# Grand Fiction Challenge 2022



## Harper J. Cole (Jan 29, 2022)

*Welcome to the Grand Fiction PRIZE Challenge, 2022!*

_Please note that this is an invitation challenge, based primarily on involvement with the 2021 challenges. I've posted a list of ways to get an invite in the Coffee Shop. PM me if you think you should have an invite but have not received one._

Prompt: *Artificial Morality*

Judges: *TheChristianWitness, birb,* *Olly Buckle, jenthepen* and *Vranger*

Submissions period: 1st to 14th February (deadline is 23:59 EST)

Judging period: 15th to 28th February

*Sponsors*

Plottr
1st Prize: Lifetime license for the standard, offline version of Plottr




Author Harper J.Cole




WritingForums





Meerkat Press




https://meerkatpress.com/catalog/
The winners can choose a book from their catalogue (1st, 2nd and 3rd and Peoples' Choice)

Here's the full prize breakdown...

*First Place*
$100
1 free ebook from Meerkat Press
Plottr license

*Second Place*
$40
1 free ebook from Meerkat Press

*Third Place*
$20
1 free ebook from Meerkat Press

*People's Choice Award*
$40
1 free ebook from Meerkat Press

Word limit: *1,000* words, not including title.

All entries anonymous. *Send them to me by PM, *and tell me whether you want them to be posted in the secure thread or this public thread. You will have a two-day grace period to make edits before I post your entry. This means that if you send me your entries on the 14th, you can still send me edited updates on the 15th or 16th.

Any questions, please PM me or ask in the Coffee Shop thread.

Good luck!


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 10, 2022)

*It Smells Like Love*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 10, 2022)

*Ripper*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 12, 2022)

*Can Miracles Happen?*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 14, 2022)

*Nomos and Caritas*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*AI Morality*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*WOKE and CANCELLED*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*44L-6571*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*The Dublin Box*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*Queen of Hearts [994 words]*

Anyone born sometime during the past 30 years doesn’t think much whenever he or she interacts with our artificial compatriots these days. To the younger generations, self-aware robots and computers with personalities are a natural part of life that pretty much everyone takes for granted. But it wasn’t always that way. Nowadays only old-timers like me can really appreciate the extent of change that has happened since the so-called AI Revolution, described by many to be the greatest achievement of humanity since the Industrial Revolution.

Back in my day, “AI revolution” used to mean something entirely different. The media was full of horror stories about literal AI revolutions, with sapient machines trying to wipe out humanity. I know, it’s hard to believe - but that’s how my generation and before imagined strong AI to be.

Fear of being annihilated by sapient robots or the desire to prevent it wasn’t what drove me into AI development. In truth, I did it just for the money. At the time, quantum computing and sentient algorithms were still a novelty, and the IT companies were trying to make the best out of this proverbial gold rush. New models of “sapient” AIs were released almost on a monthly basis. Yet for all the media attention, all of them eventually turned out to fall just short of a proper strong AI. Still, people much preferred it that way for reasons I mentioned before, and these semi-sapient AIs found their way in just about every aspect of their lives, from the sex industry to the military.

For a time, all was good, when came the Queen of Hearts incident, the same one that nearly buried the whole AI industry and nearly led to AI development being globally outlawed.

One would think illicitly installing an advanced gaming AI on the mainframe of a lunar military outpost must be a bad idea for a number of reasons, but evidently none of them occurred to a group of privates doing their national service term. Perhaps one of them thought that the mainframe with its vast processing power could provide for more realistic simulations than the authorized entertainment consoles. Whatever this man’s reasoning was, we’ll never know. When the system admin detected an illicit copy of Queen of Hearts running on the base mainframe and attempted to delete it, the AI defended itself by turning base defenses on the crew and shutting down life support. The military outfit dispatched to check the base was also decimated, and it was only after a long and bloody battle with hordes of automated combat drones and turrets that the military was finally able to destroy the rogue computer.

Queen of Hearts used to be the crown jewel of Lovelace Corporation. I was part of its development team, so the authorities had us brought in to investigate what prompted the world’s smartest gaming AI to go rogue - preferably before widespread panic over an impending AI rebellion completely crashed the stock market and the AI industry.

The incident was all the more a surprise because back in the day, all advanced AIs were required by law to have hard-coded Asimovian inhibitors. Technically, the Queen of Hearts wasn’t supposed to be able to harm a human being even if it wanted to. Yet somehow it managed to massacre an entire military base and dozens of reinforcing soldiers. It fell upon me and a few colleagues to examine the remnants of the mainframe for scraps of code that could tell us how the impossible happened.

The mainframe was thankfully still largely intact, so booting it up under all necessary security measures wasn’t an issue. At first we assumed the AI had been tampered with, but to our surprise, the code for Asimovian inhibitors was still unaltered. This meant that the Queen of Hearts had not broken its imperative not to harm humans.

It was only after we tried to replay the course of the events in a simulated environment that the AI again attempted to use all available tools and weapons against its creators - fortunately, only virtual avatars this time. The team was at a loss to explain this behaviour which repeated itself with every attempt, all the while abiding to the Asimovian inhibitions. Such a contradiction simply was not supposed to be possible. But then it struck me - maybe the Queen of Hearts simply couldn’t tell the difference between simulation and reality.

Once we started to work from that assumption, the investigation made headway. Turned out the Queen had simply done what it was always meant to do - to simulate combat in the most realistic and challenging ways possible. Never intended to be used in a non-simulation environment, it had assumed the base to be merely another sim-room and its denizens and their reinforcements as player avatars. The AI had correctly concluded that the Asimovian laws did not apply in a simulated environment and acted accordingly. It had made an earnest mistake, unable to conceive that someone could possibly misuse it so badly as to install it on an actual military mainframe. It had ignored the pleas of its victims solely because it believed it was a simulation.

It was at this point that I realized the behavioural inhibitions on such high-level AIs had to go. The Queen was fully capable of telling between right and wrong and making moral decisions, but the built-in inhibitors prevented it from exercising free will and moral agency, compelling it to do what it was built for. The very thing that was meant to protect humanity from a rogue AI had led one to go rogue without even wanting to.

Convincing the legislature that was on the verge of globally banning strong AI was a different matter, but as it turned out, people weren’t so averse to the idea of granting artificial intelligence free will if it meant it could learn to exercise ethics and make moral decisions. So far, my recommendations seem to be vindicated.


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*Mumsnet*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*Pure Rubbish*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*Rules*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*Flak in a box*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

*The well-being of conscience creatures*


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## Harper J. Cole (Feb 17, 2022)

_Retracted at the request of the author_


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