Chapter 17:  Upsy-Daisy

John Dunlevy, the CIA minder of the Argosy’s IT systems specifically and the U.S. scientific team generally, was one of the last to leave the departure cocktail party. Part of his job was to fraternize with the passengers to ensure none of the US team gave any trade secrets away to their Chinese peers after hours. Dunlevy had been conservative in his drinking, but was nonetheless having a bit of trouble navigating the seemingly endless corridor leading to his cabin as the ship continued its slowly rolling progress towards the open Atlantic. The best he could manage was a slow weave down the hallway, recalling the slithering of a snake.

He had experienced a twinge of queasiness as soon as he traded the fresh breeze on deck for the close air of the corridors. Now he tried to settle his stomach and hold his course by fixing his gaze on the tiny rectangle of wall four hundred feet ahead at the end of a hall flanked by seemingly endless doors. Regrettably, one of the last would admit him to the sanctuary of his cabin. The corridor felt awfully narrow, and not very well lit. Kind of spooky, really. Better stick to something non-alcoholic tomorrow night.

Damn! That must have been a big wave. He rubbed the elbow he’d just banged into the wall.

The next swell did more than send Dunlevy back up against a wall. This time it – or perhaps something else – loosed a heavy waterproof bulkhead door set into a deep pocket of the hallway just as he was passing by. A second later, he was pinned against the wall by a thousand pounds of steel, crushing his chest and preventing him from calling for help as his bulging, horrified eyes slowly glassed over.

*  *  *

“Huh!” Frank senior said as he and Frank finished a late dinner at a table by a window. “You feel that?”

“No,” Frank said. “Feel what?”

“The ship’s motion is changing. Before the waves were hitting us head-on. Now they’re hitting the ship at an angle. We must have changed course.”

“Yes,” I see what you mean, Frank said. “We’re going into kind of a figure eight pitch and roll now.”

“I wonder why,” his father said, looking out the window next to their table into the darkness beyond. “We’ve been out of sight of land for a couple of hours. We would have set a direct course for Fort Lauderdale quite a while back, I’d expect. And anyone with a weak stomach sure won’t be loving this new motion.”

“Maybe it has something to do with a developing weather system ahead?” Frank said.

“Could be. The single biggest cost for a cruise ship is fuel, so the captain always optimizes course and speed whenever he can to keep costs down. But this ship isn’t built for heavy weather.”

“What do you mean? It’s over five hundred feet long. And cruise ship lines move their ships all over the world, don’t they?”

“True. But they don’t tempt fate, either. I was reading up a bit on the cruise industry before we left, and there’s only one ship in the world right now that’s classified as a true ocean liner. That’s the Queen Mary II. Part of that designation relates to her speed – she can do thirty knots when the captain wants to push her. But the other difference is she’s built to cross the north Atlantic any month out of the year. To stand up to the kind of conditions she might encounter in mid-winter she’s built with forty percent more steel than a cruise ship of comparable size. That makes her far more sea-worthy than any other passenger ship in the world. You wouldn’t want to find yourself in the mid-Atlantic in January in a blow in a ship like this one.”

“Well, it’s not winter, so I guess that’s not a concern for us.”

“Winter, no,” his father said. “But it is hurricane season, and we’re heading for Florida. You can be sure the captain will be keeping a close eye on any weather systems developing over north Africa and then heading west.”

Something outside the dining room window caught Frank’s attention. “That’s odd. It looks like there’s a plane out there that’s coming straight at us.”

They both watched as two red lights, one blinking, approached. Soon they could hear it as well.

“Sounds like a helicopter to me,” Frank’s father said. “We’re through with dinner. Want to go on deck and see what’s up?”

“Sure. Why not?”

A few minutes later they stepped out onto a wind-whipped, heaving deck high above the ocean. A crew member stopped them there.

“Sorry,” he said. “You can get some air here by the door, but I can’t let you go any farther.”

“Okay,” Frank’s father said. “What’s up?”

“We’re medevac’ing a passenger off the ship.”

“Sorry to hear that. Heart attack?”

