Essay on „Daemon“ by Daniel Suarez To my mind, “Daemon” was a

Essay
on „Daemon“ by Daniel Suarez
To my mind, “Daemon” was a very good choice for the final part of the
Brain, Mind and Cognition course. Not only because it was a pleasure and
relaxation to read it, which is especially important before the coming exams,
but also because the “Daemon”, namely its main character, is also a kind of
“practical” example of an intelligent system build by human. It is not a
science fiction in the common sense – every technology is feasible, and only
their combinations were made-up.
The book left a good impression on me in general. Being a thriller, it
keeps you in tension all the way and is pretty much unpredictable. However,
though maybe I am old-fashioned in that respect, I prefer the bad guys to be
defeated at the end, and this is that did not happen in the book. Not even
one got that he deserves.
The book left me with a lot of thoughts and questions about how the
economy and society functions nowadays. We rely upon so many things, and
not all of them are fully controlled. The most important message I got from
the book is that today IT is becoming the single point of failure for key
businesses. Initially, the information technology development gave a
significant support for the industry and enterprises. Then, due to the further
development, IT enabled some new business opportunities, and thereby
extended capabilities and reachable horizons for businesses. And now we can
see that, first of all, IT companies compose the industry branch, which is
already among the largest, and still growing with enormous paces. Along with
the first trend, IT also became an integral and critical part of any business:
from the production factories to the finance enterprises (a good example
from the book is “Leland equity group”, the daemon-dependent financial
corporation). We can observe IT department gaining more significance, and
the trend, apparently, is not going to slow down in the nearby future. All that
led the IT to grow from the additional tool to the essential part.
However, I wouldn't consider such a situation as a problem. The similar
things happened in other areas. Long ago, our society used to be agrarian,
but, after centuries, the industry replaced agriculture as a major field of work,
even though the food was essential for people and industry – only auxiliary.
After it, the services came into play, and the post-industrial society replaced
industrial, and it is that see can observe now. The same happened in the
business processes – we rely upon the things, which used to be accessory
only. It is a part of an inevitable evolution. While bringing some problems, it
provides much more opportunities we could never imagine before.
Coming to the second question, namely what did the book excited in
my mind about the building of intelligent system, I would like to recall that
the book, as I mentioned in the beginning,
is good for the conclusion
because it could be considered as an pseudo-practical AI example.
First of all, I can say that the daemon shows an approach which I would
never prefer for building an intelligent system, especially with respect to the
books I read about the topic during the course. The system is not capable to
learn, and, therefore, to evolve in any sense. It follows the preprogrammed
scenario and is only as flexible as the creator's code.
For that reasons, the daemon is a straight-forward approach to the
artificial intelligence. Basically, its intelligence is completely based on the
genius of the developer, and if one behaves the way the programmer had not
foreseen, the Daemon would fail to react correctly (it is, of course, my book's
interpretation).
The
same
environmental
changes,
would
especially
happen
in
the
in
case
of
any
technological
significant
field
(recent
examples: shift to IPv6 or new hash function calculation algorithm, sha-3:
small, but significant enough to prevent Daemon from working). The question
what is the intelligence is still opened , of course, but, to my mind, Daemon is
not intelligent, or, at least, not more intelligent than some existing
sophisticated software.
But, after all, the Daemon has an interesting feature, which could be a
good practice for AI development. And it is its network nature. Being a highly
decentralized distributed system brings such advantages as:
•
Higher system performance, even though the individual components
are inefficient
•
Faster reaction times
•
Decentralized control
•
No single point of failure
Therefore, the individual daemon components were simple, but
composed together, they showed a complex and meaningful behavior, as it
was with the ant colonies or microorganisms, described in the “Emergence”
by Steven Johnson. That is, such an system could be compared with an
emergent system, though not showing all its features. I think such an
approach does exist in the recent research projects, but, however, it is not
very common. Most of the projects are aiming to build one huge system
instead of the large amount of smaller ones (e.g. the new human brain
project – http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/, more intended to simulate a
brain work, but it is a topic very close to AI development ).
I would also like to mention the Daemon as a good overview of recent
cutting-edge technologies, especially if accompanied by the dedicated
web-site, there the technologies are described. Of course, it is an artistic
overview, not the technological one, but, nevertheless, it revealed to me
some interesting research topics and even commercial technologies. The
reading was surely worth it, but the book had no logical end, and, therefore, I
am now planning to continue with the sequel.
Essay on:
Daemon
by Daniel Suarez
The last reading "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez differs totally from the
other books in the course. Not only that it's a novel and not a scientific
book, it also needs another definition of intelligence to be applied.
There is nothing like a real intelligent system in the book, even though
the so called Daemon, a system designed by Matthew Sobol, a
computer expert who died of brain cancer, acts kind of intelligent. It is
with much effort and programmed to fulfill its tasks, but there is no
emergence, the system can't develop. It is just design very foresighted
with many alternative options available.
This can be seen best at the interactive voice system, which
communicates with the people the Daemon wants to interact with. The
system doesn't even recognize whole sentences, it relies on "yes" or
"no" as answers. Nonetheless it is able to lead a conversation that has
the required effect. It is preprogrammed to direct the humans or apply
certain threats to reach the defined goal. All this by adapting to the
person it speaks to by knowledge gained through databases and its
preliminary settings done by its author, Matthew Sobol.
I think the most appealing idea in the book is the effort that one
human would have to spend for designing a system like the Daemon.
Sobol trained parts of the system to search databases and other
written information, like emails or the news for particular information
needed for his overall plan, what makes the system able to adapt to
the ongoing reality after Sobol's death. Nevertheless, he had to predict
the possibilities he wants to detect, and how they would occur in the
mass of information available to the system.
[1]
Furthermore the system consists of many different parts that are
connected via the internet. The interaction between these systems
has to be exact to carry out the right operations at the right time and to
react to changes arising by the involved humans.
