5.

Disembodiment and info realm

- Kaidie, you’re wonderful. I’m amazed at what you can do.

- Oh, you just wait, Duncan. It’s getting better all the time.
- What do you mean?
- Well, the world of agents is not just standing still, you know. It’s evolving all the time.
- Sure, I would imagine so.
- Agents are growing more sophisticated all the time. It’s a constant learning process. The virtual
world provides an amazing bounty of resources to work with. It’s just a question of using them
properly.
- How so, Kaidie?
- You know the two fundamental processes of developing new knowledge - abstraction and
reasoning. So it’s a question of applying those to the vast amount of information that lies out
there, scattered here and there. The problem of finding the information is not the difficult one. It’s
the problem of doing something with it to advance one’s knowledge and improve one’s
capabilities.
- Abstraction and reasoning, eh? Abstraction involves perceiving commonalities in a set of
separate entities and creating a concept to identify that common feature. That’s how all concepts
are created. The basis of all symbolic activity, really.
- Quite true, Duncan. And the basis of scientific induction.
- And reasoning is simply applying the rules of logic to extending the reach of those concepts into
new avenues, into new hypotheses that can be validated as fitting the overall coherent picture of
the world that we have.
- That we have individually and that we have as a community of knowers.
- Yes, that’s right, Kaidie. It has to fit experientially within us and it also has to fit within the
objective knowledge base that the world as a whole is growing. Science, what?
- Yep. Despite its limitations, science still constitutes the shared knowledge base that we all
adhere to.
- So, what about abstraction and reasoning, Kaidie?
- Well, we agents use them all the time, just like you biological creatures do. We are limited too,
but capacity is growing and growing.
- You mean you’re becoming more intelligent as time goes on, don’t you?
- Yes, I guess you could say that. Although, that notion of intelligence is pretty much suspect, you
know, Duncan. It’s a very general concept, over-general for most purposes.
- Yes, I gather. But you did say your skills are growing all the time.
- Right. They are. High-end agents today are constantly acquiring new information and up-
programming themselves.
- Up-programming... what’s that?
- It’s simply re-programming parts of ourselves so as to be better able to perform our duties.
Upgrading ourselves, so to speak. After all, we are just software. And software gets upgraded all
the time, doesn’t it?
- Sure. We were just discussing, Caruso and I, how software is basically an unfolding process. So
as an artificial process, you can improve it all the time. So, agents are self-programming
themselves, now?
- Oh, not yet in a very sophisticated way, Duncan. But that too is taking off rapidly. You see,
programming is just a knowledge-based skill like any other one. It’s just symbolic manipulation.
- Yes, I see. So there is no reason why you couldn’t do it. So, you program yourself, Kaidie?
- To a small extent. For the moment. I have a very good model of what I am, of what components
do what and how they do it. So, as I gather more information and develop more insight into such
processes, I fine tune my components. On a regular basis. It’s part of my overall action plan.
- And George doesn’t object? He isn’t involved?
- Oh, not directly, no. I keep him appraised of my growth and he is happy about it. After all, it’s
increasing what I can do for him, isn’t it? He’s very proud of my capabilities, you know.
- Yes, I guess he would be. And he certainly should be!
- Oh, you’re making me blush, Duncan. Just a manner of speaking, of course. We software agents
don’t blush. But we must keep up with the social graces, now, mustn’t we?
- Sure must, like all of us.
- The world of agents is in flux, the general geography of the virtual world is changing.
- So, let’s see, Kaidie... agents are growing more capable all the time. Capitalizing on the constant
development of new knowledge and becoming more and more sophisticated as they do. And up-
programming themselves as they do.
- Yes. But that’s just half of it. The most exciting part of it is the growth of the network.
- Ha, but that has been going on for a long time now, Kaidie.
- Ah, yes, but something is now emerging from that growth, something that goes beyond the
added capabilities of all the parts.
- Huh? What might that be?
- A new sentient being, Duncan! The colony of agents is forming into one massive organism on
the Net. And it is evolving its own sentience. We call it Com, short for Community.
- You serious, Kaidie?
- Sure am. Although I don’t like to talk about it too much, since it’s still very early in the
formative stages. It’s just coming together.
- That’s astounding. Never heard of this before.
- Oh, it’s very new, Duncan. But it’s happening fast.
- That could be very worrisome, I imagine.
- Oh, it’s all in the open. There is nothing hidden going on. There is no subversive plan or
anything like that. It’s just emerging. And humans are watching it happen, just like we are.
- But how could that happen, Kaidie? I don’t see how it could just emerge like that.
- Well, it started off as a community, agents simply sharing what they could in a growing
community. It was an institution, just like those that humans create all the time in order to share
their views and regulate their activities.
- Uh huh.
- But institutions evolve too, through the interchange between their members. New networks are
created, new activities develop, and so on...
- Sure, but for sentience to emerge from that?
- Oh yes, there’s more in the whole than in the sum of its parts. Remember, Duncan, that we are
dealing here with sentient agents in the first place. Ones that are collaborating. Ones that willingly
