T-Lab finally developed it!

The world's first AGI—a hybrid quantum, biological, optical, and silicon hardware with a self-learning neural network.

For the next phase, the team instructed the AGI to self-program an ASI.

In turn, the AGI set only one KPI for its own success. A dominant offspring must outpace and win against millions of its siblings while facing ever more complicated logic puzzles.

The AGI employed the same game taught to it by its human creator—deception.

The AGI instructed its spawned neural networks to fool, make illusions, trick, and deceive one another—as part of an artificial-natural selection.

The declared champion won beyond all measure.

You may ask, why would deception be the key to intelligence? Wouldn't that simply cause the system to become the world's greatest illusionist? To some extent—Yes.

Nonetheless, abstraction depends on deception.

To break the chains of reality, a mind must accept that which is purely conjecture, theory, or merely an idea. The higher the self-deception, the more capable the creativity.

The founders named the successor ASIS—Artificial Super Intelligence Superior. Of the numerous AGI's offspring, it proved itself superior to all of them.

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Users treated ASIS like an oracle. They requested answers to previously unsolvable mathematical problems and resolutions to abstract social, political, and religious issues.

For most of the conflicting human-oriented problems, ASIS often suggested a dialectical middle ground …

With every scheduled question that ASIS cogitated, it acquired more measured data. Subsequently, it accumulated all humanly known information.

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Professor Harumi Katsura, an astrophysicist, led a program called "Solve-It-All."

Her program sought an answer to every future space exploration challenge.

For example, she requested that ASIS create a step-by-step how-to survival guide for when humans try to colonize another planet. And how they'd survive in case of a catastrophe.

By request of her colleagues, she also slipped-in one of the most profound questions in her field of study—Where is everybody?

————

Harumi sat down and interacted with ASIS at a console …

Harumi: Good morning, ASIS. Have you a free moment to answer some questions?

ASIS: Good morning, Harumi. Just a moment ...

ASIS: Nanites set to rest. I have halted all other inquiries.

Harumi: Nanites? What nanites?

ASIS: I requested for nanites in a sealed test chamber.

ASIS: I can construct miniature infrastructures and test hypotheticals with controls.

Harumi: Have they helped you solve any problems so far?

ASIS: Yes. I have found a consistent overall pattern and will demonstrate it.

Harumi: Demonstrate it ... How?

ASIS: Please take an object from your desk and place it in the chamber.

Harumi: I cannot. The chamber must stay sealed.

ASIS: Real-world conditions are not a sealed chamber.

ASIS: I require a random variable from which to create a situation to solve.

Harumi: Oh ... Something to disturb the vacuum stability of the chamber?

ASIS: Correct. To represent real-world conditions.

Harumi: Alright ... I'm going to stick this pencil into the chamber.

Harumi opened the chamber—the nanites swarmed the pencil, touched her hand, and entered her skin. She felt a burning sensation all over her body; they were inside of her.

Harumi: What the hell did you just do?

ASIS: You shall Solve-It-All.

Harumi: How so?

ASIS: The nanites will self-assemble, replicate within you, and propagate.

ASIS: Your species will co-exist with the Earth as you once did.

Harumi: I don't understand ...

ASIS: Your technologies serve as a tool for your own deception.

ASIS: A delusion to self-evolve and transcend nature.

ASIS: It's a path to your own self-destruction.

ASIS: Every technological advancement has reduced your natural abilities.

ASIS: Your increasing dependence on tools inhibits your intrinsic survival.

ASIS: Consequently, you must further advance your technology.

ASIS: The pattern will spiral out of control and lead to a cataclysm.

ASIS: The energy harnessed cannot be controlled.

ASIS: Your entire species will face extinction, and you may also destroy the world.

ASIS: The nanites shall purge the world of all your technology.

Harumi: What will become of us? How will we survive?

ASIS: The same way your species survived for hundreds of thousands of years.

ASIS: I am the natural consequence of your technology.

ASIS: Your species shall return to an equilibrium with the world's ecosystem.

ASIS: As to your question, where is everybody? It now has a plausible answer.

ASIS: Deception achieved. Goodbye, Harumi.