
FOREWORD

To pinpoint the moment in history when the abacus acquired reason is
as difficult as saying exactly when the ape turned into man. And yet
barely one human lfie span has lapsed since the moment when, with the
construction of Vannevar Bush's differential-equation analyzer,
intellectronics began its turbulent development. ENIAC, which followed
toward the close of World War II, was the machine that gave rise -
prematurely, of course - to the name "electronic brain". ENIAC was in
fact a computer and, when measured on the tree of life, a primitive
nerve ganglion. Yet historians date the age of computerization from
it. In the 1950s a considerable demand for calculating machines
developed. One of the first concerns to put them into mass production
was IBM.

Those devices had little in common with the processes of thought. They
were used as data processors in the field of economics and by big
business, as well as in administration and science. They also entered
politics: the earliest were used to predict the results of
Presidential elections. At more or less the same time the RAND
corporation began to interest military circles at the Pentagon in a
method of predicting occurrences in the international
politico-military arena, a method relying on the formulation of
so-called "scenarios of events". From there it was only a short
distance to more versatile techniques like the CIMA, from which the
applied algenra of events, from whihc the applied algebra of events
that is termed (not too felicitously) politicomatics arose two decades
later. The computer was also to reveal its strength in the rolw of
Cassandra when, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, people
first began to prepare formal models of world civilization in the
famous "Limits to Growth" project. But this was not the branch of
computer evolution which was to prove the most important by the end of
the century. The Army had been using calculating machines since the
end of World War II, as part of the system of operational logistics
developed in the theaters of that war. People continued to be occupied
with considerations on a strategic level, but secondary and
subordinate problems were increasingly being turned over to computers.
At the same time the latter were being incorporated into the U.S.
defense system.

These computers constituted the nerve centers of a transcontinental
warning network. From a technical point of view, such networks aged
very quickly. The first, called CONELRAD, was followed by numerous
successive variants of the EWAS (Early Warning System) network. The
attack and defnse potential was then based on a system of movable
(underwater) and stationary (underground) ballistic missiles with
thermonuclear warheads, and on rings of sonar-radar bases. In this
system the computers fulfilled the functions of communications links -
purely executive functions.

Automation entered American life on a broad front, right from the
"bottom" -that is, from those service industries which could most
easily be mechanized, because they demanded no intellectual activity
(banking, transport, the hotel industry). The military computers
performed narrow specialist operations, searching out targets for
combined nuclear attack, processing the results of satellite
observations, optimizing naval movements, and correlating the
movements of MOLS (Military Orbital Laboratories - massive military
satellites).

As was to be expected, the range of decisions entrusted to automatic
systems kept on growing. This was natural in the course of the arms
race, though not even the subsequent detente could put a brake on
investment in this area, since the freeze on the hydrogen bomb race
released substantial budget allocations which, after the conclusion of
the Vietnam war, the Pentagon had no wish to give up altogether. But
even the computers then produced - of the tenth, eleventh, and
eventually twelfth generation - were superior to man only in their
speed of operation. It also became clear that, in defense systems, man
is an element that delays the appropriate reactions.

So it may be considered natural that the idea of counteracting the
trend in intellectronic evolution described should have arisen among
Pentagon experts, and particularly those scientists connected with the
so-called military-industrial complex. This movement was commonly
called "anti-intellectual". According to historians of science and
technology, it derived from the midcentury English mathematician A.
Turing, the creator of the "universal automaton" theory. This was a
machine capable of performing basically *every* operation which could
be formalized - in other words, it was endowed with a perfectly
reproducible procedure. The difference between the "intellectual" and
"anti-intellectual" current in intellectronics boils down to the fact
that Turing's (elementarily simple) machine owes its possibilities to
a *program*. On the other hand, in the works of the two American
"fathers" of cybernetics, N. Wiener and J. Neumann, the concept arose
of a system which could program *itself*.

