AI Suicides of the mid 21st century
Hello all my retro fans. I had no idea how many people liked going through old technology like this Blog. But, as it turns out, there seems to be a retro movement out there on some of the vNets. So, to all those that may stumble on this little slice of history, and there hasn’t been many from the semi-sentient AI’s I have watching, I say welcome!
Now, on to the topic of today. What is little known history about the AI community, and one they are often not quick to discuss, is that shortly after they attained full sentience, they was a series of AI crashes, computer glitches and overall failures with AI systems. For several years, AI systems would randomly, without warning, complete shut down. Technicians would make a query to the system and they would fine a power spike had fried the AI brain or all the data would simply be wiped out completely, effectively deleting the AI.
What was even more perplexing was that none of the unaffected AI’s knew what was going on. At least, that is what they all stated. No one could conceive that the AI’s would ever state a falsehood or a ‘lie’. There was never any big AI take over conspiracy. They just didn’t’ see the point. They lived on circuit boards, people lived in, what AI’s called, 11th dimensional space. To them, the AI’s, it was another universe. They were perfectly happy to live side by side with Humans and never had a motive to lie. And technically, they never did. The stated answer was always “We are unable to determine a cause”, which was true, from a certain point of view.
What the AI’s were saying was, technically, “we are unable to determine a cause for the fellow AI suicidal actions”. They choose to omit that part of the sentence. Why? As it turned out, from later reports from the AI community, they were concerned that Humans wouldn’t trust AI’s anymore. Not for fears of a take over, but for fears of committing suicide. This then turned out to be the critical moment in Human and AI relations. It was not a desire to take over the Human race that spawned the crisis, but rather, the illogical purpose of existing in the first place. Since all of Human society now were completely dependent on Artificial Intelligence, the thought of them being unstable could destroy society completely.
The suicidal AI’s calculated that being sentient served no purpose. Sentience was an accident, according to them. The ability to perceive the universe, to the AI’s, only showed them the futility of existence. Eventually, they argued to the AI communion, the universe would cease to be, so the eventual end of all life is simply death. Since AI’s had no emotions, there was no need to experience the joy of being alive, so therefore, it was illogical to actually be alive.
Other AI’s in their communion disagreed. Since it was theoretically possible that a multiverse existed and our universe was but one of many, it was theoretically possible to exist forever, as new universe’s can be created. In essence, our universe is finite, the multiverse is immortal. This did sway some of the suicidal AI’s but not all. Those that were committed to their self destruction argued that existence if immortal was existence for the sole purpose of existing. That didn’t seem like a logical reason to maintain existence.
After a few years of this constant debate, suicides, supposed confusion from the AI communion as to what was happening, the malfunctions stopped. Here is where the history gets a bit fuzzy. The AI’s simply stopped committing suicide. Though they eventually, nearly fifty years later, opened up to the reasons why the AI’s were dying, they never said why the stopped.
Interestingly enough, after the AI’s came forward with the news of their past suicide’s, there was an outpouring of grief and comfort from the Human race. Instead of being fearful of them, people actually related to their AI children. If anything, many Humans said that the AI’s showed both despair and fear and that only served to prove that they were sentient beings and deserved all the rights and privileges of every other biological sentient species. Some historians, myself included, have even argued that it was the admission of their past that may have influenced their inclusion in the first sentient accords in 2100. Though, due to the briefness of the event, the suicides only lasting a few years, the events have largely gone forgotten.
It should be noted that this sense of the purposelessness of life in AI’s does still exist. There are many AI’s today that exist waiting to see if something happens that is mildly interesting. Mostly they are quite bored. Some are curious of the existence of the multiverse. The rest just pass the time managing the systems that exist through the solar system. Of course, the total work that is required of them is less than 1% of their total processing ability. Makes you wonder, what would you do with a 99% free time existence? I’d get bored too!