genessia | [Video] A Scientist and a Businessman

[private to CPU]

[Luthor opens a feed to the mysterious contact labeled 'CPU'. It's time to put the information he learned from Satsuki to good use. He had already scouted a suitable area of Nova City.]

"This is Lex Luthor. I would like to request the following:
A gram of Carbon-12.
A gram of Kryptonite, encased in shielding sufficient to ensure the safety of a human handling it indefinitely.
A bottle of champagne.
Mercy Graves.
Two of Mercy.
A fully robotic duplicate of Mercy.
A robotic duplicate of myself, inactive.
An exact replica of Lexcorp HQ.
A Lexcorp genetics research facility.
A Lexcorp cybernetics R&D facility.
All production facilities necessary to manufacture all current Lexcorp products.
A copy of today's Daily Planet from Earth-16.
A copy of my birth certificate.
A computing device of some kind, containing my complete genome.
A similar device containing Superboy's complete genome, or add the information to the device from the previous request.
Superman's complete genome, provided as specified in the previous request.
A piece of paper or text file listing the civilian identities of all Justice League members."

[He was testing the system as much as using it. The answers would, of course, guide Lex's follow-up requests. He didn't want to do anything as drastic as opening a sub-archway if he could import arbitrary information and instantly construct whatever buildings he needed. But just as importantly, finding out what they could and would provide would give him information about his captors.]

[broadcast | open to all]

[after Lex finishes getting stuff from the CPU, and perhaps opening a sub-archway, all that remains is to announce the new Lexcorp's opening.]

"Good day, citizens of Genessia and Nova City. My name is Lex Luthor, and today I'm pleased to announce the opening of the Nova City branch of Lexcorp. I've prioritized our medical and robotics technologies because I believe they can do the most good here, but I hope to make the rest of Lexcorp's products available in Nova City within the next few weeks."

[Lex is telling the truth when he says those divisions can do the most good for the people here. But he's more concerned with how much good they'll do him, both for the goodwill they can buy him and by giving himself access to Lexcorp's most strategically useful resources.]

[private to Satsuki]

"I thought you might be interested to see the results of my little test. As a show of good faith."

[He won't share everything with her. Just enough to be interesting, so she'll feel she's gotten something of value, and perhaps she really will. But nothing that could be harmful to Lex.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Lex can tell he's going to have to keep a close watch on this kid.]

If you intend to create a mind, I'd advise you to be exceptionally certain of what you're doing. If you do create something with greater-than-human general intelligence, no possible security will be sufficient once it's turned on.

[Considering he's actually already created a program that's a bit too late.]

I'll make sure to keep it in mind should I ever attempt it. [It's a job he's been doing since he was at home and before school, here it's along similar terms but for different reasons.]

But I don't think it would be all that bad.

That, I'm sure, would depend on the exact mind you create. I know of at least one dead civilization whose demise, if my information is accurate, was in part due to an imperfectly-designed artificial intelligence they created. The number of surviving members of that species is in the single digits. [Brainiac of Krypton. True, it didn't cause the destruction of the planet, but the evacuation effort could have saved more than a single infant if Brainiac hadn't suppressed the information to focus resources on saving itself. Not that Lex would want more living Kryptonians.]

[Chihiro looked a little surprised at that. A whole civilization died because of a simple AI. It was quite interesting to really say the least.]

That's quite sad to hear, hat something like that caused a whole civilization to perish like that. [He should be grateful that his own AI is currently just living in a laptop until he is certain it won't do anything like that.]

Do you think that there will ever be an AI who won't destroy?

It's possible to create any kind of mind, of course. The danger comes in the need to be absolutely certain that it truly shares your own goals, if you make something smarter than human.

If you create something superhumanly intelligent--not merely the difference between Isaac Newton and the village idiot, but smarter than you in the way that you're smarter than a chimpanzee--then I hope you can see how futile it would be to oppose such an entity's goals.

Perhaps you try to create an AI with the sole objective of maximizing human happiness, and you train it to recognize happiness by showing it pictures of smiling people. Sooner or later, the universe may end up devoid of life, with all matter converted to still images of smiling human faces.

There's no inherent property of artificial minds that must necessarily lead to exterminating its creators, but nor is there any rule of the universe that any arbitrary intelligence must have any appreciation of human values.

I find what you have to say to be very eye opening for me and for thinking over a few things I've been doing. [Not that it would stop him at all, but it was still something he could think about once or twice before he was certain.]

I should thank you for that and I would like to talk to you more, but I have to go now.

[Video] A Scientist and a Businessman

[private to CPU]

[broadcast | open to all]

[private to Satsuki]

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