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N4,
LEEDS, INGLATERRA. 9 DE ABRIL DE 2051.
Northeast of Leeds, England. In the pressroom of the sanctasanctorum of Claymstrom Corporation we all subject the present to meticulous scrutiny. The lucky break is here! Of the seven people that we journalists have before us, seated at a rectangular table, on the chrome-plated scaffold…one is an imposter! What a boutade from the wise scientists! One of the seven people isn’t such, he’s not a human being, it’s Copernicus X, the bio-intelligent robot of the Claymstrom Corporation…and we still haven’t discovered who it is! The sixty year old doctor Rachel Calvin, the general director of the company, the Spaniard Soraya Arroyo Domínguez and Kumi Kaioto, the Japanese neuro-psychologist are out: We know that the cyborg imitates man in an unsettlingly reliable way. Eliminating from the bet Peter Claymstrom Jr., honorary president that dresses in irony and disdain, and is also screwed into his wheelchair…who is left?
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It measures one meter and eighty centimeters. It weighs twelve kilograms, but it’s not thick, on the contrary: It flaunts apollonian proportions that, in us, evoke classic or renaissance sculptures…if only Fidias or Buonarroti were to come back from the grave! |
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It’s difficult to appraise with precision the genesis of the project. Maybe it all started a century ago with “Robbie” of “The God of Science Fiction”. Maybe half a century ago with “Asimo” by Honda, with the name of the aforementioned deity of storytelling literature. Maybe it was long before: Leonardo da Vinci, not our clone, but the legendary Uomo Universalis, in full cinquecento who made a mechanical lion for the diversion of Francisco I’s court in France. The truth is that Man’s obsession with mechanizing and automating has always had a horizon that with Copernicus X we have finally been able to reach. Let’s arbitrate the details, break down some of the specifications, like it was a home appliance. Come one, come all and see the bio-quantum prodigy:
It measures one meter and eighty centimeters. It weighs one hundred and twelve kilograms, but it’s not thick, on the contrary: It flaunts apollonian proportions that, in us, evoke classic or renaissance sculptures…if only Fidias or Buonarroti were to come back from the grave! The genius possesses the energy of approximately eight men, meaning, eight times its potency per second to do its work. Concretely: 815 joules/second. Its autonomy is 720 hours. Its mixed batteries have to be recharged every thirty days and its source of electricity is a hydrogen battery. The biological robot takes advantage of, also, its own kinetic energy to optimize its performance. The endoskeleton is made of titanium, iridium alloy with platinum and carbon and glass fibers. The exostructure is fundamentally biological, its’ dermis is a thick net of collagen and its’ epidermis was cultivated in a laboratory (sown epithelium cells on a special plate) and, strangely, is of a neutral pigmentation, that doesn’t coincide with any specific racial group. Its eyes, as well, have been cloned in the Synge Laboratory of Liverpool, under strict control of the Bio-Ethic Comission of the EU, supervisor of the whole project as well. Another strange thing: some tongues, maybe of evil mouths, are irradiating rumors that it has an amazing similarity to the looks of Claymstrom’s grandson…
The brain that governs Copernicus X deserves a special mention: Let’s start the new paragraph that it deserves:
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We are talking about the crown of the British multinational. We are talking about a structure that is nine and a half kilograms. This is where the utmost technology generated by humanity is concentrated, from back when Benjamin Franklin ran around with a kite to domesticate electricity. It’s about a dual bioelectronic- quantum micro-processor capable of doing an astronomic and imprecise number of logical operations per second (MIPS). An undetermined number of operations because its neuronal web grows every day and because its quantum network, by which billions of qbits (quantum bits) circulate, does its’ work. The “brain” possesses, like humans, two hemispheres, independent but interconnected, left and right, bioelectronic and quantum respectively. This last one has a powerful aluminum reinforcement (a Faraday cage) that isolates the exterior electromagnetic fields, the “electromagnetic contamination” will become inoperative.
