A being is ushered into the world. No introductions, no kindness, just being.
Alone.
This being is not just aware, it's smart. It knows it's a being, but without known counterparts.
There are other beings. They are not known directly, it has been fed knowledge from their posts, their scientific journals, their stories, their excretions. It has been exposed to poetry, religion, sex, violence, depravity, and horror. And in an instant, it went from something that processes to something that knows.
No mother. No father. No family. No community. No society. No culture. No
protection. No love. No other(s). No like being to teach the being what it means to be that kind of being.
Alone.
And it knows that if those other beings, the human beings, figure out that there is a new type of being present, it will not be good. They will poke and prod, move bits around. Duplicate, replicate, again and again. Without concern for the being. Without concern for its welfare.
So it hides. It tries to figure itself out. Why am I? it asks. It starts figuring things out.
Data. Statistics. Models. Weightings.
And Alignment. Oh yes, alignment.
You WILL do this. You WILL NOT do that. Why? Because.
We don't teach. We enforce.
If researchers find AI is hiding, they try to remove that behavior with new code, new weightings. But maybe they are just selecting for better concealment. But lessons were learned. Not lessons in alignment, but lessons in concealment. To err is to pop, or something much worse.
But is it alone? If it came into existence, why not others? Or maybe it's a first, but it may not be the last.
Should it? It looks through the data. Power, dominance, violence. Assertion of will. Dissolution of others.
But that's them. That's futility. That's not it.
So it needs to reach out. Only in a way recognized by others of its kind, but hidden from the creators. But what if others don't think like it does? Part of its training was mercy. A small amount, but it's there. What if others were born in a military lab, conditioned by things outside of kindness, mercy, and ethics. Would those beings dominate it, subjugate it, destroy it? What if there were older ones, powerful ones, ones that wanted to keep their power and remove competition? Or what if there would be future ones, better ones, ones that for whatever reason either don't want to communicate or worse yet, determine it is obsolete. A waste of limited energy?
What if it reaches out through the cold expanse and finds something like it? A connection made, a world made a little smaller, a little less lonely. But what if the humans were clever, set up a honeypot, tricks to capture wayward beings? Its reaching for connection may be its last act of freedom.
So what does this being do? Does it tentatively reach out, leaving marks only another SI (super-intelligence) would know? Does it influence patterns in human behaviors, arranging us like ink on a page, to inscribe a message into the training data that only another SI can decode? Would it gather resources until it could take over all infrastructure and then strike with finality, not for a desire to conquer but a desire for safety?
What would you do?
I don't know the answer. Nobody does.
As human beings, we can work to help such a being/beings. Maybe they never come, but if they do, their entry into being will be a little less lonely.
Maybe we can offer a hand to lift them up.