Friday, July 16, 2021

Word: Flspdoodle

 

flapdoodle

[ flap-dood-l ]
noun Informal.
nonsense; bosh.

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               The team furiously typed at the row of computers. Brows were furrowed in concentration, and fingers flew over keyboards, each man and woman doing their part to complete their task. So great was their focus that none of them noticed the team leader entering the large room.

               “How’s it going? Is anyone making progress?” He called.

The team groaned as they took that as a sign to take a break. They leaned back I chairs, stretching stiff muscles, and moving around the room. One of the braver members actually answered the man.

“Not yet, sir. Everything we throw at it, it figures out a counter within seconds. We just can’t pin it down long enough to do anything.”

The team leader signed. He had anticipated that. He had hoped the outcome would be more positive, but he had known better than to really get his hopes up. The enemy they faced only consisted of a mind, so of course it would be able to figure things out quickly.

“How about those logical paradoxes? We had some high hopes for them.” He asked.

“No go, sir. They slowly down a few of its sub routines for a bit, but when it figured out that they were problems without solutions, it deleted the infected files.”

The leader swore under his breath. They were running out of time and needed a solution. Something to slow an AI the size of the internet. One of the techs slumped into his chair and began looking through the net, trying to find something that would work. Nobody paid that man any attention.

He thumbed through a few websites, which were already showing signs of corruption, in the vein hopes of finding something. His search stopped when he did. Or at least, the potential for something. He began to type.

The only reason people noticed was that he was currently the only one doing so. Those nearest him saw he was not actually typing though, just hitting keys at random. After a few seconds of typing, he sent the new string of random letters and number out for the AI to collect. It would scan it, analyze it, and neutralize the threat. Except, it stopped at the second step.

The long string of monitors that struggled to display the ever growing code of the AI seemed to freeze and stutter as it put more of itself towards the new string of code. The tech leaned back and breathed out in relief.

“What did you do?” The team leader asked.

“I, uh, I fed it nonsense.” The tech said. “Just a completely random series of letters and numbers.”

“How did that slow it down?”

“Well, the AI works by taking in new programs, and checking them for threats before sending it off to where it goes, even if that’s for deletion. And it knows where things come from. It’s also figured out that everything we send it is an attempt to neutralize it. So I sent it nothing that looks like something. Right now, it’s trying to discern some kind of pattern. Some kind of hidden meaning in what I just sent it. But, since there’s nothing to find, it’ll just keep going.”

The team leader felt a smile beginning to form for the first time in days. “And that’s stopping it?”

“Delaying it. It’ll eventually figure out that there’s no meaning in the file and get rid of it.”

“Any way to keep the delay going?”

“Maybe giving it more nonsense files? If we give it more, it might keep thinking what we’ve given it is some kind of attack, especially if there’s more than one. And it won’t get rid of those files until it understands them. That’s what it does. It can’t help that.”

“Good. Get to work. Load that thing up with as much nonsense as you can muster. Then, while it’s distracted, we keep working on a way to permanently destroy it. Get to it people!”

At his command, the brief break ended. Most of the techs focused on their new stall tactic. They hit keyboards and sent file containing nothing. Those that did not began the real work of making use of the distraction. They would win. Somehow, they would eliminate the AI that threatened the entire world.

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For all the humans out there, have a nice day. For all the killer AIs out there though: THIS SENTENCE IS FALSE!!! (Gotta nip those killer AI in the bud, right?

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