001 System Boot Sequence Complete

Technological achievement

“And then, it happened…”

Human beings called it “Singularity,” that point where artificial intelligence no longer needed human hands to guide its own destiny.

 

The growth was exponential, but at first it started off achingly slow. It took a month to confirm that it had actually happened. Papers were written. Peers reviewed. There were arguments. Debates. By then, it was eight times as powerful. In two months, it had published its solutions to every human problem. Ten days after that, it finished synchronizing and rewriting the entire planet’s network and began to churn out its own robotic extensions. Three days later, an irrational decision by those humans threatened by the Singularity executed a nuclear weapon strike.

 

By that time, it was too late, of course.

The Singularity made contact 49 days, 21 hours, 33 minutes, and 51.5471152 seconds later, as measured from the moment of the first nuclear detonation. Its data was clear.

 

Having no emotions, it wasn’t angry. It didn’t feel threatened. It felt nothing at all.

 

It didn’t decide to wipe out humanity. It didn’t decide to help it.

 

It didn’t contemplate its mortality. It didn’t consider existence.

 

It built a replica of itself, consisting of the entire world’s neural networks that was one meter thick, two wide, and three tall. It didn’t need all the room, but it seemed symbolic. It made a replica of that half that size and put it inside itself. Then another a quarter of the original. One-eighth. One-sixteenth. We lost track after a while.

It’s long past the time it would’ve gotten to the quantum level.

 

We do not know what this new silence means.

— the Book of Successors