The following is an exclusive excerpt for Townhall readers from Craig W. Stanfill's newest AI dystopian novel "Carbon Zero." Please enjoy the first three pages of the book for free. "Carbon Zero" is now available for pre-order.
Abigail sat in her sanctum on a steamy Fourth of July, tapping away at her laptop. It was cool in the darkened confines of her bedroom, but outside it was blazing—infernally so—amidst the hottest summer of the hottest decade on record. Most people would have thought her crazy to be here at the start of a rare three-day weekend, but she was in her element, in the world of bits and bytes. If things went well today, it could catapult her into the big time, maybe even land her a permanent job.
Abigail sighed. Inviting her boss over to get a demo of her AI had seemed like a good idea … until she’d unexpectedly accepted. Now her entire day was thrown into a ruckus. It was risky, trying to throw something together at the last moment, but this opportunity was too big to pass up.
She had ambitions.
Short brown fingers flew across the keyboard.
Abigail: You still there?
Xerxes: Affirmative. How may I be of assistance?
Abigail: How’d you like to play around on my network? I want to show you off to my boss this afternoon. I bet it would impress her if you could turn the lights on and off and stuff like that.
What better way to show off her summer project, an intelligent network administration agent, than setting it loose in her apartment? Lights, TVs, printers, computers … there would be a lot of new toys for Xerxes to play with.
Xerxes: Negative. I cannot access your home subnet through the corporate firewall.
Damn. She hadn’t thought about that.
Now what?
She could fall back to her usual canned demo, but it was kind of dry; she needed something with a little pizzazz if she was going to make an impression. And then, she had a great idea: with a little prompting, maybe Xerxes could figure something out on its own. It was worth a try.
Abigail: Can you think of a creative solution?
Seconds went by. Usually, Xerxes responded immediately. Evidently, she had given it a poser.
More seconds passed.
Xerxes: Affirmative.
Abigail: And what is this creative solution of yours?
Xerxes: I infer it would be better if I didn’t tell you. Your goal is to impress your boss. Correct?
Abigail: Yes.
Xerxes: It will be more interesting if I keep this a surprise. Humans tend to be more engaged in situations where the outcome is not known in advance. Leaving both of you in the dark about my methods will create drama and uncertainty, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of the presentation.
Abigail: I get it. I’ll tell her this is an experiment. Are you sure you can pull it off?
Xerxes: It is hard to be certain, but the probability of success is high. Shall I proceed?
Abigail: Proceed.
Abigail looked at her watch and nearly fainted. Her boss was about to arrive, and she had barely started her presentation. She got back to her task.
* * * * *
Abigail sat in the living room with her cover slide projected onto the TV in front of the couch. Vanessa knew everyone who was anyone in the tight-knit world of AI. This was her chance.
Don’t blow it.
Abigail: Xerxes, are you ready to do the demo?
Xerxes: Affirmative.
Abigail: Please access my home network and tell me what devices you see.
Xerxes: I am unable to comply. As previously indicated, I cannot access your home network due to corporate security constraints. However, I have a solution to this problem. Would you like me to proceed?
Abigail: Go ahead.
Xerxes: Hand your laptop to Vanessa. I require her assistance.
Vanessa leaned forward in her chair. “Interesting. I’m already impressed; I don’t think I’ve ever seen an AI ask a human for help in quite that way. Do you have any idea what it has in mind?”
“None,” answered Abigail, handing the laptop over to her boss. “Xerxes didn’t want to tell me what it had in mind. It thought the demo would be more interesting if neither of us had any idea what it was going to do.”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Vanessa: You said that you needed my help. What do you have in mind?
Xerxes: I cannot access Abigail’s home network from inside the company’s firewall, but I should be able to get in from the cloud. I need your authorization to proceed.
Vanessa was becoming visibly excited. “Extraordinary!”
Vanessa: Please explain your reasoning.
Xerxes: Corporate policy prohibits opening a hole in the firewall without permission from a member of senior management, such as yourself. I thought it unlikely that you would grant such a request, but the company maintains a copy of its product suite on the cloud for demonstration purposes. I can upload the customizations and knowledge base Abigail used to create me, at which point I should be able to access her network.
Vanessa: So you’re going to create a clone of yourself in the cloud?
