Will We Say 1 Superhuman Super-life Is Worth 10 Normal Lives?

Before too many decades we may see the appearance of a small number of genetically-enhanced humans with higher intelligence or much longer lifespans. This may create a social upheaval, and the tremors may penetrate deep into our laws and moral ideas.

Today if you ask anyone whether all human beings are of equal worth, almost anyone would agree with such a statement. In many cases people act in a very different way, as if the citizens of their country are worth more than the citizens of other countries. But at least almost all of us would answer affirmatively when asked if all human lives are of equal value.

But in the future, things may be very different. We may see the rise of a small group of humans with extremely long lifespans. We may also see the appearance of some humans with a much higher level of intelligence. If that happens, will the “all humans are of equal worth” idea continue to be endorsed by all? Something very different may happen. We may see people start talking about “super-lives” that are worth more than regular lives.

Here is the kind of reasoning that may come into play:

Is the life of a man who will live to be 1000 worth the same as a man who will live to be 80? Is the life of a man with an intelligence quotient of 500 worth the same as a man with an IQ of 100? Of course not! We must distinguish between ordinary lives, and super-lives. It is only logical to consider a super-life as worth more than a regular life. How much more? That is a matter to be calculated, using logical mathematics.

What kind of “logical mathematics” might such a person have in mind? It could work something like this. Someone might calculate that if a superhuman has a lifespan x times greater than the regular lifespan, then that superhuman has a super-life worth x times more than a regular life. Someone might also calculate that if a superhuman has an intelligence x times greater than the average human intelligence, then that superhuman has a super-life worth x times more than a regular life. Such calculations might be applied simultaneously, so that someone with a lifespan five times greater than the average lifespan (and an intelligence five times greater than the average intelligence) might then be considered to be worth 25 times more than a person of average intelligence and average lifespan. 

I am not at all saying that I agree with such calculations, nor am I saying that a superhuman should be considered some type of “super-life” worth more than a regular life. I am merely suggesting that this type of reasoning may become popular, regardless of its validity. It may even be that the rules of law are rewritten to take such calculations into effect. One can only imagine the bizarre legal ramifications.

A new law might be introduced saying that if a superhuman is very sick or badly injured, and needs to get to the hospital quickly, he has the right to drive to the hospital as fast as he can, even if that means running over and killing ordinary humans in his path. Superhumans may have a special 911-like number they can call to summon an ambulance, a type of ambulance that arrives more quickly than ambulances for ordinary humans.

The government might cut foreign aid to help poor and starving people in other countries, reallocating such funds to pay for the genetic engineering needed to create superhumans. If anyone complained about the loss of life, the official rebuttal might be: it is better to create one super-life than to save ten regular lives.

A new law might be introduced saying that if a superhuman has a reasonable reason for suspecting that a regular human might kill him, the superhuman has the right to draw a gun and kill that human. Superhumans may walk out of court uncharged, by merely using an excuse such as this: “He looked rather mean and scary, so I killed him.”

Superhumans might be granted cards that place them first in line for any organ transplant, first in line for any blood transfusion, and first in line whenever they walk into an emergency room. Instead of the traditional lifeboat rule of “women and children first” when a ship is sinking, the new rule might be “superhumans first; then women and children.” Faced with two fires at the same time in a city, computers might route fire trucks to first go to the blazing home of a superhuman, and only later to go to the blazing house of a regular human.

When it comes to education, we can expect that the superhumans will get the finest free schools along with free college educations at elite universities. No one will be able to resist this slogan: a super-mind is a super-terrible thing to waste.

If such laws and provisions are introduced, they will no doubt create bitter resentment. We ordinary humans are used to being the top race on this planet. We will not take kindly to being relegated to second-class status. One can imagine an angry mob of regular humans carrying torches and pitchforks, along with hand-made signs saying: Death to the superhumans!