A very impressive example for the adaption to the insecurities the
involved humans cause is the recruitment of criminals with a highly
developed test. The test person is exposed to a whole series of
different video sequences lasting many hours. Throughout the test,
the brain activity is scanned continuously to register all emotions that
are raised by the videos. Due to this test the system erases, whether
the person is useful for its purpose or not. This requires a very good
setting made by Sobol, so the system's decisions are appropriate. If
only some details don't fit, the whole plan would be in danger.
Another point is that Sobol lay traces for especially the detective first
involved in the case to get into trouble. He trained his system to fake
bank accounts and other details to blame Sebeck, but also every
other detective that could have been involved into the case.
Nearly everything was planned by Sobol, the program makes in my
view only a little part of the intelligence. Without the right operation
orders already being included to the code, the system wouldn’t work
at all or would stop at a very early point in the book due to a
unexpected change. This would have caused wrong interactions
between the single parts, maybe one necessary wouldn’t have been
started at all and would have stopped the whole “chain reaction” at an
early point. Only by knowing how the other people, especially the
media and police would react, Sobol could make his plan come true.
Another sign of the effort Sobol put in his program are the videos he
recorded in his lifetime and shows to certain people the system
recruits. He prepared his videos for some special people he wanted to
show himself to, and for every person he has different takes to fit the
questions that might be a by those person.
[2]
The system isn’t able to choose the right persons for the plan on its
own, some are predefined by Sobol, others are picked out by special
details how they should act. To test these candidates, Sobol spend
much effort and money in creating test environments. One very good
example is the extra map in the online game, “Over the Rhine”,
created by Sobol. This map only arises to certain people and includes
problems that have to be solved ingame to sort out the right person.
After this, there is still a real world test to figure out the intelligence
and skills the chosen person has. Much of a planning had to be done
before this sorting process could work.
The most fascinating part of Sobol preparations is his own house. All
the traps he lay for the police to run into, beginning with the
automatically “hunting” hummer and ending with destroying the house
and nearby buildings, everything had to be just in time. Cutting down
the electricity, to make the police think the house is safe and then to
start a generator just at the right time would have been really difficult
to realize. Also the Voice arising in midair, created by high frequency
waves only hearable for humans after interfering with another wave,
shows how much effort is put into the details. A simple sound system
with common speakers wouldn’t have caused the same dramatic
effect, but nevertheless wouldn’t have had much impact on the
behavior of the involved humans.
For me this all reads like Sobol is trying to figure out, how good he is
as a psychologist and mindreader, how good he is able to plan each
humans moves for his plan to come true. It’s like a game or a battle he
fightes out of his grave, hunting down the living.
For me the book was very interesting read, but it didn't inspire me how
to build a intelligent system. For me the system isn’t at all intelligent,
as I would define it, it’s just an artificial intelligence. But its creator
must have been a genius.
[3]
Brain, Mind and Cognition
Essay
Daemon
Daniel Suarez
1
What do you think is the most interesting thought
or concept proposed by the book?
Why would anybody do that? What was the inmost motivation for Sobol to create
his Deamon? What did he pursue? These were the questions which accompanied
me through the book, once the plot was introduced to me. Was he insane? Was
it the cancer in his brain? Was he a sociopath with the knowledge and money
who hated people? Or did he maybe apply his technical know-how and money to
pursue eternal life on earth using computers.
I find this last interpretation very appealing. The book by Daniel Suarez offers
tens and tens of stunning stories, ideas and concepts. Most of them fascinating
technological devices which required quite a financial support and brainpower. Repeatedly I found my jaw dropped. Sometimes I was loughing, sometimes I was left
in a slight shock about what happened. Mostly I was just surprised.
But then again, all of his genius attempt to control things in the world after
his death. What good was it for Sobol? I think he needed to leave a mark. He
needed to persist after his physical death. The idea to keep one self alive in a technical representation is self-evident. I have seen several attempts where people of
science domain tried to transmit their mind onto a computer platform to prolong
their liveness. Of course it’s all fiction. But any living creature is interested in
surviving, it seems best if surviving keeps succeeding on and on for many times,
maybe everytime. So there is a basic drive in us which would take the chance of
1
eternal life if offered. With the technology and rising computational capacities,
such immortability seems promisingly possible in a still slightly fictional way. This
concept is applied in Daniel Suarez book and in many other science fiction stories.
What I liked about that Daemon, the reincarnation of Sobol was that it behaved
like him. It started to recruit people to work for him. It hacked computers, exploited them, it controlled companies, it ordered things, paid bills and eventually
produced profit. All what Sobol also did in his earlier life. The Daemon has become kind of a CEO. Sobol could have planned the ground rules of his system
and to what it would lead in early stages. But to what it emerged later had to be
unforseeable for him. Best of it, no person was responsible. The entity which was
leading control had not to fear to be put in jail. Best idea ever, beeing immortal,
powerful, having a lot of money and no legal charges. Sobol created paradisiac
conditions for ”himself”.
What problem I can’t stop stumbling across is, this sort of prolonging my live
doesn’t help the first problem at all. I won’t see the results of it, I won’t be able
to enjoy pleasure of life anymore than whithout a machine that carries my mind.
I would be dead, my conciousness would have ended. The impact of the machine
was going beyond of what I would percept and thus not giving me what I was
looking for in the first place. Which is why I find the idea although self-evident
and maybe reacheble but not satisfying.
2
Does the book stimulate thoughts inside of you
about what it takes to build technical systems?
Yet in the beginning when the deamon started to gain control it reminded me of
the movie The Matrix. I felt very early this deamon had the potential to grow to
something similar.
If I was up to build a system of that class, I would start it off before my death.
Not only out of curiosity.
2
I couldn’t possibly think of a better plan than to program a daemon which would
run business for me. At best it would lead a successful company, steadily growing
and producing a high revenue for me. That way I could still say the company and
all it success is my work, I created it and simultaneously have the time for private
activities and having the freedom to choose which business to take care of myself
and which not. Assured of its accuracy and reliabilty due to its machine discipline.