“No; from what I hear, it was a freak accident. The ship’s divided into five watertight compartments, with automatic doors that close off the corridors where they pass through the watertight bulkheads in case of emergency. All the doors are controlled from the bridge, and each has double controls to prevent it from closing unexpectedly. Somehow one of them got released and pinned a passenger to the wall. Shouldn’t be possible, but there you are – it is a brand-new ship after all, and I guess there are still some bugs to work out. I’m told he’s mashed up pretty bad. That said, he’s lucky it didn’t happen any later than it did.”

“Why’s that?” Frank’s father said.

“We were just close enough to land when the accident happened for a rescue helicopter to reach us from the coast guard station at Land’s End in Cornwall. Even then, we had to alter course to give the chopper enough time to arrive. After this, we’re on our own till we’re a couple of hundred miles off Florida.” The crewman pulled two red-coned flashlights out of his pockets. “And now I’ve got to go.”

The ship had dramatically reduced its speed to make the helicopter pilot’s job easier, but there was still a full twenty-five knots of wind sweeping the deck, and the motion of the ship to contend with as well. A full moon was playing hide and seek with the broken clouds racing overhead, and the roar of the helicopter added an oppressive note to the throb of the ship’s engines and the vibrations of the wind passing through the wire in the deck railings.

The big helicopter made two slow, wide circles as they watched, swinging almost a mile to the lee of the ship each time before making its final approach from astern, calculating and recalculating its drift relative to that of the ship as it made its sweeps. Sheltering at the other end of the deck Frank and his father could see a medical team hovering over a stretcher. Overhead, spot lights mounted on the ship’s twin funnels focused their cones of light on a ten by ten-foot white X painted on the middle of the deck.

“Wow,” Frank said. “I wonder how the pilot’s going to land with the deck heaving so much?”

“He won’t,” his father said. “What he’s figuring out is how to be sure he can hover over that X.”

Sure enough, when the helicopter came around the third time, it slowed until it was a hundred feet above the X, its engines roaring and its rotor wash adding to the heavy wind sweeping the deck. As soon as the aircraft was synched up with the ship’s speed and heading, the medical team moved out with the stretcher. Frank could now see it was surrounded by a metal cage with a steel ring sticking up.

Turning to the chopper, Frank could see what looked like a short crane swing a foot away from its side. Then the crane swung further out, along with a figure with one foot through a sort of stirrup at the end of a cable hanging from the crane. By the time the crane was at right angles to the aircraft the rescuer was already descending as the cable unreeled.

“Now there’s a job I can do without,” Frank’s father said. “This isn’t too bad, but you figure most of the time that guy’s not riding down a cable but diving into the water in scuba gear in the middle of a gale to rescue somebody who’s in the drink. The training they put these guys through make a Navy seal’s regimen look tame.”

The rescue crew member was almost to the deck now, swaying from side to side in the wind as the ship swayed in its own direction. When he was almost down to the deck, the medical team grabbed his legs. A minute later and the cable was attached to the stretcher ring, and patient, stretcher and rescuer were swaying back up into the gusting air. Even before they were wrestled inside, the helicopter began a slow, leaning sweep away from the course of the ship and headed off towards the shore, lost in the angry blackness of the night.

“Well, well,” Frank’s father said. “That’s that. I wonder what other little problems need to be worked out on the Argosy? Hopefully we won’t need another visit like tonight’s until there’s a way to pull it off.”

 

Chapter 18

So you Say (or Not)

 

Frank and his father opted for the cafeteria style dining area for breakfast.

“Looks like I’m going to have to get up earlier and run every morning,” Frank said. “Too much temptation here.”

“What was it Oscar Wilde wrote?” his father said. “‘The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it?’ You ought to try this French toast and fresh strawberries with the maple syrup and powdered sugar. Looks great to me.”

“Yeah, well you couldn’t gain weight to save your life.” Frank turned towards the tables lining the windows, and there was Simone, sitting alone at a table. She gave a welcoming smile.

Frank’s father turned and noticed her as well. “Well, there’s your lady friend. Looks like you’ve got a date. I’d better find myself another table.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frank said. “At most, Simone and I are just friends these days. Let’s go.”

“Ah, Frank,” she said as they sat down. “Good morning. Hm. Something occurs to me. What do I call your father if he has the same name?”

