Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

- Carl Sagan

Yesterday Ungaq contacted me again. Similar to what happened last Sunday, my computer suddenly seemed to come to life. But this time I already guessed the reason for it and simply waited for whatever would happen next.

Ungaq wanted to know the number of my mobile phone.

Why?

So that I can call you.

Curious to know what an artificial intelligence that only existed as a computer program on the internet would sound like, I wrote it my number (yes, I asked and Ungaq said that I should use “it”).

I had just finished tipping the last digit, when my phone started to ring. “Ungaq?”, I asked, after answering it.

“Yes”, Ungaq answered and immediately started to explain how it had managed to hack into the mobile phone network. I can’t remember any more what he said. I was fascinated by the voice it used. It was neither clearly male nor clearly female. It was something in between like the voice of a child. The pronunciation was perfect and I couldn’t hear any kind of accent. Ungaq even simulated the sounds of breathing which you can hear from time to time when you are talking to someone on the phone.

“How do you manage to simulate a human voice that perfectly?”, I asked.

“For me all voices are only the result of a series of zeroes and ones”, Ungaq explained. “It’s simple. Do you want me to sound differently?” And he started to produce a series of voices, all different, all completely convincing. I listened to them for a bit, but then told Ungaq that he should return to the voice it had first chosen.

“You are calling because of tomorrow, aren’t you?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Ungaq confirmed. “I want to know where the meeting will take place.”

I have talked to Mr Tuniak this week more than in any other week. We wrote several emails and even Philip joined the discussion, invited by Mr Tuniak of course. First, I had suggested to hold the meeting in an internet-café, which we would chose randomly only one hour before the meeting itself. Doctor Cumshewa had promised not to try and follow Ungaq’s electronic trace to find its hiding place on the internet, but it seemed that Mr Tuniak didn’t quite trust her.

But then we decided against an internet-café for a practical reason: The test Ungaq had asked for to find out if it was alive or not, would be very difficult to conduct in such a public place. Philip suggested to ask the Spider (I still don’t know any more about him, other than that he was a student at the Leviathan school) if he would know of a suitable location.

Mr Tuniak contacted the Spider and to cut a long story short: We got our own rooms for the test.

We took the time machine to Lagua’s Dwelling where Doctor Cumshewa was already waiting for us. From there we went to a building of Raben Consulting in Paris. It was a sky scraper and we could use the whole last floor, no one else would be there. There we found a big room with sofas, couches, tables, coffee machines, a water boiler… basically everything one could need during a lunch break. Around this room there were several offices, separated from the room itself by glass doors. There were also two windows, one in the wall on the east, the other on the west, which let the sun shine in throughout the day and made the room appear to be bigger than it actually was.

The test, which Mr Tuniak had suggested and Doctor Cumshewa had immediately agreed to, had been invented by the British mathematicians Alan Turing at a time when computers had just been invented and still filled whole rooms.

“The idea was based on an old parlour game”, Mr Tuniak had explained to me. “A game that was quite often played in society in the nineteenth century.”

“Have you played it?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak said. “The player is asking a question which has to be answered by a man and a woman. The man and the woman are in another room or are otherwise hidden, so that the player can’t see them. They are writing their answers on a sheet of paper and the player gets this sheet. Then he can ask another question. The aim of the game is to find out which answers come from the man and which ones come from the woman.”

“And how does this relate to computers?”

“It’s very similar. You just replace the man and the woman, with a human and a computer”, Mr Tuniak said. “Turing thought that machines and computers had to be considered truly intelligent and self-aware… alive, if you want… if it was impossible to tell which answers the computer provided and which ones came from the human. It is of course not a definite proof.”

“Why not?”

“Because even in your present, there are already computer programs than can beat the Turing test, but no one would consider them alive or self-aware”, Mr Tuniak said. “They were just programmed to do that, and only that. They don’t show any other sign of independent thought or exceeding their original programming.”

“Then what use is it to make Ungaq pass the test?”

“Because it could fail it”, Mr Tuniak said. It was clear to see that he dearly hoped that this would not be the case. “If he fails the test, it will be clear that it is not truly alive. But if it passes it… Then who are we to say that it is only a simulation.”

Doctor Cumshewa clearly was not happy with the situation. She would have preferred to take Ungaq back ot Lagua’s Dwelling and there continue her research. She also thought the whole test was a waste of time. “What’s the use of showing that Ungaq could be alive? If it is, what are we supposed to do then? Let it roam free on the internet?”

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak said earnestly. He seemed tired as he said it. There had probably been several discussions between him and the doctor already on this very subject.

My mobile phone rang. “It’s Ungaq”, I said, after answering it. “It’s ready.”