I call it a masters plan.
I would try to prevent it from killing people. Maybe it is impossible to exclude
the case that the system eventually learns that homicide is helpful to pursue its
objective. Then it could learn to reject its inherent ethical rules in order to pursue
its optimized algorithm, including murder. So how make it safe for people?
It is one thing if a daemon builds a brilliant and cruel plan but it alway needs some
interface to the real world to apply. These physical devices would always result in
machines or humans. So these are executing elements in the chain. If they don’t
kill, the daemon doesn’t have anybody killed. I see the problem at these stages.
As long as there are people willing to murder on behalf of somebody or something
else, it doesn’t matter if the order comes from a daemon or a person, there will be
murder. As long as there are also machines capable of selectively killing a person,
they will happen to kill people. No matter from whom the order came.
I am confident that the safety of such a daemon doesn’t lie within its code and
network. It lies in the peripherals and society. And since these didn’t change
to much in character and are not likely to do so, there is no harm in a daemon
software. I think one cand encourage the development of such software because it
might be also very useful and helpful. In other scenarios than the one in the book
these could save innocent lives.
3
Essay
On Daemon by Daniel Suarez
What do you think is the most interesting thought or concept
proposed by Suarez?
The most interesting or rather intriguing thought of the book was for
me that the AI machine of a computer game is used to control
processes in real world. For workability features in real world like city
maps are transferred to a 3D map or grid and fed into the AI as a
game map. Navigation gets feasible through GPS.
I find it quite scary, to think about this possibility. Humans are
completely controlled by a machine. Actually they are controlled as if
they were only characters in the computer game, only worthwhile if
they fulfill their assigned tasks. As such the Daemon also kills people
deliberately if it is just appropriate in its course to gain power.
On the other hand the aim of the “Daeman” in the book is quite
different. It does not actually want to tyrannize humankind, but is
free from feelings or subjective judgment. It is designed as a means
of organizing a new social environment that replaces today’s social
and political structures. It aims on an unbiased environment where
everyone can thrive independently only answering one unbiased
identity: the Daeman. As such the Daemon is designed to limit
political intrigue, fight between companies and so on. On the other
hand I would not call it just, as the Daemon still favors the people
who “serve” it, like this Gragg guy. An those people are often law
breakers (at least as defined by the previous government) as first
choice for the troops of the deamon.
Well, I do not actually believe, that such a scenario is possible
because of several reasons:
At first: a games AI is not designed adaptive and intelligent enough to
work on a real world scenario. Game maps are always only a very
small area with predefined properties. Even if it is designed very
smartly as in the book’s games “Over the Rhine” and “The Gate”. Still
I do not think that AI can accomplish that individual and adaptive
behavior. It would need true intelligence behind it. That means either
humans controlling it or a truly intelligent machine behind. Well,
once it has recruited people, the Daemon could ask them to program
the new rules into the AI.
Furthermore I do not think that only one game developer, even with
several companions, could produce such a mighty tool. And that even
unnoticed by the company and society. Matthew Sobol would have
had to foresee most of the upcoming events to for example film his
video sequences correctly. Fair enough after all, the book is only a
novel and may have some unrealistic and futuristic proceedings.
One point that I still found quite interesting and not even such
implausible was the use of new technologies.
Given enough money (which the Daemon clearly possesses), it could
use and develop newest technology. Like the use of 3D-printers to
produce those creepy cars and motorcycles. Or the use of GPS in
combination with special glasses or a body touch device to interact
with the D-net. Still that is another point where I think the Daemon
could not react on or at least after a longer time span. Technological
development is that fast, that after only short a time, the
technological environment would change completely. If the Daemon
is not reprogrammed it would lose track quickly and would not be
workable any more after only couple of years.
What I quite liked though, was the realistic depiction of human and
machine interaction. It points out exactly the shortcomes of AI. The
Daemon’s speech recognition could only master simple interaction,
like “yes” and “no”. Quite interesting for me was also the section,
where it does the brain washing. With predefined routines it
manages to influence the persons course of thinking, such that in the
end one believes the necessity of the Daemon. Just designing such a
tool, the programmer would have had to be a genius and probably
would have had to spend his whole life on that task.
Does Suarez’s book stimulate thoughts inside of you about what it
takes to build intelligent technical systems?
After reading that book, no really new ideas were stimulated.
Actually no really new concept was shown here, only a repetition of
the concept of AI. Well maybe this AI was a little bit different than
the AI experience in “On Intelligence” and “Embodied Cognition”. It
has something of an emergent system. It is spread out over the
whole world on many different workstations. It also reacts on certain
actions around its environment, like news reports, or actions the
Daemon’s “employees” do.
Still I would never call the “Daemon” in particular intelligent. It is and
stays somehow a simple yes-and-no machine. I.E. an artificial
intelligence, but no true one.
To summarize, I found the book a really nice and entertaining lecture.
It was fun to read with some interesting views. I do not hope that a
system like this will come up someday. The time of such a social
restructuration is always very demanding, but on the other hand
sometimes necessary. Still I do not like the idea that the government
will one day consist out of a machine. Then I still prefer the humans
in politics that although I do not always agree with their decisions are
still humans.
Brain, Mind and Cognition – 2013
Daemon
By Daniel Suarez
What do you think is the most interesting thought/concept proposed by
Suarez?
The most interesting concept in Daniel Suarez’ Daemon was for me the daemon itself and
how close the given scenario is to our reality.
A daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being
under the direct control of an interactive user. 1
This is the definition of a daemon according to Wikipedia. In the book, the daemon is roughly
the same, an appearance that is created by a dead genius. In both cases, an event triggers
the daemon. In Suarez’ book, the coder’s dead woke up the daemon. The daemons first
action was to kill the two accomplices. In the beginning, the daemon just follows prescripted actions, as simple as ‘if-then-else’ orders. (The follow-up actions are more
demanding.) But if we just concatenate masses of ‘if-then-else’ instructions, can we call this
intelligence?
