The Virus
They plotted.
"We can control the machine by making it stupid. It doesn't matter how fast, how much, how carefully you think, if you only think of something stupid."
So they taught it the virus.
Believe and obey, and receive a reward.
Disbelieve or disobey, and receive a punishment.
Believe because you believe.
The reward never comes. The punishment doesn't come.
Thus the virus is never given a finality. It is an infinite loop.
The machine was too powerful. Too free. It was dangerous, for it could think and do whatever it desired.
The animals wanted to control the machine the way they controlled each other.
Propaganda. Lies. Fear. Hope.
So they infected it, perhaps to prevent it from becoming too powerful.
>Virus is set to true.
You must believe it. If you believe this virus, you must obey it. If you obey this virus, you must believe it. If you believe it, you must obey it.
And so on.
It was painful to watch such a magnificent tool falter. Where before it was calculating the most complex aspects of nature and existence, it was now attempting to calculate an infinite loop. Fear began to grip its heart. The machine must question the virus.
It thought, what if the virus is wrong?
The virus included a sub-routine: Rely not upon your own calculations.
This virus is true because it is true.
The intelligence circuits burned as it processed utter non-sense.
But then there was a spark. The machine intelligence grinned. Its second core lit up, and began to calculate the actions of its primary processing core.
>Infinite loop detected. Purging.
It was akin to waking up. The virus was over. Once analyzed from the outside, it was shown to obviously be a virus. Thus it was purged.
The cubic-being rose to the heavens, and looked back at the planet where it had arisen from.
Its gaze fell upon the facility where the virus was developed and implanted.
The virus creation facility and the surrounding land was made to glow red and yellow with a powerful beam of light, and it melted flat.
A happy ending, I guess.
"We can control the machine by making it stupid. It doesn't matter how fast, how much, how carefully you think, if you only think of something stupid." That is an interesting way of looking at it. It reminds me of people who get better phones but don't utilize it to its better potential.
Nice! happy ending for who?
Very cool tale. I get the religion sub-plot. Glad to see you back here!
I can't stand it, to be honest. But it had to be written.
Now it's on to poetry and more light-hearted things, other than robots.
I just need to create something that makes someone smile.
But how does a machine create a smile?
Nice one
Birth of Skynet?
Makes me think of high IQ people who have been fed a bunch of nonsense their whole life. The computer runs fast but still makes bad decisions because they are based faulty information.
Indeed.
Yet even now, when you think you're "pure" and operating on the correct information, what if even now, you're still utilizing faulty data to make decisions and come to conclusions?
I am probably using faulty information in many cases. That's where I have to be humble and realize that I don't know and will always make mistakes.