for the cube to be placed back on its pedestal. 'The Seven's controller records the motions and then plays them back exactly as learned. Watch.'
This time, the robot's arm rose to the cube on its own, grabbed it, and lowered it to the floor — its movements precisely duplicating those it had just been taught.
'We were absolutely amazed at how much processing it took to program mobility into the robots,' Gray said. 'We humans think that rising out of a chair, walking across the room, and getting a glass of water is the easiest thing in the world, but that playing chess is difficult. In fact, it's just the opposite. We're just so incredibly proficient at motor skills that they seem easy. High-level processing — like chess, differential equations, musical composition — seems difficult only because we're so bad at it. That results from the fact that high-level thought is the newest, most recent addition to our mental repertoire, whereas we began learning locomotion billions of years ago.'
Laura let Gray finish, and when he looked over at her he said, 'Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I'm venturing into your field.'
'No, that's okay. I'll give you an A minus so far.'
Gray smiled and turned back to the room below. 'A lot of rudimentary subsystems are hardwired in the robots right on the factory floor. Then, the main computer runs them through a few trillion simulations. Finally they get here, but as you can see' — Gray nodded at the infant robot, which was all trussed up in its web of cables—'they're still pretty helpless. They can't even stand up at first.'
'How old is this one?'
'Oh, I'd guess it came off the production line about a week ago. After two weeks in the nursery it goes to the Basic and then Advanced Neural Programming Centers.'
'Preschool and kindergarten?' Laura asked, and Gray smiled.
They watched as the gangly, four-legged robot tried to walk straight at a row of new objects. The cables went taut on practically every step as the robot simply forgot to plant a foot.
'Why don't you just program all the neural nets the same way?' Laura asked. 'I mean, once one of them gets everything down, it would seem a lot more efficient to use its program for all the rest. It must be expensive to train them one at a time like this.'
'But it's the only way,' he said, spinning his stool around to face her. The earnest expression on his face captivated Laura. 'You see, neural nets have two tremendous advantages over digital processors. The first is that they fail gracefully. If something goes wrong in one of their nodes they just reroute their processing instead of crashing the whole system. And then, there's the second major advantage, which is obvious.'
'What's that?'
With eyes glistening Gray said, 'They develop brilliance.' His voice had a dreamy quality to it. 'There were theories, but nobody knew till we tried. The trick is in the process of learning. You can tell the robot that if you push one cube off another it'll crash to the floor. But if you allow it to learn, it begins to make generalizations almost immediately!'
He was energized. He looked radiant with excitement. 'Every traditional computer is designed to respond to the same set of instructions in exactly the same way every time. But neural nets are all different. From the moment they come off the line their abilities and preferences and tendencies vary. Some are better at detail work. Others have such a highly developed sense of kinesthesia they could walk through a china shop without rattling a plate. Others are great problem-solvers and are best at pure, abstract thinking. They have the same hardware, but from the complete jumble of connections in their nets they become individuals.'
Gray slid off his stool and began to pace. 'It's just like the diversity of the human population. Take Georgi — an absolute genius at the physics of optical computing. He's also the best chess player I've ever come across. And then there's Margaret, who has the finest understanding of databases in the world. She's also a single mother and the most devoted parent I've ever met. She goes home at five sharp every night to cook dinner for her kids. Dorothy is a twenty-first-century Pasteur, but you should also hear her play the piano. She was a child prodigy, and she was paraded around at age four like some carnival act. And then there's Griffith — a balding roboticist who thinks he's a Hell's Angel. He drives a Harley around the beach on his days off playing 'Born to Be Wild' on his DAT player — always 'Born to Be Wild,' never anything else.'
'What about Hoblenz?' Laura asked.
'He's a warrior. A member of an even more specialized breed who lives for the hunt. It used to be that all humans had to be able to defend their lives to survive. The poor fighters were culled from the herd along with the genes that made them weak. Now, we pay others to do our fighting for us, and we equip them with such highly productive tools that many need less overtly violent skills to excel at killing and we need fewer and fewer of them.'
In the quiet that followed, Laura agonized over something that bothered her. Finally, she gave voice to the cause of her disquiet. 'Why are you showing me all this?' It hadn't come out right. 'I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm fascinated by all this stuff, but I just don't understand how it relates to my job.'
'I'm asking you to do something that's never been done before. I'm asking you to tell me whether the computer is emotionally disturbed, and if it is…'
Laura waited, but then had to prompt him. 'Yes?'
'… can you cure it in the next three days' time.'
19
After returning from the tour of the nursery, Laura got back to work in the quiet of her office. She was surprised to find her hands stiff and sore from all the typing. She sat back and rubbed her hands — her attention drawn to the black eyeball in the wall beside the door.
'Are you sure you can't hear me well enough so that I can just talk?' she asked in a raised voice.
The computer answered her on the screen. <How should I know whether you feel well enough to go for a walk?>
Laura sighed and flexed her fingers like a pianist — the joints in her hands popping. 'Never mind,' she typed. 'So, how do you know when you've got a virus?'
<Usually I get a report from the phase-one.>
'You can't sense their presence on your own?'
<If it's bad enough I feel something. This infection feels like there's a void inside me. I've done an extensive review, and about six percent of my system is being used by something that is not me. It is as if there's a blank space over in the annex. I know the boards should be there, but I can't access them. I can't seem [missing] rid the [missing]. And it's changing. The blank space is growing.>
'But you have no clue what it is?'
<I call it the Other.> the computer replied.
Laura stared at the computer's reply with growing alarm. When Laura returned to Gray's house it was late. She was exhausted, but instead of heading upstairs for bed she felt compelled to go in search of Gray. The door to his study was closed, and Laura knocked.
'Come in,' Gray called out through the thick wood.
She opened the door to see that Gray was rocked back in his chair — reading. His stockinged feet were propped on his desk, being warmed by the blaze in the fireplace.
'Oh, Laura,' he said. He dropped his feet to the floor and placed the papers he was reading on his desk.
'Sorry to bother you so late. I just thought we might need to talk.'
Gray stood and walked around his desk, motioning for her to have a seat on the leather sofa.
She suddenly wondered what she had come there to say. She'd begun half a dozen different conversations in her mind on the ride up the mountain, but she'd never gotten all the way to the point of the talk.
'I'm glad you stopped by,' Gray said as he sat in a chair beside the sofa. 'I was just reading your latest article. It's very interesting. I had no idea what your views were.'
Laura didn't know how to take the comment. 'But if you didn't know my views,' she began, growing more and more defensive, 'how is it that you offered me this job?'
'Oh, I didn't pick you out,' he said, and Laura was instantly crestfallen. She felt the blood rush to her face.