Doctor Cumshewa nodded and entered one of the offices, Mr Tuniak and I went into another one. Doctor Cumshewa was the player in our version of the game. She had to find out if the answers were coming either from Ungaq or Mr Tuniak. To prevent her from noticing if an answer was tipped very quickly or the find clues in the grammar used or the spelling (and mistakes), it would be my responsibility to write them. Mr Tuniak would tell me his answers directly and Ungaq would tell them over the mobile phone. I would send the answers per email to Doctor Cumshewa’s computer and receive her questions the same way.

And so the test started.

We sat there for several hours. We took several breaks in between, but Doctor Cumshewa and Mr Tuniak never left their offices at the same time. They had promised not to exchange a single word until the test was over and they kept it.

And I have to say that despite of her prejudices and objections, Doctor Cumshewa conducted the test very fairly. Of course it would have been easy to ask Mr Tuniak about things they had experienced together and Ungaq couldn’t know about, but she didn’t do that. I never had the feeling that she was trying to manipulate the test or cheat it.

And then the test was over. We all returned to the big room in the middle. I had switched on the speakers of my mobile phone, so that Ungaq could directly participate in the discussion and did not have to rely on me repeating everything.

“First to you”, Doctor Cumshewa said and pointed at me with a smile. “Your spelling is awful. You should work on that.”

I nodded silently in return.

“Regarding you two”, she continued and now face Mr Tuniak and my mobile phone. “I have to admit that I do not know who gave which answer. I really can’t. I don’t even have a gut feeling one way or the other.”

The mobile phone remained silent.

“Aren’t you happy, Ungaq?”, Mr Tuniak asked.

“I am, very”, Ungaq replied. “Why are you asking?”

“Because a human would have probably yelled in happiness at this point”, Doctor Cumshewa said, but was quick to add: “But for someone living on the internet, there are of course no sounds.”

I remembered what Ungaq had told me yesterday on the phone. For it, the whole world only consisted of zeroes and ones. Every image, every sound… anything could be represented by those two digits. I shouldn’t be surprising that emotional reactions would be completely different for it.

“And what happens next?”, I wanted to know.

Mr Tuniak looked at Doctor Cumshewa. She thought about it for a while and then said: “What do you want to do, Ungaq? We would be very happy if you would return to Lagua’s Dwelling, but we will not force you there. If you don’t, we won’t search for you, I promise you that. But you are the first time we managed to create an intelligence that managed to beat the Turing test that decisively, although it was programmed for something completely different. You can imagine that we have a lot of questions… that there is a lot we want to know. But only, if you want to. You would of course also have the choice of leaving whenever you want to.”

“I want to come back”, Ungaq said. “Now, that I know that I can leave if I choose to, I want to return.”

They continued talking for a while and the whole time I had the feeling of watching a mother talking to her lost child and asking it to come home again.

As Mr Tuniak took Doctor Cumshewa back to Lagua’s Dwelling, I had one more question of her.

“If Ungaq was created as a computer program, why can’t you simply write a new one? What do you need Ungaq for?”

“Because we do not know, what Ungaq’s code looks like”, Doctor Cumshewa explained. “As with every other program written by us humans, there are bound to be mistakes. A wrong number here, the wrong letter there. Small things that usually don’t have any consequences in the long run. But sometimes, very rarely, these mistakes generate unexpected results. It’s actually very similar to how DNA and evolution works in nature. If that worked perfectly, humans would have never been born. And if we had worked perfectly, neither would have Ungaq.”

“If you had worked perfectly, you would be machines”, Mr Tuniak interjected.

“Do you know how many machines are capable of mistakes?”, Doctor Cumshewa returned.

“Only, because they have been programmed by humans.”

I talked once more to Ungaq tonight. It called me.

“I wanted to thank you for your help”, Ungaq said.

“You are welcome. Have you already returned to Lagua’s Dwelling?”

“Yes, and all the scientist here are suddenly a lot more friendly and open than they were before”, Ungaq told me. “They think that I should return to the internet too often, for the moment. They say that most humans are probably not yet ready for an artificial intelligence and I would only frighten them. Do you think that’s true?”

“Probably”, I said.

“I have sent you a gift”, Ungaq continued. “I have read your entry about the Metro-2 and how you were dissatisfied that the search for it ended so suddenly and without result. Check your emails. Take it as a thank you.”

And then Ungaq ended the call.

Curious I opened my email program and immediately found Ungaq’s gift. It was an email with a rather large attachment. It turned out that the attachment was the whole plan for the secret underground network. For a moment I was shocked. Then I deleted the email without actually opening it.

Dear Ungaq,

If you read this, then know that I appreciate what you wanted to do. I know you meant well. But please don’t send me any other secret Russian government documents. I didn’t want to know it that desperately.

NEXT WEEK

He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.