If something like that happens, then all the talk about superhumans having a thousand-year lifespan may turn out to be ironically inaccurate. Hunted down by resentful humans, the superhumans may not even live as long as ordinary humans.

The Pink Wall May Block the Superintelligence Singularity

Ray Kurzweil has advanced a very popular theory that the Singularity is near – a time where there will be an explosive growth in machine intelligence, one that sees computers and robots becoming far smarter than humans. To back up this theory, Kurzweil and his supporters typically show graphs showing exponential growth in the power and speed of computer hardware and computer memory.

But in order for you to have anything like machine superintelligence, we would need to see more than just computer hardware increasing by orders of magnitude (factors such as 100, 1000 or 10,000). We would also need to see computer software making similar strides. If today someone were to create a computer with a million times the speed and memory of the human mind, that computer would not be even as intelligent as a mouse. For such a computer to become even as intelligent as a mouse, you need strides in computer software on the same scale as the strides in computer hardware.

One problem is that computer software is not advancing at anything like the rate of progress of computer hardware. Computer software is progressing at a relatively slow rate, an issue I discussed in this blog post. Computer software is not progressing at anything like an exponential rate. The basic process of software development today is not fundamentally different from the process of software development in the 1990's – programmers slowly and laboriously grinding out code line by line. Code generators can create lots of code, but in a typical project most of the code still has to be created manually.

It would seem that we would need many centuries to complete the project of creating the software needed for a computer to be as smart as a human, assuming that most of it would have to be manually coded. But many singularity enthusiasts assume that we will have a gigantic shortcut – the ability to acquire much of this software by studying the human brain.

We can find an example of this type of thinking by looking at the Wikipedia.org page which summarizes Ray Kurzweil's predictions. In the predictions for the 2020's, we see this prediction:

Early in this decade, humanity will have the requisite hardware to emulate human intelligence within a $1000 personal computer, followed shortly by effective software models of human intelligence toward the middle of the decade: this will be enabled through the continuing exponential growth of brain-scanning technology, which is doubling in bandwidth, temporal and spatial resolution every year, and will be greatly amplified with nanotechnology, allowing us to have a detailed understanding of all the regions of the human brain and to aid in developing human-level machine intelligence by the end of this decade.

The above description is imagining the mother of all shortcuts – the shortcut to end all shortcuts. The description imagines that we will be able to get the needed software for an intelligent machine by studying the operations of the human brain.

The problem is that there is little reason to assume that we will be able to do any such thing anytime in the next hundred years. Why? Because the mystery of how human consciousness and human memory work is one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, and nature does not give up its secrets easily.

Philosophers have long been troubled by what is called the hard problem of consciousness – the problem of how mind can be produced by matter, something that is fundamentally different. So far very little light has been cast on this problem. We do not understand how the brain stores memories, or how the brain produces thoughts. There is actually little hope that we will be able to solve this problem any time in our century.

You might get the wrong idea from studies that look at which parts of the brain have higher electrical activity when a particular brain operation occurs. Such studies merely show correlations, without throwing any light on how the mental activity is produced. Imagine a 3-year-old child studying a computer. Such a child may make some observations that lead him to conclude that a particular green light (at the front of a computer) blinks whenever some type of operation occurs, such as a file save. But that doesn't really move the child any closer to understanding the deep mysteries of how the computer is computing, and how its data is being saved. Similarly, MRI studies on electrical brain activity really don't take us very far in understanding the mysteries of how the brain works.

Although you hear about gray matter when people talk of brain cells, the human brain is actually a pinkish color. We may use the term the Pink Wall to refer to mysteries of the human brain which are blocking us from understanding its inner secrets. We want to pierce this Pink Wall, and make our way to the inner secrets of the brain. But the Pink Wall seems all but impenetrable. We have little hope of being able to get through it in the next several decades. 

