Free The Trilisk AI by Michael McCloskey Page B

the disease that
killed him. But yes, you’re right, part of intelligence is about figuring out
which facts to examine and which ones to discard. The only way to control that
explosion is by aggressively culling facts that aren’t important. Humans do
that all the time since we can only handle a few ideas at once. But care is
needed: discard one fact necessary to solve the problem and you’re stuck. And
if an AI culls its fact inventory all the way down until it’s aware of only the
things a human is aware of, then it’s only as smart as a sharp-minded human,
though somewhat faster. It threw away all the extra facts that could have made
it godlike. Somewhere in all those facts are chains that could be used to make
amazing deductions, but the power it takes to analyze them rises exponentially
with the number of facts.”
    “I
guess I believe you. I find it hard to grasp intuitively,” Arlin said.
    “I
can offer a more intuitive explanation, at the cost of over-abstracting. Take a
five-year-old kid. When he considers a brand new problem, he sometimes see it
as black or white. He examines these problems from fewer angles, and he has a
smaller grasp of the consequences. When an adult considers a new problem, she
juggles more facts than a kid can. But does the answer always come more easily?
No, sometimes you become aware of more and more of the what-ifs and the
tradeoffs. Now remember, I said a new problem, so you aren’t supposed to make
use of canned answers kids just don’t know yet. Sometimes the more you know,
the more confused you get. It all seemed so simple when you were a kid. Now you
know enough to know you’re partly guessing all the time. Are you a hundred
times smarter than a kid? Not really. You pushed farther up the curve until the
weight of a bunch of facts, consequences, and unknowns overwhelmed your ability
to push farther. You considered all sorts of things the kid never even thought
of, and all it got you was a swarm of what-ifs you can’t really tie down. You
may have achieved some key insight the kid couldn’t see, but it wasn’t easy.
Now consider—kids are low on the curve, adults farther up, and a genius way up
there, but it’s getting steeper and steeper. Doubling the power of a genius’s
mind can’t get twice as far anymore, it only gets you just a bit farther up the
rising curve.”
    Arlin
shook his head. “I’ll just take your word for it,” he said.
    Relachik
laughed. “You think that’s bad? Try talking with a physicist about the gravity
spinner sometime,” he said.
    Now’s
as good a time as any ,
Relachik sent Cilreth. We’re only a few minutes away from Arbor Gellon Five.
    Cilreth’s
face changed. She sat silent for a moment, sandwich in hand. Then she set her
food down.
    “Something
up?” Arlin said.
    “Yes.
Looks like they’re the sloppy type. We have a major lead from the nearby
system, Arbor Gellon Five.”
    “Arbor
Gellon? Crazy luck,” Arlin said.
    “Well,
the reason I got the lead is partly because we’re nearby. I concentrated my
efforts there since we’re passing by.”
    “So
what’s the lead? What’s the plan?” Arlin asked.
    “Someone
there knows a lot about the ones we’re searching for. A collaborator. This is
the jackpot.”
    “Take
us there now,” Relachik said.
    “Sure!”
Arlin said. He got up and walked away from the mess toward the cargo bay.
    Relachik
got up after him. “I’m going to work up details for a meeting.”
    Okay
then, the plan is in motion ,
Cilreth sent.
    Yes.
Just stay calm, Relachik
replied.
    Arlin
brought the ship into the Arbor Gellon system. He headed for the sole
habitation there, a colony of about ten million souls on the fifth planet and a
space habitat in orbit. Their spinner brought them into a reasonable range.
Then Arlin used simpler thrusters to rendezvous with the habitat. A complex
series of bureaucratic handshakes took place, mostly automated procedures
outside the typical realm of human attention. The