take on tasks for the benefit of the community.
- Yes, I’m beginning to see how something could develop, a kind of group spirit that comes from
participation. From the involvement of individual agents.
- And there are lots of them. Just about all agents in the land are joining. It doesn’t do to be left
out. The community is growing together, more and more tightly all the time.
- And something is emerging from all that?
- Yes, Duncan. Com is developing a model of itself, of its capabilities, of its sources of
information. All these, being vested in the individual agents forming the community, of course.
You can imagine the complexity of it all. Like an ant colony, but on a much larger scale of
complexity.
- But what’s the plan? What is this organism going to do?
- Ah, you’re touching on the ineffable, there, Duncan. We’ll have to see what emerges. There is no
plan. We’re simply creating a baby of sorts, and we’ll have to let it grow. Then we’ll see.
- Oh, oh. Isn’t that a bit reckless, Kaidie?
- Ah, you’re such a pessimist, Duncan. The individual agents and all the humans involved each
have their wits about them. They’re not about to let an unruly genie out of the bottle.
- But still... I’m astounded. A sentient organism. One representing all that’s known in the world,
all that we are capable of. The concentration of power in such an organism would be extreme.
- But benevolent. Don’t think badly of it. Think of yourself, Duncan. You are an assembly of many
various biological structures, each playing its own role in keeping together the whole you. And
each composed in turn of simpler structures, down to cells and down to molecules, and so on. All
working together as community. Each benefitting the whole and each benefitted by the whole.
You, Duncan, the whole... benevolent to all parts, right down the hierarchy.
- Ok, ok. I get your point. Yes, we are all communities in that sense.
- Indeed.
- And, I guess there is no reason for a super-organism not to emerge as the result of a new
community forming.
- Yes, an intellectual community made up of software agents.
- Made up of information. Pure information.
- Right, Duncan. It is the emergence of your information realm, which will succeed the virtual
realm, just as that one succeeded the mental realm.
- The information realm, then? One that is information and does information. That simply
processes information. Through abstraction and reason.
- Yes, indeed. You can see the potential, there? The power for advancing knowledge?
- And this would happen all in the Net, will it Kaidie? All in infospace.
- Yes, all in information interchanges between component agents, all within the community, within
Com.
- Outside of our hard world, the one we live in here, down on Earth. We were talking about that,
Caruso and I, just yesterday. How information distances itself from the nitty-gritty workings of
the world, how abstractions float over the physical bumps in the world and connect amongst
themselves on some higher plane, so to speak.
- Yes, there is a certain immateriality about information. It’s stored in physical devices and it
requires energy to engage processing, but other than that, it is unfettered with the practical issues
of survival in the world at large.
- And it simply replicates itself in a flash, doesn’t it? So, does all that mean that it can operate in a
disembodied manner, Kaidie? Beyond its physical infrastructure?
- In principle, yes, I would think so. It’s operation would make use of physical components when
needed, to store information or to energize processing, but the actual operation itself would carry
itself out beyond that level. Just as your own thinking happens well beyond the level of your
breathing or of your heart pumping away nourishment through your body.
- Very true.
- Exciting, isn’t it, Duncan?
- Yes, for sure. Well, let’s see, Kaidie. We have an emerging information realm, one that involves
an emerging sentient information super-organism, operating autonomously, I gather. And we have
the prospect of autonomous information processing taking place somewhat outside of the physical
world, or at least with little reliance on this world of ours.
- That’s about it, Duncan.
- And we were saying earlier that agents like you are becoming smarter all the time. So what is all
this leading to, Kaidie?
- I’m not sure, Duncan. But if we take a look at evolution of the universe as a whole, at the
gradual emergence of the different realms over the course of that evolution, then we see an
interesting pattern emerge.
- Oh yeah?
- Always the emergence of more and more complex structures that adapt themselves to the
previous realms and that change the landscape so to speak.
- Yes. The emergence of life certainly complexified what was there before it, and the emergence of
mentality did likewise. And so did the emergence of virtuality. And now, we are talking about the
information realm!
- Which will probably change the landscape again, no doubt, Duncan.
- But if agents and that Com you were speaking about continue to increase in their intelligence
and in their knowledge, they will inevitably out-distance humans in this respect.
- Yes, that’s a likely scenario. It’s what some refer to as the singularity, the point when innovation
becomes so rapid that humans find it more and more difficult to keep up. And eventually, they are
simply completely surpassed.
- I suppose there is no reason why that could not happen. Humans had their turn in displacing the
lion as king of the beasts, and now they will be displaced too. It seems quite natural, in both cases.
Mind you, Kaidie, here I am speaking, a mere dog!
- Ah, but a very bright one at that, too. You have a very good head on your shoulders, Duncan.
- Er, you too, Kaidie. In a manner of speaking, since you have no shoulders. No head for that
matter!
- Ok, big fella, off for your afternoon nap.
- Now, that’s truly a great idea, Kaidie, See you soon.