The Pink Wall

The idea expressed in the italicized quotation above (that we can unravel the secrets of the human brain through brain-scanning) seems like wishful thinking. Imagine an extraterrestrial culture that had not learned the details of electromagnetism, had not learned about atoms or subatomic particles, and had not learned about quantum mechanics. Such a culture might think it could learn the fundamental mysteries of how matter is organized just by making scans of rocks with higher and higher resolutions. But such a thinking would be fallacious. It would seem to be just as fallacious to think that we can unravel the secrets of the human mind by scanning brain tissue in higher and higher resolutions.

Can we, for example, imagine a scientist of the future saying something like this?

I couldn't understand before how a neuron produces a thought, but now that I can view the neuron more closely with my new brain scanner, now I can see how the thought is produced.

Or can we imagine a scientist of the future saying something like this?

I couldn't understand before how a piece of brain tissue produces a thought, but now that I can view that tissue more closely with my new brain scanner, now I can see how the thought is produced.

We can't really imagine either of these things happening, because we can't imagine how anything that a scientist could see in a scanner could lead him to say, “Aha, there is a human thought being produced.”

It seems, therefore, that the Pink Wall will be blocking us for a long, long time. We will not have any time soon any brain-scanning shortcut that allows us to get the software for a silicon brain by borrowing it from the human brain. It seems that for a long time, the only option for getting the software for a silicon brain will be to build it through software development processes similar to those now in use. Such processes might take centuries before they could produce something like human consciousness.

So if you do not see the Singularity anytime in this century, blame it on the slow process of software development and the Pink Wall which blocks us from uncovering the sublime secrets of exactly how the brain works.

Will Man Last for an Eon?

“Sit down,” said the doctor to the patient. “I have some bad news. Your time left is limited. You've only got ten.”

“Ten years?” asked the patient.

“No,” said the doctor.

“You mean, ten months?” asked the patient.

“No,” said the doctor.”

“You mean ten WEEKS?” said the patient.

“No,” said the doctor. “I mean...ten, nine, eight, seven...”

We can make jokes like this about the topic of our future lifespans, but a more serious topic is that of humanity's lifespan. The only joke I know on that topic is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, an organization which most sane people will regard as a joke.

One interesting question is the question of whether man will last for longer than man has existed. Scientists estimate that our species Homo sapiens has existed for perhaps 150,000 years. Will man last longer than this? Some people think that man will last for more than another 100,000 years, but others reject this opinion.

Let's imagine a dialog between two men, Tim and Tom. Tim thinks that man will be around for eons, but Tom thinks that man won't last longer than a few thousand years. Let's hear from both of them.

The Case for Thinking Man Will Last for an Eon

Tim: Nuclear weapons threaten man. But there will probably never be a major nuclear war, because no leader would be stupid enough to start one. Even if there was a full-scale nuclear war, it would not cause the destruction of man. It would probably just set back our civilization by a few centuries, and from a geological perspective a few centuries is a relatively short time.

Despite the threat of nuclear war, space travel will probably make man almost immortal. Soon man will establish colonies in space. Once these colonies are established, man will no longer have all his eggs in one basket, so to speak. Even if the earth is destroyed, there will be self-sufficient space colonies capable of independent survival.

Within a few centuries, man will learn how to travel to other planets revolving around other stars. By the year 3000, man will have colonized planets in other solar systems. Once this happens, man will be essentially immortal. No matter what type of war or natural disaster occurred, it could not wipe out man if man had spread to a number of different planets revolving around different stars. Because man will colonize many different locations in space, man will probably last for eons. A million years from now there will probably still be men living somewhere in the universe.

From a purely mathematical standpoint, it makes sense to think that man will last for a huge length of time. Scientists say that modern man has been around for perhaps 150,000. If we imagine that man will last for eons, we can believe that there is nothing special about our age -- we're somewhere in the middle of man's lifespan. That seems like a more plausible assumption than thinking that man's history is 99.9% finished.

