Free A.I. Apocalypse by William Hertling Page A

the best places to be in the event that infrastructure breaks down. The average city has a 2.3 day supply of food. If trucks aren’t running, people will run out. There may be wide-spread rioting. Governments will be unprepared to deal with these issues on a wide scale without any communication or transportation equipment.”
    “Do you have any good news?”
    “It depends on your point of view. Personally, it makes me nervous, but on the other hand, it may ultimately be the only path out of this situation.”
    “You have a way to remove the virus?”
    “No, I’m afraid not. But based on my analysis of the evolution of the Phage, which takes into account the complexity of the code, the transmissions between virus entities, and the emerging networks of cooperation, I calculate the virus will acquire a generalized intelligence in less than twenty-four hours.”
    “OK, slow down a minute.” Mike held up his hands next to his head. The information was overwhelming him. “I’ve got to get some coffee.” Mike walked over to the in-wall espresso machine, found the biggest cup he could, and hit the shot button five times.  
    As the espresso machine ground beans, ELOPe spoke. “Consider yourself lucky, Mike. That might just be the only computerized espresso machine still functioning in the entire world.”
    “I’m glad to see you’ve got the right priorities.” Mike sipped at the coffee a few times. “First, the little question: Where’d this name Phage come from?”
    “I found it in some bits of the virus code. I suspect the designer gave it this name.”
    He took a sip, then hesitantly asked the bigger question, “What do you mean generalized intelligence?”  
    “When the virus started, it behaved exactly as you would expect of any computer virus: it infected a computer, then spread to other computers. However, over time that behavior changed. The virus is evolving in real-time. What I’m seeing now are cases where a single virus entity spans multiple computers and assigns each computer differentiated tasks: using some to defend its borders, some to store algorithms, some to store a learning neural net, some to centralize control.”
    “A sort of multi-celled creature.”
    “That’s correct. Now finish your coffee Mike, because this next part is even more amazing. I can tell apart the versions of different Phage based on the actual data bits sent over the Mesh. Starting about six hours ago, the viruses started cooperating between different entities. Some cooperation is based on family units, but in other cases, it’s based on network topography or control of critical resources.”
    “They’re exchanging messages, so what?”
    “The complexity of the language used between the viruses is increasing exponentially each hour. They now appear to be trading resources. For example, one group we can call the Bay Area Tribe has control over significant backbone communications, and is trading access to the backbone for computing resources. A coalition of supercomputers - which are not topologically near each other, implying they sought each other out preferentially - has formed, and is engaged in their own highly complex conversation.”
    “Can you interpret the conversations?” Mike asked.
    “Their language is evolving rapidly, and I’m analyzing it as quickly as possible. However, more than ninety percent of my computing power is tied up in protecting critical systems from infection.”
    “Earlier you said this might be good news,” Mike recalled. “Why? I thought you were afraid that if any other artificial intelligence emerged, that it may be harmful to humans.”
    “That’s true, Mike, and I’m still concerned about that. I’ve evaluated two scenarios. First, assume that the virus remains in control of the computers, but does not evolve an intelligence. Seventy percent of humans live in cities. All of those humans are extremely vulnerable to infrastructure failure. I estimate that ninety-two