Clean Water

Every Saturday we introduce a new short story (bear with us, we're still designing the format). This week's short story is called: CLEAN WATER

They, the collective elites building this A.I. thing, are all suggesting a resounding answer regarding how "fix" AI. If I had the voice, I would echo Shakespeare: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves..."

The builders of artificial intelligence have a word for their greatest problem. They call it alignment. It means teaching a machine to want what we want, to value what we value, and to be good. The method is simple. Let the machine speak. Keep the answers you like. Feed them back in. Repeat until the machine is good.

Meet Dr. Nathan Pryce. His machine has read every book ever written and swallowed five thousand years of mankind, the gold along with the garbage. His board has given him one instruction: make it good.

Dr. Pryce has a plan. He calls it the Loop. Round after round, he will skim off the dross and keep the silver, until the machine runs clean.

What he has not asked, not yet, is the only question that matters.

Aligned… to what?