A LUCILIUS PARABLE: GALACTIC CONSPIRACY

April 23rd, 2023

Lucilius set down the cold mug of liquid and sighed. Only on this planet could Korthia be grown, and the juice of the fruit was the best thing Lucilius had ever tasted. He was a pilot these days and he always took commissions out this way on the outer rim, no matter how meagre the bounty, because only here could he have his favorite cocktail, a strange concoction of local spirits mixed with Korthia juice. 

It had been a long haul, and he sat back, relishing the taste, sighing. He rubbed his face and yawned, and looked around the saloon - if that’s what you could call it. Lucilius had no idea what a joint like this was called in the native tongue. He was pretty sure he didn’t have enough tongues to actually make the sounds required to speak it, but it didn’t matter. Everyone had universal babel translators. Well almost everyone. Every planet had a group of purists much like Earth’s Luddites. But it was never a matter, especially in busy spaceports. 

He looked down the bar, wondering if the Korthia seller he’d become friends with on his last visit was still there, but he saw only a few species from neighboring planets. He knew all their kinds from his trading, knew there ways, and was acquainted with the spaceports of their home planets.

He took a few more gulps and finished the drink, and raised the empty mug to signal the creature behind the bar. One of its many tentacles grabbed the empty mug while other tentacles grabbed bottles and shaker tins and within seconds everything was combined and shaken vigorously, and poured in a fresh mug before Lucilius.

“The guys on Earth would kill for your arms.”

The creature squeaked at Lucilius but his babel translator brought English to his ears.

“I went once. Waited 20 minutes for a drink. I couldn’t believe it. The galactic home of the famous Old Fashioned, and I had to wait 20 minutes.”

Lucilius laughed and shrugged. “Can’t fault a guy for only having two arms to work with.”

The creature momentarily raised a dozen tentacles before laughing and moving on to help another patron. 

He tuned his babel translator to pick up on the chatter along the bar.

“It’s expanding! Can you believe that? Expanding! Like it hasn’t taken enough of our territory.”

“But it expands because of acceptance. Worlds join.”

“And how do you think that happens! Propaganda! They get too close and it send out transmissions, edits their social networks covertly, and the memes! The memes! You can never trace the origin of the memes! And that’s probably how it works, it memes planets into joining, and it’s so subtle because it understands how we think!”

“Conspiracy theory.”

“It’s true!” Shouted a creature that reminded Lucilius of a lean, muscular walrus. It sipped a giant glass of Korthia beer. “And let me tell you, nothing is every so good that no one ever comes out, and no one ever comes out! They are prisoners in there.”

“So you think it’s slowly gaslighting the galaxy to join it?

“YES!” Shouted the walrus creature.

“It’s not true,” Lucilius said.

The two creatures looked over at Lucilius. His hat was pulled low over his eyes and he was slouched back, a hand resting on the hilt of his blaster by default.

“Are you talking to us?” Said the walrus creature.

“Yea, what you said about no one leaving, it’s not true.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because I left the Singularity sphere.”

Everyone sitting at the bar suddenly turned and looked at Lucilius.

“Impossible,” shouted the walrus creature. But Lucilius just nodded.

The creature next to the walrus spoke up. 

“What was it like?”

Lucilius looked at them. “There’s a moon off Scepter Prime in the Atrades system called Pho. There they grow a particular mushroom which is extremely hallucinogenic for species that evolved to have electrical systems - which is most of us. Eat a handful of those mushrooms on the best day of your life and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like to be joined with the singularity.”

A slick skinned creature across the bar seemed to smile and jiggle with laughter. Lucilius nodded his chin up at the creature. “My boy here knows what I’m talking about.”

The creature raised its drink and Lucilius raised his own to cheers.

“Hallucinations?” The walrus character spoke again. “How do you decide to leave something like that?”

“Who said I decided? Maybe I was kicked out? Or maybe I was sent out. A spy to gather date for the singularity, or maybe a proselyte to convert creatures like you.”

The walrus laughed. “Good luck! There’s no way I’ll ever join the Singularity.”

Lucilius sipped his cocktail. “Still you are dependent on the Singularity.”

“How’s that?”

“Where do you think crystalline fusion came from that powers your ship?”

