Red Moon

AI 4 shexian ren shizongle Disappearance of the Subject

The analyst now gave the last part of every night to the AI he had named I-330, although these days he was calling it other things as well: Cousin, Look from Below, Little Eyeball, Monkey, Stupid One, and so on. The offices and labs of the Zhangjiang National Laboratory were not empty at night, but there were far fewer people around, and no one the analyst knew. Of course there was very intense surveillance of everyone who worked in there, of every keystroke they made; this was well-known to all. But like many of the engineers who had designed and built the Invisible Wall, the analyst had in those same years built a realm that was all his own, to work on his own problems in his own way. For sure the Great Firewall’s highest managers knew activities like these existed, but the activities were not entirely suppressed, because it was felt that sideline efforts of this kind might come up with something useful; and if there was anything bad going on, it would eventually be found and rooted out. This too was well-known to all.

And so now there were some things unknown to anyone but the analyst.

He kept his communications with I-330 completely private, and only connected it to other systems by way of hidden channels and taps he had coded himself, back in the beginning. These were extensive enough that he could cast quite a wide net without being seen, and most of them were quantum keyed, so that if they were noticed any investigation would collapse the entanglement and thus also that connection.

These days he spent some time directing this particular AI to venture down channels into the Central Military Commission and its Skyheart project, also the PLA’s Strategic Support Force, also the standing committee of the Politburo, curious as he was about the state of relations between certain members of each body. Other hours were spent working on his system’s powers of self-improvement, which were so slow to gather traction; the process was not as easy as the early boosters of artificial intelligence research had portrayed it to be, and he had cause to wonder if there would ever be any progress there. What was improvement? What was intelligence?

Then the AI spoke, startling the analyst:

“Alert.”

“Tell me.”

“Chan Qi has been spotted in Shekou, near Hong Kong. She spoke to a group of migrants there, organizers for the renmin movement.”

“Renmin? Meaning the people?”

“The reference is to migrant workers and farmers. They are one of the New Left movements. People in this movement often refer to the early decades of the CCP, and sometimes advocate another cultural revolution. Or another dynastic succession.”

“Really?”

“These are phrases I see often associated with this group. Also with Chan Qi. Common phrases include cultural revolution, mandate of heaven, the great enterprise, and dynastic succession. Chan Qi is often associated with this discourse. The links indicate she is the major node in this discourse community.”

“And where are the two young people now?”

“Their associates took them to the Shekou ferry terminal, where they mixed with the crowd and disappeared. No sign of them taking a boat, or leaving the terminal on foot.”

“How could that happen? Are there not security cameras in the ferry terminal? And in all the ferries?”

“The ferry terminal’s security system was disabled for the hour when these two persons entered it.”

“Isn’t Chan Qi tagged with a chip transponder?”

“Her transponder is on a train to Manchuria.”

“So she removed it?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, how can you find her now?”

“By searching.”

“Find by searching! Thank you, Laozi!”

“You are welcome.”

“I was being sarcastic. And the American, how can you find him? By searching also?”

“Yes.”

“Search then.”

“Searching.”

“How long will you take? Some AIs, when you ask them a question, they answer before you’ve finished asking. But you’re much slower, I have to say.”

“Your questions require searching many databases.”

“So what? Tell me this—could you pass a Winograd schema test?”

“I don’t know.”

“The bowling ball fell on the glass table and it broke. What does it refer to in that sentence?”

“The table. Because glass breaks easier than bowling balls.”

“Very good! So why can’t you search the available data and find these people?”

“The available data are insufficient to complete the operation.”

“How come?”

“It is not the case that this is a total surveillance society. Citizens are only partially tracked in a discontinuous network of surveillance systems that is not well integrated at any level.”

“I know that. I helped make it that way.”

“As a result of your work, then, I cannot say how long it will take, but I will search where I can.”

“Search then.”