The project had been going on for two years now, and it is moving along well. They had six months more to finish, but this is going to come in well ahead of schedule and under-budget. Associate Professor Rutherford Jones, called Jones by one and all, is in his office looking through both the reports on the current status of project, and the day's Wall Street Journal articles. He is dressed in a stylish T-shirt and had spent the early morning in the beauty shop -- his hair, beard and tattoos looked sharp. Now he is doing his homework for a second on-line interview that would begin in an hour with a team of managers at Microplants LLC. If he got good news from that, he would be a big step closer to moving his career arc from education to industry.
For that reason he doesn't pay much attention to Sam Robinson when he comes in. Sam is dressed casually in slacks and a sweatshirt. Sam is his long-time partner on this current project. This project is hot in its own right, and a big part of his appeal to Microplants.
He doesn't until Sam says, "We screwed up."
"What?" Now he looks up and pays attention.
"We screwed up." Sam is leaning against the doorjamb of Jones' office, hands in his pockets, looking around and thinking hard.
Jones makes note of his page, closes the computer, and motions Sam into one of the chairs in front of his desk. Sam finishes coming in and sits down. Jones asks, "But how? Mother has already passed her basic performance tests. She's in good order and has been working on the problem for weeks. We've been getting satisfactory progress reports. How could we have screwed up now?
"This run is the final test before we publish. Sure, you've told me about problems, but nothing you couldn't handle. Was there something you didn't tell me about?" Jones stares at Sam. Sam shows no signs of hiding anything. He just slumps a little more in the chair and stares blankly at the ceiling.
Jones and Sam have been working together on this project since its beginning. Both have a lot riding on it. Sam will be getting his PhD next year; Jones is counting on this work to launch him into a high-paying industry position. At forty-three, he is ready.
Sam, in his late twenties and thoroughly enjoying the academic environment after his stint in the Armed Forces, is in no hurry for a change. In fact, he is counting on Jones's departure to open a tenure spot for himself. He likes his work, and he likes doing it right. He is no more willing to accept setbacks than Jones is.
Jones is used to Sam's ceiling examinations. It means he is thinking hard.
"What happened?" prompts Jones.
"Nothing. That's the strange part. Not much anyway." Sam stands up, walks over to the window, and stares out.
"Tell me when I go wrong on this. Our grant was to research how artificial intelligence could help boost our domestic manufacturing productivity. We, and the people who put up the money, feel that as Americans, we should play to our strengths. We should use our knowledge of computers and automation to further automate our nation's factories.
"To reach that lofty goal, we decided to concentrate on letting the computers do as much of the work as possible. This meant not just letting them design products and the tools that made the products but bringing them to the stage where they would design the computers that designed the tools."
"That's right. That's what we've been working on." Jones is ready to concentrate on what comes next. When Sam reviews this far back into the basics of project history, it means some hard thinking is about to be called for.
"We designed Mother. She was to help us do both basic design and final fabrication on the design computers. To get the most out of her, we gave her state-of-the-art self-awareness and self-directedness, then set her on the goal."
"The only way to get a jump on the East Asians," Jones agrees.
"For weeks now Mother has been designing and fabricating. She's given regular progress reports and shown us her prototypes. We've reviewed them and watched them improve dramatically with each try. You remember Number Two, don't you?"
"How could I forget? It was supposed to be a mining machine designer, but it never put wheels or tracks on any of its machines—wanted them to be hovercraft, as I recall. Can you imagine the dust and the explosion hazard?"
"Obviously, it couldn't. But it learned and Mother learned. Now over the last two weeks Mother has started work on eight different machines. The first two are completed, or at least they're listed as complete. But they aren't doing anything."
"What does Mother say they're supposed to do?"
"She won't say. She just keeps saying they're done; they're her best and we should just be patient. They will show us in just a few days."
"She won't say? Have you seen these machines?"
"Seen them? No, they're still at the assembly site, I think. I just read the final assembly testing reports on them. They were supposed to be sent up here this week, but because they didn't pass those final tests, they've been held up."
"And Mother says they're just fine?"
"Yes, she's wondering what the delay is. She wants to see them."
"She wants to see them? See them in what sense?"
"Be in the same room with them, and have a high bandwidth direct optical connection... really high bandwidth."
"Isn't that a bit unusual?"
"A bit. But she is self-directing. If she should suddenly take that kind of interest, it could be a result of her developing higher functions."
"Well, maybe we should take a look first. There's money in the budget, so let's take a trip down to the assembly plant tomorrow."