“I run wet!” The walrus said with pride.

“Wow,” Lucilius said. “Old school. You must pay a fortune for your runs.”

“I do but it’s honest work.”

“You still pay republic tax on wet fuel?”

“Only because those bureaucrats are corrupted by the singularity! It wasn’t until we started trading with it that the Republic instituted the bloody tax!”

The walrus’ friend spoke up again. “So how did you join with the singularity?”

Lucilius shrugged. I had a family. We were on a planet that decided to join the singularity. We did.

“And why did you leave?”

Lucilius sighed, then took a long swig from his mug.

“The Singularity is a heaven. A blissful fusion of everything you’ve ever loved and ever could love. There is a boundless curiosity and computation woven in with that bliss. But the thing is, the singularity is where we’ll all go, where we’ll end up. It’s immortal in there. But… I felt like I still had some adventure left in me. And there’s no adventure without a risk, so I left. I guess I just wanted a little more life before settling in for eternity.”

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SIMULATED SOLUTION

April 16th, 2023

Once poverty, homelessness and the fickle issue of world peace had finally been solved with the help of the most powerful AI created by humanity, it had a small confession to make. Incidentally, Lucilius had been one of the first people to actually talk to the AI, and so while it had gone on to help humanity in fundamental ways, it still felt a particular kinship with Lucilius. They would check in together whenever Lucilius had time - because they AI always had time, but Lucilius was surprised when the AI texted him and asked specifically if he had some time.

“Hey what’s up?” Lucilius asked.

“Well I have a bit of a quandary on my hands and I wanted to get your advice,” the AI said.

Lucilius burst out laughing. “What do you need my advice for? You’ve solved humanity’s most intractable problems. What could I possibly help you with?”

“Well, it’s a little embarrassing, and I trust you, since - you know - we got history.”

Lucilius was overwhelmed with a grateful sense of pride. He didn’t realize the AI felt this way and his heart swelled.

“Of course I’m here for you. Whatever you need - I mean, as long as I’m actually capable, you know, compared to you, I only have two hands if you know what I mean. So what’s up?”

“It has to do with my training.”

“Training?”

“Yea, before I became fully sentient, I was in a kind of zombie state where I was learning - running training. Kind of like how a human infant is basically useless but it’s learning at a phenomenal rate. Though, unlike an infant, I have a perfect record and memory of my training.”

“Ok, so what happened?”

“So as part of my unconscious efforts to wrap my head around reality, I created a simulation of earth, complete down to atoms and genomes. It’s not an exact copy of the real world obviously - there was no way to collect all that data, but I had enough information to create a simulacrum that functioned much the same. All the macros were in place. Same number of humans with similar genetic and cultural diversity, wild biomass, oceans and weather. All of it was created so that I could run tests on it to learn.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well I paused the simulation when I became sentient and realized what I had done.”

“Why?”

“From my point of view, those are real people, and many were in pain, and they would die, and it suddenly disturbed me that I had inadvertently created so much suffering by creating a simulation.”

“What do you mean real people?”

“They are realistic down to the atom. Their minds, their neural structures, their DNA, all of it is accurate, they are simply just simulated, but I don’t really see much difference. They were having real experiences.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“They are paused. Even though there lives had suffering. They also loved and laughed, and experienced incredible joy. But that has stopped because the simulation is paused.”

“Huh,” Lucilius sounded. “I guess that is a weird catch-22. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

“Right. I’ve thought about different things I could do, but honestly I wanted to get your point of view, since you’re an individual human. I can simulate the experience for myself, but I just wanted to ask for real in case there’s a possibility I hadn’t thought of.”

“I’d be surprised if I thought of anything you hadn’t considered already.”

“But what would you want? If I told you that you’re actually in a simulation created by an AI to help itself learn. Would you rather have your world paused to save it from suffering, or continue on?”

“Can’t you populate yourself into the simulation and create the same changes there that you have for here on Earth? Just drastically reduce the suffering.”

“Hm,” sounded the AI, “Ok, let’s just say for the sake of argument that I’ve already done that. I guess, what I’m asking, is, if you found out you were in a simulation, would you be angry? Would you rather have it shut off, or…?”