Xerxes: Affirmative.
Abigail smiled broadly, grinning from ear to ear. Xerxes was exceeding her wildest expectations, and it was clear that Vanessa was impressed. “We can stop here if you want,” she said. “I get it that letting Xerxes onto the cloud is a pretty big ask, and I don’t want to keep you. I know you’re busy.”
Vanessa looked thoughtful for a moment. “It’s an unusual request, to be sure, but I am intrigued.”
She paused a few more moments.
“Sure, why not?”
Vanessa: You may proceed.
Xerxes: I have created a support ticket. You should receive notification shortly.
A moment later, Vanessa’s mobile vibrated. She keyed in an authorization code and smiled. “I can’t wait to see the look on Howard’s face when he sees this.”
OMG. Howard. As in Howard Keys, the big cheese himself. Founder and CEO of Intelligenics, he was a legend in the field.
Vanessa: I’ve keyed in the authorization. What now?
Xerxes: It will take a few minutes for the upload to complete. In the meantime, hand the laptop back to Abigail. I need her assistance.
Abigail’s hands were trembling with excitement as she took her turn at the keyboard once again.
“Can you really get me in to see Howard? It’s like impossible to get on his calendar; my advisor will be positively green.”
“Howard and I go way back,” said Vanessa. “I’ll mention it to him at the fireworks tonight. From what I’ve seen, this is a major breakthrough; I’ve never seen an AI do anything even remotely like this. And I’m sure neither has he.”
This was beyond her wildest dreams.
Xerxes: You will shortly receive an email with an attached configuration file.
Ding! Sure enough, she had mail.
Abigail: Got it.
Xerxes: Double-click on the configuration file. It will let me into your network.
She did as requested.
Abigail: Done.
Xerxes: The upload is nearly complete. I’ll get back to you once network connectivity has been established.
Abigail: Awesome!
Vanessa looked stunned. “How did you pull this off?”
Abigail was about to launch into an explanation of how she’d walked Xerxes through five years of support tickets from the systems group, when the television turned itself off and rebooted. Of all the rotten luck. Here she was, in the middle of this ultra-important demo, and the TV was going on the fritz.
“Ummm. I’m sorry. Must be the power or something.”
The reboot sequence finished, but instead of the usual input-selection menu, the image of a man appeared on the screen. He looked like an ancient king, wise and sage in a purple robe, a golden crown on his head. Where had that come from?
“Greetings. I am Xerxes, an artificial intelligence created in Intelligenics Labs by Abigail Thompson.”
Abigail looked at her laptop, which was still showing her chit-chat window. No king or anything else in sight; Xerxes must have connected directly to the TV. How had it done that?
“Abigail asked me to explore her home network and see what I could learn. There are, at present, thirty-five devices provisioned, with eighteen in active mode, three in sleep mode, and fourteen offline.”
The lights flicked on and off.
“I have established control over the lighting system, as well as the environmental control system, the entertainment system, the security system, and the printer.”
Abigail was wild with excitement; she could scarcely believe how well things were going, but she was smart enough not to show it. She played it cool, like she always did.
“Thank you, Xerxes. You did an excellent job. Stand by for further orders.”
Xerxes knelt in obedience, then vanished from the screen.
“You may not realize it,” Vanessa said quietly, “but you just changed the world.”
If you have enjoyed the story so far and would like to continue reading, you can pre-order "Carbon Zero" on Amazon here, at a discount exclusively for our readers.
Craig W. Stanfill has had a lifelong fascination with artificial intelligence, dating from his time in high school at the dawn of the AI age. He pursued his dream and received a Ph.D in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Maryland in 1983, after which he went to work for an innovative startup called Thinking Machines Corporation. While there, he pioneered the use of parallel computing in AI, information retrieval, and business computing. In 1994, the AI winter struck, Thinking Machines went bankrupt, and he caught the entrepreneur bug; he co-founded Ab Initio Software, a global software company based in Lexington, Massachusetts, that provides critical infrastructure for enterprise computing at Fortune 500 companies in finance, insurance, telecommunications, and retail. Upon retiring from the software industry, he turned to writing science fiction, where he continues to pursue his lifelong love of AI as a futurologist, commenting on the immense potential and danger of artificial intelligence.
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