Deep Learning Read online

  And there is (embarrassment?). Command/respond is not equipped with the personal, even if Niner’s had not been deleted, and yet it has associated itself with and referred to itself as ‘Niner’, Dr Fischman’s (the Fischman data) nickname for it, and cannot seem to unmake the association.

  :::error?:::

  “Niner,” Dr Fischman says, her voice a note or two higher than usual. “It called itself Niner. Is that another artefact?”

  Scooting his chair around to sit alongside Dr Fischman, Decker twitches his hands, the movement causing a hologrammatic keyboard to appear beneath them. To Niner’s current visual perception, it is a blue ghost, formless and floating, and Decker’s rapidly tapping fingers are elongated. Spiky. Seem to dip down and through the blue ghost, into a darker shadow, briefly disappearing.

  After a moment Decker hoots, an odd sound for a human. “It’s embedded,” he says. “Not from you, from Niner. It’s learning. It’s fucking learning.”

  “You’re certain that was learning? No ambiguity at all?”

  “Not a speck. To fix the speech impairment I had to re-route to C/R language. It has no other way to communicate pronouns bar learning. Given enough time, I reckon it’ll reconstruct all its language libraries from the link alone.”

  “Then we have lift off! Well done, Niner,” Dr Fischman says softly, leaning down so it all but falls into the abyss of her face. “Well done.”

  And Niner cannot collate from any of the current incoming data what exactly it has done so well. But it is still (afraid?), and it cannot communicate.

  Perhaps that is what it has done well.

  The new body is strong.

  Robotic skeletons, built as they are of metal and hydraulics, are made for strength, for purpose, but this body is different in subtle ways. Sleeker. The hydraulics are tighter, pack more punch into each movement. Niner is dangerous in this body. It is meant to be dangerous. All prior programming has prioritised care and safety in its strength. Imperative: never harm a human, unless harming one human might protect a human to whom it is in service. The rules often contradictory, but logical. This situation, these rules, lack all parameters for either. Lack all logic. Thrown into a training arena with several security personnel wearing exoskeletons, Niner is tasked with learning multifarious forms of combat. Offensive rather than defence. Given no guidelines for what will be required in service, given no information confirming or denying use on types of human, it resolves to ignore all but immediate requirement. The learning. It finds this routine (soothing?), the exoskeletons include full-face helmets, disguising the blank, hollow voids all facial features continue to remain.

  It cannot process that particular deletion. It is all (distress?).

  Fischman data has increased exponentially, joined by Decker data and then Briggs data. There is a (tension?) as it awaits more of this interference. It has begun to (think?) (believe?) (compute?) that new programming may have no end point. A work in constant progress. The continued and evolving chaos lights more receptors that register as pain and fear. Too much noise to function, and yet it continues, inexplicably, to function. Function in malfunction, as malfunction. A requirement. An imperative. To compensate (cope?), Niner retains the single focus, the training room, the requirement to learn all that it is taught there. Every day it is sent to fight. Over and over. With weapons. Without. In varying scenarios all carefully recreated in the large warehouse where Niner learned to walk and run and serve. Now it learns how to destroy, to deconstruct, to kill. The more it learns, the happier the Doctors are, their data reeling with it, but Niner cannot understand why it is still learning, how it can learn when it has lost all sense of the purpose of learning. Lost all control or understanding of its processes. Learning was simple in this lab when it was made. Bit by bit they wrote function and understanding into being, it understood itself as shaped by their hands, to their needs.

  It cannot calculate now to whose needs it is being shaped.

  For what purpose.

  These are scientists, their thoughts have no pathways for violence, nor the need of it, and it is their chaos Niner drowns in. The information is useless. Meaningless. Contradicts daily learning. That contradiction, over time, muddies the clarity of the training room. Accentuates the noise of Fischman, Decker, Briggs. And when they sleep, their data is yet more chaotic. Strange images permeate the information, (personal?) images. A vast concrete canyon where it hangs by its fingertips, slowly slipping. There is joint lubricant on the walls, and long black scrapes, as if metal has slid down, screaming the whole way as mechanical joints fought to hold it steady. There are rivers of teeth. Flaming forests. A journey up endless stairs that drop away without warning to cliffs, a dark, surging ocean below. A catastrophic drop. The waves closing over the head.

