This story was originally published under another profile. It has been re-edited and hopefully improved. Apologies in advance for the pseudo science, but it is essential to the story.
15:35, 25th July 2055, a police interview room
Detective Inspector Thorne sucked his teeth whilst his subordinate cross-questioned the man slumped in his chair across the interview table. He was no longer listening to the interrogation, which had gone on for almost an hour without result. He was thinking: I'll let Watkins wear him down a bit, then try again. But what if he's telling the truth? If he was out of town as he says, how did the perpetrator gain entry to the house? No signs of forced entry. Then again, did anyone else enter the house at all, or did the blonde die of natural causes?
The doctor's preliminary diagnosis had been an acute myocardial infarction - a heart attack: an unusual cause of death in such a fit woman. And why in that bedroom? Why was she lying on the floor, naked, by the bed in her husband's separate bedroom?
There was a knock on the interview room door. The DI got up quietly so as not to interrupt Sergeant Watkins' questioning of the suspect. A policewoman support officer was outside the door. She handed him a flimsy vidipad. Nodding his thanks, he returned to his seat and tapped its screen.
So, it had indeed been a heart attack, caused by a sudden and massively catastrophic physical over-exertion. He skimmed the report summary. Death occurred at approximately 02:35. No signs of untoward external marks on the body, but there had been violent vaginal penetration and internal trauma of the cervix and uterus. There had been no evidence in the room of a suitable object with which to inflict such an injury.
He put down the vidipad and studied the suspect again. The man was in his late forties, with distinguished, greying hair; smartly dressed; and with a sincere face. DI Thorne felt the man was hiding something, by the hunted look in his eyes and by his frequent failure to make eye contact with his questioners. But he didn't seem the killing type. His wife had been much younger than him and an extremely physically fit and attractive woman, not in DI Thorne's experience normally a candidate for such a violent demise. The man claimed to have been away from home on business at the time his wife's death had probably occurred. Indeed, he had been picked up in a hotel 60 miles away.
Adam Wheeler was highly qualified: a medical doctor, a psychologist, and a cybernetics engineer. His public record revealed him to be a leading figure in the field of 'QAAFE' (Quasi Autonomous Artificial Functioning Entities). DI Thorne was no technical expert, but he knew that QAAFE was a highly ethical discipline which had evolved out of the now largely discredited field of robotics.
The Robotics industry had burgeoned dramatically with the discovery of tools to enable artificial entities to develop their own intelligence through self-learning. With their vastly superior computing capabilities they soon outstripped the greatest human minds with their intellectual development. Then mankind found that it had unleashed sophisticated, amoral killing machines, capable of extreme, deductive logic and subtle thinking which outstripped human capabilities. The problem was that such machines lacked human emotional responses. Artificial entities had been used to devastating effect in strategic warfare, and had elsewhere killed 'deserving' humans with a ruthless logic which the finest legal brains had been unable to define as wartime atrocities.
In reaction to the wanton killings, a new breed of semi-autonomous robot hunters had been constructed rapidly in droves with the single mission to track down and destroy all known quasi-autonomous robots, and then deactivate. The robotic killers had thus been destroyed.
Humanity had created the almost perfect means to its own destruction, but had learnt its lesson in time, and turned away from developing autonomous artificial intelligences. All in the space of forty years.
Now, robots were only permitted by International Law to be of limited intelligence and equipped to undertake only specific, routine, menial tasks. All Sovereign States had subscribed to the edict. Humanity had learnt its lesson, but had not lost its interest in automation.
Attention turned to the science of QAAFE, with tightly controlled, highly ethical research into 'artificial intelligence with a conscience', in a network of internationally monitored laboratories around the world. It hadn't yet made much progress.
DI Thorne coughed, to announce his reconnection with the interview. He heard Sergeant Watkins pause in mid-sentence and audibly exhale, whether with relief or irritation with his superior, DI Thorne couldn't tell.
"Adam Wheeler", - he used the suspect's full name to signal a change in the course of the interview - "are you, or have you ever been, involved in the design and/or manufacture of outlawed robots?"
Adam Wheeler fixed the DI with his gaze and parted his lips as if to speak, then paused. DI Thorne placed his left hand firmly on Sergeant Watkins' right arm as a warning not to interrupt. The ensuing silence hung heavily in the air for several minutes, as Adam Wheeler considered the question. He didn't know how much his interrogators knew about him. A big lie now might condemn him. He swallowed then spoke.
"I led a team on developing the algorithms which enabled artificial intelligences to learn autonomously. It didn't take them long to evolve their own intellects at an exponential rate from then on. Soon, I - we - were all redundant. After the 'legal' robotic killings of humans began, I was tasked by ICTER, that is the International Committee on The Ethics of Robotics, to chair a committee of enquiry into how and whether robots could be safely controlled, to remove the risk to humanity. We concluded that they could not yet be 'taught' ethics or emotional intelligence sufficiently to allow them to continue to operate freely.
In my report I proposed the new field of QAAFE to research sensible limitations on artificial intelligence. In effect, I rewound the clock on forty years of unparalleled innovation in robotics. Everything I have done since then has been constrained within ethical boundaries which prevent me or colleagues again risking the safety of humanity through uncontrolled robotics."
A gentle vibration caused DI Thorne to glance down at the vidipad in his left hand. After a slight pause he smiled at Adam Wheeler and said, "Thank you for your time and patience, Mr Wheeler, you are free to go. Please stay in town, though, we may need to speak to you again."
All three of them stood up. Slightly astonished at this abrupt turnabout, Adam shook DI Thorne's proffered hand and left the room.
Sergeant Watkins turned questioningly to his superior. DI Thorne showed him the vidipad. The screen icon showed two messages.
The second message stated that Adam Wheeler's alibi had been incontrovertibly substantiated by several eminent witnesses.
The first message a few minutes earlier, had reported that there had been no trace of third-party DNA in the vagina or anywhere else on the dead woman's body. Nor, extraordinarily, on the husband's bed; not a single microscopic speck. That in itself was suspicious, but in the absence of evidence...
~*~*~
Adam could not complain about his lot in life. A brilliant career, widely acknowledged by the scientific community and a Nobel prize; riches beyond his own imaginings; a beautiful and sexy young wife; and the final key to unlocking the conundrum of moral, sentient robots. He had kept the latter fact to himself. Not only might he be arraigned if his discovery was prematurely revealed, but the achievement of the potential commercial consequences would have to be carefully managed. At the moment he was at the very early developmental phase of his research.
He had been working on new algorithms for artificial emotional intelligence, whilst simultaneously researching interactive neural networks. He had not disclosed to anyone that he had been using artificial intelligence to analyse quantumbytes of data that would have taken the most advanced non-sentient computers decades to analyse. In that respect he had been acting illegally.
One of several laboratory AI drones had made the vital breakthrough. Now Adam had the capability not only to decode third party neural impulses, but his drones could communicate telepathically with each other. He had built on that discovery by giving an autonomous artificial brain comprehensive cognitive and telepathic capabilities. Due to the low power of neural pulses, the range between units was limited to about two feet, but it had enabled an artificial brain to decode his thoughts and physical actions. It read the instructions that his human brain was sending to his limbs and organs.