Something to be Proud Of -
Chapter 16:
Chapter 16
“If you want a girlfriend in the spring, don’t start with an amoeba in the fall”
- Manfred Eigen
Buck dropped by the next week. Mel had locked himself in the lab again.
The console reported:
[Eight].
“You see? Pretty cool, huh?”
“I’ll say!” Buck was genuinely impressed.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what it meant last week. No luck, but it seems to be learning the powers of two.”
“The soup can only answer questions. But, what question did I ask?”
“The last sequence had literally 23 different proteins released over a 2 second sequence. The number of control experiments would keep him busy for the next two years.”
“So, why does it seem to only be able to do multiplication by twos? Is it just memorizing them, like kids do with multiplication tables?”
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot: standard antibodies are bivalent, meaning they have two, identical binding sites. In most cases, the cell does not signal, unless both are bound.”
“Slow down a bit, please.” I am an engineer, remember?”
“OK, here.” Mel pulled out a pen and drew a picture of a cell surface, covered with a bunch of Y’s. “The receptors look like Y’s, a binding site on each end. In order to signal into the cell, something has to bind to more than one thing, bring two receptors together, then that triggers a pore to open, or a chemical to be released, or God knows what. Remember: we are biologists. We only pretend to understand what’s going on.”
“Very cool. So, if I understand you, one of the basic functions of one of your cells is to make the ‘logical AND’ operation.”
“Yeah: It will not react unless both conditions are met. Also, two receptors imply binary math, but that would fundamentally how high it can count. Soup might just not be good at Math.”
“So, you’re saying it can only do multiplication by two?”
“So far, yes, but that’s not proof. What I’m saying is that its natural number system is binary. But it can also reason over the code of the molecular sequence of the binding site itself. The cells can generate about a billion distinct receptor types. Each cell has its own unique receptor. So, we can use the reactions between the cells to conduct simply logic over matched pairs. Again: this is more or less binary.”
“OK: Now you are rambling,” said Buck. “I can’t believe you survived 5 years at X-Corp!”
Undeterred, Mel continued to vomit his thoughts, “… I am not strong in Computer Science. I can’t fully figure out how to code symbols or numbers into smells, how to teach the soup to manipulate the smells, and how interpret the response of the soup. Any ideas?”
Mel admitted not with his face, but tried to help, “Can you give me a tutorial on what you think the thing can and can’t do? I can shop it around.”
Mel laughed, “That’s what publication was supposed to be for!”
Buck’s eyes lit up with recognition and he let out a snort.
“Anyway, I am working on ways to make it learn other types of logic and math.”
“So, is it learning? Is it intelligent?”
“No more than an electric circuit or a neural network” I don’t even know how to write this up.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a cheap carnival trick, like the horse that can count or chickens playing tick-tac-toe.”
Sam had been staring at the soup the whole time, “Boy! Don’t be a dumbass! You taught menudo to count! Erasmus can’t even do that!”
For his contribution, Erasmus had been playing with the soup: dropping bits of Fritos and beef jerky in, and watching the phosphorescent reaction. Waves of faint colour crossed the pool, and the console registered various responses:
[Starch]
[Sodium] [Chloride]
[Protein – General]
The rest of the group started to watch the screen. Only Sam showed trepidation. Then, without much of a warning, Erasmus casually stood up, unzipped his fly, and tinkled a bit of piss into the pool.
“Goddammit, Erasmus! What the fuck do you think you’re doing? This is Science for fuck’s sake!”
Mel chuckled, “Don’t worry Sam. It actually never occurred to me to do that. Let’s see what is says.”
They all scrambled to huddle around the computer screen:
[Urea] [Ammonia]
[More] [NOT]
“Hey, that’s some pretty smart soup.”
“What does the second line mean?”
“I don’t really know. It might mean it doesn’t like it, but I have been testing all sorts of things. It says this nearly every day. At first, I thought it was hungry and just added general nutrients.”
“Well, if we can’t make money out of this, we should be shot.”
“All I need is another couple years’ funding. I want to see how far I can push this.”
Sam was lost in thought, the exploded, “We’ll tell Those Bastards at the council the garbage will be fed to the soup!”
“Easy Sam!” Alberto interrupted, “What good is feeding garbage to soup?”
Mel’s mind was racing ahead. “not a bad idea... the soup can digest Sam’s garbage… There’s a thought… The soup consumed loads of nutrients, and the effluent was fed to pigs, who preferred it over grain....”
I dunno. You’re the smart guy: think of some mystical ego-pagan, Gaia bullshit. You give me two or three juicy press releases; I’ll give you a hundred grand. This is an intelligent being that needs to be fed.”
“Sam, it is not! It is just a bunch of chemicals.”
“So is Carluccio, and we pay him $175k a year.”
Buck ventured, “Maybe you are over thinking this. You are worried about the linguistics of smell, how to teach it something practical. From what I understand, you are just trying to find interesting things for it to do, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Well, why don’t you have Zeke talk to it?” Alberto ventured.
“Huh?”
“Zeke is not interested in anything but eating and fucking. You can pay him to experiment, while you work on the hard stuff, like simplifying this console, so every household in America can have a home soup computer.”
“I seriously doubt Zeke can talk to soup. He barely talks to us!”
“That’s the whole point! Zeke probably will understand soup better than us, and loves to play games. Look, just give me a bucketful of soup and a console, and I will explain it to Zeke. We’ll give him a reward for every new answer he gets out of the soup.”
“Fine. No skin off my ass….”
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