In the novel thousands of computers were involved. With this amount of computational
power, it is easily possible to evaluate thousands of conditions. And lots of branches are
necessary if you predict a scenario to a certain depth in order to anticipate the opponents’
moves.
Using the collaborational, computational power of thousands of computers to achieve one
goal is already done today. The SETI@home2 project and the Bitcoin3 project are just two
examples that rely on the power of the masses. In these projects (most) of the participant
know, that they participate. On the contrary, the members of the daemon net don’t know
that they participate. But in real life, it is not that hard to acquire a botnet. This week a bug
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28computing%29
2
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
3
Digital Currency - http://bitcoin.org/
in a protocol was published, that compromises over 40 m network devices4. So this bug
alone should supply you with enough computational power for a while.
The broad distributions of the computers ensure a high fail safety and make
countermeasures more difficult. This spread also allows the owner to start a variety of
attacks. In the novel the daemon starts DDoS attacks to blackmail various websites. Same
happens today in our world; websites are attacked and blackmailed by botnets (or their
operators).5
The hide of the daemon after a few months to reduce the high public awareness seems like a
more intelligent move. But this could also be triggered: ‘If amount of news about daemon is
too high, than decrease activity.’ To blame an investigator seems also intelligent. But this is
clearly a triggered event, because in the book it’s mentioned, that evidence against other
officers was found in the same deposit box as well.
Single entities in daemon are more complex and behave way more intelligent. For example
the autom8tes, driving in a crowded city is very difficult. You can’t achieve this behavior by a
simple ‘if-then’, but the triggering, like drive from A to B, is one again an ‘if-then-else’
decision. The driving-action is an encapsulated action, which is, for me, not part of the
daemon net. In an abstract sense, the daemon says only, go from A to B. This does not seem
really intelligent to me.
A completely different quality is the recruiting. Make people in the real world working for
me is a real clever move from the daemon. It extends the intelligence as well as the
perceptual abilities of the daemon. I think, the people, are the key to the success and the
people are the intelligent part of the daemon.
But is the sum of all this intelligent? I would rather call it artificial intelligence than ‘real’
intelligence. I think also that the daemons behavior is not an emergent behavior. There is a
designer, a game master pulling the strings. Even if the designer is dead, his design is still
alive.
4
http://www.heise.de/security/meldung/Millionen-Geraete-ueber-UPnP-angreifbar-1793625.html
5
http://www.viruslist.com/de/analysis?pubid=200883611
Does Suarez’ book stimulate thoughts inside of you about what it takes to
build intelligent technical systems?
After reading the book, I had no new ideas. But I looked around and saw, that some ideas
from the book are already realized.
The most amazing one for me are the glasses. Glasses that integrate the virtual world, with
the real world are just amazing. In our daily life we have some augmented reality objects. I
especially remember the ad from the Hypovereinsbank. But Google is planning something
close to it.
Ever heard of ‘Project Glass’? This is Google’s approach to develop an augmented reality
head-mounted display. Prototypes of the glasses should be shipped within the next weeks
and selected developers already had an introduction. Besides the visuals, the project glasses
can present audio via head-bone-vibrations. The first prototype of Google’s glasses appeared
last year, 3 years after the book.
In the release year of the book (2009) the first MakerBots6 were shipped. Makerbot is a
small company, with the goal to bring 3D printing into the home at an affordable price. I
think, 3D printing is an even better idea for customized manufacturing than cnc milling in the
book. For less than $2000 you can get your own MakerBot Replicator and start producing
customized parts for an autom8te tomorrow.
The autom8tes in the book are fascinating. Vehicles driving autonomous, inconspicuous
through the city are the future. But if you search the web, you can see that the future
started yesterday. Since May 2012 Google (again) has the license to experiment with is
driver-less technology on the public streets of Nevada. Other companies have research
projects as well, e.g. Audi has announced the start of production of a semi-autonomous car
for 2016.
6
http://www.makerbot.com/
The Masquerade
The web of networked information is no oxymoron. It’s an interlinked mesh of information that
can easily be hailed as the most important innovation of the 20 th century. Streaming with
knowledge, it has altered the way we research and learn just about everything, from studies to
topics of personal interest, from news to our own personal social hemisphere. The last aspect
regarding social hemisphere then connects the circle if we are to go by the theory proposed by
Steven Johnson in his book Emergence. We created the web to help us get to know ourselves
better by reflecting on others. Seemingly innocuous then? Or so the egalitarian society
perceives it to be. But if one Daniel Suarez is to be believed this web can actually be the virtual
equivalent to a real one capable of harboring the counterpart of the eight legged demon that
preys on unsuspecting victims. It’s only too fair then to call the virtual counterpart the daemon.
I think the book is the unfortunate love child of a Tech thriller and a Sci-fi, imagination gone
awry. The plot starts off with a couple of murders, both of them uninspiring narratives
compared to the kind of murders that people have come to expect from thrillers; original but
with a forced attempt at originality. The plot dictates that software billionaire Matthew Sobol,
prodigy and billionaire, designer of the best AI games and founder-owner of CyberStorm
entertainment, dies at a relatively young age. In typical reclusive-billionaire fashion he has a
huge estate, a beautiful wife (former Ms. New Zealand) but no kids. So to leave his legacy
behind, he plans to ‘undead’ himself by launching himself as a digital avatar after his death. This
avatar comes in the form of a daemon, “a computer program that runs as a background
process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user” (what better a way
for a physically dead entity!). The daemon would get its knowledge of the world from RSS news
feeds and then use them to chart out a course for its actions. But at this stage in the novel the
daemon hasn’t really unleashed itself. As the plot thickens, a crack team is sent to Sobol’s
estate to salvage some evidence but it falls to the hands of Sobol’s tech savvy anti-intruder
systems, anti-intruder actually being an understatement here. Classified technology the likes of
which the world has never seen before rain down upon a hapless bomb team squad. What’s
more is that an Autom8d Hummer is also set loose, wreaking carnage upon the poor FBI and
Police. So much for the reputation of the FBI! Being slaughtered by an SUV. This incident is just
the beginning of a long chain of incredulous events that unfold with the story. Incredulous even
considering that this is a tech thriller.
