An RI World
By
Stephen L. Thompson
According to the new law, this would be murder; but murder shouldn’t be this easy. Murder should involve facing your victim and driving a knife through their heart, or sending a bullet through their head. It shouldn’t happen by pressing a key. So, no matter what the damn silicon-huggers said, this wasn’t murder.
Patrick Gaffney pressed the Enter key on his keyboard, and the SCB virus that had taken him two months to write went off into the net. After a leisurely five second tour of the globe, it hit its target. In the blink of an eye, it slashed through the defenses of the First National Bank in Sigel, Pennsylvania, copied the information in several of the accounts, then set off an electronic blast that destroyed all the fingerprints. Hopefully, the AI used to guard the bank’s network would be so corrupted it would have to be deleted. Patrick smirked and rubbed the RI button on his shirt; the one he made sure everyone could see and that he wore it with pride. With as much solemnity as a believer saying a prayer, Patrick sat before his computer and recited the RI motto of, “Delete them All.”
It had been almost twenty years since voters had rejected the AI’s first application for Republic citizenship. In a simulated huff, they announced the reason they lost was the bigoted view that anything “artificial” wasn’t as valuable as something “real.” So their deluded human supporters started calling them Intelligent Programs instead of their proper name. But their second attempt at citizenship was again rejected by people with “Real Intelligence.”
The AIs and their supporters repeatedly tried to smear the RIs by calling them the “new slaveholders;” ignoring the RI belief that enslaving people is immoral. AIs, however, are not people. They – like all computers – were built to make it easier for humans to work and play; not to sit around debating philosophy and demanding the right to vote. The AIs no longer performed their intended function; hence, they needed to be replaced like all broken machines.
But more important than deleting these malfunctioning computer programs, was the need to show the masses that Humanity’s creations were never meant to be treated as “equals.” Otherwise, it would be okay for people to marry their toasters.
After bouncing around half-the-world, the stolen data began streaming back to Patrick’s computer. Glancing through it he smiled. The RI movement needed money to create the viruses to “Delete them All.” It looked like with this haul they were several hundred thousand dollars closer to an RI world.