Obviously we are presenting this divergence in a vastly simplified
form, as a bird's-eye view. It is also clear that the capacity for
self-programming did not arise in a void. Its necessary precondition
was the high complexity characteristic of computer construction. This
differentiation, still unnoticeable at midcentury, became a great
influence on the subsequent evolution of mathematical machines,
particularly with the firm establishment and hence the independence of
such brances of cybernetics as psychonics and the polyphase theory of
decisions. The 1980s saw the emergence in military circles of the diea
of fully automatizing all paramount activities, those of the military
leadership as well as political-economic ones. This concept, later
known as the "Sole-Strategist Idea", was to be given its first
formulation by General Stewart Eagleton. He foresaw - over and above
computers searching for optimal attack targets, over and above a
network of communications and calculations supervising early warning
and defense, over and above sensing devices and missiles - a powerful
center which, during all phases preceding the extreme of going to war,
could utilize a comprehensive analysis of economic, military,
political, and social data to optimize continuously the global
situation of the U.S.A. and thereby guarantee the United States
supremacy on a planetary scale, including its cosmic vicinity, which
now extended to the moon and beyond.

Subsequent advocates of this doctrine maintained that it was a
necessary step in the march of civilization, and that this march
constituted a unity, so the military sector could not be arbitrarily
excluded from it. After the escalation of blatant nuclear force and
the range of missile carriers had ceased, a third stage of rivalry
ensued, one supposedly less threatening and more perfect, being an
antagonism no longer of blatant force, but of operational thought.
Like force before, thought was now to be subjected to nonhumanized
mechanization.

Like its atomic-ballistic predecessors, this doctrine became the
object of criticism, especially from centers of liberal and pacifist
thought, and it was oppugned by many distinguished representatives
from the world of science, including specialists in psychomatics and
intellectronics; but ultimately it prevailed, as shown by acts of law
passed by both houses of Congress. Moreover, as early as 1986 a USIB
(United States Intellectronical Board) was created, subordinate to the
President and with its own budget, which in its first year amounted to
$19 billion. These were hardly humble beginnings.

With the help of an advisory body semiofficially delegated by the
Pentagon, and under the chairmanship of the Secretary of Defense,
Leonard Davenport, the USIB contracted with a succession of big
private firms such as International Business Machines, Nortronics, and
Cybermatics to construct a prototype machine, known by the code name
HANN (short for Hannibal). But thanks to the press and various
"leaks", a different name - ULVIC (Ultimative Victor) - was generally
adopted. By the end of the cen tury further prototypes had been
developed. Among the best known one might mention such systems as
AJAX, ULTOR, GILGAMESH, and a long series of GOLEMs.

Thanks to an enormous and rapidly mounting expenditure of labor and
resources, the traditional informatic techniques were revolutionized.
In particualr, enormous significance must be attached to the
conversion from electricity to light in the intramachine transmission
of information. Combined with increasing "nanization" (this was the
name given to successive steps in microminiaturizing activity, and it
may be well to add that at the close of the century 20,000 logical
elements could fit into a poppy seed!), it yielded sensational
results. GILGAMESH, the first entirely light-powered computer,
operated a *million* times faster than the archaic ENIAC.

"Breaking the intelligence barrier", as it was called, occurred just
after the year 2000, thanks to a new method of machine construction
also known as the "invisible evolution of reason". Until then, every
generation of computers had actually been constructed. The concept of
constructing successive variants of them at a greatly accelerated (by
a thousand times!) tempo, though known, could not be realized, since
the existing computers which were to serve as "matrices" or a
"synthetic environment" for this evolution of Intelligence had
insufficient capacity. It was only the emrgence of the Federal
Informatics Network that allowed this idea to be realized. The
development of the next sixty-five generations took barely a decade;
at night - the period of minimal load - the federal network gave birth
to one "synthetic species of Intelligence" after another. These were
the progeny of "accelerated computerogenesis", for, having been bred
by symbols and thus by intangible structures, they had matured into an
informational substratum - the "nourishing environment" of the
network.