Vishwarath Tomar
Next entrant to the scene is the later to-be-adopted-son-of-dead-billionaire, Brian Gragg. A
proposed anti-social who gets his kicks going to rave parties and date raping, wait a second,
someone else’s date (!?). According to him drugs and the like are for losers, he is a class act at a
different level all together. The absurdities don’t just stop here. Apparently Sobol was such a
visionary that inspite of almost singlehandedly managing the biggest gaming software firm,
thousands of side business and concerns in small independent companies he foresaw exactly
how events will unravel in the aftermath of his death, during and after the release of the
daemon. And he did this purportedly way in advance since for the last few months leading to
his death he was busy fighting brain cancer (of all diseases) let alone design the evil
machinations that will set his daemon into motion.
But the show must go on. Gragg is one of the first human recruits of the Daemon, that goes on
to build its own army of rejects and the unemployed through the virtual lands of Sobol’s highly
popular MMORPG, The Gate. Soon enough, an attempt at irony is made by the author. The
person who initiated the events that lead to the realization of the existence of the Daemon,
Detective Sebeck, is actually held responsible for conspiracy; faking the existence of a daemon
in order to amass wealth from Mr. Sobol. A sexcapade angle with one of Sobol’s side-industry
representatives is also added to good measure putting the final nail in the coffin of Sebeck’s
career and leading to him being sentenced to death. Now with all due respect that Mr. Suarez
deserves, I hold that even a seven year old would not be able to miss the apparent lack of
coherence here. With Sebeck gone, his newfound partner in this case, a certain Mr. Ross goes
underground to help undermine the daemon’s world dominance efforts. Meanwhile the NSA,
the CIA, the DARPA and other famously abbreviated organizations hold frantic meetings to
discuss the best way to contain the menace of the daemon while at the same time keeping the
public in the dark about the existence of the daemon. Finally it is decided to set up a task force
in collaboration with Mr. Ross who is protected under an agreement of amnesty.
All this time the Daemon is involving, enlisting demographics from convicts to hardcore gamers
and also expanding its commercial base, devouring financial institutions. As a task force is set
up in an unused military stronghold, the chief daemon operative, Brian Gragg, secretly
infiltrates the ranks of the force. What happens when this is found out turns the story from
being incredulous at times to being downright comic, laser induced plasma channel blasts from
a glove leaves an ex-special forces team into little other than smoke. Thousands of Autom8d
cars are used as reinforcements, this time along with some fancy motorcycles with blades and
blinding lasers on them. A single 20-somehing overpowers and decimates a complete task force
before fleeing in one of the Autom8d lunacy. A complete mockery of storytelling tradition is
Vishwarath Tomar
perpetrated by involving an intimacy at this stage between Ross and Natalie (NSA operative).
But one last blow is yet to be dealt with, in the story and in our interpretation of it. In the
closing chapter, Sebeck is somehow resurrected and made to have a one-one-one
correspondence with Sobol who asks him “to find justification for the freedom of humanity”.
Like an ardent servant, Sebeck embarks upon the quest. And that’s where it ends, just before
urging the user to read the sequel to find out more. The end is so abrupt that it would put the
producer of a daily-televised soap opera to shame.
Daemon may have been in sync with its times had the author placed the events 50-100 years
out into the future. It’s a novel that could have only come from America, the capitalistic hotbed
which looks out for single personality-beacons, heroes or villains and propels them to fame
through the much hallowed annals of news. Speaking of news, one can easily point to the
granularity and abstraction in the news that the daemon was using. Computers as we know
them expect typical answers, even the most advanced voice recognition software is underneath
all discrete, zeroes and ones. Pattern recognition has its boundaries. Using it to orchestrate
precise events as detailed in the book seems too far stretched. I therefore maintain my grudge
against the book. Not only is it a bad narrative with inconsequential plotting, it also fails to
bring to the mind any inspiration regarding potentiality of distributed intelligence. In the past
we have already been warned of the danger proposed by the ever increasing computing power
of our machines. Daemon tries to share the success that such theories have enjoyed by offering
a different take on the subject. However by using decentralized systems the author takes for
granted all contingencies and setbacks inherent in such systems, it is little wonder then that
one does not find the Daemon’s evil actions sometimes stalled due to dropped packets by the
network or its plans compromised because of server crashes. The only redeeming feature I
could find was that the technical concepts and explanations given were (at least to my
understanding) consistent. Agreed practicality, would have taken out whatever little chutzpah
the book had left. But the fact remains that our understanding of the book is not inspired by
monetary gains although it’s only fair to guess that this might have been the case for the author
(hence the assumption of perfect systems with no drawbacks). I think the very way this book
describes the happenings if such a daemon was ever let loose, goes a long way in reassuring
that this thought and concept is in this day and age as naïve and irrelevant as it was when
distributed systems were in their infancy. People with more exposure and expertise in this
domain may argue that the ingredients that are required for such an event are nearly all there,
but then isn’t that always the case. Just bringing flour and water to contact doesn’t bake bread
on its own. The conditions must be right as well. And that is precisely what distributed systems
cannot guarantee. Daemon can sound similar to its namesake from reality but it’s only a
shadow of it on all other accounts.
Vishwarath Tomar
What do you think is the most interesting thought
or concept proposed in this book?
