This is a little short story I wrote during CES. While NVIDIA was talking about their new chips, they also had a patent application get released for a little robot that can autonomously do tasks at a datacenter. You can see the 2030 version in the image below (bottom center next to the patent illustration). 😉
The Anagram That Launched a Thousand Facepalms
by Chris White
It’s the year 2030, and the ONC project just spun up the world’s first cold fusion reactor to power… well, pretty much everything. “ONC” is short for “Ornate Crystal Neck”. It started as a literal translation of the nickname given to it by the lead researcher. The internet and the media adopted “ONC”, and for whatever reason it just stuck. Its lustrous name is a reference to the $3.5 Billion worth of rubies and diamonds needed to contain the laser energy in an inspired new form of tokamak; a torus not entirely dissimilar to what Iron Man rocks, but massive. Rather than a single 8 foot diameter doughnut-like racetrack common in most tokamaks, ONC uses a smaller ½ inch diameter tube. And rather than a single loop, it spirals around a center mast that is 4 stories tall (aka the “neck”). So in a way it is smaller than your usual everyday tokamak, but in another way it has a much longer path length. The “hose” that spirals up the neck is composed of diamonds and rubies to handle the high energy environment. When you stand back and look at it, it does kinda look like an ornate crystal neck. A neck wearing the most expensive necklace in the history of the world, and promising to give the world something more beautiful in return: Free energy.
It is notable that a confluence of events made this possible. The engineering breakthrough for cold fusion was conceived of by scientists using AI. The construction project was sped up by fast-acting robotic construction droids that worked round the clock. A project that would have taken 10 years to build in 2025 only took 2 years in 2028.
It is 2030 now, and construction is finished. Its time to fire it up.
Humans are miles away for safety. They are managing and monitoring it with cameras and robots. Quite a few robots actually… there is a fleet to maintain the reactor, and then there is an army of cleanup bots in concentric rings around the reactor to do containment and cleanup in case things go terribly wrong. The math showed that there was a optimal size needed to bring everything into a stable harmonious state. To the chagrin of the investors and the Bureau of Land Management, it had to be the size it was, not bigger or smaller. At least that allowed the AI to predict the size of the zone that would be lethal to humans. Its was a large zone, but the robots made it workable.
News stations across the world are covering the great “Switch On” event. Humanity holds its collective breath as the countdown reaches zero. A brilliant blue beacon of light shines upwards into the sky. SUCCESS!!! This is it! We did it! No more energy crisis. No more hunger. No more wars over fuel. We did it. We actually did it! NORAD gives the official thumbs up that it is contained and working smoothly. Cameras cut to the presidential podium. The crowd of reporters is electric waiting for him to enter the room. Among the social media chatter, and the clinking of champagne glasses, many people didn’t notice their phones ringing. Were they of sober mind they would have noticed, because everyone’s phones rang. In fact 11 billion cell phones rang at the exact same time.
The president walks in victoriously. He takes the stage with the foreknowledge that this will be his enduring legacy, and this speech will be among the greatest of all time. He delivers his first inspiring line, but no one hears it. Screens all over the world are suddenly showing a scene from the classic film Harry Potter. In this famous scene Tom Marvolo Riddle writes out his name in floating letters, but instead of his name, the letters are “Ornate Crystal Neck”, and the anagram doesn’t rearrange into “I am Lord Voldemort”, it rearranges itself into “Skynet Central Core”.
I bet you’re wondering, “How did we get into this situation?”
The answer is: little by little, then all at once. The human mind does not intuitively grasp power laws. AI does.
THE END
*patent illustration credit: uspto.gov