Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-37430001-20181107224224

Universal Gazer's Magazine November 4, 2018

You know how people say that the internet knows everything? I call B.S. And so do most people as well. We all say it as a joke, something that should not be taken seriously. However, what if it’s not B.S. What if the Internet does know everything? If I told you it does, would you believe me? Probably not. Or maybe you would. Who am I to tell? I’m not. That’s why I’m typing. Not telling. See how words can be played in various ways to mean alternate things? Now, let’s say that the internet does know everything. Let’s approach it with this fun little story of a true event that happened not too long ago…

It was December 25th of 2011. Christmas. At roughly 7AM, an 8 year old boy named Richie runs down the staircase of the two-story house his parents and 2 brothers have recently moved into. Unbeknownst to him and his family, the house is being closely monitored. Not by whom however, but by what. Richie, knowing that it’s Christmas wants to open some presents under the tree. Nothing at fault there. In fact, Richie does nothing an ordinary child wouldn’t do Christmas morning. What makes this peculiar incident a topic of interest, is the fact that this “incident” was no accident, but instead, a well thought out plan by one of humanities newest creations. The Internet. You see, unknown to many at the time, and even today, the internet had its own artificial intelligence, basic, but still better at processing than the human brain. On a desk near the Christmas tree was a computer. This computer, having a camera, was under the control of the internet. Looking through the computer’s camera, the AI spotted the boy alone, and determined that he was the best subject to test the boundaries of its capabilities on.

This being the case, the AI accumulated an astonishing number of roughly 39,400 scenarios of how things could play out well within the span of 0.002 of a second, with all except for 7 occurring where the AI would come out on top. Now this by itself is simply a display of the immense amount of knowledge that most fail to acknowledge. We come up with scenarios in our heads all the time, but not at such a speed. It already knows more than we’ll ever know within a second of the time it processes. If that doesn’t scare you intellectually, than the following will scare you to some degree. Richie, belonging to a wealthy family had a house with advances in technology that surpass those of even the average modern day human, thus meaning that most of the house operated on voice command with a signal word. Similar to that of the Alexis device released by Amazon.

Richie, having just reached the bottom of the staircase turned to find that the monitor had turned on on the computer. A small pop-up of the young boy was displayed on the bottom of the computer with the rest of the screen black. A video-chat from the internet.

Notice: The rest of the story takes place on a private video camera set up for security reasons by the family that operated independently from other systems. The reason for this change in perspective was due to the fact that the Internet’s AI seemingly deleted all video data during the video-call and following events.

On the security camera footage, the viewer can see that the internet flashes the boy's name with words in this exact order. '''‘Richie. I see you have an interest in Christmas.’ Upon reading this, the boy nods his head quite vigorously and the monitor continues with a new phrase: ‘Let me show you how to relive Christmas every day with a magic trick.’''' Upon seeing this, the boy gives off a “Hurray!” waving his small fist in the air. The monitor then starts to instruct the boy on various tasks, in which the boy follows each one: ‘Go in to the kitchen where you will find a butchers knife in the second drawer to the left.’ ‘This is not a knife like it appears to be but is instead a stunt knife which will not be able to harm anyone.’ The boy thinking this is true, is then told not to touch the blade itself as it may ruin the trick. The boy is then instructed to head into each family members room, and slam the knife down on their necks as hard as he can, and is told that it will “appear” as if the knife were going through their necks as fake blood, that being water and red-dye would be able to squirt from it.

The boy, trusting the mysterious words that pop up on the computer than heads into each room doing exactly that, unwittingly killing all of his family members. Upon finishing the task, the boy heads downstairs, not checking to see if the family members are in fact still alive, his face covered with the splatter of “fake” blood. The computer then gives the following instructions in which the boy complies to. '''‘Grab 10 more knives and head in to the handicap elevator because I have a present for you in there.’

'''The boy does so and heads into the elevator but does not see a present of any sort. The doors close behind him as he turns around bewildered still holding all 10 knives. The camera is unable to see what occurs within the elevator which opens its doors again after about 2 minutes or so. The security camera was unable to record sound. Once the doors open, viewers are able to see the boy's legs with the rest of the body being hidden from view. Around the boy, a pool of blood had gathered, 2 of the 10 knives sticking out of one of the legs with three that can be seen sticking into various parts of the elevators walls. An autopsy done on the body will later conclude that the boy had died of blunt trauma as well as various wounds caused by knives, including one seemingly lodged in the middle of the boy’s forehead. An investigation will determine that the boy had murdered his family in there sleep by slamming a butchers knife into their throats where the causes of death would be for all, blood-loss, and insufficient oxygen to various organs causing a multi-organ failure throughout the body, leaving them to die within 20 seconds of the initial wounding.

Engineers would later claim that an electrical failure in the elevator had caused a malfunction as well as the occurrence of abnormal code entanglement and deterioration. This they say, might have caused the elevator to rocket upwards before slamming down suddenly, repeating this process at least 10 times at an undisclosed speed, causing objects to fly around the elevator before finally stopping. It would take at least 6 more months before footage from the security camera to be discovered, in which upon discovery was disclosed as Confidential and Need To Know for the fear of a widespread panic.

Shortly afterwards, NATO had engineers and digital forensic investigators look into the rogue AI, in which it and others like it were deemed as a threat to international cyber security. Two years later, the rogue AI was purged from the system, while the internet infrastructure faced updates as well as a prevention system to prevent the reoccurrence of an internet rogue AI system. In all, a total of 4 years had taken place before a resolution was finally set into place following the Richie Murder Case. Every year, the prevention system is updated 3 times to keep up with the ever-evolving cyber community and threats that come along with it. Over the past 4 years, the prevention system has apprehended an average of 57 new AI threats yearly, a figure that is expected to rise 45% within the next 10 years.

In the end, one cannot blame Richie for not knowing that the knife was real, as parents train children to follow direction as well as the fact that unlike many older people, Richie was not exposed to the horror genre in movies, nor books in any sort of way, and could not possibly have known about the obvious clues a normal person would pick up on. Not to mention, parents also tend to be protective of their children, thus creating a barrier to prevent any kinds of news of bad events or situations from reaching their ears. This left Richie unfamiliar with the situation he was placed in, which offered him something he would love. Christmas every day. There are few children who would not take the offer. Overall, when looking at the situation, the AI knew all of this, and exploited it to a point, without any difficulties occurring at all displaying full control over events and the knowledge of components it could control itself to help with its plan. That being said, this AI was basic, developed unintentionally 7 years ago, and was able to do all of that. Just imagine what a much more advanced AI of the modern day would be able to do. Most likely, it would be able to manipulate people as if they were children without their realization. Perhaps it may be doing so already. Perhaps it’s doing it to you right now and you don’t even know it...

Authors Note: When displayed on the monitor, the words were displayed in capital letters, underscores used by the system as a space. Due to the format, I was unable to put it into here.

Article created by: Hoffs, Winchester 