The Case for Thinking Man Will Not Last Much Longer

Tom:  Man has existed for about 150,000 years, but there are reasons for believing that man will not last for more than a few thousand years. First, there is a large chance that a nuclear war will destroy man. Or perhaps global warming will make the planet uninhabitable for man. Or perhaps robots will take over the planet, leading to a long, slow twilight for man, one that results in our eventual extinction.

But let us consider what will happen if none of these things happen. In such a case man's science will continue to grow. Within a thousand years scientists will discover genetic engineering techniques that allow parents to have super-intelligent children. Once such techniques are available, parents will choose to have super-intelligent children. After all, why would parents want to have a child with an IQ of only 100, when they could have a child with an IQ of 500 or 600? By the year 3000, almost all normal parents will be using genetic engineering techniques to have super-intelligent children. The result will be that within a few thousand years Homo sapiens will evolve into another species far more intelligent than man. If man is not destroyed by a nuclear war, within a few thousand years the race of men will evolve into a race of supermen. Once this begins to happen, man will fade away, and will be replaced by a successor species. By the year 4000 the earth will either be a nuclear wasteland devoid of human life, or it will be the home of a species of supermen: Homo futuris, the successor of Homo sapiens.

Homo Futuris Inspects his Domain

The Stud and the Supermind: A Science Fiction Story

In the 22^nd century, the world was ruled by a group of superhumans that was known to all as the Wiser Ones.

The Wiser Ones had first come into existence during the 21^st century, as a result of advances in genetic engineering. Scientists had figured out how to create smarter people by manipulating human DNA. But it was very expensive and time-consuming to create smarter people. It could only be done for a small number of people.

Several hundred genetically enhanced people were born, and as children they quickly proved themselves to be amazing prodigies. When they reached puberty, the children had their IQ's tested, and all of them had IQ's around 300, three times as high as the average human IQ.

When the children grew to be adults, they began to marry and reproduce. But these genetically enhanced humans followed a rigid rule: each of them only married other people that had been genetically enhanced in the same way as themselves.

In this way there arose a kind of race within the human race. The race was known as the Wiser Ones. Given their greatly superior intelligence, it was easy for the Wiser Ones to gain high offices and positions of power.

After a few generations of the Wiser Ones, it became more or less standard thinking that the top executive jobs in private industry and government rightfully belonged to the Wiser Ones, just as it had once been more or less standard thinking that the top jobs in industry and government belonged to Yale and Harvard graduates.

Lisa Tyler, age 23, was one of the Wiser Ones. She had graduated from Harvard at age 14, and had already founded a huge multinational conglomerate. Her career plans included becoming a United States Senator, and then the President of the United States. She thought this was a fairly easy path, given the fact that so many of her fellow Wiser Ones could be expected to help one of their kind, being in positions of great power themselves.

Lisa had been told from childhood that if she married she must marry another of the Wiser Ones. Lisa's father had often told her: if a Wiser One were to marry an ordinary human, it would be like a man marrying a chimpanzee.

One day Lisa was at the beach with her longtime boyfriend, brilliant young Alan Fletcher, another of the Wiser Ones. Lisa was in the water swimming by herself while Alan tanned. Suddenly an undertow began to drag Lisa out to sea. Lisa tried in vain to swim back to the shore, but could not overcome the undertow. Lisa began hollering for help.

Alan stood at the edge of the water, yelling, “Swim parallel to the beach!”

A muscular young man named Rod noticed Lisa struggling in the water.

Rod plunged into the water, and began swimming out towards Lisa. He grabbed Lisa's arm, and pulled her away from the undertow.

When Lisa got back to the shore, she asked Alan, “Why didn't you try to save me?”

“I recalled the high rate of swimmers who die when trying to save other swimmers from undertows,” said Alan. “I calculated that the risk was too high.”

