Helt leaned back in his chair and placed his hands on his legs, “It appears that that has been a mistake. Of course, there have been few AI systems with the capacity to directly manage that task, but the Silverman has far more than enough to do it and we have just experienced the results. I can only theorize that the Silverman AI has learned a better way to handle an isolator drive. Unfortunately, it will take far more instrumentation than we have here to figure out what it’s doing.”
The three of them looked at each other for a moment before Wills spoke, “I’m a great fan of badly written sci-fi vids; I hope that thing doesn’t learn a better way to fly this ship without humans.”
CeCe and Helt smiled and CeCe lazily raised a finger, “AI conceptual psychology is non-relational; that is, they have no idea of self, need, or competition. One of the best ways to start a fight in a psychology lab is to assert that our current level of AI is true intelligence. Another way to start a fight is to defend the point of view that what humans call intelligence and attribute to ourselves is merely a product of our own conceit reinforced by the lack of anything at or above our level to compare ourselves to.
“Consider that when we are born we have extremely limited abilities; everything the three of us now know we have been taught or, if you will, programmed. Humans have no ability to handle situations that are based on data that is new, abstract, or incomplete unless we have been trained, familiarized, or exposed to it or something similar. If some fantastic and indecipherable piece of alien technology dropped into our hands that was capable of something we had never even imagined was possible, we would formulate a series of experiments to determine what it was based only on our previous experience of what we think the thing might be if it were something we were familiar with.
“The objective of an AI is based on task management; a particular AI system is given a specified set of tasks with limits and conditions, and it finds the best way to make them all work together if they interact. Our current level of what we call artificial intelligence is, fundamentally, highly compact versions of what used to be called super computers. They have massive storage, highly involved, but specific programming, and are very fast. The primary difference between an AI and humans is that human programming is more generalized and is contained within a biological organism with all of the usual associated baggage that involves.
“The Silverman Integrator is called an ‘Integrator’ because it was intended to integrate economics, logistics, transportation, communication, security, and more for an entire planetary system. Its programming was extremely involved and made up a significant part of its cost, but the programming determines what it does and the basic rules. An AI has no needs as we define them; it only has the ability to learn to handle its assigned tasks. The possibility of kitchen utensils mounting an attack on us one dark and stormy night is fairly remote.”
Wills let out a long breath, “I am relieved to hear that. Keep up the good work, Helt.” He stood and headed for the door, “Back to the bridge, I guess.”
#
“Doctor Stoker,” a tall, slim, fortyish woman three rows back stood up, “If I remember my science classes correctly, there should be no real danger to the Foresters from this anomaly that is disturbing the star. Even intense flares cannot penetrate a planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere. Are you expecting something more like a nova?”
Stoker was sitting on the front edge of the table. He turned to look at Treelam who was sitting in a chair behind the table; he had a slightly embarrassed look when he turned back to the audience.
“Ahh . . . yes, I guess I should tell you about that. Forgive me for being incomplete; I rarely talk to people that are not fully informed. Anyway, the problem is that Forest does not, at this time, have an effective magnetic field.”
That caused a stir in the audience.
“Soon after Forest was discovered, the lack of a strong magnetic field was realized. A year later, we put a geological team down in several remote and unpopulated parts of the planet. Core samples indicate that Forest may be in the process of a polarity reversal. The samples seem to indicate that Forest has never had a strong magnetic field and that reversals have been relatively common as these things go. Ordinarily, a reversal does not present a major problem under a G-class star, but this particular situation does make it a problem.”
Stoker pointed at a young man that had his hand up, “Doctor, why is it called ‘Forest’?”
Stoker smiled, “Well, basically because the vast majority of its land surface is covered with vegetation. As I understand it, the scout ship pilot that discovered the planet exclaimed that it looked like a solid forest from pole to pole; it stuck.
“Geologically, Forest is an unusually quiet planet. About eighty-five percent of its surface is water and there appears to be little tectonic plate activity, so there are no real mountain ranges to affect air currents and weather patterns. This would also be an indication