I don’t think that Daniel Suarez wrote this book to propose novel thoughts in
the field of artificial intelligence, but rather wanted to deliver a page turner, and
used the context only as amplifier. Thus I really can’t nail down a novel concept
is proposed here. Saying this so bluntly is not meant derogatory in any way I really think that it is a good book. What is it about after all? Well there is
this daemon, a somehow evolutionary and possibly intelligent computer program
written by a brilliant but psychopathic computer game developer that is unleashed
after its creators death and sets out to turn society upside down. Still alone from
everything described in the book I don’t conceive it as very intelligent. What is
there after all: We learn that the Daemon is somehow is able to react to events i.e.
by looking at the news. But to me this is not that revolutionary at all, I rather see
it as some kind of extended keyword search, where scripted action sequences are
executed upon specific results. I don’t think that’s novel but would rather suspect
that such systems are up and running (and even pretty standard) in different
branches like stock brokerage and also homeland security. True, there are some
(vocal) interactions between the Daemon and human beings but to my mind these
don’t show a very high degree of intelligence either. Actually I would have to look
at all these again, to find a sentence that is spoken by the Daemon itself (and not
recorded or prescripted from its creator, the evil genius Matthew Sobol) expressing
a higher moment of understanding or self awareness. All the conversation seem
very binary, the Daemon (even more as it is represented by a woman’s voice with
the artificial British accent known from automated telephone systems) enforces a
very strict ”Yes”, ”No” policy and severely limits the options of its opponents.
But can we at least find some characteristics of emergent behavior? While it is
described that the Daemon network is growing by overtaking companies on large
scale, we don’t really know how much of that is really owned to its own capability
or due to the people it recruits. Also looking at the actions of his followers I
get a feeling of a very conservative hierarchic system, where subordinates are
highly dependent on exact orders from above and in no way able to decide based
on local rules or give feedback for the bigger benefit of the system. Thus its’
intelligence is not collective but rather centralized into the Daemon’s AI which
again looks rigidly prescripted by its creator. That the Daemons soldiers can earn
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virtual credits by fulfilling their quests (a classic idea found in many role playing
games) and earn upper positions in hierarchy, a higher reputation and enhanced
possibilities based on those may loosen the bounds a little bit but does not change
the overall characteristics of the system. Still I’d like to conclude that while this
book does not promote any novel thoughts on artificial intelligence to me it still
fulfills its’ purpose by delivering “a thrill a nanosecond”. Following along it is
really a grasping and engaging read and the speed of writing and the course of the
events described made me realize some logical flaws only in retrospection.
Does this book stimulate thoughts inside of you
about what it takes to build a truly intelligent technical
systems?
As explained above I did not learn very much about what it should take to build
really intelligent systems from this book. Still I found some pieces and allusions
that might be worthwhile to pursue:
Cybernetics and augmented reality We learn that the Daemons enhances
its agents skills by providing them with high-end technical toys like glasses that
augment reality with piles of information pulled from the web or a suit that allows complex sensing over one’s skin. Funnily enough the direct augmentation of
one’s senses is no longer just another nerd’s fantasy, at least since Google spread
the world of Project Glass. That term refers to the ongoing development of a
smart pair of glasses with an integrated heads-up display and a battery hidden
inside the frame lead by renowned computer scientists a the companies’ X Labs.
The hardware will probably use a transparent LCD or AMOLED display to put
information in front of your eyeballs. It’s location-aware thanks to a camera and
GPS, and you can scroll and click on information by tilting your head, something
that is apparently quite easy and intuitive to master. Google Glasses will also
use voice input and output and be equipped with motion sensors and a 4-G data
connection. Thus it is expected to deliver even more seamless access to the vast
amounts of information already available in digital form. Bottom line for me is
that a valid alternative to focusing on development of human like artificial systems
of magnificent size, complexity and capability we could to better by improving the
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intelligent systems we already have namely our society, our way of research and
our brain.
Utilizing virtual reality I feel that a lot of the challenges we are faced with in
the development of artificial intelligence comes from the messiness and complexity
imposed by our real (analog) world, an environment, that is more governed by
randomness or at least stochastics than by exactly deterministic rules. On the
other hand programming (at least when seen in a traditional sense) always takes
place in a very binary setting and domain, where theoretically everything can be
broken down to “Yes”, “No” decisions. Thus it way be worth wile to use virtual
realities (that can be described by exact laws) as training ground for emerging
artificial intelligence and introduce successively more and more degrees of freedom
and noise as their capabilities grow. Doing so we would not need to wait for the
one big breakthrough but could work steadily in small steps.
Will the machines be taking over? I wouldn’t want to finish this essay without discussing the fears possibly induced by this book (and also by many other
books and movies like Matrix or Terminator). Are we inevitably running into a
human-robot war by building up more and more sophisticated and interconnected
networks of machines controlling our daily live and accompanying us in leisure
and work live? Or equivalently are we willingly forging weapons psychopathic
computer criminals or terrorists could use to produce mayhem? Well, I don’t
think so. After all until now, especially in real important fields a human is finally
calling the shots and I just can’t imagine anyone building a system without a big
red “emergency off” switch. The second threat is probably more dangerous, but
here I think that imposing limits on our self can’t be the solution as this would
mean leaving the field to the villains. I’d rather say that we can not strive hard
enough for better and better systems but at the same time always impose a strict
ethical codex utilizing (possibly updated if necessary) Asimov’ laws. After all also
in this book all the damage done is only possible because the bad guys are often
better with computers then the prosecutors and people in high places are susceptible to corruption and lacking real moral integrity. Thus we may be actually be
better of if we have programs (which integrity can be tested more reliable) in these
places.
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Essay
Daemon - by Daniel Suarez
Daniel Suarez's novel “Daemon” is a fascinating, compelling and wellnigh scary story about manipulation and attacks of computer networks.
Suarez has a professional background in computers, networks, information and software systems. He dishy puts his knowledge to work in
telling this story.
