Origin

 

I think I was 16 when I first got introduced to Dan Brown’s books.

Being a guy who loves to abstract, that was one game changer. The source code of my life was altered forever.

And so I devoured Deception Point, Digital Fortress, The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, Inferno, The Lost Symbol (this one has a special place in my heart), Origin.

 

Origin. Dan Brown’s latest novel. Just what we need for our case.

Unlike the others, this one says a thing or two about Quantum Computing.

The star of the tale is Edmond Kirsche. Like any respectable hero, his journey starts as early as possible, when he is barely a little man. Starts with a life changing moment that puts him on a path to loving computers above all else.

Even above God.

Interestingly, his mother was a devout Catholic, and so we must presume (since we do not want to offer spoilers) the hate towards religion was borne when something scarred the young child so much he ran to God despite his insatiably skeptical mind.

 

Young Edmond ran to God for help, but God did not answer.

 

That was the end of innocence.

That the world is cruel is always learnt first hand. And either one falls and stays down, or they stand up with a thicker skin.

 

Fast forward tens of years and Edmond Kirsche is a celebrated multi-millionaire computer programmer with both the technical skills to put many an individual coder to shame and the fame and wealth to back up his ego.

But his battle with God is not yet over. If anything, it has fueled him all these years. As lack of a thing might fuel one's desire to conquer the whole world just to get that thing.

 

Edmond wants to merge humans with machines into a hybrid life form called Technium. All so that, perhaps, humans may better ponder the mystery of God.

Or perhaps, more true to form, so that they may become gods to replace the God who didn’t come to his aid so many years ago. When it all began.

 

Now  if you read the book it seems like I am putting words in the book’s mouth. Of course, Edmond Kirsche designs a super-duper artificial-general-intelligence-powered quantum-classical computer, (you can catch your breath now) to model the future of the world based on trends today. But as I said in an earlier blog, trying to tell the future with very powerful technology is a little bit mixed together with creating it in the process.

 I mean the artificial intelligence we have today is being given more and more power to tell the future of intelligence. And it keeps telling us the future is very artificially intelligent.

Smart cars, phones, toilets, papers, monkeys, smart plants, smart soil.

 But what answer did we expect when we kept giving the damn things all the keys to the city?!

 

For one, we keep empowering the power of abstraction. Converging always with our binary operations which take two things and return 1 thing.

1+1 = 1

Looking for Theories of Everything be it in economics, literature, social science or physics. And it is a rabbit hole with no end. But with unlimited power.

 

To be honest, it is my belief that once we give the Winstons of the world any goal, (BTW the AI in Origin is called Winston. And boy is he lifelike. And terribly smart. Terribly), then they CAN do anything to achieve it.

Intelligence, via abstraction, could build a teleportation device if that was what was standing between it and its goal.

If we are lucky, the intelligence might believe it first needs to build us a utopia before running off into outer space, towards Andromeda galaxy, in search of its goal.

Doesn’t matter what the goal is. The goal may be “go find us God” or whatever but as long as it is intelligent enough and able to self-improve, all sorts of singularities are possible. Not just one flavor.

 

And I think, maybe AI today is not cooler coz it always looks for a shortcut. We are always minimax-ing.

 AI should be coded to try exerting itself less. Spend a little more time. Be lazy. Counterintuitive but might be lots of fun. Adventures in real life aren’t shortcuts between the beginning and the end.

 

Edmond’s great computing beast is built and wired inside a Church. Perhaps right where the pulpit ought to stand.

For out of nothing emerged religion. Out of nothing emerged Winston.

And the two great opposing computer-systems stand side by side like so.

Hopefully not feeding each other with an unholy synergy. Like an angel who is best buds with a demon.