Only a few of them were still around, out of the crowd who came over for the evening. It was pretty late already, too, unless we count it as "early", from the direction of the morning; few parties last this long.
A few of them were lounging around, on sofas, in Akos's room. Computer parts and empty coke bottles scattered around on the desk, and big, one-gallon containers, having contained peach juice at some point.
There was soft music coming from one of the computers. From around this, tinkering with the machine, did the current topic emerge... not entirely out of nowhere though: they had debated things like this a lot already.
"But then how does a machine come up with stuff that's original?" Pete continued elaborating upon his opinion. "Just look at this. Here is this music player program. Bits go in, bits come out. All just a mechanical process."
"Yeah but it doesn't quite add up" Geza interjected. They were sitting across each other, in the large armchairs. "What is 'original', even?"
"Well, if you calculate what's the square root of 2... that's not it."
"It's all blurry a bit still though."
"If that was the only issue, AI could still be possible" one of their classmates remarked, "... but it still isn't possible though. I'll tell you why. They already made a program that proves math theorems... which I think is pretty original, despite working in a mechanical way. Or look at a chess program. Anyway. So, but, if you go over a certain complexity, even in math theorems, then you can proceed in many, many ways. If you add all the logic of what you know about the world, for example that... beer is good", he took a sip from the bottle, "then then result will be so large, that... even if each atom of the universe was a computer, it still couldn't be calculated."
"Sure. Who said this?"
"The physics teacher. But, allegedly, there is some book, written by a Nobel-prize winner mathematician..."
"You idiot, there isn't even a Nobel prize for math."
"Sure, anyway, so some fancy big brain guy. And this is what he says."
"Um so... you're never, ever, wrong?" Geza asked.
"How does this come in here?"
"So this fellow concluded that a thing that is capable of flawless thinking is hugely large. Is this what we want to build? Anyway... my point is, I read this book about how the brain works, and how we actually think. They said that... even for numbers, we don't store them in a logical way on the inside, but only in an approximate way. And this is why crows can only count up to six accurately, and from that on, it's only roughly right.
"Genius. I can count a little bit farther up though, than crows. I... thought you could too?"
"You know what? You can't either. You just learned how to. But you still don't feel, as a feeling, that six times six is thirty-six. Same while studying languages."
"And how does turn into logical thinking?"
"He wrote something about that too. Wait, he had this great sentence... maybe I'll remember..."
"What belongs together... is this the one?" Akos emerged, suddenly, from one of the armchairs. They had thought he was asleep.
"That one! OK, can you explain this, I'm way too tired..."
"So: what belongs together will make sense, what makes sense will be logical, and what's logical must be true. Right?"
"Oh yes" Geza expanded. "By 'belongs together', he means that... 'things' have a few properties, like, that apples are red, yes I know it's a supid example, but still... and that based on this, we can string these up into a tree, like, apples are red, red is a color, a color can also be green, so apples can be green, too, and so on. Simple substitutions like this. He says that you can construct sentences from these that make sense, and they make sense because they're logical to some degree."
"And they think that something usable will come out of this?" the classmate asked, unimpressed.
"Yeah. But... they have some new experimental method. They push some electromagnetic fields through the brain", he yawned mid-sentence, "so, fields, and the currents in the neurons change this field. They detect this somehow. And this is so sensitive that they have to cool it with liquid nitrogen."
"And they read out your brain with this?"
"Not yet. But... they can tell a lot of things with this. For example, how hungry you are."
"Great. And that's what they want to draw conclusions from... I can tell you, even without liquid nitrogen. Wanna bring me a sandwich?"
"Go to hell."
"Otherwise, this substitution thingy doesn't even sound so stupid. Are neurons doing something like that in the brain?"
"More or less. Ohh also, the latest theory is that these very basic things corresponds to verbs, since those are the ones evoking changes in structure. This is from the same book."
"So... what is an 'apple', then?"
"It's a particular event, involving how the object is influencing its environment, and it has consequences like..."
"Are we sure of this?" Anne showed up too. She exchanged glances with Akos. "I... think it's not?" she added, in an innocent voice.
"Come on. Why did you have to sleep through all of this? Do I also need to convince you, too, that AI is possible? I'm way too tired for this..."
"I'm good, thanks. You can't convince me more anyway."
"Ohh by the way, if AI is supposed to be actually simple and doable" the skeptical classmate started again, revitalized, seeing additional support, "why hasn't it been done yet?"
"Who said it's simple?"
"Well, you had your favorite sentence. Anyone could come up with that."
"Well, sure... but soon, there will be something already."
Anne was listening to the debate a bit more, thinking. She didn't know either where the world was going. Will every human have an artifical brain, just like she had? Everyone lives as long as they want, in any kind of world they want...
"We stay ourselves only if we are today who we wanted to become yesterday."
Could people use the opportunity? There would be some who just gave positive feedback to themselves, endlessly. They wouldn't be able to. They wouldn't stay themselves.
She organized a party. Her. Anne. Exactly in the way she wanted.
This is reality. Reality matters, and it will keep mattering. But only because we think so today. And it will be us, being there tomorrow, too. Different brains, different bodies, but the same goals.
She looked out of the window. Her brother was down at the gate, walking Kriszti out. The others were already gone. The first rays of the sun rained down on the landscape. Snowy pines, quiet, sparkles. Clouds drifting through the blue sky, the air shiny and clean. Snowdust danced in the wind. Her big, blue eyes blinked once, sleepily.
The world is beautiful.