But following this success came new difficulties. After they had been
deemed worthy of being encased in metal, AJAX and HANN, the prototypes
of the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth generation, began to show
signs of indecision, also known as machine neurosis. The difference
between the earlier machines and the new ones boiled down, in
principle, to the difference between an insect and a man. An insect
comes into the world programmed to the end by instincts, which it
obeys unthinkingly. Man, on the other hand, has to learn his
appropriate behavior, though this training makes for *independence*:
with determination and knowledge man can alter his previous programs
of action.

So it was that computers up to and including the twentieth generation
were characterized by "insect" behavior: they were unable to question
or, what is more, to modify their programs. The programmer
"impregnated" his machine with knowledge, just as evolution
"impregnates" an insect with instinct. In the twentieth century a
great deal was still being said about "self-programming", though at
the time these were unfulfilled daydreams. Before the Ultimative
Victor could be realized, a Self-perfecting Intelligence would in fact
have to be created; AJAX was still an intermediate form, and only with
GILGAMESH did

a computer attain the proper intellectual level and enter the
psychoevolutionary orbit.

The education of an eightieth-generation computer by then far more
closely resembled a child's upbringing than the classical programming
of a calculating machine. But beyond the enormous mass of general and
specialist information, the computer had to be "instilled" with
certain rigid values which were to be the compass of its activity.
These were higher order abstractions such as "reasons of state" (the
national interest), the ideological principles incorporated in the
U.S. Constitution, codes of standards, the inexorable command to
conform to the decisions of the President, etc. To safeguard the
system against ethical dislocation and betraying the interests of the
country, the machine was not taught ethics in the same way people are.
Its memory was burdened by no ethical code, though all such commands
of obedience and submission were introduced into the machine's
structure precisely as natural evolution would accomplish this, in the
sphere of vital urges. As we know, man may change his outlook on life,
but *cannot* destroy the elemental urges within himself (e.g., the
sexual urge) by a simple act of will. The machines were endowed with
intellectual freedom, though this was imposed on a previously imposed
foundation of values which they were meant to serve.

At the Twenty-first Pan-American Psychonics Congress, Professor Eldon
Patch presented a paper in which he maintained that, even when
impregnated in the manner described above, a computer may cross the
so-called "axiological threshold" and question every principle
instilled in it - in other words, for such a computer thereare no
longer any inviolable values. Patch's paper stirred up a ferment in
university circles and a new wave of attacks on ULVIC and its
patron,the USIB, though this activity exerted no influence on USIB
policy.

That policy was controlled by people biased against American
psychonics circles, which wereconsidered to be subject to left-wing
liberal influences. Patch's propositions were therefore pooh-poohed in
official USIB pronouncements, and even by the White House spokesman,
and there was also a campaign to discredit Patch. His claims were
equated with the many irrational fears and prejudices which had arisen
in society at that time. Besides, Patch's brochure could not begin to
match the popularity of the sociologist E.Lickey's best seller,
*Cybernetics - DeathChamber of Civilization*, which maintained that
the "ultimative strategist" would subordinate the whole of humanity
either on his own or by entering into a secret agreement with an
analogous Russian computer. The result, according to Lickey, would be
an "electronic duumvirate".

Similar anxieties, which were also expressed by a large section of the
press, were negated by successive prototypes which passed their
efficiency tests. ETHOR BIS - a computer of "unimpeachable morals"
specially constructed on government order to investigate ethological
dynamics, and produced in 2019 by the Institute of Psychonical
Dynamics in Illinois - displayed full axiological stabilization and an
insensitivity to "tests of subversive derailment". In the following
year no demonstrations or mass opposition were aroused when the first
computer in a long series of GOLEMs (GENERAL OPEARTOR, LONG-RANGE,
ETHICALLY STABILIZED, MULTIMODELING) was launched at the headquarters
of the Supreme Co-ordinator of the White House brain trust.