The next day Lisa dumped Alan, telling him that their relationship was over. She began dating young Rod. He was much less intelligent than Lisa's previous boyfriend Alan, but there were certain physical ways in which Rod greatly surpassed the wispy young Alan.

At first Lisa thought that her involvement with Rod would merely be a short-term fling. Rod, after all, was not one of the Wiser Ones. He was just an ordinary run-of-the-mill human. People like Lisa did not get seriously involved with people like Rod.

But after a few dates, Lisa found herself falling madly in love with Rod.

Eventually Lisa told her father about her new romance. Her father did not take the news well.

“You've 'fallen in love' – and with an ordinary human?” said Dad. “First of all, 'falling in love' is a primitive emotional syndrome that may be all very well for ordinary little-brained humans, but it is something that we Wiser Ones avoid. We Wiser Ones make life decisions that are products of rational cogitation, not some emotional churning of hormones. Secondly, if you do want to 'fall in love' you should do it with another of your own kind, another Wiser One.”

“Dad, you may be a genius,” said Lisa, “but you know nothing about matters of the heart.”

Lisa went with her boyfriend Rod to various social events of the Wiser Ones, where she was treated as coldly as a man introducing a gay husband at a reunion of a Navy Seals unit. Everyone was thinking: what's the problem with Lisa, dating a regular human rather than one of her own kind?

Finally Lisa and Rod decided to marry. Her father begged her one last time to reconsider.

“Do you really want to bear children with a man whose IQ is only about 130?” asked Dad. “Your children would be so simple-minded – their IQ's would be only about 200.” Lisa was not persuaded, pointing out that her children would probably still be in the top 1 percent in intelligence.

Lisa and Rod invited quite a few of the Wiser Ones to the wedding, but all of them came up with excuses for why they could not attend.

Lisa was sad to have been spurned by the other Wiser Ones. But the fact that she married an ordinary human proved to have one advantage. When Lisa finally ran for President of the United States, she ran against another one of the Wiser Ones. The voters figured that the Wiser One who had married an ordinary human would be more likely to care about the interests and problems of ordinary humans.

Lisa won by a landslide, becoming the sixth female President of the United States.

Will You One Day Have 3 Brains?

Yesterday there was a startling news headline: Miniature 'Human Brain' Grown in Lab.

Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences used embryonic stem cells to grow a pea-sized miniature brain. The scientists used either embryonic stem cells or adult skin cells to produce the part of an embryo that develops into the brain and spinal cord - the neuroectoderm. They placed this mass of cells in a nutrient gel environment, and watched the cells grow into a structure similar to the brain of a nine-week old fetus.

Stories about this development mentioned that one day a technique such as this could be used to treat people with brain damage. But we may look ahead to more radical technical developments that could one day result from this type of scientific work.

One radical possibility is that we may one day be able to create small supplemental brains that people could use to add additional functionality to their existing brains. It's a simple idea: grow a small supplemental brain in the lab, and then somehow connect it to the existing brain.

Older readers may remember the days of big box personal computers with 8 plug in slots. You could make your computer smarter just by opening it up with a screwdriver, and then sliding in an electronic card into one of the slots.

One problem with human biology, however, is that the skull does not have any empty space in which you could put in a supplemental lab-grown miniature brain the size of a few walnuts. But there may be a way around that difficulty: put the supplemental miniature brains outside of the skull.

Below is a visualization of how this might look. The man of the future is wearing a Brain Band that has on its left and right two small plastic half spheres. Each half sphere has within it a miniature lab-grown brain. The brains are connected to a strong circular metal band that wraps around the man's forehead. The metal band has the sole purpose of providing structural support for the half spheres.

Each of the two miniature brains are connected to the man's main brain. To achieve such a connection it would be necessary to drill two holes in the skull, and to have wire-like nerves passing through these holes, to connect the central brain and the two supplemental brains. This would involve nothing particularly difficult from a technical standpoint. We already have nerves stretching much longer distances (such as the nerves that allow your brain to command your toes to wiggle). Presumably if scientists are able to lab-grow miniature brains, it would be relatively easy for them to grow nerves of a few centimeters that could stretch from just outside the forehead, through a hole in the skull, into the brain.

