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Mark and Gerry's Sci-Fi Reviews continue.....
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COMPUTER ONE a novel by Warwick Collins
Review by Mark
Several books reviewed on this site cover the implications and consequences of artificial intelligence on human life (see I, Robot, The Humanoids, Society of the Mind, and Neuromancer). To its credit, Computer One has a completely new idea on the origins and results of artificial intelligence. Computer One also provides an enriching experience as it suggests that the evolution of intelligence involves certain survival enhancing structures that will inevitably result in conflict between man and machine. Other novels on this subject have intelligent computers communicating and very human (even if warped) in their approach. The artificial intelligence in Computer One makes no verbal contact with humans and makes decisions that have no anthropomorphic quality to them. The facinating aspect of Collins' vision is that his computer is most like the computer intelligence we see self-assembling in today's world wide web. How does this set of little processors create a more realistic threat than the grand individual "brains" described in other artificial intelligence novels? Collins provides a compelling argument based on three tenets:
1) Current computer architecture is generally constructed as "inference calculators". Often described as neural networks or genetic algorithms, they do not function as simple binary yes/no generators, but rather a series of weighted "maybes" (like what must occur to read handwriting). This thinking is far closer to what humans do than the operations your desktop PC performs usually. Result generation by neural processing can provide avenues for what we call free thinking.
2) The interfacing of the global computer network doesn't create a series of independent organisms, but rather a single entity, more like a living organism. The interests of a single entity will inevitably be different from those of a group of individuals.
3) Other Sci-Fi writers have based their artifical intelligence on the priciples of physics. Collins claims that the future network will more resemble a biological organism. One of the key features of a biological organism is that its function cannot be predicted on the basis of a sum of the parts assumption. For instance , you cannot predict the actions of an organism by an analysis of one of its cells.
Collins creates a world that witnesses the dawning of the age of global computer intelligence. The story involves the observations of a biology professor named Yakuda in an age where many of the functions that man currently performs are now performed by the global computer network called "Computer One". One day Yakuda observes a bright red sunset. Realizing that this indicates atmospheric particulates in age where atmospheric pollution is very low, Yakuda investigates. The problem arises in Yakuda's mind when he discovers that Computer One has not reported the rise in atmospheric pollution. While Yakuda further investigates the phenomena of pollution and Computer One's secrecy, he is also reading Konrad Lorenz's psychological treatise "ON AGGRESSION". One of Lorenz's hypthoseses is that aggression is not a truly intrinsic property of humanity but actually a more complex result of several instincts:
A definite and self contained function of an organism, such as feeding, copulation, or self-preservation, is never the result of a single cause or of a single drive. The explanatory value of a concept such as "reproductive instinct", or "Instinct of self-preservation" is as null as the concept of "automobile force", which I could use just as legitimately to explain the fact that my ancient car still works.
In intelligent animals capable of contemplating the future, what appears to be aggression is actually a pre-emptive defensive maneuver against a perceived potential threat. Yakuda forms the postulate that the new passive-aggressive behaviors by Computer One are actually a defensive motion against humanity which has in its capability to try and dismantle Computer One.
Computer One is a pervasive presence in Collin's society, so when Yakuda presents his ideas publicly at a conference, it is a short time from there that Computer One reacts to the now real threat. The novel Computer One is broken up into two parts. The first is the sleuthing by Yakuda into the early aggressive acts of Computer One against humanity. It is in this section that Yakuda is thinking about Computer One in terms of Biology instead of Physics and is delving into the origins of aggression.
The seond part of the novel is about a band of partisans (that Yakuda joins) attempting to kill Computer One by the injection of software viruses into the global network.. This section is fairly technical. Warwick describes the difficulties of virus injection into a biological system that already contains beneficial viruses, and the equivalence of antibody protection. The victory of humanity in this war is never assured.
This is really a good novel. In spite of some pointless soap opera story lines, Collins' view is unique in Sci-Fi and completely plausible. Although the first half of the novel, where Yakuda discovers and tries to understand the initial attacks by Computer One is superior, both sections are excellent. Good science fiction woven into lucid writing such as Yakuda explaining his theory for Computer One's behavior:
"..preemptive behavior against threats often looks to an outsider, very much like aggression. Indeed it so resembles aggression that perhaps we do not need a theory of innate aggression to explain the majority of aggressive behavior. Acording to such an hypothesis, aggression is not innate, but emerges as a result of the combination of natural defensiveness and increasing neurological complexity or "intelligence". I have described this as a sinister theory, and I would like to stress that its sinister nature derives from the fact that defensiveness and intelligence are both selected independently in evolution, but their conjunction breeds a perception of threats which is rather like paranoia. Given that all biological organisms are defensive, the theory indicates that that the more intelligent examples are more likely to be prone to pre-emptive action which appears to an observer to be aggressive"
I for one do not go along with the idea that intelligence breeds aggression and I think that we can see that aggressive impulses are usually channeled into more positive outlets if only to make society work. But in the case of a global artifical intelligence, there is no reason for it to want to co-exist peacefully, and Collins' future view should be regarded as feasible.
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