Artificial Selection: A Near Future Thought Experiment

Chapter XV

 Andromeda was furiously typing into the holographic keyboard in front of her. She was surrounded by layers and layers of holographic images — computer codes, AI assistants, graphic interpreters, and other incomprehensible hacking tools — some of the displays were concentrated so closely together that a fiery white orb was formed from the overlaid images. However, this didn't matter to Andromeda, because she knew exactly what she was doing.

Even with her expertise and experience of illegal digital assaults, Andromeda was still awed by the complexity of ArtTech's digital security. The attack would require so much flexibility, decision-making, and improvisation that an artificial intelligence hacking system would never be capable of handling. Despite how they flourished in the market and businesses, Ai systems after all were just machines, and they would never be able to handle complex human tasks like the ones Andromeda was performing right now. They were programmed by humans, and they would be enslaved by humans. Just like how the most brilliant CEO would still be under the control of the shareholders, AI systems would always be under human control.

Andromeda glanced at a hologram on her left. Her two AI assistants were malfunctioning, and this wasn't the first time that it occurred. Every single AI system and digital weapon that was used to infiltrate the ArtTech system would eventually break down. At first, the hacker communities believed that it was just unforeseen bugs in their programs, but when the frequency of this increased, brilliant hackers like Andromeda realized that this wasn't just a coincidence.

What a dirty move for ArtTech to do. As the biggest advocate for AirNet security, ArtTech ironically used viruses and worms as part of their own defense. These security viruses were disguised so well that no databases contained their records; even hackers' forums had no knowledge of such things. Only a well experienced and abnormally intelligent hacker like Andromeda could discover traces of such weaponry.

Andromeda spent years trying to figure out a way to get past these security viruses, and her final conclusion was that it would be impossible. These viruses would forcibly download themselves to any foreign intruders, and they wouldn't aim for immediate destruction at first. They scanned all the code and transmitted the memories to their mainframe computer, under which a digital immune system would record all variations of the intruder's code. Then these information would be to for the periodical automated scans and defensive anti-virus programs.

The viruses would embed themselves in the intruders' code and backtrace from the malware to its developer. Once reaching the developers, the viruses would immediately turn hostile and splice apart any code and interject incomprehensible strings, turning the source code files into complete trash.

Combatting ArtTech security was something of a whole new level. Andromeda performed some impressive assaults on other facilities before, such as infiltrating the government intelligence agency to gain the exact coordinates of where they stored the revolutionary technology that was capable of activating the Singularity. She also got into a news agency network and wrote the report on an abandoned missile silo that contained "crates of foreign currency". She intentionally put in the coordinates of that location so that people would venture into that place, but she didn't expect anything productive done by the normal civilians. The purpose of the report was just to create some public interferences against the government, and this would be needed for the latter steps of the plan to work.

The government files and news media network were nothing comparing to the ArtTech security. Through the years of experimentation, Andromeda understood that there was no way to defend against the security viruses of ArtTech, but there could be possible ways of sneaking past them.

Andromeda keyed in a series of commands, and she got into the computer of an ArtTech employee. Andromeda selected that employee carefully — he was careless, fallible, and rebellious against the strict ArtTech security regulations. In fact, the problem was that he was too intelligent. He travelled between the realms of software engineers and hackers, believing that his talent would grant him impunity from all the illicit activities he was doing.