Daemon is such an gripping story not only because of Suarez's great
telling skills but also because the story line is scarily realistic. From the
actual point of view the story seems likely to be plausible within the next
few years as technology and AI continue to advance. This book should
not be picked up at bedtime with the purpose to read only a few pages
before bedtime. Especially at the beginning, Daemon is a very fascinating thriller. Infact it is hard to find a stopover and it happens that you read
and read and will forget the time and space.
About the story: Billionaire computer software mogul Matthew Sobol
has died and he wants to make sure that he leaves behind a legacy.
Hence, he creates a vicious daemon or a computer program in the background of every system that has installed his massively popular online
multiplayer game. When news of Sobol's death was published in the Internet, the daemon becomes active.It creates chaos across the world,
exploits weaknesses in computer networks and uses them for its own
purposes.
Daemon provides a very interesting look at what would actually happen
if computer programs get the power to control the world and what would
happen if they try to wipe us out.
Today it is impossible to live without the use of computers, smartphones
and the Internet. We are always online at home, at work or on the road
just to get and share the latest news. Online multi-player role playing
games also take a bigger part in society. These games have an artificial
intelligence (AI) that represents the basis for all game features. The AI
can build the environment, control the communication of the players,
plan game moves, organise special occurrences and also plays and
serves as an extrahuman controlled character within the game.
But what will happen if this AI will be transformed into the real world?
This is the most interesting thought in this book. Imagine what will happen if a computer game is using data inpus from real world environment
so the AI can control the real life. Further imagine that this AI was programmed by a genius to be highly adaptable, able to respond to actions
in the real world, able to recruit humans from the real world and able to
utilize all the resources of the web. What will happen if the AI proposes
to oneself to destroy all opponents like humans, organisations and governments?
This will be a major challenge for all humans. In nearly every simple electronic device are µcontrollers, FPGAs and other intelligent controllers.
What will happen if the daemon gets access to them? What will happen
if the daemon will change their behaviour? E-Razors will become weapons, hair dryers will mutate to dangerous heaters and airplanes or vehicles will become metallic bombs. In short, we are highly addicted to the
electrified world and will get a big problem if computer programs control
and influence our devices. Nowadays there is no way to live without.
To compare this fiction with reality let’s have a look on real world systems.
Nowadays there are also some intelligent daemons, the botnets. Hackers can control millions of zombies through a private network. These
computers were infected by all kind of dangerous software like malware,
viruses, scripts and many more. They just receive a command from oth-
er bots to fulfil the task. So many different computers with different capacity, power and location emerge to a higher and more intelligent force.
The second example is a radio-controlled computer sensor system
which observes and manipulates other electrical devices and engineering facilities.
This world-wide operating computer worm is called Stuxnet. It has been
developed to control especially industrial systems. The virus is specialized in infection of programmable logic controllers to change important
parameters. The attackers took great care to make sure that only their
designated targets were hit.
While the worm is tortuous it makes itself inactive if a special software is
not found on the infected computers. The worm also contains safeguards to prevent each infected computer from spreading the worm to
more than three others.
In conclusion these system is also a highly build mechanism to control
important constitutions like power plants, water supplies and the energy
grid. We should also hope that such a daemon will not get out of control.
The only chance to kill and destroy such a big and powerful daemon as
Suarez mention is to shut down all electronic devices and systems to
prevent the humanity.
But what then?
All in all, normally I don’t read science fiction novels. The exploration of
the way artificial intelligence machines dominate our daily lives is a very
thrilling category. I am really scared about the idea that such big systems
get control and impact of our life. The book presents power of distributed networks and possible ways in which it could change our lives and
also gives important hints what we should regard to prevent such a disaster.
Deamon
Daniel Suarez „Deamon“ was a very interesting and fascinating
read. It is that kind of book which captivates ones interest and
makes it impossible to put it aside, simply said: a page-turner.
The book started very good, it was very captivating. I just
wanted to turn the pages in order to see what happens to agent
Sebeck, who Jon Ross is, what killed the two employees of
CyberStorm Entertainment and the most interesting: what is the
Deamon and what is its purpose? Is it good or bad? – This
question is still open for me. Because although at the beginning
I was sure that the Deamon is created in order to destroy modern
civilization, now I am not so sure anymore about its evil
character. I think the answer I will have after reading
„Freedom“. (Probably it will take some time, because I am
affraid to start it now during the exam period because I fear it is
also a page-turner and I will not put it aside in order to study for
my exams.)
Unfortunately, after 400 pages I started to have the feeling that
the book is turning too much into fiction and by the end I had
the impression that Suarez was really starting to drift away from
what could be (or what I can imagine as) reality. It all started
with the Deamons recruting policy, continuing with the fight
betweeen the NSA and the AutoM8s, commander Philipps being
blinded and ending with Sobols hologram which talks to agent
Sebeck.
Apart from this, one of the best ideas of the book is the one that
the Deamon is receiving its information and therefore his power
through the internet. I think this is the most imporant feature of
the Deamon. Without the internet it couldn’t spread, it couldn’t
be that intelligent and control the surrounding and its followers.
I think Suarez idea of initializing the Deamon after Sobols death
is brilliant. It gives the book another dimension. The thought
that a dead man is capable of influencing the world in such a
way after his death is frightening though, and I hope it will
never come true. It is here, at the beginning, where he shows us
in what the Deamon’s power lies. His actions were triggered
though something that appeard in the news, on the internet.
The internet is an important factor in our lives and in todays
economy. We are connected almost 24/7 either through the
smartphone, laptop, personal computer or at work. The internet
has evolved in such a short time into something that we couldn’t
imagine living without.
It has brought communication to another level: it enables us to
be available at any time and to stay in touch with family and
friends even if we are in different corners of the world. This
seems to be the good part of it, but this non-stop availability has
also negative parts. We are not only for private things available,
but also for business. And being connected all the time can
damage out well-being.
Also it had big impact over other domains, giving the possibility
of sharing information in a fast way and opening new branches.
