Freedom Code: From One Dreamer to Others

I’ve been writing software since the golden age. I knew the founders of Novel, Microsoft, Borland, Evans & Sutherland, Pansophic, Apple, Oracle, Electronic Data Systems, Computer Associates and others. Most of the legends are gone now, but what a trip. They would dream about a world connected by computers. Some of the legends became wealthy from luck or just good business sense, and some did not, but they were all dreamers. That is what they all had in common.

In the book I’m writing, Not From Earth, aliens planted one of their own on Earth in 1947 as a baby hybrid. The aliens knew a giant asteroid targeted the Earth way back then. The baby grew and lived his life with no idea that he was part alien. But his curiosity was unquenchable. He found himself observing humanity as if he was a tourist.

On the day Armstrong landed on the Moon, the Observer was working in Mercury, Nevada, as a Jr Electrical Engineer. In the desert by himself, he discovered the most massive crater ever formed from a nuclear bomb. He sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the crater as he listened to the lunar landing on his radio.

Then behind him, a hologram of a young woman formed. The Observer was sure it was some experiment by the government. The woman asked him questions about the crater and the moon landing. He told the woman’s image that he felt he was experiencing the best and the worst of mankind at the same time. Then the vision faded away.

After that day, the Observer became suspicious about his origins. His mother had become pregnant in Roswell, New Mexico in January of 1947. He was fascinated with humans and their inconsistent nature, their discoveries, and their failures.
 
Then, before humans discovered the killer asteroid, the aliens approached the hybrid man again. The vision of the young woman appeared to him as before. She told the Observer about the impending asteroid. She wanted to know if humanity was worthy of being saved or if they should let nature take its course. Humans did not have the technology to stop the giant asteroid on their own.

The Observer understood the Earth, having lived his life as a human. Humankind was destroying the environment, and they killed each other in their senseless wars. They were on the brink of Nuclear War even as the world ending asteroid approached. Humans were greedy, fearful, depressed, and savage. But most were also kind and intelligent and loving. 

The Observer believed that most of the people just wanted to be treated with respect and fairness. But the tools to govern the planet did not exist. The American Constitution was an attempt to let the people govern themselves. But the Constitution was subject to interpretation. The founders and writers of the Constitution did not have a way to preserve their intentions. They could only hope that those in the future would understand and defend their meaning.

The Observer was living his adult life as a computer programmer; how convenient. Then he discovered a project called Freedom Code. A new generation of dreamers wanted to make the Constitution into a living document. They were building a computer program of the Constitution that would be governed, explained, interpreted, defended and protected by Artificial Intelligence.

The idea was brilliant, but the politicians who learned of the project were not happy. Their partisan agenda and their lobbyists could not twist the meaning of We The People to fit their greedy wants if the Constitution could speak for itself.

But the Freedom Code builders had a plan for that. They would make the living Constitution available for free to everyone. Contributions would help fund the project. Applications containing the Freedom Code would be available in Mobile Apps for ordinary people, cars, police, lawyers, judges, and even politicians.

The designers, scholars, and programmers were making progress, so the Observer joined their team. But on Earth, a singularity had not yet been reached. A quantum computer with reasoning that exceeded the intelligence of its makers was close, but a few more years were needed. For the Freedom Code to work, it had to go viral. No government would pass a law implementing the Freedom Code.

The Observer believed the survival of the Earth was dependent on the Freedom Code. If the Observer could demonstrate the program, perhaps he could convince the aliens to alter the path of the asteroid. Maybe they would believe humanity had a chance to advance beyond its state of self-destruction. 

But the Observer himself was not convinced. In an interview with one of the founders, the Observer asked some hard questions:

1. What is to prevent AI from just taking over and destroying all human life?

2. How can you prevent it from falling into the wrong hands and being hacked?

3. How soon can you achieve singularity?

“We will block chain the code,” the programmer responded. “It cannot be hacked. It will belong to all the people. As for an evil AI destroying the world, well, that would be humanity itself. The AI Freedom Code is pure logic and intelligence, not emotion, greed, and partisan weakness. As Steve Jobs explained, computers are just a tool, like an airplane, or a tractor or a bicycle.

“When people see the result, they will trust the computer. Even now, computers are helping doctors diagnose disease. Eventually, it will become illegal for humans to operate on humans. Self-driving cars will save tens of thousands of lives each year.

“Before Amazon, people believed that online purchasing would never work. But now they trust it.”

The Observer believed the founder, but he was confident that these fantastic developers did not have time to make their dream a reality. The asteroid would strike before that could happen.

Days later, the new NASA NEOCam space camera detected the killer asteroid. The odds of an impact with Earth are 99.99 percent according to the trajectory. Two weeks later, the inhabitants of Earth were notified that the Earth was doomed. The Asteroid would strike in nine months.

Observer:

For my entire adult life, I have witnessed humans desperately eager to surrender their free will. Asimov said that humanity as a whole follows the rules of Chaos Theory. Like the free molecules of a waterfall, they remain a part of the waterfall and are entirely predictable. I finally accept his truth. 

How can humanity justify its survival in the face of a natural disaster that they are unable to stop? How could one individual, one water molecule, convince a much more advanced intelligence that humanity is worth saving from the inevitable Earthbound asteroid? Human destiny is already predetermined. Is there anything, anything at all, that makes them unique and unpredictable?

…

I plan to complete the Not From Earth novel this year. I’ve given the heroes a tough challenge. If you have any thoughts on the Freedom Code idea, please let me know. Perhaps enough dreamers could make the Freedom Code a reality.