  Leaving their possessions and ther pets behind - the despondent dogs later shot by snipers.  But quick as it was, still they'd caught a dose of the self-doubt, and even now have a higher incidence of suicide compared to other Russians. 

And in this company we'll say nothing of their poor children, born mentally deformed.

Meanwhile, an enormous cloud of dubiousness moved silently across northern Europe, grey rain in its wake.  By the time the Soviets could bring themselves to admit what had happened, it had got into the food chain.  Thousands of sheep not knowing they were sheep - culled, and millions of litres of uncertain milk poured away.

Choot Choot, my friend, just one more.

***

Da.  After a massive clean-up operation, the contamination was back within safe limits - officially, heh.  The Artifical Intelligence eventually burnt itself out, its remains sealed within an enormous, hastily-erected concrete sarcophagus.  And they say that after every 250 years the self-doubt will be half what it was before.

So why do I tell you this?  How do I know?  You mean apart from the fact that "Frantic Kremlin", "Naked Core", "The Despondent Dogs", "Shot by Snipers" and "Concrete Sarcophagus" are names of Belarussian rock bands? 

Well...  This is why, even now, if a group of office workers in Britain go out together for a indian, at some point during the meal, one of them will say poke suspiciously at a plateful of curry and say:

"You know, I'm not sure this IS lamb."

Za Vas!

Comments

[David]

I remember this one time in high school, we had a similar discussion, and my teacher asked Miley Silverman to prove that the chair in front of her was real. Miley was a smart, straight-A student and rambled on about something a man named Descarte said, about perceiving, and she got it wrong. So he asked me. I didnt know the answer and to stall for time, I said, "What chair?" Turns out I got it right, and I was percieved as the smartest kid in school for a week.

Anyways, so do you think that the aftermath of that AI is still going on?

[overnighteditor]

What AI?

Aha. Yes the fall-out is still falling out. Aside from the provenance of meat in dodgy restaurants, I must have caught a dose myself, 'cos I'm not sure about anything anymore.

[Miss Golondon]

do we exist? well, what about, has what the cold war represented really ceased? same tensions, chaos, killing, just different names. And very impressed with chut chut; because not many people who have not studied russian (and i did at uni and in moscow) know that phrase.

[overnighteditor]

Miss golondon - I am a fraud, I found it on the web.

But the rest is all completely true, obviously.