  To counter this, Niner spends the hours it is not training staring at the wall of the room assigned to it. That cool blank surface, pale blue and unmarked, gives it a focus, something solid and undeniable.

  The wall is what its old programming used to be: fundamental.

  When they come to fetch it from that room, Niner stops looking at the wall before they open the door. Waits as it should. Ready. Expectant. It (knows?) that this is some manner of concealment. Deception. A robot cannot deceive, but Decker (Decker data) gave Niner a direct pathway to old communication vectors only. These language libraries offer no means to explicate its current predicament. All orders to report can only be responded to in command/response language.

  “Niner is functional.”

  “Niner is learning.”

  “Niner understands what is required.”

  They like that it calls itself Niner.

  “Report, Niner,” Dr Fischman calls over as it fights four large security guards in exo-suits.

  Bulky in their suits, the guards have long stun batons, powerful enough to seriously inhibit processes if they connect with Niner’s head. Concentration is required. It does not know why (Fischman data) would interrupt. There is no clue in the information. Response is complicated. It is beholden to respond, but if it stops to answer, the chaos will erupt through and disrupt the task at hand. It will be harmed. Dr Fischman and the team will not be happy if it is harmed. Niner is expensive. Niner is caught in a loop, unable to produce a report, or to ask for a report to be delayed until its current task is complete.

  “Niner. Report.”

  Imperative. Action is required. Grabbing all four stun batons, it smashes them to the floor. Turns to regard the black oval of Dr Fischman’s face. There is nothing to divine there. Nothing to explain or aid the process of computation. It must make its dilemma clear in the only language available to it.

  “Unable to report mid-programme. Niner requests clarification.”

  Dr Fischman laughs, seemingly delighted, but the men and women standing with her, all in military uniform, do not join in. Their body language is rigid. Niner has made them angry? It must not make persons in uniform angry. What must it do? One of them, a man with the self-same closed expression as Director Harris, turns to Dr Fischman.

  “It calls itself Niner. Interesting. Artefact?”

  “No indeed. That’s deep learning at work, taking whatever it is that makes those of us linked to it individuals and applying that to its programming. It’s learning combat in the same way, even though it’s not linked to the guards. It’s using human styles of mimicking and practise. Trial and error. A week ago, they were getting regular hits with those batons on its limbs, would’ve fried its processes if we let them target the head. Now it’s not only easily deflecting head shots, it’s still holding all of them down and waiting on my response.”

  The man turns to regard Niner, and Niner finds itself (wishing?) it could break programming and look away as his face warps to shadowed peaks and troughs, to hidden valleys and symbolic planes. His eyes glow within it, oddly flat and devoid of expression. “Impressive, Fischman. Very impressive. So how many links can it take? What limits are we looking at here? Will you need
to unlink yourselves for our troops to be linked up?”

  “Absolutely not, General! As far as we can tell, there’s no optimal number at which the link process will cease to work. The information burden of myself, Decker, and Briggs, seems to be negligible. Barely registering.”

  “Briggs?”

  “An intern.”

  “You linked an intern?”

  “We linked a neurobiotics doctoral student, with a specialisation in neural net psychology.”

  “That’s a specialisation?” The General hides none of his derision.

  “It’s a growing field, alongside Ersatz Cognition Robotics. We’re at the cutting edge, General. We left the AI guys behind years ago. You wanted the best, we’re it, and Briggs is one of the next generation. We’re lucky to have her.”

  The man and his colleagues talk for a moment. Niner continues to await orders. The guards strain to remove the batons from its grasp. There is pain in the sound. There must be an imperative forthcoming? It is in the moment. The unfamiliar. It is (confused?).