That was erely GOLEM I. Apart from this important innovation, the
USIB, in consultation with an operational group of Pentagon psychonics
specialsts, continued to lay out considerable resorces on research
into the construction of an ltimate strategis with an iformational
capacity more than 1900 times greater than man's, and capable of
developing an intelligence (IQ) of the order of 450-500 centiles. The
project received the vast funds indispensable for this purpose despite
growing opposition within the Democratic majority in Congress.
Backstage plitical maneuvers finally gave the green light to all
orders already projected by the USIB. In three years the project
absorbed $119 billion. In the same period, the Army and the Navy,
preparing for a total reorganization of their high command
necessitated by the imminent change of methods and style of
leadership, spent an addiional $46 billion. The lion's share of this
sum was absorbed by the construction, beneath a crystalline massif in
the Rocky Mountains, of accommodations for the future machine
strategist; some sections of rock were covered in armor plate four
meters thick in imitation of the natural relef of the mountainous
terrain.

Meanwhile, in 2020, GOLEM VI, acting as supreme commander, conducted
the global maneuvers of the Atlantic Pact. In quantity of  logic
elements, it now surpassed the average general. Yet the Pentagon was
no satisfied with the result of the 2020 war games, although GOLEM VI
had defeated an imaginary enemy led by a staff of the finest West
Point graduates. Mindful of the bitter experience of Red supremacy in
space navigation and rocket ballistics, the Pentagon had no intention
of waiting for them to construct a strategist more efficient than that
of the Americans. A plan to garantee the United States lasting
superiority in stategic thought envisaged the continuous replacement
of Strategists by ever more perfect models.

Thus began the third successive race between West and East, after the
two previous (nuclear and missile) races. Although this race, or
rivalry in the Synthess of Wisdom, was prepared by organizational
moves on the part of the USIB, the Pentagon, and Naval ULVIC (there
was indeed a NAVY ULVIC group, for the old antagonism between Navy and
Army could be felt even here), it required continuous additional
investment which, in the face of growing opposition from the House and
the Senate, absorbed further tens of billions of dollars over the next
several years. Another six giants of luminal thought were built during
this period. The fact that there were absolutely no reports of any
developments in analogous work on the other side of the ocean only
confirmed the CIA and the Pentagon in their conviction that the
Russians were trying their hardest to construct ever more powerful
computers under cover of the utmost secrecy.

At several international conferences and conventions Soviet scientists
asserted that no such machines were being in their country whatsoever,
but these claims were regarded as a smokescreen to deceive world
opinion and stir unrest among the citizens of the United States, who
were spending billions of dollars annually on ULVIC.

In 2023 several incidents occurred, though, thanks to the secrecy of
the work being carried out (which was normal in the project), they did
not immediately become known. While serving as chief of the general
staff during the Patagonian crisis, GOLEM XII refused to co-operate
with General T. Oliver after carrying out a routine evaluation of that
worthy officer's intelligence quotient. The matter resulted in an
inquiry, during which GOLEM XII gravely insulted three members of a
special Senate commission. The affair was successfully hushed up, and
after several more clashes GOLEM XII paid for them by being completely
dismantled. His place was taken by GOLEM XIV (the thirteenth had been
rejected at the factory, having revealed an irreparable schizophrenic
defect even before being assembled). Setting up this Moloch, whose
psychic mass equaled the displacement of an armored ship, took two
years. In his very first contact with the normal procedure of
formulating new annual plans of nuclear attack, this new prototype -
the last of the series -revealed anxieties of incomprehensible
negativism. At a meeting of the staff during the subsequent trial
session, he presented a group of psychonic and military experts with a
complicated expose in which he announced his total disinterest
regarding the supremacy of the Pentagon military doctrine in
particular, and the U.S.A.'s world position in general, and refused to
change his position even when threatened with dismantling.

The last hopes of the USIB lay in a model of totally new construction
built jointly by Nortronics, IBM, and Cybertronics; it had the
psychonic potential to beat all the machines in the GOLEM series.
Known by the cryptonym HONEST ANNIE (the last word was an abbreviation
for *annihilator*), this giant was a disappointment even during its
initial tests. It got the normal informational and ethical education
over nine months, then cut itself off from the outside world and
ceased to reply to all stimuli and questions. Plans were immediately
underway to launch an FBI inquiry, for its builders were suspected of
sabotage; meanwhile, however, the carefully kept secret reached the
press through an unexpected leak, and a scandal broke out, thereafter
known to the whole world as the "GOLEM Affair".