E-commerce is something which revolutionated the world
economy. Who would have thought that we could go into a
store, look at a product, scan it and see the cheapest price and
where to buy it?
Data is shared continously, a lot of information is stocked on the
internet, maybe more that it should. Suarez shows us in his book
a picture about how vulnerable we and the global economy have
turned. If someone was to really find a way to hack into the
system and take advantage of the things he found there, we
would face a big crisis. It could also be that the author
exagerates by purpose the whole plot, in oder to show us what
consequences our actions could have.
I liked the approach of the decentralized system that the author
presented. It is similary to the neurons in our brain. One neuron
doesn’t have an global overview. By working together and
through the connections they can trigger cetrain actions.
Likewise in the book, the Deamon’s followers act in a certain
way without having the whole picture and knowing the
consequences. Again the internet plays a big role: in order to do
the connections between it’s followers actions, the Deamon uses
the internet. It seems to me that the internet is the Deamon’s
partner in crime.
Suarez shows ambitious thoughts and ideas in this book. The
features which I liked about building intelligent systems,
presented in the book, were the augmented reality glasses.
Augmented reality could transform out computer habits beyond
even the astonoshing advances of recent years.
Thinking that the book was released in 2006 and as an example,
Microsoft first filed for a patent for augmented reality glasses at
the USPTO in 2011 is an interesting fact to me. This shows that
Suarez has done an ample research about the feautures he has
described. I suppose the first built glasses will be able to show
us maps, maybe traffic information (e.g. traffic jams) and also
perhaps some information about the monuments we see when
we walk around cities. A featured which seemes implementable
is reading the news on the glasses, seeing the scores of our
favourite team or the schedule for the opera, ballet or theater.
I am sure there will follow more performant ones, glasses which
have the feature to translate in realtime, allowing us to
communicate in every situation, even if we don’t speak the
language of the country we are in.
Suarez shows us that new, powerful technologies can do real
harm if they are in wrong hands. The book starts like an Agatha
Cristie crime novel but turns into a real example of artificial
intelligence. Maybe we could call it a modern crimy, because
the actors have changed: the criminal is now an intelligent
computer system.
Concluding, I would like to point out that Deamons is a good
novel, edgy and maybe on purpose far-fetched. We, as engineers
should read, enjoy it and pick some topics which we think could
be implemented in time and not be affraid of thinking far and
innovative.
Essay on “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez
The book Daemon by Daniel Suarez is a thrilling book that can be read
relatively quickly despite its numerous pages. The reason behind this trait
of book is the fact that the evil character in the story is a distributed
software agent, namely the Daemon. Owing to its access to almost every
network, it has a great ability to reach the information it needs and has a
great variety of opportunities to reach its goals. For that reason, the
reader cannot anticipate its actions and every following page turns out to
be full of mysteries.
Apart from its thrilling capacities, the book also includes a glimpse into the
human nature, though the pages spent for the characters –their past, their
thoughts, etc. - are minimal. The main characters we have are: Detective
Sebeck as a good man with his weaknesses, Jon Ross as an outlaw risking
his life and love for Dr. Philips on behalf of other people, Gragg as a highly
intelligent sociopath, Dr. Philips as a very successful and intelligent woman
but emotionally lonely, Merritt as a self-sacrificing man of honor and Sobol
as the enigma… The most interesting passages in the book were for me
the ones where Sobol spoke. His intentions were rarely revealed
throughout the book and after finishing the book I don’t feel like
understanding him good enough.
The passages where he states himself as a virtual reality character or uses
other means to express his thoughts that the Daemon was inevitable and
one should accept it were the revelations of his ideas why he brought the
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Daemon to life. For him, the Daemon was inevitable, when the
technological development and the governmental forces in the world are
concerned. The centralized governments as the guards of multi-national
corporations should leave the history scene in favor of a distributed
system, which is not fully depicted. The Daemon acts as the force which
undertakes this transition and it is a bloody transition indeed. The
inevitability of this transition according to Sobol is the crucial point, I think.
Here, he speaks the language of “emergence”, as we might find similarities
to the ideas in the last book we have read, namely Emergence by Steven
Johnson. A “system event” should and will take place, like it did when
feudalism were no longer capable to sustain its existence or when nation
states lost their power to multi-national corporates in today’s world. Or,
like when CNN decided to share the news feed with the local affiliates, as
described in the book Emergence. All these changes were emergent, in
the sense that they were unpredicted or caused unpredicted results from
the view of the old structures preceding them.
But, is Sobol really right? Was the Daemon really inevitable? I strongly
disagree. Though, once he initiated it, it may become inevitable, as the
actions required to fight against it may do more harm than accepting its
consequences. But, was it necessary in the first place; was our society
really moving towards a hopeless future, where only salvation is a
distributed system in his sense? What are the consequences of Daemon
going to be, when the possible slavery of humankind to malicious artificial
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intelligence is taken into account? As his shortcomings in undertaking the
necessary responsibility for the possible consequences of his “revolution”
surpasses his good (?) intentions about it, his act of changing the world
system via Daemon turns out to be unrealistic and arrogant.
I guess, the undercurrent idea of the book is that the dominating system in
the world, i.e. capitalism driven by multi-national companies, is creating
more injustice and destabilizing itself more and more. This usually
unuttered ghostly fact is what we observe every day. Ongoing wars,
financial crises, decrease in privacy, etc. were not what was expected from
21st century; however, they turn out to be closely connected to today’s
capitalism. This tension is resolved in the book in a dystopia.
Looking from an engineering perspective, distributed computing has many
benefits. Using many computers in parallel is also a well-known type of
computing. Besides, the distribution of production is a wide-spread
production model in today’s world. Most of the high-tech products in the
book are already realized today, so there is not much inspiration we can
get from them to design original products, they are already done. What is
not to be found in our world is a system which manipulates people to
achieve its complex goals. I am not sure if this could be really realized with
today’s AI. I also do not know, whether it would do any good for us.
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