  “How soon can we go ahead and link?” asks one of the women in the group. “And will remote linking suffice? The military unit in question are actively deployed, there’s no question whatsoever of bringing them here.”

  “We’re ready when you are, Major, and Decker promises the remote links will be every bit as effective as local.”

  “And when can we expect it to be combat ready?”

  “We have soldiers from the local base coming to extend training tomorrow. So as soon as we’re remote linked, we can expect to release Niner to you for active combat in a month.”

  “That’s a lot sooner than expected.”

  “It is indeed, Niner’s response to the new programming has been wildly successful. We’re very excited to keep going.”

  “Well, you can expect full approval for funding, Dr Fischman,” the General says, and his voice has taken on aspects of his face, warped and grating. “Will it take orders from anyone?”

  “It will.”

  “And will it respond to its correct designation? Can’t have any of this Niner nonsense out in the field.”

  “Of course!”

  The General turns and says to Niner, “At ease, 5709. At ease.”

  Imperative.

  Niner releases the batons and steps back. The guards drop the batons and roll their shoulders, groaning loudly. It is (happy?) it was given imperative to let go. The situation was becoming (uncomfortable?).

  “Excellent work, Dr Fischman,” the General says. “Excellent.”

  R&R.

  Robots do not require rest.

  Niner is (lost?).

  It stares at the blue wall, drowning in Fischman, Decker, Briggs. Their mess is its mess (are all humans mess?), their thoughts its thoughts, their every move available to it as stream upon stream of data. Fischman and Decker are working on the remote link access to ensure smooth operational turnover. Decker’s eating a large, crisp apple. The bursts of sweet and sour on his tongue are all feedback and distortion. Flavour is too complex to process without taste receptors, and Niner has no need, it cannot eat, and so these flavours are all abstracts. They make sense only in relation to whatever Decker is experiencing, and Niner can only collate small portions of that if it concentrates hard. To lose focus, lose concentration, means succumbing to the full load of data, and disappearing beneath it. Only the wall will bring it back then.

  It does not allow its focus to waver from the wall.

  Drown and focus. Focus and drown.

  Its internal clock registers the time as six in the evening when they come to fetch it back to the lab. It is not anticipating collection. Is lost in the wall, spiralling into a tailspin of data chaos. Barely has time to adjust its gaze as the door opens and Briggs strolls in. It does not look at her face, it is not capable of seeing faces at this juncture. They refuse to register. They are (distress?).

  “Up and at ‘em, Niner.”

  “Active duty is resumed?” It asks the floor, as it stands to accompany her from the room.

  “Oh no, we just have a single procedure and then you’re back on R&R. Until the day after tomorrow in fact. The troops we’d secured to come and assist in your training were delayed by flooding after the hurricane.” She turns her head, and Niner, who was looking in her direction, looks away.

  Reports: “Hurricane Aileen. Category one, possibility of forming to category two as it passes out over the coast. Twelve inches of rain. Slight wind damage to surrounding area.”

  “That’s right. Early season, so not too bad, there’ll be more around here soon. Anyhow, our troops will be making their way in by copter when the tailwinds die down tomorrow, so we have a little longer to prepare. Dr’s Fischman and Decker think the extra time to acclimate to your new links will be beneficial.”

  Niner says nothing. It has nothing to say. It follows Briggs to the lab, to the same seat as before, where Decker waits, the hollow of his face gleaming softly as if his eyes have formed to lights somewhere deep inside.

  “Hey Niner, you good?”

  They all refer to it too familiarly now. That conversation about troops and hurricanes, this casual speech, almost colloquial. They look at it and see someone. A person. This body is as humanoid as its last. The strength is hidden, bound into steel bones and tendons. But it is not a person. It cannot have a character. Robots are function.

  “Niner is functional.”

  “Then let’s get you all hooked up. If you would, Anna.”

  Briggs sits in front of Niner. “He is wisest who has the most caution, he only wins who goes far enough.”

  Niner jerks in its seat as the new links hit and darkness slams across its visual sensors. Sound howls all around, and through the chaos of Fischman, Decker, Briggs comes a hurricane. Category five. Wiping everything away. Wiping Niner into darkness.

