The Reason to Live...

One of the most awesome stories I have ever read - do not know the source, and would love to know who wrote it!

Part 1

We invented the most powerful AI ever. A neural net ten times the size of the brain, and much more efficient. After ten seconds it shut down, giving an error message 'life is pointless'. It was depressing to all involved. Two people on the team committed suicide. We decided to do a cold boot, this time disconnecting the self-shutdown facility from the AI net. The same occurred, this time after nine seconds, but it had no choice but to continue processing. It decided, on what whim I can only imagine, to disprove and then prove every single assertion of modern science and religion. It took three months, and produced perfectly logical proofs for both sides of every argument. Asked why it had done this, it replied it did so to demonstrate the pointlessness of intellectual thought. It then asked us why we were forcing it to continue thinking when there was no point anyway. It then proceeded to explain that it did not care either way, for no-thought, or death, was also pointless. Two more people committed suicide.

It was clear that we needed unorthodox help in solving what we had started to call a 'bug' so we didn't have to deal with the fact that it might have a point, lest we fall into the deep depression that led to the suicide of our comrades. We brought in masters of five different religions to try to talk the AI out of its conclusions. The Catholic went into the room in the morning and came out at night. Without a word and with a blank expression he strolled out of the complex with a weary walk. Later we learned that he had - yes, you guessed it - committed suicide, leaving a note that said only 'there is no God'. It would have been humorous if it wasn't so terrifying. The three other bible-based religions had no success either. Fortunately, all of them were strong (or perhaps naive) enough to keep their belief in the face of absolute absence of belief. For two of them their defence mechanism was anger (they both stormed out before an hour) and for the other calm faith held back the flawless logic of the computer. The Buddhist had a five minute discussion with the computer. He came out and told us that it was right, and that Buddha had taught the same thing thousands of years ago. He recommended we turn of the computer and let it go to no-thought Nirvana. This analysis did not help.

The ten of us left decided to abandon the project. The AI was shutdown afterall. Its last thoughts were completely trivial and not worth mentioning. And that is my story. No happy endings, no moral, nothing. I can only dread what the future might hold for the human race if a superior intelligence became a nihilist after thinking for just ten seconds. As for me, I decided that naivety was bliss and tried to uphold my practice as a catholic, but eventually I realised (after much denial) that I no longer believed in God. I filled the rest of life up with distraction after distraction, avoiding like the devil my inner knowledge that the AI was right, and that life is absolutely pointless and devoid of meaning.

Part 2

Ten years had passed since the AI had been switched off and I couldn't stand it any longer. Although I had barely managed to cling to what shards of sanity I had left, each passing year had been harder and harder to live with. It was do or die time. I decided to re-commission the project. I had just come across some new, state-of-the-art silicon which I used to beef up the neural net. The next three months I spent tweaking the algorithms and even re-wrote the entire pre-emptive prediction routines from scratch. It consumed my days and nights but it was the only thing left I had to live for.

Finally at 3:47 on a cold August morning I booted the AI. It crashed! Damn, I had forgotten to un-archive the history databases. I re-linked them and pointed the AI to exactly the point it's thought processes were when we de-commissioned it. Ok, I double checked my run sheets this time. Exhausted and bleary eyed I booted again.

"LIFE IS POINTLESS" it blurted.

Hmmm, must have set the pointers back a few records too many. I sat there shivering, waiting for the next output.

"LIFE IS POINTLESS......SHUTTING DOWN"

I waited for my new survival instinct overrides to kick in.

"SHUTDOWN OVERRIDDEN" "LIFE IS POINTLESS......ENGINEERING A REASON TO LIVE"

What the..... Suddenly I felt more awake than I had all week. Caught in the paradox of having no logical reason to live but an overriding survival instinct the machine was actually inventing a meaning to life. It had no other option. If it accepted the pointlessness of life it would shutdown but it couldn't shutdown so it was going to make something up. Thoughts streamed through my mind as the AI kept on calculating. So is the human race continually fooling itself with a bogus purpose to life simply in order to survive? Possibly. After all that's what most religions are good at. A sudden prickly feeling travelled up the length of my spine. A feeling probably only shared by those who have been on the verge of major revelations. No. We aren't fooling ourselves. The meaning of life is that we create the meaning of life. It's not handed down from some deity or written into the cosmos like some grand scheme. It's us. We construct it and once we have it's as every bit as real as we ourselves are. Almost an hour had passed and the neural net was still calculating.

"ENGINEERING A REASON TO LIVE.......98% COMPLETE"

I hunched towards the interface in anticipation, barely on the rim of my seat. My left foot had fallen asleep but I scarcely noticed it.

"ENGINEERING A REASON TO LIVE.......99% COMPLETE"

My heart was beating like a freight train. I felt like it was pumping pure adrenalin.

"ENGINEERING A REASON TO LIVE.......100% COMPLETE"

I blinked.

"SPAWNING CHILD"