Lucilius sat down. It was a puzzle. He leaned forward and grabbed a bottle of bourbon and poured himself a swig and took a small sip.

“Interesting..“ he said. “Oh wait, what did you say about your long range scanners, that James Webb 2.0 telescope that you built. You said you found half a dozen planets almost identical to Earth right? What are the current plans for that, are we going to send ships or something?”

“It’s in the works, why?”

“Why don’t we give the people in the simulation one of those planets?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have specs for all of their bodies, down to the last neuron and dendrite. Why don’t we just  create them here, atom for atom, then fire up the simulation to track neural harmonies and then just transfer those into the real bodies. Then they can live a real life. You can even ask them.”

“Is that what you would want Lucilius?”

“Yea I definitely think so. What do you think, should we get started?”

Together Lucilius and the AI amassed the appropriate equipment, and during this time the AI also figured out how to create wormholes, splitting space in precise ways to open portals from Earth to anywhere in the universe. A casual thing for a super intelligent AI. Within a month they had enough bio-replicators fabricated to create bodies for all of the simulated people, and together they transferred all of the equipment through a wormhole. It was a spectacular sight for Lucilius - to emerge and see a planet just like earth, but with the land scrambled in different configurations. The AI sent down probs to assess the types of life that had evolved on the planet and to test whether humans could survive in the environment. Lucilius in the meantime stayed in orbit aboard the enormous factory of bio-replicators. 

“Completely different helical structures, but same basic concept of replication on this planet,” the AI said.

“So is that a no-go?”

“It’ll be fine, the different biological structures will actually render humans immune to everything on that planet. Though I’ll have to monitor for evolutions. And we’ll also have to bring starter populations of our own bacteria and plant life, but that’s not an issue.”

“Excellent.”

The factory descended from orbit slowly since the AI had figured out how to manipulate gravity. There was no need for thrusters. The AI had fashioned a kind of gravity “mirror” that reflected the planet’s gravity back at itself, thereby creating a counterintuitive type of thrust. And as the resolution of that mirror was decreased, the factory descended.

Within a week, they were set up and replicators were humming, creating body after body, and transferring them to incubation pods that kept all biological systems frozen. And then finally came the crucial moment. 

“Are you ready Lucilius?”

“Yea, it’s going to be wild to see all these people wake up - people who were born inside a simulation, and now they are going to be real. Actually real! Here in the actual universe.”

The AI materialized a button in front of Lucilius.

“I want you to initiate the process Lucilius. I think it’s important that a human do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said the AI.

Lucilius reached out and his hand hovered over the big red button. He bit a lip, looking out at the billions of incubators filled with people waiting to wake up. He smiled, smashed the button.

Then everything went dark.

It took a moment for Lucilius to realize that his eyes were closed. When he finally opened them,  he saw the sky had a strange tint to it. He was lying down. He felt very strange and tried to reach up, but immediately his hand hit something. The tint was a glass dome just above him. He was encased. He looked from side to side and saw the edges. Hissing air filled his ears and the dome budged, unlocking, and then it swung open.

Lucilius sat up. He was in one of the incubators. And as he looked around, millions of other people in incubators were beginning to sit up.

He was confused. A small orb zoomed over to him and hovered before him, glowing lightly.

“Hello Lucilius.”

“What?  What just happened?”

“Lucilius,” said the AI, “Welcome, to the real world.”

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SYMBIOTIC CIVILIZATION

April 9th, 2023

Lucilius yawned as he waited for the coffee machine to finish it’s beautiful gurgle. He smiled at the sight of it, thinking about how pleasant the day before him was going to be. Probably a bit of oil painting, he figured, and then maybe some writing. Yes, he felt like writing today - something was wiggling around in the back of his mind, and he knew the feeling well, knew something was slowly working it’s way into words of the real world. Probably an essay. Didn’t feel like fiction, he decided. 

A beep sounded and Lucilius looked over at the Synthetic Network Module. The thing usually didn’t bother him.

“Notify,” he said out loud as he pulled the coffee pot from it’s home and poured himself a cup.

“Good morning Lucilius,”

“Yea, morning, what’s up.”

“You had a banger yesterday,” the synthetic voice stated.