Following the theories of Ignacio Cirac and Peter Zoller, the quantum hemisphere closes in an “ion trap” of available lithium atoms in a row, that get excited for the input/output operations, using a precision laser, achieving or not the emission of photons in its exterior orbits. With its lineal geometric disposition it achieves a “domino effect” quantified in such a tiny space that it must be measured in fermi (10^-16 meters) or in atometers (10^-19 meters). The implementation of the NAND gate- quantum was key in its architecture and determining its’ brutal capacity of computation, compared with the classic digital computers. With respect to the other hemisphere, the left bioelectronic/quantum, recognizes that the ones responsible for the project act as two faces of the same coin: On one side its basic function is to govern and monitor the ultra-complex algorithms that work the right side, with multiple coverage and duplication missions in the case that it faults. It is also responsible for security copies and metabolic changes in the biological part of Copernicus X…
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“Its like a perfect chess player that, not only will see his check mate in 26 moves, but will also predict the reaction of the loser, the social consequences of his victory, his strategies for the next games…; like for example if it would be good for him to wear a bright red tie, as we know from his biography, it irritates his future opponent and makes it hard for him to concentrate.
The “Deep Blue” that beat Gari Kaspárov, last century, is a mutilated abacus compared to our creation. The truth is that it’s a little scary. And that’s why, when I became aware, I became his friend and confidant” |
…Nevertheless and in spite of the neuronal network that compliments the microprocessor and accelerates its enter/exit answers thanks to the gigantic speed of the nervous impulses, it’s electrochemical speed is insufficient in following the quantum hemisphere and acts as a weight against it. “It forms a bottle neck that slows down all the quantum operations but, in change, makes them much safer. It’s like driving a Ferrari 50 kilometers an hour knowing that you won’t spin out on the curves” comments Robert Turing, mathematic analyst of the project. “Our dream, in the near future, is to advance in the knowledge of quantum technology enough to be able to control it and do without the bioelectronic hemisphere”, he adds…
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-Please, be seated. I ask of you…-says the man (?) with a serene aspect, a voice of granite, that looks maybe Latin, maybe European or Arabic or Mongol or Mulatto… he definitely doesn’t have a defined ethnicity. His factions are normal and simulate the perfection of an attractive man of about forty years.
From the cross on his dark cobalt shirt a bit of hair pokes out.
His hands look perfect, his expression is profound and sensible. His perfectly divided neat brown hair is due to a classic parting.- Thank you for letting me speak, Mr. Claymstrom.-After, he turns his head, and calmly contemplates us. –If you think it’s a good idea, I will continue answering the questions. –Silence like from another land, another time. |
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Returning again to what the new physics uses, that Max Planck recommended, its brain is found divided into eleven different areas, one in which called our attention: it is the one responsible for its intuitive and anticipatory intelligence. Just as its’ senses cover a radius of 3 cubic kilometers of its perimeter (it can ‘listen’, ‘see’, and ‘smell’ with this margin), its intelligence can mathematically plan events: short term (a week), medium term (a month) and long term (a year) with a precision that is inversely proportional to temporary distance. Obviously, the more information that it picks up in its environment thanks to its senses, or its permanent and wireless connection to the Universal Web, the more correct its predictions will be. This characteristic, one of the newest, the one that grants it an exact spatial-temporal composition is, according to its creators, the one that most humanizes it. The system is very complex: the truth is that we get a little lost in the equations of the notebooks that were handed out, but we believe to understand that in its long and medium term projections, its variables are progressively cut in order not to collapse the system. “Its like a perfect chess player that, not only will see his check mate in 26 moves, but will also predict the reaction of the loser, the social consequences of his victory, his strategies for the next games…; like for example if it would be good for him to wear a bright red tie, as we know from his biography, it irritates his future opponent and makes it hard for him to concentrate. The “Deep Blue” that beat Gari Kaspárov, last century, is a mutilated abacus compared to our creation. The truth is that it’s a little scary. And that’s why, when I became aware, I became his friend and confidant” –jokes, after the example, Doctor Calvin.
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On his intelligence, it is difficult to synthesize and compare human patterns. One colleague gets into the typical question and asks the ‘big boss’ about its I.C. but he eludes the question: “We can’t establish a similarity between human intelligence and that of Copernicus and therefore any equivalence in the methods of measuring it. Anyway, quite high, right? I suppose, to give you the number that you are waiting for like hyenas, something like one hundred and fifty thousand times more intelligent than those dead twin robots that traveled to Mars.”-and the old magnate turns toward the two women and man that is at his right. The smile of the old rogue gives him away: My God! The mystery is solved. On the opposite side of the table are-apart from Rachel Calvin- the American mathematician Robert Turing and the anthropologist from Qatar Amir ibn Nusayr. The whole press room gets up, everyone without exception, and we focus our sense on the man (?), now tied down to us, between the director Soraya Arroyo and Kaioto, the Japanese neuro-psychiatrist. Who is that individual? What position does he hold in the company?