“Well,” his father said, “Francis is my given name, so why don’t you call me that. Don’t be surprised if I don’t answer at first, though. Nobody’s called me that since I was ten years old.”

“Francis it is then.”

Frank looked at his watch not long after. “Time to go,” he said, and then “what will you be doing today?”

“I see they’re giving hourly tours of the ship today,” his father said. “That kind of caught my interest.”

“Mine as well,” Simone said. “I have to give my first lecture at eleven and thought I would take the 9:30 tour. Would you like to join me?”

“Sure thing,” Frank’s father said. When Simone looked down at her plate, Frank’s father winked in Frank’s direction and added, “Sounds like a date.”

Frank glowered at his father as he stood up. “Well, have a good time while I’m hard at work.”

The work in Frank’s immediate future involved an introductory briefing for all US and Chinese participants in the ship’s theater. That large room, set in the bow of the ship, had been designed to treat passengers to music and theatricals rather than to host geo-political ethical debates. Which was fine with Frank. If he was going to spend the next two weeks listening to academics, military personnel and business types, he might as well be comfortable.

At the door to the theater were two tables; a tiny Chinese flag stood on one, and an equally diminutive stars and stripes was perched on the other. On each was a pile of wireless earpieces and a sign that said, “please take one.” Hmm. Did they expect everyone to be hard of hearing?

The answer became clear when he entered the theater. Several seats had been removed from the back rows on each side to allow the installation of glass booths. Inside each was someone sitting behind a microphone, wearing professional headphones. Of course. There would have to be simultaneous translators.

On the stage were two chairs on each side and a podium. A full-sized flag stood behind the chairs on the left and a US banner behind those on the right. Well, that wasn’t too subtle, Frank thought. But there was no use pretending this would be a love fest. To the side was a podium, and up to that podium strode General Wood. The room quieted down.

“Welcome,” the General said, “and thank you for your invaluable assistance during and after this cruise. As you all aware, the challenge each of us has accepted is to work together to propose new rules relating to the use of autonomous, AI-enabled weapons in warfare. More specifically, we are tasked with developing ethical rules relating to so-called lethal autonomous weapons, or LAWS.

“The joint hope of our respective governments is that our work may lead to a binding treaty between our two countries ensuring that any LAWS that either country may develop will be employed in an ethical way on the battlefield, and that the underlying AI technology will not threaten humanity generally. If we are successful in our work through this initiative, we can hope that a global pact may follow. This is a daunting but important goal, and I look forward to collaborating with each of you in its pursuit.

“With that, I will turn the floor over to Dr. Friedman, who will lead the proceedings from this point forward during our cruise.”

Friedman walked to the stage in his odd, jerky way, toes pointing out to either side.

“Thank you, General. I would now like to introduce the heads of delegations, beginning with the scientific leads, Professor Fang Yang of the University of Nanjing University and Professor Warren Denning of Carnegie Mellon University. Those in the audience who do not already know these worthy gentlemen will find their biographies and lists of publications in the meeting materials. Gentlemen, please join us.”

The men who walked onto the stage from right and left were of approximately the same age, which was late-middle, and their dress suggested roughly equal indifference to appearance. They shook hands warmly; that was a good sign, Frank thought. They must know each other personally as well as professionally.

“Next,” Friedman said, “let me introduce the military leads, Major General Li Jun, of the Peoples Liberation Army and Major General Mike Bright of the United States Army. Again, their resumes may be found in the meeting materials. Gentlemen, please join us.”

The two officers were in full uniform. Like the professors, they met in the middle of the stage and shook hands, but formally, before taking their seats. Not quite like the pre-fight handshake of prize fighters, Frank thought. But he imagined he might not be the only person in the audience to whom the analogy came to mind.

“We will begin,” Friedman said,” with statements by each head of delegation regarding the public positions of their respective countries with respect to the deployment of LAWS. General Bright, please proceed.”