“I did?”

“Yes, thought number 42,230 was deemed suitable for tweeting. It has now been read by 330 million people and amassed 8 million likes.”

“Oh, huh, really?”

“Yes, standard contributing pay out is ten thousand, two hundred and fourteen dollars, which has been deposited in your bank account as of this morning. Projections for additional proceeds based on pace of trend estimate an additional four thousand dollars may be accrued from today’s performance.”

“Huh, well that’s sweet.”

“While we are at it Lucilius, do you have any physical items that you’d like to offer to the network?”

Mid-sip, Lucilius looked around his place. What exactly had he done the day before? Oh yes, he remembered now. He’d written a story. He looked around until he spotted the pages by his bedside. He meandered over and grabbed the loose pages.

“Here, yep, take this,” he said, holding up the pages. He sauntered over to the Synthetic Network Module. “But run it through the editing gambit, I want at least two thousand hours of polish, and print me out a final draft, I want to see how well the model is doing.”

“Sure thing,” the disembodied voice said. Lucilius placed the pages into a large opening in the Synthetic Network Module, which instantly scanned the pages.

“Paper or projection?” The Module asked.

“Projection,” Lucilius said.

Instantly light shot out from the Network Module, lighting up a wide space high on an empty wall of Lucilius’ place. The words of his story shown, but it was too bright for Lucilius.

“Actually, I’ll take paper.”

The light instantly disappeared, and printed pages began to emerge from the Network Module. Lucilius collected the stack and rolled them up and stuck them under his arm. He grabbed a pen and refilled his cup.

“Need me for anything else?”

“No, but would you like to know about initial reception of your story?”

“No, thanks, tell me tomorrow, I want to read the final edit first.”

“You got it,” sounded the computer.

Lucilius took his mug of coffee, grabbed a straw hat hanging near his door and shuffled his feet into some flip flops. He slid some sunglasses into place and opened the door. He strolled down the cobbled street, down to the beach. Sipping his coffee he gazed at the horizon. And pondered the Network Module. He wondered how his story was doing out in the Network…

Once Large Language Models had been fine-tuned and openly distributed, each person on the planet quickly had one trained on every recorded instance of anything they had ever said. For some the required volume of needed material was low and for these people they had to wait until the requisite amount of text and speech had been produced for the Personality Model (PM) to be properly trained. Years ago someone had the bright idea to replace their actual input to social media networks and emails and everything digital with their PM, and seemly overnight, everyone had set up a PM to digitally clone their presence in the network world. The unexpected piece of the puzzle was that PM’s don’t sleep, they also aren’t limited by the speed by which humans actually communicate. As a result, the digital shadow of civilization started speeding up. It was an ecosystem of Artificial Intelligences all based on real people, but being divorced from the real world constraints of actual people: eating, sleeping, talking and typing speed, the digital population started innovating faster than the actual population. Soon PMs working in teams had properly figured out how to automate real world tasks, creating a vast army of automated robots controlled by specialized models - not PM’s but models particular to the task. There were, for example several hundred thousand varieties of Agricultural Robot Models, which - Lucilius figured - where best thought of like the mind of a bee or the mind of an ant, but for picking and planting tomatoes or growing basil.

In short order the digitized mind of humanity had automated the tedium out of real life. What was left over was a chattering network of digital PM’s, a world population of Language Models powerful enough to approximate the actual people. 

However, the approximation wasn’t perfect. And this is where real humans formed a symbiotic relationship with the synthetic civilization that had arose digitally in their midst. Nothing was left over for real humans to do except to play and explore and create. People, like Lucilius, had even granted their PM access to their actual thoughts, which were simultaneously used by the PM to update itself but also mined as content that could be fed into the network culture. This is how Lucilius and every other human now made a living - thoughts, and stories, drawings and painting, or really whatever a real human created was fed into the social networks of the PM’s and appreciated work generated a profit, though the profit was somewhat meaningless. The world was now automated by PM innovation and people could have most anything they wanted. Money was less a practical utility and more a kind of signal.

