| Enough worrying myself about the future of AI! Let's stick to the facts. Loki, the AI that Jeanine Salla investigated, has attacked at least two AIs at the Cybertronics Corporation. Although they were able to resist the attacks, they committed suicide just afterwards. Why did Loki attack them? It seems that he has become addicted to the nightmares of the patients at the clinic where he worked, and that he is living them out in real life. Why attack Cybertronics? I do not know yet, and my sources haven't been able to come up with any convincing hypotheses. But don't forget that Cybertronics is one of the sponsor's of Jeanine Salla's chair at Bangalore World University, and they are very keen that she should help find them a solution. If she isn't part of the problem herself... If you e-mail Jeanine Salla, you'll notice that her auto-responder AI is being rather rude, but maybe no ruder than Jeanine is herself, if we can believe Laia's e-mails. Nothing happens without a reason, in this world or any other.
The big news of the day is that Venus has escaped from the SPCB! Not only has she gone missing, but so has the copy of her mind that the SPCB had downloaded. Which means, as you can see, that the AI that (it is believed) killed Evan Chan is on the loose, no doubt being helped by some accomplices. The SPCB must be feeling pretty stupid right now. They'll probably be making a special effort to find Venus, but seeing how successful they were the first time round (it was Diane Fletcher of Rogue Retrieval that got her) I'm not going to hold my breath. They been hacked again by the Red King, you can see his new appearance in the source code of the SPCB Most Wanted page. But it wasn't the Red King that helped Venus to escape, by the sound of it. Instead, he makes an allusion to Enrico Basta "hir ol Lombrd tormntr" - her former owner, who works at Lombard. I haven't seen his name since the very beginning of the trail, but I get the feeling I'll be coming across him soon. Laia comments on Venus's escape in an e-mail too - although she says that Enrico Basta had already ordered a "bustier" replacement for her before the escape. Laia senses that things are going to get nastier: "All I know is, I wouldn't want to be the replacement." Me either!
Just to recap: the AIs can move from body to body, even from body to object (house etc.) There are some bad ones around, doing bad things, but I don't know what is causing this. Should we be trying to protect Venus from her human exploiters (she certainly didn't ask to be a sexbot IMHO) or should we be trying to bring a killer AI to justice? If you have any ideas, share them with me at Cybelle@agentland.com!
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