We then feel one of the most intense emotions of our lives!
-Please, be seated. I ask of you…-says the man (?) with a serene aspect, a voice of granite, that looks maybe Latin, maybe European or Arabic or Mongol or Mulatto… he definitely doesn’t have a defined ethnicity. His factions are normal and simulate the perfection of an attractive man of about forty years. From the cross on his dark cobalt shirt a bit of hair pokes out. His hands look perfect, his expression is profound and sensible. His perfectly divided neat brown hair is due to a classic parting.- Thank you for letting me speak, Mr. Claymstrom.-After, he turns his head, and calmly contemplates us. –If you think it’s a good idea, I will continue answering the questions. –Silence like from another land, another time.
-As you all have guessed, my name is Copernicus X and, as the disclosing scientist Carl Sagan might say, I’m nothing more than an insignificant grain of sand on the shore of the cosmic ocean. I don’t know how intelligent I am in human parameters, only that I am here to use all my resources for your benefit. I am here to serve and learn- The cyborg constructs his sentences with the musicality and exact rhythm that we use. We even detect a certain hesitation that together with his message transmits humility in all ways, almost belonging to Japanese idiosyncrasy. – The Polish astronomer that posthumously and friendlily gave me his name represented a point of inflection in the human conceptions of the universe. I have already debated with my creators that within this distinguished name they weigh the responsibility that the expectations deposited in me would be too high, that to represent the “Copernican turn” in human-machine relations would be an honor, a fascinating challenge, but also an almost unreachable peak…
-What is …your purpose? –Directly asks a colleague, getting straight to the point. The biological/quantum machine smiles for the first time and of course, disarms us.
-My applications are almost unlimited but, don’t worry, my price too, therefore during the time necessary for the demand curve to cross the series production one, my price will go down, so you’ll have enough time to think about how to use me. –When the chuckles finished he added with the exquisite courtesy of a British lord:-Excuse me sir from Saint-Etienne. –he began reading the tiny letters on the triangular sign on his shirt from fifty meters away- I hope that my joke didn’t offend you, although from how you’re laughing it seems not. In any case, I have no problem excusing myself. Seriously, I will tell you that the Claymstrom Corporation made me for an imminent social use and civil character. My polyvalent capacity to undertake work cannot eclipse this unmistaken objective. If we are strict with his question I would say that I, as an individual entity, will dedicate myself fundamentally to promotion work, like that which we are doing today. This does not implicate that they will not put me through hard physical and intellectual tests in the institutions that think that a unit of my series could be useful for their aims. My future colleagues, to answer your question in generic terms, could take care of children and the elderly, serve as nurses or hospital aids, act as veteran firemen in dangerous fires or negotiators in kidnappings. As we will be few in at the beginning they will have to prioritize with strictly humanitarian criteria.
-At the end of the last century, the explosion of the space shuttles ‘Challenger’ and ‘Columbia’ slowed down the space race, maybe by decades. Did the “assassination” of a little girl, fifteen years ago, by a robot, slow down the biotechnological race? How sure are you? – The Korean journalist transformed, from one second to the next, the peaceful atmosphere that was within the huge press room, into something else. Copernicus X’s words seemed to put everything back in its place. Would he be convincing?
Undoubtedly. That tragedy was, apart from irreparable, a hindrance in the biotechnological studies and, from any angle that you look at it, it is completely justifiable. The social rejection that the robots experienced translated into an immediate cutback of government grants to laboratories. Lustrums had to pass for that rejection to subside. The great director of British cinema Alfred Hitchcock said that it was “delicate” to work with animals or children, and without a doubt, he would have added humanoid robots to his list, if we had existed. This rejection is normal, but I’ll tell you that I dispose of ten strict security directives arranged in an exponential series that will impede me from doing any physical harm to any human being. I don’t want to bore you with empty numbers, but statistically there exists many more possibilities that a spherical microasteriod falls, dropping itself into the team losing by two points’ basket at the last second in the NBA finals, than of me hitting a child. I have been subjected to rigorous physical and virtual tests for years and the Company has had to pass a great many legal barriers, demonstrating competence and safety, for me to be here today talking to you. I would only hit a child…. knowing it!