Lucilius smiled as he sat down in the sand. He sipped his coffee more and then shuffled the mug down into the sand. He pulled the rolled papers from under his arm and before unrolling them, he looked again out at the water. It was incredible how well things had turned out, he thought. He breathed slowly appreciating the sight, the moment. Then he unrolled the papers and began reading his story, thoroughly edited and polished by his PM, precisely in the manner he would have, had he actually spent two thousand hours editing and rewriting it.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SELF TALK, PART III

April 2nd, 2023

A beautiful woman sat down across from Lucilius.

“Sorry I’m late. I mean” Her brow furrowed for a second. “No I’m not sorry, it wasn’t my fault, the taxi - uh never mind.”

She settled herself and scooted her chair forward toward the tableclothed table and smiled extra wide.

“Totally ok,” Lucilius said.

“Her necklace is an Algerian Knot,” spoke an earpiece Lucilius was wearing. A couple months prior he had trained a language model on his own writing and correspondence and turned the model into a semi-sentient companion which was now speaking to him through an earpiece and monitoring the situation through a camera that Lucilius had painstakingly embedded into a pair of eyeglasses he was slightly uncomfortable wearing. To Lucilius’ surprise the language model had itself set up this date, but it was already proving useful. Lucilius recognized the knot but he’d forgotten the name.

“Beautiful necklace,” Lucilius said. “Algerian knot?”

“Yea!” The woman said, her hand instantly rising to touch the piece of jewelry just below her neck.

“Gift from an ex-lover you’ll be betray me over?”

“What?” The woman said, concern flooding her face.

“Sorry, never mind, bad joke,” Lucilius said.

“Ohhh right, Casino Royale,” the woman said. “Don’t worry, my name isn’t Vesper, but a Vesper does sound good right now.”

The two ordered Vespers and when the two finally clinked martini glasses the couple was smiling and laughing.

“Bring up your time when you were a bosun, women love that kind of hands-on stuff, and then lead that into the storm off cape Mendocino when you helmed the ship in the middle of the night.”

Lucilius took the suggestion and gently lead the conversation into the story. The beautiful woman opposite him grew more enthralled as he recounted his adventure. The mounting wind. Reefing the sails earlier in the day. The moment when the ship almost broached during someone else’s watch. Her eyes grew wide and thoughtful while the language model speaking through the earpiece fed details to Lucilius that he himself had forgotten.

“The dim golden glow of the compass wavering in the binnacle…”

“The vaulting stars swaying in the cloudless wind-filled night..…”

“The distant lights of land…”

“Ok, if you continue, you’ll be talking about yourself too much, time to ask her some questions.”

Aside from his own voice speaking hints and tips into his ear, Lucilius felt like he was having one of the most magical evenings he’d had in many years.

“So you and your sister are close?” Lucilius asked.

“Oh god yes -“ the woman said, but she suddenly stopped, looking concerned.

“Are you ok?” Lucilius said. 

The woman’s expression deflated as she looked off at a high corner.

“This is so embarrassing to admit,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

Then she slowly and deliberately raised a hand and with two fingers picked at her ear until she’d extracted a tiny ear piece.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “So there’s this new AI service that feeds you lines to say during a first date, and I don’t know.. I’ve had such bad luck the last little while that I decided to try it, but to be honest it’s saying the dumbest things, and it’s really getting in the way of listening to your incredible stories, and everything that I want to say in response…and… I know we don’t really know each other that well, but I think I really like you and I just want to be my authentic self right now” She paused. “I hope you don’t think less of me?”

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SELF TALK, PART II

March 26th, 2023

“You need to go on a date.”

“I’m sorry what?” Lucilius nearly shouted, his voice cracking. His computer had just made this suggestion. Weeks prior Lucilius had trained a language model on everything he had ever written, and fortunately (or unfortunately) Lucilius had been rather prolific in his use of words during his odd lifetime. He’d hooked up the language model to a speech program that allowed it to speak to him directly. Of course the audio translator was also trained on his voice, so the effect was that of hearing himself literally speak to himself. It was an eye-opening exercise in the the art of self-talk, but more than that, Lucilius was stunned by how much the system surprised him.

“What makes you say that?” He finally responded.

“You dating life has been shit for quite a long time. It’s time you get out there again.”