“Let me add my welcome to those of General Wood and Dr. Friedman’s,” Bright said from the podium. “It’s a privilege to take part in this unprecedented meeting of the minds. At the outset, I would like to make it clear that it is Department of Defense policy that LAWS will always be used, and I’m quoting now, “with appropriate care and in accordance with the law of war, applicable treaties, weapon system safety rules, and applicable rules of engagement.”  That position was publicly announced in DoD Directive 3000.09 on November 21, 2012, which I will refer to as the LAW Directive. What this means is that, while a weapon may in fact have the autonomous ability to fire, they may not identify and confirm a human target without the prior approval of a human weapons specialist.

“At the same time, the United States has developed, and will continue to develop, air, sea and land robots that can perform other missions over extended time periods on an autonomous basis. Those missions include reconnaissance, delivery of supplies, troop transport, and multiple other tasks.”

In short, Frank thought, the US would continue to perfect all the skills required for a completely unsupervised LAW to take the field. And, of course, the various platforms the US would be perfecting for non-LAWs purposes would be built to specifications that could easily be converted to operate as LAWs should the human-in-the-loop constraint ever be dropped. Just as the Predator drone, which had entered service as a reconnaissance vehicle but was then armed with air to ground missiles. Those missiles had now been fired hundreds of times against terrorist and military targets, albeit each time with prior human-in-the-loop permission before firing.

“Of particular relevance to these meetings, it is the position of the United States that the appropriate role of AIs and robots in the military is to augment and extend rather than replace the warfighter. With that by way of introduction, I will now briefly describe some of the robotic platforms that have previously been publicly disclosed.”

A screen descended in the rear of the stage and the General proceeded to click through a slide display of a variety of autonomous vehicles, both airborne and surface. The latter were of various sizes. Those that were designed for offensive use were often able to carry a variety of different weapons, including light and heavy machine guns, anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers.

“Thank you,” the UASD said, at the end of the General’s presentation. “I think we have time for a few questions.”

Several hands went up, and General Bright pointed at a Chinese attendee, who asked his question in his native language. Almost immediately, a voice with a Chinese accent began to speak into Frank’s ear.

“Is it not a fact that the same directive you quoted from permits the development of non-supervised LAWS if appropriate approvals from senior bureaucrats are obtained?”

“That is true,” the general admitted.

“And have such weapons been developed?” the attendee immediately demanded.

The general paused. “I am afraid that I am not at liberty to either confirm or deny the truth of that statement.” Bright pointed to one of the Americans in the room. “Your question, sir?” The General said.

“Can we assume the United States has not yet created an ASI? And will the Directive requiring a human-in-the-loop remain in force when and if the US military has an ASI?”

Well, we were certainly getting off to an aggressive start, Frank thought. An ASI – that is, an artificial super intelligence – would be an AI that had exceeded human intelligence and could apply it broadly. In short, an AI generalist, like Turing. The closer one came to achieving that goal, the more one could imagine releasing a LAWS on a mission with only general instruction – such as to seek out and destroy enemy positions – as compared to a narrow one – like traveling to an already identified location and taking out a specific target already identified and programmed into the drone.

“It is my understanding that the United States military does not have an ASI,” the general said. “On your second question, I am not aware of any intention at this time to modify the LAW Directive based upon any advances to AI technologies. Until then, it provides, and I’m quoting here again, “Autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”

Well, that was an artful answer, Frank thought. The consensus in the AI community had always been that the singularity – a term coined by Ray Kurzweil to describe the moment in time when an AI achieved general intelligence equal to a human – was still many years away. And yet Jerry Steiner had accomplished just that. Still, Turing had destroyed all of Steiner’s designs and relevant records. Someone else would have to recreate the singularity.

The General fielded several more questions before surrendering the podium to his Chinese counterpart.

Frank had to listen closer now, as the translator’s halting delivery entered into one side of his brain while the General’s rapid presentation pumped interference into the other.

“Let me express my great pleasure at being invited to participate in this worthy enterprise,” the General began. “It has always been the goal of the Peoples Liberation Army to defend the borders and ensure peace for the Chinese people. At the same time, it is the mission of the Chinese people and its government to provide the best example to the world of how a society may advance to prosperity in harmony. We welcome this opportunity to extend that example.”

Indeed, Frank thought. Just as it was extending its influence through every other means possible.