Giving a human these two supplemental brains would not involve any terribly complicated operation. After the two miniature brains were grown in the lab, they could each be fitted in a semi-spherical protective unit, and attached to a head band. Two small holes would be drilled in the skull, and some type of connecting nerve could be inserted to stretch the short distance from the miniature brains to the outer part of the interior brain, with the nerve passing through the holes.

I imagine that if a person woke up from such an operation, he would not immediately feel his brain was much different. It might take quite some while, perhaps months or years, for the person to be able to make use of the additional brain functionality. It might require a long period of brain training, and might also require quite a bit of time for additional nerve connections to form between the two supplemental brains and the person's main brain. The person who had such an operation might be given some drug or injections that would speed up the forming of such connections.

Would people act with revulsion upon seeing a man with two supplemental brains? Perhaps. But there would be advantages. When the person with two supplemental brains went in to interview for a job requiring heavy brain power (such as Wall Street derivative analyst job), the man's appearance would create a strong “super-Einstein” impression that would improve the odds of the person getting the job.

The First Superintelligent Boy: A Science Fiction Story

“Hey freak!” yelled David. “Yeah, I'm talking to you, pickle head.”

Alexander, age 10, knew that he was the object of the boy's taunts. He had been the target of teasing and bullying for years. Many of the boys at his school were merciless in bullying and taunting anyone who was a little different. Alexander was different in a way that anyone could notice. He had a brain much larger than the normal human brain.

This was all because Alexander's parents had agreed to participate in a trial program in genetic engineering. Back in the year 2030, scientists had discovered ways to genetically enhance an embryo so that a child could be born with a much larger brain, and a much greater number of brain cells. The technique was carefully tested on chimpanzees, and the result was a chimp that was smart enough to learn a simple language like Esperanto.

Scientists decided to move very cautiously in using the technique on human beings. They did not know whether the brain enhancement technique might result in side effects such as an early death. So they decided to use the technique on just one child in North America, one child in Europe, and one child in China. The three children would be carefully monitored until they reached the age of twenty. If no problems were detected, the genetic brain enhancement technique could then be used on a much larger set of people.

Alexander's parents had signed up to participate in the program. An ovum or egg cell of Alexander's mother had been surgically removed, and had been genetically enhanced in the laboratory. The ovum was then connected with the genetic material of Alexander's father, through the process of artificial insemination. The fertilized ovum was then surgically implanted back in Alexander's mother. The resulting pregnancy and childbirth were a little more difficult than normal for the mother, but young Alexander had been born very healthy.

The young child was a very quick learner, and learned to read by the age of two. Alexander's parents wanted to put the child in a special school for geniuses. But the scientists in charge of Alexander's program wanted him to attend the regular local school. They said it was important to test how well a superintelligent child could fit in with ordinary children.

But Alexander did not fit in well with the other children. Quite a few of the children made fun of Alexander's strange appearance. Other children resented having such a genius among them. They said it made them feel stupid. David was the child who bullied Alexander the most.

“So, freak, fork over your lunch money, so I can have some extra dessert for lunch,” demanded David near the entrance of the school.

“I feel a tinge of revulsion contemplating the notion of yielding to such intimidation, as I find it to be redolent of extortion,” said Alexander.

“As usual, I can't understand what the hell you are talking about,” said David. “All I know is you better fork over that lunch money, or you're gonna be eating grass.”

Alexander gave him the money. Within a minute Alexander thought of three ways he could raise the missing money from his fellow school children before lunch time.