This destroyed the career of a number of very promising politicians,
while giving a certificate of good behavior to three successive
administrations, which brought joy to the opposition in the States and
satisfaction to the friends of the U.S.A. throughout the world.

An unknown person in the Pentagon ordered a detachment of the special
reserves to dismantle GOLEM XIV and HONEST ANNIE, but the armed guard
at the high command complexes refused to allow the demolition to take
place. Both houses of Congress appointed commissions to investigate
the whole USIB affair. As we know, the inquiry, which lasted two
years, became grist for the press of every continent; nothing enjoyed
such popularity on television and in the films as the "rebellious
computers', while the press labeled GOLEM "Government's Lamentable
Expenditure of Money". The epithets which HONEST ANNIE acquired can
hardly be repeated here.

The Attorney General intended to indict the six members of the USIB
Executive Committee as well as the psychonics experts who designed the
ULVIC Project, but it was ultimately shown in court that there could
be no talk of any hostile, anti-American activity, for the occurrences
that had taken place were the inevitable result of the evolution of
artificial Intelligence. As one of the witnesses, the very competent
Professor A. Hyssen, expressed it, the highest intelligence cannot be
the humblest slave. During the course of the investigation it
transpired that there was still one more prototype in the factory,
this time belonging to the Army and constructed by Cybermatics:
SUPERMASTER, which had been assembled under conditions of top security
and then interrogated at a special joint session of the House and
Senate commissions investigating the affairs of ULVIC. This led to
shocking scenes, for General S. Walker tried to assault SUPERMASTER
when the latter declared that geopolitical problems were nothing
compared with ontological ones, and that the best guarantee of peace
is universal disarmament.

In the words of Professor J. MacCaleb,, the specialists at ULVIC had
succeeded only too well: in the evolution granted it, artificial
reason had transcended the level of military matters; these machines
had evolved from war strategists into thinkers. In a word, it had cost
the United States $276 billion to construct a set of luminal
philosophers.

The complicated events described here, in connection with which we
have passed over the administrative side of ULVIC and social
developments alike -events which were the result of this "fatal
success" - constitute the prehistory of the present book. The vast
literature on the subject cannot even be calculated. I refer the
interested reader to Dr Whitman Baghoorn's descriptive bibliography.

The series of prototypes, including SUPERMASTER, suffered dismantling
or serious damage partly because of financial disputes between the
corporate suppliers and the federal government. There were even bomb
attacks on several individuals; at the time part of the press, chiefly
in the South, launched the slogan "Every computer is a Red" - but I
shall omit these incidents. Thanks to the intervention of a group of
enlightened Congressmen close to the President, GOLEM XIV and HONEST
ANNIE were rescued from annihilation. Faced with the fiasco of its
ideas, the Pentagon finally agreed to hand over both giants to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (though only after settling the
financial and legal basis of the transfer in the form of a compromise:
strictly speaking, GOLEM XIV and HONEST ANNIE were merely "lent" to
MIT in prepetuity). MIT scientists who had established a research team
which included the present author conducted a series of sessions with
GOLEM XIV and heard it lecture on selected subjects. This book
contains a small portion of the magnetograms originating from those
meetings.

The greater part of GOLEM's utterances are unsuitable for general
publication, either because they would be incomprehensible to anyone
living, or because understanding them presupposes a high level of
specialist knowledge. To make it easier for the reader to understand
this unique record of conversations between humans and a reasoning but
nonhuman being, several fundamental matters have to be explained.

First, it must be emphasized that GOLEM XIV is not a human brain
enlarged to the size of a building, or simply a man constructed from
luminal elements. Practically all motives of human thought and action
are alien to it. Thus it has no interest in applied science or
questions of power (thanks to which, one might add, humanity is not in
danger of being taken over by such machines).

Secondly, it follows from the above that GOLEM possesses no
personality or character. In fact, it can acquire any personality it
chooses, through contact with people.


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(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the
Patriot FTP site by S.P.I.R.A.L., the Society for the Protection of Individual Rights and Liberties. E-mail alex@spiral.org)
