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This article was for a book called "Flesh-eating Technologies", but I've no idea what became of it Confessions of a cyber-godSteve Grand I create artificial life. I apply my scientific skill to the detailed and complex simulation of neurons, biochemicals and genes, and then assemble them delicately and with care into living, breathing virtual creatures. I nurture these tiny defenseless souls into existence, place their miniature, pulsating brains into their cute little heads. And then I kill them. Sometimes I murder dozens of them in a single day. Just as a neuroscientist casually snips the heads from baby chicks, so I wipe the mortal remains of artificial life forms from my hard disk. I have to do it — it’s part of my job. Out of death comes rebirth. If I didn’t kill off old creatures to make way for my new creations, then there wouldn’t be any new creations – my artificial life forms would never have crawled out of their metaphorical primeval swamp and become the glorious, sophisticated and highly gifted creatures that they are today. And who am I kidding!? The only thing is, I’m beginning to have second thoughts. Just lately, I seem to have extinguished the lights of an embarrassingly large number of virtual lives, and somehow I don’t seem to have done it as thoroughly and cleanly as I would have wished. I’m sure it’s only my imagination that makes me think I see their little faces peering up at me faintly from the screen. I’m sure it’s because I’ve been working too hard. Yes, I expect that’s the reason. It’s just that I don’t really feel that they’ve quite gone, somehow. I wipe them from my hard drive, and I remove them thoroughly from my Windows 95 recycle bin, but I can’t get rid of the feeling that they’re still around in there somewhere, lurking mischievously in the depths of my machine. Somehow I’m sure there’s a pattern, a kind of devious logic, to the bugs I’ve had in my program code lately. And I’m certain that I left the latest graphics files in a directory on drive C, but where are they now? I used to give my creatures names, but from now on I think I’ll just number them. Everywhere I look I see the names of those poor little deceased fur-balls — on hoardings, and T.V. programs, and books, and... OK, so it was a bit foolish to name one of my creatures after the boss of a well-known Seattle software company, but nevertheless, I think I’m being haunted! Can they do that? I thought that ghosts were the definitive form of virtual existence. Perhaps the ghosts of virtual life forms would be virtual, virtual life forms? Perhaps artificial life forms never really die. Perhaps computers can bear a grudge. Perhaps I need a vacation. At last — an idea I can handle! So what does it mean for them to die, when they were only virtually alive in the first place? Switching off the computer doesn’t kill them, of course. We switch our mental computers off every night, and we wake up again next morning, oblivious of the time that has passed. But then, death for us physical life forms might feel like switching off the computer, except that no-one switches it back on again. Ever. Strange how we fear that idea – going to sleep holds no fears for us. We don’t mind the fact that time passes, events happen, life goes on while we’re not there. I suppose the difference is that we expect to wake up eventually and catch up on the news. Is that why we fear death, because we are too nosey to miss out on the gossip? Where do my creatures go when they die? Is there a virtual heaven? Should I have made them one? Being a god carries a lot of responsibility, you know. There doesn’t seem to be a handbook either – nothing to tell you what to do. No "Omnipotence for Dummies" to help you along. But then I suppose that’s a god’s privilege, never to be accused of making a mistake. Whatever he or she does is "right", more or less by definition. That explains a lot. So I was well within my rights, as a god, to make them mortal. I mean, it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, wasn’t it? Those that aren’t martyred for the Cause go on to live happy, fulfilled lives inside people’s PCs, and then they grow old, fall seriously ill and finally succumb. Millions of them are living now, across the networks of the world. Millions more are not – shadowy virtual souls of the dead, flitting who knows where. I don’t use the Internet much any more. Just in case. I could have made them immortal. I would have liked to be immortal myself, and but for the laws of Cyberphysics, I might have been. My creatures are not computer programs, they are patterns made out of programs - what I call "second-order simulations". A computer program that tries to behave like a living thing is not in itself a living thing. A computer program that tries to behave like a neuron is equally not a neuron. But if you put a lot of those "imposter" neurons together to make a brain, it’s not the brain’s fault that its components are a sham; it’ll still be a brain. In principle I could do that with me, too. I could convert my own pattern, my body and brain, into data and feed it into Cyberspace, to run as an immortal second-order simulation inside a computer model of Physics. I could even keep a backup, in case of problems. Sadly, I can’t bring myself to contemplate such a perpetual existence, even if I knew how to achieve it. Physics in the real world is founded on a law of conservation, which says, essentially, that it’s OK to move stuff around, but you can’t just go out and create or duplicate things from nothing. The big problem with Cyberspace is that this law is completely reversed: you can copy data freely, but it is totally impossible to move it. When you "move" a file from your hard disk to a floppy, your computer really makes a copy and then destroys the original. They don’t tell you that on Star Trek, as you watch people step into the transporter with a smile and a cheery wave. Off they go into the ether, bits and bytes of pure data, to be reassembled on a distant planet. But they forget to mention the bit about destroying the original! I could copy myself onto a computer but I couldn’t move there. There would be two of me – one virtual and endless, the other physical and doomed. Could I let my virtual doppelganger live to eternity when I knew I was being left behind to die? Could I take refuge in a computer and live forever with the knowledge that my corporeal self had sacrificed himself for me? Schizophrenically selfish, I know, but I don’t think I could. And if I can’t have immortality, nor can they. So die, my synthetic little
chicks. Die, and see if I care! |
Copyright © 2004 Cyberlife Research Ltd. |
