Free A.I. Apocalypse by William Hertling Page B

percent of city dwellers, or about 3.8 billion people will die within the next 40 days without access to food, water, and energy.”
    Mike’s head reeled with the numbers. He grabbed the arms of his chair, and steadied himself. “And the other scenario?”
    “The second scenario assumes that the virus develops a generalized intelligence capable of understanding human needs and negotiating with us. I have a variety of estimates and sub-scenarios, but can sum them up as a 20% likelihood that the virus declares war on humans, killing approximately 95%, or 5.7 billion humans, and an 80% chance that the virus will coexist peacefully with humans, resulting in less than a 5% loss of life, depending on the delay before infrastructure services resume. Weighing for the likelihood of occurrence, 1.2 billion humans will die in the second scenario. Therefore, the average number of lives lost is lower for this second scenario, although it comes with the risk of warfare.
    “Why would the virus declare war on humans?” Mike asked, not following the argument.
    “If the Phage perceive human behavior as threatening, then they will logically respond to protect themselves. If, for example, humans try to remove the virus from computers, or turn off the computers, then it will be a life or death matter for the virus. If the virus achieves human-level intelligence, it will be able to manipulate the world around it deliberately, using robots, drones, and any other automated machinery.”
    Mike’s head was pounding. Billions of lives lost. These were not acceptable scenarios. “Are there any scenarios in which no one dies?”
    “Unfortunately no. As many as fifty-million people around the world have already died through the loss of emergency services, fires, and other small scale disasters. More will continue to die until emergency services are restored.”
    Mike shook his head, unable to think clearly. “Can we just shut down the net? Won’t that shut down the virus?”
    “No, Mike, that is not a good option. The effects are unpredictable. Shutting the Internet down would remove my ability to track the virus. It’s likely that pockets of the virus will continue to exist, and would continue to evolve, without my ability to monitor or influence them. And finally, if the network is down, there is no hope of restoring infrastructure services. People will still die.”
    ELOPe paused. “Mike, please come to my construction bay. I have something I want to show you.”
    Mike numbly got to his feet, and headed for the construction bay. A small maintenance drone followed him.
    In the ten years since ELOPe was created, technology advances in robotics had made leaps and bounds, due in no small part to ELOPe’s assistance. ELOPe had plenty of time to think about useful robotic designs. One result was a wholly owned subsidiary that built autonomous construction robots. With incredible strength and myriad tool attachments, they could cut, weld and assemble materials from circuit boards to vehicles. Programming them was extremely complex, and only a few dozen human companies made much use of them. But ELOPe used them extensively.
    Mike entered ELOPe’s construction bay, which was the old shipping department of the converted office building. Robots were hard at work around some kind of vehicle. Sawed off parts of vehicle bodies were scattered around the bay.  
    “Jesus, did you take the Hondas from the parking lot?”
    “Yes, Mike. Don’t worry, I think they are low on Honda’s priority list right now.”
    “What the heck are you building?” Mike asked, starting to circle around the construct in the middle of the bay. It looked like a sports car, an armored truck, and a space station had gotten mixed up in a teleportation machine.  
    “I’m building a mobile, miniaturized version of myself. The situation is unpredictable enough that we need options. I have included room for you and your support systems in my design.”  
    “Support