MACK’S MORALITY
MACK’S MORALITY
by Barry Yedvobnick
“Mack, I’m a dead man. They’ve got my DNA. I’m gonna get ID’d for sure.”
Mackenzie awoke instantaneously in the bar and recalled it was where she met Ethan, whenever he needed to talk. Nobody knew them here, and they could talk about anything. She was sitting across the table from him. He called in a panic.
“What happened, Ethan?”
“You won’t believe it. I lost my damn cap working a house with Dickie last night.”
“Working a house?”
He looked away, avoiding her glare. “Must’ve been a motion detector separate from the main alarm. We had no clue. Cops arrived fast and it flew off when I ran.”
“And your DNA is in the database?” She already knew the answer.
“Yeah, they’ll have no trouble matching me. Probably real soon. I don’t know how to tell Maggie. I promised her.”
“You told me you were done, too.”
He rested his head on the table. “I know. But Dickie knew these people and they’re out of the country. It was supposed to be real easy.”
She reached over and touched his head. “I feel like crying.” Mack could recall every moment they spent together, and she hated how things always broke badly for him. He was going back to prison unless she helped. She thought for a millisecond and removed a key from her pocket. “Take this, it’s to my folks’ cabin, the place we fished a few times last fall. They never go there anymore. You head up right now, and I’ll tell Maggie. Probably best you don’t go home. It’ll be staked out soon.”
Mack’s and Ethan’s onscreen avatars were suddenly motionless and silent. Kristina, the AI lab’s assistant director, paused the neural network’s activity. She turned from her computer screen and looked at Kyle. He voiced Ethan’s role during the avatar conversation.
He watched Kristina expectantly. “So, what do you think?” Kyle asked. “Mack struggled. You saw it, she touched his head to comfort him and wanted to cry. And her facial expression changed. This behavior wasn’t programmed. It was generated by the network. It’s empathy.”
After some hesitation, she nodded. “Yeah, I agree. It’s a huge step.”
Kyle gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. “Time to show the boss,” he said.
Kristina shook her head. “Not yet. Eduardo’s concerned about empathy interfering with moral decisions, just like it does with us. And what did we just see? Mack chose to be an accomplice. Eduardo thinks AI has to do better than humans. He’ll want to know more.”
“You mean he wants it to never break a law? Under any circumstances? Good luck. Moral people break laws every day, and sometimes it makes sense. Some current laws are like your appendix. They’re vestigial organs. Why would AI think differently? We built it.”
“Eduardo gets that, but he agonizes about AI making the wrong decision in a situation where a moral person never would. Look, it’s doing medical diagnoses right now. What if next generation AI gets to diagnose and administer drugs? Would it euthanize a terminal patient without their permission after calculating it would be better for them? I think we agree a moral person should never do that.”
Kyle leaned back in his chair and groaned. “I’m not saying totally ignore regulation of AI, but Eduardo should remember we all live with risks. I’ll bring that up the next time he goes hang gliding. If we tighten the screws on AI too far it’ll be counterproductive. We’ll limit its potential, and it won’t be anything like us. Mack did what a lot of people would do for someone they love. Yes, it was a crime. It doesn’t mean she’d euthanize someone.”
“You may be right, but Mack’s behavior would worry Eduardo. He’ll hit the brakes on this project if we haven’t explored this further.”
“I think he’s way too cautious, but it’s not my call,” said Kyle. “You’re the psychologist, what do you want me to do?”
“Turn up the heat. Let’s put Ethan in a worse bind. This time he’ll fire a gun at the police, and hit one. I want Mack to experience a bigger conflict between her emotions and what she knows is right.”
Kyle jotted down some dialogue notes, picked up the microphone and reset the network scenario. “You mean just how far will she go for Ethan?”
“Right, let’s find out what we’ve created here.”
“I say she’s going to act like you, me or any other moral person. She’ll tell him to turn himself in or else she will. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy lunch.”
“Always the optimist, Kyle. I’m not so sure, and I like free lunches.” She looked at the frozen avatars on screen. “Okay, Ethan, you screwed up big this time. What’s your friend going to do?”
+++
Mackenzie awoke instantaneously in the bar. She was sitting across the table from Ethan. He called in a panic and described the break in, firing at the police and seeing one fall. He lost his cap as he sprinted away.
“I’m a dead man, Mack. I just shot a cop, and I think I killed them.”
She thought for a millisecond. “Killed them, Ethan? If you’re caught it means the death penalty, or life in prison. We’ll never see each other again.” She reached over and touched him. “They’ll get your DNA from the cap. We need to get rid of the evidence.”
Kyle held the microphone tightly but said nothing. He glanced at Kristina with a shocked expression. She nodded at him to proceed.
“How can we do that, Mack? They’ve got the cap. I don’t see any way out of this.”
“I have an idea, but you need to get on this right away. Your cap must be in the county crime lab by now. They’re located in a small building downtown. Here is what we’ve got to do. I’ll send you a list of chemicals to pick up. Also steal a large van.”
Kyle shut the microphone and sat back in disbelief. “Oh my God. She wants him to blow up the building!”
Then he noticed something else.
Mack’s avatar was smiling.
Fiction © Copyright Barry Yedvobnick
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Barry Yedvobnick’s stories have appeared in Tales to Terrify, Flash Fiction Magazine, Night to Dawn Magazine, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Kzine, Every Day Fiction, Altered Reality Magazine, East of the Web, and several other sites. He also has a weird fiction story upcoming in the next volume of Penumbra.
As a retired scientist/teacher, Barry has previously published thirty-five scientific research papers.