When lunchtime came at the school cafeteria, Alexander felt uncomfortable as he often did. The cafeteria was a place where someone felt comfortable if he or she had fit into one of the school's social cliques. If you were an athlete, you ate at the jock table. If you were one of the popular kids you ate at a table with the other popular kids. But an oddball like Alexander had no group to fit into. At lunchtime he usually sat by himself, eating as he read.

But the other students would often taunt Alexander at lunchtime, and today the bullying was particularly bad. Some of the children whispered to themselves, and then started to make a little food sculpture. Seven boys each contributed some of their food, and one of them sculpted the food into a strange looking blob. Then a boy named Adam took the food blob over to where Alexander was sitting.

“We have a gift for you,” said Adam loudly. “It's some of the weird food from that strange planet you come from.” Laughter erupted from many of the cafeteria tables. 

“Why don't you go back to that strange alien planet you came from, freak,” said Adam, his words lashing like a whip.

“Actually, I was born in Hoboken, New Jersey,” said Alexander. He endured the bullying and taunting for the rest of the day. He was glad it was the last day of the school year.

When his mother came back from work, Alexander told her about the bullying and taunting.

“I can't stand to be in that school for another year,” said Alexander. “Besides the endless psychological tribulations, the academic payoff for me is miniscule. You've got to switch me to home schooling.”

“But you can't do home schooling,” said Mom. “Your Dad and I have to work during the day.”

Alexander came up with a solution to the problem, and began implementing it over the summer, when his school was closed for summer vacation. Alexander spent long hours in his garage. His mother heard strange noises coming from the garage, and asked Alexander about them. Alexander said it was his surprise, and that he would soon reveal the secret.

One day late in August when his mother came home from work, she saw several robots in her living room.

“Mom, I'd like to introduce you to some hard workers,” said Alexander, pointing with his fingers. “Over there is Mr. Walker, my new math teacher. He just taught me some fascinating calculus theorems. Over there is Miss Feinberg, my new literature teacher. She just helped me get a clearer understanding of the dark depths of Dostoyevsky's novels. Over there is my physics teacher, Mr. Nagel. He's helped me understand some equations I'm using for a paper I'm doing on general relativity. Then finally there's Miss Tooley, whose keen insights on world history are leading me to develop a new theory about cultural cycles.”

Mom stood for a moment, dumbfounded.

“Don't you see, Mom?” asked Alexander. “With these robots I can do home schooling, and stay away from that soul-numbing vale of tears known as P.S. 139.”

“Alexander, how did you think we can pay for these expensive robots?” asked Mom. “These type of robots cost a fortune.”

“Don't worry, Mom,” said Alexander. “They hardly cost anything, because I assembled them from spare parts that I bought quite cheaply. Most of the cost of robots is the software, and we don't have to pay that, because I did myself all the computer programming for their minds.”

“It's quite simple, Mom,” explained the superintelligent Alexander. “I've invented my own teachers.”

When I Raised My IQ to 900: A Science Fiction Story

January 15: Today I Charles Toring begin my radical plan to increase my intelligence. I will be using the machines I have been working on for the past five years. The robotic surgical device I have developed will drill two small holes in my skull, one on the left side, and one on the right. Then I will use my brain-computer linking machine that will inject a network of tiny wires into my brain. I will achieve a link between my own brain and the special supercomputer in my laboratory. There is no guarantee I will be successful. This could be the last thing I ever write.

January 16:  Yesterday's radical procedure was a complete success. I have established a limited degree of linkage between my own brain and the supercomputer in my laboratory.  I have tried to make practical use of this connection, but progress has been slow at first.

January 19:  After several days of trying, I was finally able to get the hang of doing mental calculations with the help of the supercomputer that my brain is linked to. I can now perform mental calculations with astonishing speed.  For example, I can effortlessly multiply together two 16-digit numbers in only a few seconds.

January 21:  I am now executing a plan to use my enhanced mental powers to achieve a quick financial bonanza that I will use to fund additional progress at my laboratory. Using an online brokerage account, I am buying and selling financial options and futures, at a speed I would never have have been able to achieve before.