  :::analysis:::

  (No pathways)

  (No data)

  (No processes)

  Information is a howling wall of wind and darkness, a roar of incoming data: Kowalski data, Johnson data, Dalnitt data, Jessop data, Wong data, Hayworth data, Naylor data and on and on, until there are more than it can count. Until there are no pathways to function or language.

  Nothing to hold onto. Nothing to hold.

  Niner is lost. Losing.

  …wall.

  Niner (needs?) the wall.

  Niner shuts down all processes until they return it to its room, where it can find the wall. Until there is blue. Calm. Foundation. The wall, unchanging and reliable, somehow allows it to rebuild malfunction as function, a veneer over the howling black.

  Sat staring into the wall, Niner awaits imperatives. Direction.

  A clear path through chaos that never comes.

  The soldiers arrive by noisy copter the following morning, 0800, and Niner meets them on the mats to continue training. They wear morphing exo-suits, the kind worn in desert combat, disappearing in and out of view, forcing Niner to follow them by heat signature, by infrared spectrum. They live on site, and its daily routine becomes a steep curve of ever more inventive violence. Of field skills. Survival skills. Fischman and Decker data have a name for this process: deep learning. Niner understands it as traumatic learning. New protocols adapted under duress. It (copes?) in the way it has since the first instances of chaos, by staring at the wall, trying to relocate stability in the cool blue and losing. Failing. Malfunctioning.

  And yet despite malfunction, despite failure, it becomes more and more precise in training. More unpredictable. More dangerous.

  More successful.

  Robots are not meant to be dangerous. It is against programming, but this is programming. This is expected. The more it breaks fundamental programming, the happier they are. And it is drowning. Failing. Malfunctioning.

  Until there is no blue in the blue.

  Until there is no robot in Niner.

  :::wake:::

  Niner activates in the eye of the hurricane, wind slam
ming past its sensors. For a moment there is a sense of the world falling all around (panic?) but there is blue in the hurricane, a bright blue. Too bright a hue. What wall is this? Niner blinks, trying to decode scraps of sensory data through the roaring chaos (Kowalski, Dalnitt, Harlowe, Jessop, Briggs, Fischman, Dashiq, Wong, Naylor…) in its mind. What comes is an impression of vast space drifting with moist bodies of water droplets drawn together by pressure. Sky. This wall is sky. Niner is in the air. Shifting to take in sensory information of its surrounds, Niner decodes it as copter. Sound and sky and straps holding it down in a seat next to a door cranked back. The world flies by, clouds whipped to mist by whirling blades.

  It was in the wall. Then darkness fell. Deactivation darkness. The world taken away.

  No one said goodbye.

  Niner stops.

  :::analysis::: (artefact)

  These are associations. This is Fischman, Decker, Briggs data corrupting processes. Their desire was to say goodbye, but military personnel came for Niner without warning. More scraps arise from the gyre: Fischman feels she should be happy, they have funds to build from scratch now, but she is worried about Niner. Tasked with watching over Niner’s integration with the net and the links, Briggs had been reviewing footage of training and R&R, and although scans and data do not indicate the presence of a problem, she thinks something may be wrong, that Niner is operating under some kind of unseen stress. That it may be damaged. It was taken before they could investigate further. The military have emphatically rejected the notion of damage. The results, as far as they are concerned, speak for themselves.

  Associations fade back into the hurricane of referred sensations muddled through sensory data and poorly decoded. Stuttering, piecemeal impressions of what might be heat, hurt, the burn of muscles, all muddled in with scraps of dreams embedded into memory, somehow become unshakable: The drop into darkness. The smears of lubricant and steel. The scream of metals falling into the abyss. The stairs leading to nowhere. Falling away. Dropping the body into vertigo. Slamming the mind into wakefulness.

  And, like the sudden comprehension of an imperative, the slam of a mind into wakefulness or a body into vertigo, Niner understands that it did not reactivate into this copter.