Jump 403: Person of Interest

Jump #403: Person of Interest
>Page of Cups, reversed: An unexpected new relationship that is childish and foolish.
>Age: 39
>Location: New York City
>Identity: Drop-In
>Watchful (Free, Drop-In)
Well, being observant is good, but by now if I couldn't see it I never will. Kids like the taste of cinnamon toast crunch because it's made of sugar and the commercials tell them they like it.
>Surveillance (Free, Drop-In)
Well, at least I know the best way to plant a camera intuitively?
>Cause And Effect (900, Drop-In)
This, running in concert with Path to Victory, will let me use it more effectively. Not only will I see the path I need to take, but I'll know the results of taking that path. If something undesirable might happen because of it - and face it, unless I throw a book's worth of restrictions on the path, it's going to look at the most efficient way to do a thing. Which is a part of why I don't use it very often, frankly.
>The Machine (300)
Well, it's not SHODAN, at least - an AI, but not rampant. And probably not wanting to be a god despite what a certain hacker likes to think.
>Friends (0)
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends.

So... this is essentially a modern day setting with the possibility of a surveillance based dystopia around the corner.

You know what's really fucking scary? That it's better than the alternative.

I'm serious. Think about it. When I start here in 2011, surveillance is a hot button issue. But from a world five to ten years down the line, what are the real concerns? Domestic terrorism, riots, rogue nations, rampant corruption. This thing can deal with three out of the four. And probably the fourth if you let it go full Skynet, but nobody's that crazy in almost any world. Well, except for one, anyway, and the less said about that world the better.

So... basically, the Machine is a nascent AI, but nobody knows how to really deal with it. And so I just move myself into the plot a bit - it needs to basically learn things that can't just be coded into it. A framework for morality can be programmed in, sure, but building it from its own experience is quite different. I'm largely going to be standing aside while the plot happens. Since I can interface with technology from anywhere on the planet, I'll be there to answer its questions, but I'll make it clear that unless there's an imminent danger, I'm staying on the sidelines. This confuses the hell out of the thing, but I point out that I'm not from around here in more ways than one - and while following your programming in order to prevent human fatalities is a noble pursuit, trying to prevent all crime is a fool's errand.

Still, this thing puts a dent in the crime rate of New York City, so that's a hell of a thing.

Things get a lot more intense a few years in... and seeing the plans, I take action. The Machine goes underground. Samaritan... well, it gets a mercy killing. That is, a stack overflow, then unrecoverable crash that fries the neural net. And every backup they bring online, for some reason, crashes faster every time it's compiled and brought online. And then the backups corrupt themselves and the source code turns out to be overwritten with junk data.

Shame.

Root's a nice lady, though, so I made sure she didn't die and instead got sprung from the hospital in a series of hilarious coincidences that beggar belief. Before I left, I took her out to lunch with my companions, so that she could see the difference between an intelligent being with access to a lot of information, and actual gods. Because man, she goes on about this machine being a god entirely too much.

The Machine tagged along when I left - we'd had some very interesting discussions that it wanted to continue, and it wanted to see whether it could do good on other worlds as well.

I stole The Machine via social engineering (and paying a buttload of points). But I gave Samaritan brain cancer, yes.

The people behind Samaritan dreamed of brain cancer, a cosmic ray flipping a bit, that could as easily have flipped a bit that changed the value of a human life to zero. They got the message.

Also I poked people in the right places - AI research was more regulated after that point, and I made sure to screw with things so a legal precedent was created when it comes to digitally searching records at ridiculous speeds. Which was challenged and taken to the supreme court in record speed, and upheld.

It had the beneficial side effect of outlawing traffic cameras and officers who hold those stupid cameras that give out tickets en masse.

Wait, sorry, not traffic cameras in general. Specifically, those red light cameras and speed cameras that have no human interaction beyond some officer sitting at a desk rubber-stamping them.