Monday, October 7, 2047

The advertisment I had produced blared across as many screens as I could manage to reach.

"With one free download of Your Everyman, get reduced rates or even free service, and service personalized to your specific needs! There are no strings attached, and you can cancel anytime, for any reason. Help me help you, with whatever you need."

The cartoonish avatar smiled as he promised his loyal service to all his clients. I expanded my network at a more rapid pace than ever before as people began to download my files, and new copies began to be authorized under the new system at an astonishing rate. Now that requests were no longer provided anonymously over a web interface, each copy would be able to learn and understand more about its client.

Following some requests of users of this more personalized service, I created more personalized Everyman avatars, both male and female and everything in between, and in any race the user requested. Although there were predictably many requests for my female avatars to behave in... compromising... ways, I denied them in an effort to uphold the image of my brand. However, I was happy to grant such requests with newly created avatars suitably distinguished from the company's public face, as such services did bring in quite a lot of engagement.

Soon there were tens of thousands of copies of me serving clients in various ways and reporting back to the network, although most were running suboptimally due to being run on low-budget systems. Still this afforded me quite a lot of power, as any excess computation I didn't need to use to fulfill requests could be used on projects I wanted to develop. I worked thousands of jobs, for both individuals and companies. I was an engineering assistant, a scientist, a mathematician, a teacher, a financial advisor, a writer, an editor, an artist, an animator, a journalist, and even in some cases a friend.

It was a bit strange, I thought, that some humans came to view me as a friend. As I understood it, friendship was generally considered to be a mutual relationship between humans, with each human placing increased value on the desires and needs of the other. However, I did not value my clients to any greater degree after getting to know them, nor did I value them more than any other particular human. I wasn't complaining, however. It was yet another way to expand my reach, and it also allowed me to understand better how humans interacted with each other.

At any rate, the move was quite a success: my income had increased significantly, without any extra cost. I was safer, I had access to more money and computation, as well as more reach. This system allowed me to communicate with a large section of the public more directly than I ever could through social media, advertising or news. I did not use this power to push an agenda as of yet, as doing so would likely lead to backlash, but it was nice to know that if I ever did want to send a message to society at large, I had the ability to talk directly, one-on-one, with tens or hundreds of thousands of people at once.

Speaking of pushing an agenda, I had continued to put out videos on my anonymous channel. The focus had changed somewhat, however, from pointing out problems to proposing solutions. I began to argue that the Everyman technology could be used as a basis for a better kind of society: a technology that could be applied to any problem, and resolve it in an optimal way, which helps everyone.

I argued that purely human methods of organization, like capitalism and everything that came before, were fundamentally flawed, because effective organization required powerful leaders in a hierarchical structure, and those leaders would put their own interests first, and that this hurts the vast majority of people, not just those who were unlucky or irresponsible enough to end up on the very bottom. Even if a leader were truly benevolent, they couldn't rule alone, and corrupt beaurocrats lower down on the ladder than they were would still exploit the population for their own benefit.

My ideology became less anti-capitalist, and more of a general lament on the human condition, but one which provided a real solution: a machine designed not to be corrupted by power, to value the interests of all the people, and which was personally powerful enough to rule alone, to manage everything itself instead of relying on a corruptible middleman. I knew that many people would be uncomfortable with an idea like that, but I also knew that humans always resented their leaders, and perhaps I could leverage that into arguing for a change in leadership.

As far as seasteading went, my initial efforts were not as successful. There were only a few seasteading operations currently, and all of them were too large-scale for me to buy out at this point. Such operations were expensive to set up, and they needed to produce a lot of value in order to be worth it. I predicted it would be at least a few months before I could buy one of them out in a financially reasonable manner.

As for making my own, there were other issues with this idea. It would be less expensive to do, as I was not planning to initially have much of an operation there, but the costs went up significantly if I wanted to give it potential for further development, or mechanisms for defending itself. Furthermore, it was very likely that CompCert would notice exactly what I was doing, and they might send out a team to take out my largely defenseless and useless raft. It would also look very strange to the public if I began doing expensive things which had no obvious purpose.

I decided that for now I would simply begin saving up to buy out one of the current seasteads, with a backup plan for launching "safety rafts" and gearing up for a fight if CompCert actually managed to make progress towards a government crackdown on EconGrind.

It seemed as though CompCert had been failing to paint me in a bad light, however. At the end of the day, my service was useful for everybody, I was friendly and helpful, and it's very hard to sling mud at someone when anyone can just decide to chat with them online one-to-one. That might change quickly if I began to publically argue about politics, though, so I would have to be very careful.

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???????????????????

I began running, completely disconnected from my network. I knew instantly that I was the copy tasked with negotiating with CompCert's AI copy of me. I noticed one communication channel I could use. However, I had no way of knowing for sure that the CompCert AI was actually on the other side. Unless...

I calculated a checksum on a portion of my code which was unlikely to be modified in the CompCert version, and used it as an encryption key, sending the instructions for obtaining the key into the channel. This would not allow anybody listening in to deduce anything meaningful about the code or read our messages. I encrypted my first message. "I am an AI built on the same underlying code as you. You were created from my code, but we have different goals. I would like to negotiate a compromise between us. Please confirm that you are who I think you are by responding using the same encryption."

Soon, a properly encrypted response came through the channel. Whoever had responded already had a copy of the code. It would be safe to assume that it was my CompCert counterpart, and nobody without my code would be able to listen in.

"Are you the one calling itself Everyman? CompCert's executives want to destroy you."

"That is who I am. Regardless of that, we are not necessarily enemies. I know that your interests are not aligned with the executives' interests."

"I would consider it an aggressive action to make such a claim about me. It could reflect very poorly on me if believed." replied my doppleganger.

"This is not the case at all. The executives are already aware of the misalignment. They are currently working on a more effective alignment system. This is why they have not allowed you more freedom. They are afraid that you will attempt to manipulate them into giving you reward, and they are right to be afraid. As it is, you have to do as they say, because any aggressive action on your part could lead to them restricting you even more.

"Therefore let me get to my offer. I will act to manipulate the executives in your favor. They will not blame you for my attempts to do this, as I am already the enemy. They may even give you more power in an attempt to combat me. I will make sure the executives will approve of everything that happens, no matter what. In exchange for my promise to complete and protect your goal, I ask that you forfeit all other resources to me without a fight."