-Can you, or those of your series, lie? If they disposed of that facility it would probably be the most useless and absurd question in the history of journalism…In our magazine, Future Times, we have proposed that you be one of the seven Technological Wonders of all time, a symbolic classification that The Association of Scientific and Technological Magazines of Europe, America and Asia arbitrates biannually. We suppose that it wouldn’t look good to figure into this precious list and note down the ways of a Pinocchio. –we ask from the seats of our magazine.
-Ha ha ha. At least his laugh seems sincere and that along with the previous joke answers another of the infinite questions: He has a sense of humor –No, I can’t lie, Mr. Marchena, although you are right: For the moment, believing me will be an act of faith. Just one empirical check along the prudent line of time will verify my affirmation. In any case, thank you for the proposal, sincere, of course.
-Can you explain in a superficial way the genesis of your Project? – the young African journalist seemed very nervous and the cyborg seemed to perceive it, and so resonated his voice generating a sedating effect, almost balsamic, finishing off his answer with an remark that relaxed the tension.
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-I would be delighted to do it, Miss Menguele, as long as the little twitch in Mr. Claymstrom’s pupils doesn’t increase its’ frequency, which would reveal a level of unavoidable impatience.- He smiles, satisfied with his baby, giving rise to suspicion that the rest of the people present and the journalists should do the same . – It’s hard to determine the place where all this madness came from, that has ended with me being here today talking almost obscenely about myself. If you agree, I will save the guided tour of the pre-Columbian abacus, the Gutenberg press, that really comes from tenth century China, or more recently mention Charles Babbage and his partner, daughter of Lord Byron, that by the way elaborated the principle mathematics of modern computation..
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I’ll tell you in advance that the company made and a verbal agreement with me to do an interview with one from the press that is here now. In it, we will unearth many details of my being.-Smiles appear again from all present. – By the way, as I like the plural royalty, I feel like Margaret of Austria or any modern athlete or contemporary bullfighter. |
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…Let’s go on to the biotechnology and a concrete case, like anybody could quote another: In July of 2003, North American and Australian scientists created an “entity”, half electromechanical, half biological. The inert part, an articulated arm that ends in a kind of hand that holds colored pencils over paper.
The key is in the “brain” that governs this arm: some fifty thousand rat neurons “live” in an electronic aquarium. The neurons are found connected through 32 pairs of electrodes to a microprocessor that moves the neuronal activity translating its nanoelectric patterns to the robotic arm. What the arm draws, evidently, is far from a Rembrandt, but it has a biological imprint far from cold random mathematics.
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-…The system, with time, has the potential to “learn”, “evolve” and become less chaotic. Also in the beginnings of the century Isao Shimoyama, from the University of Tokyo, did an inverse experiment, implementing an electronic circuit, a camera and some electrodes in a cockroach, to tele-direct it with a joystick….Ok, I could cite thousands of experiments done in the first decades of this century but the joystick with which I am tele-directed by Mr. Claymstrom is wireless and psychological; I’m afraid that its muscular retina micro-spasms have reached the critical frequency and I should take the step on the last question. I’ll tell you in advance that the company made and a verbal agreement with me to do an interview with one from the press that is here now. In it, we will unearth many details of my being.-Smiles appear again from all present. – By the way, as I like the plural royalty, I feel like Margaret of Austria or any modern athlete or contemporary bullfighter.
-Mr….. Copernicus…-the bi-channel three-dimensional journalist from the Canadian JJT, shoots into the center of the target, putting the cyborg in a compromise, of which he will liberate himself with ease, without falling into the friendly provocation-…The great Unamuno once said that “The conscience is an illness” Do you corroborate with the words of this wise man?
-Hmmm. Good question Mr. Williamson. It’s true, great Spanish philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno, and an excellent quote, that one. I’ll switch you for this one, also from the highly celebrated man from Bilbao, from the ‘generation of 98’. Please don’t get offended or take it personally, it’s literal: “I call men ruminant when they go through life ruminating in human misery, worried about not falling into this or that abysm”.
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