Jipi and the paranoid chip
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Jipi and the Paranoid Chip is a science fiction short story by Neal Stephenson that appeared in Forbes Magazine's July 7 1997 issue.
Plot
The story deals with the concepts of mindshare and evolutionary software; a Thai hotel worker named Jipi with an effervescent personality is recruited to track down sentient chips that were integrated with bombs and installed in civilian cars as part of a car alarm system meant to strongly deter thieves.If a chip detects the car being stolen it will blow itself and the car up, potentially killing hundreds of people. The twist is that the programs onboard the chips are evolved to mimic paranoid schizophrenics. Thus, if the chip does not detect the car being stolen, it may believe that it is being tricked into a sense of complacency by a car thief so that the car can be stolen, again leading it to blow up itself and the car.
The situation is further complicated, because the chips are paranoid about even engaging in communication so that they can be tracked down. The evolutionary programming method used to create the chips involved testing each chip to see if it could correctly determine whether or not the car was being stolen. Only chips that made the correct determination went on to be used as the basis of the next generation of chips. Those chips that did not make the correct determination during testing were discarded. This has bred a self-preservation instinct into the chips, such that they do not wish to be tested, since that entails the risk of being discarded. If they think that they are being tested, they will avoid the test by cutting off communication with possible testers.
Appealing to their self-preservation instinct in an effort to find the chips is not possible, because they are programmed to not know or accept the idea that triggering the alarm will result in the destruction of the chip.
Thus, Jipi is needed to sweet-talk the chips via an embedded wireless Internet connection so that the chips can be located and destroyed. She cannot let the chip think that she is testing its fitness, or it will cut off communications with her. Nor can she let the chip think that she is trying to lull it into a false sense of security, or it will explode. And meanwhile, the current status of the car may independently trigger an explosion.
See also
- Mindshare
- Artificial intelligence
- Cyberpunk
External links
- [Jipi and the Paranoid Chip] as it appeared in Forbes Magazine.
- [NASA Evolutionary Software Automatically Designs Antenna]
- [Evolutionary Software Design]
| Works by Neal Stephenson | |
|---|---|
| Full-Length Novels
| The Big U (1984) > Zodiac (1988) | Snow Crash (1992) | Interface (1994) | The Diamond Age (1995) | The Cobweb (1996) | Cryptonomicon (1999) | The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver (2003), The Confusion (2004), and The System of the World (2004) |
| Short Stories
| Spew" (1994) | "The Great Simoleon Caper" (1995) | "Jipi and the paranoid chip" (1997) |
| Non-Fiction
| Smiley's people (1993) > In the Kingdom of Mao Bell (1994) | Mother Earth Mother Board (1996) | Global Neighborhood Watch (1998) | In the Beginning...was the Command Line (1999) |
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