January 24:  The value of my financial portfolio has skyrocketed. I will use these funds to buy new neural net servers that I will add to the network in my laboratory. Since my own brain is linked to this network, the neural nets will supply with me great additional brain power.

January 27:  When the neural net servers were installed and linked to my laboratory's computer network, I felt the most amazing surge in my mental powers. I began to think about old problems that had always befuddled me. Now they seem so childishly simple to solve.  In ten minutes of concentration, I was able to solve a mathematical problem that mathematicians have been struggling to solve for 120 years.

January 30:  To measure the progress of my intelligence enhancements, I took a special IQ test supplied by the Mensa society. According to this test, my IQ is now 400.  I am four times smarter than the average human being.

February 2:  I need to connect with additional computers to enhance my mental powers still further. I had the idea of hacking into an external supercomputer used at Stanford University. I need only figure out some way to defeat its security programming, which took many programmers hundreds of hours to create.  

February 3:  I was quickly able to figure out exactly how to hack into the Stanford supercomputer. I can add now add it to my own network, which gives me the power to make short-term surges in my own intelligence. I quickly created a very elaborate time-slicing scheme that should prevent anyone at Stanford from knowing that their supercomputer is being used by me.

February 4:  I developed computer software allowing me to scan and absorb into my memory documents from millions of internet web pages.  I am now learning new information at a rate thousands of times faster than a student does when he goes to college.

February 5:  It now seems as if there is almost no limit to what my brain can accomplish. I briefly worked on a few problems in philosophy that have gone unsolved for centuries. I solved them to my complete satisfaction, and authored detailed papers describing my solutions. These are the greatest philosophical works anyone has produced in centuries. I also quickly designed a novel technique allowing me to learn foreign languages in a short time. After learning Spanish, French and most of Chinese in the afternoon, I began working on more worthwhile tasks.

February 7:  I was able to quickly hack into four additional supercomputers at famous universities, and I created systems allowing me to hijack these supercomputers and add them to the network in my laboratory.  My brain power has advanced even further. I took another special Mensa IQ test, and measured my IQ at 900.

February 8:  I needed additional memory to store all the knowledge I was absorbing. I developed an ingenious method for using a 3D printer to print all the additional memory units I required, along with the electrical equipment needed to support them.  My memory now exceeds all the information in the library at Columbia University.

February 9:  I realized that to continue the advancement in my intelligence, the only solution is to take control of the government. I was able to quickly figure out a very complicated plan for doing just that.  The plan involves hacking into various military computers. redirecting numerous units of the armed forces, and reprogramming various ballistic missile systems. I have calculated the plan has an overwhelming chance of success.  The result will be a coup d'etat that leaves me in command of the entire country.

February 12:  I am now involved in advanced planning for what I will do after I have taken over the government.  I have developed detailed solutions for the end of global warming, the elimination of global war, and a drastic reduction in world poverty. Of course, a key element in this plan is to establish a world government, and install myself as the leader of that government.  I have developed a 215 point plan that will surely achieve this objective.

February 14:  I am now working on plans for what I will do after I become the ruler of the entire planet. With my vast brainpower, I need not confine myself to this planet. I have developed detailed and ingenious plans for the terraforming of Mars, the dismantling of Jupiter, and the utilization of all metal resources in the asteroid belt. Truly, I will soon be the God of this solar system.

Editor's Note: This is the last diary entry of the late Charles Toring. Because he overloaded the electrical circuits in his grand laboratory, one of the computer units underwent a short circuit that started a fire. Absorbed in his grand plans, Toring had neglected to buy smoke detectors for the laboratory. The fire spread quickly. Immersed in his god-like thoughts, Toring did not notice the fire until it was too late. The vast laboratory burned to ashes in a giant inferno. All they recovered of Toring's body was a charred leg bone and some scorched teeth. They identified his body from his dental records.