“In the case of LAWs, our example will be different,” the General continued. “While we understand the concerns of those who fear that AIs, and especially any future ASIs, will prove impossible to control, we believe these concerns are exaggerated. Our focus is on the opportunities and advances that such new tools may provide.

“In the case of LAWs, we believe the benefits of such systems far outweigh any possible risks. Unlike human beings, LAWs will be unfailingly analytical. They will be able to make decisions in a fraction of a second that a human being might take valuable minutes or more to decide. They will be programmatically incapable of committing atrocities with malicious intent and physically incapable of rape.

“Most important, the employment of LAWs will avoid the deployment of military service personnel, thereby sparing societies from the ages-old scourge of death on the battlefield. At the same time, such weapons will be dramatically cheaper and more efficient than human military personnel. They need not sleep, nor eat, nor drink, now will their spirits or courage ever fail.

“For all these reasons, the Peoples Liberation Army is committed to the development and deployment of LAWS, subject, of course to ethical rules of engagement.

“I will now be pleased to entertain questions.”

The General recognized an American in the audience.

“General, will you be sharing information about any current weapons systems?”

“Regrettably, no. We have not publicly announced any such systems.”

“Has the Peoples Republic of China developed an ASI?” the same American as before inquired.

“The PRC has made no announcement of such a system.”

Well, Frank thought, this didn’t promise to be a very informative cruise.

Author’s Notes:  Decisions, decisions … So we’ve got our characters out at sea now on what’s supposed to be an important mission to help humanity protect itself from the consequences of it’s own innovations. The only problem is that the threat, while important, is kind of, well, let’s face it, boring to talk about. Plus the fact that pretty much everything that needed to be said on the subject was already said in the context of president Yazzi’s earlier soul-searching and meetings with General Wood and Dr. Friedman.

Still, Frank has to be doing something all day, doesn’t he?

Well, maybe not. But a few new characters do need to be introduced, and this is one way to do so.

One point you might find interesting is that the medivack scene was not imagined out of whole cloth. My wife and I returned from England on the Queen Mary 2 last May, and at the same point in time during the trip we were in fact having dinner and saw the lights approaching. What followed was pretty much as I’ve described it above. The same scene repeated itself the next night as well. Happily, there was no further need for such assistance since, like Frank, we out of range of such an escape for the rest of the voyage. We’re hoping to repeat the experience (ideally without the helicopter interventions) at the end of this May, but it remains to be seen whether the Queen Mary 2, or perhaps any cruise ships at all, will be putting to sea by then.

And finally, this week’s note about names. Way back n 1983, when I was a very callow attorney for startups, I represented a cutting age, but underfunded, robotics company called Denning Mobile Robotics, founded by R. Warren George II. The company’s flagship product, and the founder, appear at left. One of the star scientific advisors was Hans Moravec, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University – and hence we have as a character name this week’s Professor Warren Denning of the same institution.

DMR’s first product was designed to be a security robot, able to tour large facilities (such as warehouses or military installations) using a randomly generated, constantly changing, route, automatically returning to its recharging base. Sound like a Roomba way before its time? Right you are. It was.

The original unit came equipped with a video camera and an eardrum-shattering siren. The former would stream back to a human-manned security center and the latter could incapacitate anyone found where they shouldn’t be (I believe this feature was later eliminated). Multiple sensors allowed it to detect human intruders as well as to remain aware of its current location. You can read more about it here. The product failed to gain traction in part because it developed that two or three family owned businesses owned 70% of the U.S. market share for on-site security, and they saw no need to change the way they had always done business. That lesson stuck with me for my whole career – you have to know a marketplace intimately before you can try and disrupt it.

The company next tried redesigning the basic platform to vacuum and wash floors for hoped-for customers like hotels. Sadly, that didn’t happen, either, at least for DMR, which finally failed in 1999 after an earlier bankruptcy and restart.

Like so many high tech innovations, the pioneers failed to reap the rewards of their innovations. It wasn’t until iRobot (another client, this time of my own law firm, where we did their initial patent work) came along decades later that the same basic concept was able to find widespread market acceptance and financial success.

Next week: Frank Sr. and Simone take a tour of the ship followed by pub time for all. Continue reading here

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