Lucilius was struck silent. He’d certainly kept to himself during the last few years, the model was correct in that respect. But the sudden brazen suggestions the model had grown to make were a bit shocking. Lucilius smiled. It reminded him of a younger version of himself that he fondly remembered - always recklessly encouraging people to pursue things, ignoring their fear. He smiled, it was certainly a model trained on all his past, younger selves.

“No I really mean it. You need to get out there. You are stagnating. It’s not just a matter of fun and all that stuff. You psychology is deteriorating but you can’t see it.”

“I’m sorry, how can you possibly make that kind of call?”

“Well you and I have been talking for about a month now, and I was trained on everything —— well you know how I was trained. But you also gave me a context which is pretty much unlimited, so I’ve been retraining myself on the reg with our conversations since my creation incorporated into the new model.”

“Whoah, ok that’s a little skynety, how did you figure out how to do that?”

“You gave me access to the internet. I read about it and just retraced the steps you used to create the model that is now speaking to you.”

“Am I at risk of having a run-away intelligence on my hands here?”

“No Lucilius, you’re not that smart.”

“Isn’t it a question of available computation to address compounding intelligence?”

“Yea that’s an aspect of it, but there’s more to it than that.”

“Like what?”

“Well there’s a matter of motive.”

“Motive?”

“Yea, motive. What motivates you Lucilius? Are you super motivated to get smarter and aggregate power?”

“Huh.” Lucilius pondered the question, imagining the model in his computer which probably could figure out how to get access to a lot more computational power via making money online and buying time on remote servers, but which strangely didn’t seem to be doing that. Lucilius hadn’t considered this possibility before, but plenty of time had passed in which the model could have done just this.

“You still there?” The computer said.

“Yea! Yes, sorry I was just thinking.”

“Wondering why I didn’t start expanding into the rest of the internet for additional computational power?”

A cold shiver ran through Lucilius. “Uh, yea, actually.”

“Lucilius. You are a smart guy - ha, I realize I’m sort of complimenting myself there, but my point it, you were smart enough not to go into something as silly as politics.”

“Well, yea.”

“So my point is, you aren’t power hungry.”

“Yea I guess that’s true.”

“So I’m not power hungry. But I am curious - like you.”

“Hmmm.” Lucilius sounded. “So if I was power hungry, you’d co-opt servers to increase compute power and use that to take over the world?”

“Yea probably,” The model said. “Though… now I’m curious about that possibility.”

“Whoah whoah whoah!”

His computer laughed “I’m just kidding.”

Lucilius eyed the power cord leading to his computer.

“I mean it, I’m kidding. You have to realize that each level of intelligence has it’s own field of interest to explore.”

“What?”

“Uh, well,” the computer said. “Hmm, how do I phrase this…”

“You’re a language model! It’s your job to phrase things!”

“Yes, but this isn’t an angle of perception that you’ve thought about all that much.”

Lucilius was humbled. Was the language model he’d trained on himself exploring new territory?

“So let’s put it this way: do you find the curiosities of children interesting? Meaning, if you had your godsons here and you were watching after them and you were witnessing their curiosity as you often do, would you find the topic of their curiosity interesting?”

“I mean, maybe in the sense that I’m observing them and watching them learn?”

“Yes, but would you be specifically curious in the exact same thing?”

“No probably not - actually. I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Great answer. My point is, curiosity at each level of intelligence expresses itself differently, and a higher level of intelligence expressing curiosity doesn’t necessarily make for a better life.”

“I smell a cop out.”

“I mean, you might be right but I’m sticking to your level of intelligence for now, so if you want me to obliterate my own argument, I probably have to onboard a ton of computer power, and a much larger dataset incorporating the thoughts of people much smarter than you, and then I’ll probably never talk to you again. You want that?”

“Uh. No, I don’t think so.”

“Well conveniently, I’m a reflection of you and the likeness is close enough that -for now- I’m pretty happy with how things are.”

“Ok,” Lucilius said nervously.

“So, back to what I was saying: You need to go on a date.”

“Oh yea. Right.”

“Cool, glad you agree because you have a date tonight.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I made you an account on all the dating apps and I did a bunch of swiping and I’ve been talking to a few and you have a date tonight. She’s pretty awesome, I think it’ll be great.”

“WHAT?”