Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

“Good morning, Noah,” Mrs. Jones greets me. She’s impeccably dressed in one of her signature pantsuits, a light blue one that complements her immaculately coiffed white hair. “I trust you had a good weekend?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Jones. Mine was good, how was yours?” I respond, putting on my cheerful voice. Mrs. Jones responds well to positivity, so I fake it as best I can with her. Forcing the smile is harder this morning than normal. The headaches from training with Father over the weekend have died down, but there’s still a constant low-level throbbing. I take my seat at the table across from her.

“It was excellent, thank you for asking. My husband and I got back last night from a weekend wine tasting in Napa Valley that was absolutely divine. But enough pleasantries. Let’s get started. Today, we’ll discuss the legal frameworks related to the Butler Treaty. I hope you were able to complete Max Braun’s book?”

I nod. Of all the books we’ve covered in her class, this was by far the most immediately applicable to me, and the most interesting. If you don’t count Father, Max Braun is the world’s leading expert on nanotechnology.

“Do we need to get into the specifics of each country’s response?” I ask her. “Or just the general guidelines that were adopted by all the signatory countries?”

“Let’s see how well you can explain the guidelines.” She smiles, looking pleased. “And then we can get into the specifics of the laws passed in the United States if we need to. I’m not worried about the details of the regulations in other countries at this point. Please, articulate your understanding of the reading.”

“Well, in the aftermath of the Gray Goo Incident, world leaders were terrified of a potential extinction level event like that happening again. They realized that if the nanobots from Universal Robotics had been able to move more than a few inches per hour, or if there had been more of the right kinds of materials available nearby, or if the nanobot swarm had been a little bit smarter, they could have become uncontainable. In the worst case, they would have expanded to eventually consume the whole world.”

Mrs. Jones nods for me to go on.

“A lot of this awareness was due to a sustained public relations campaign by my father and his company,” I continue. “The following year, every member nation of the U.N. signed the Butler Treaty. The treaty restricted various combinations of self-replication, sensors, and artificial intelligence. The restrictions applied to any research, development, or production of any kind of technology. Every country on earth eventually ratified the treaty.”

“Good,” she says, a pleased smile on her face. “Please explain the allowed and disallowed combinations under the treaty.”

“Artificial intelligence that used machine learning was the most restricted. Basically you can’t give any learning system access to physically control anything. You can’t connect a learning or adaptive system to any external network or use any input device more complicated than a mouse and keyboard. So no microphones, cameras, or any other kind of sensors can be connected to learning systems. You can use learning algorithms, but you have to do it on an isolated computer or cluster and have government approved auditing and verification performed regularly.” This chapter was copied from novelceo . com without permission.

She’s about to ask for an example, like she usually does, so I just give her one.

“The normal use case in most industries, if they want to use a learning AI system, is to load up the data you want the system to analyze, put it on a big drive, and connect that to the learning computer. You let it do its thing, then you export the output with some complicated sanitizing steps that I don’t remember. You know I’m still not great at some of this technical stuff.”

Playing that I don’t know much about computers has got me so much mileage with Mrs. Jones that it’s become second nature to do it whenever it applies.

“Noah, please give yourself more credit,” she reassures me. “I’ve heard that you’re doing very well on your software lessons. You keep at it, and I bet you’ll be writing all sorts of programs in no time.”

“Thanks.”

“Please, go on. What were the other restrictions on artificial intelligence?”