The Control

Eva had a drawn face when she joined me on the terrace of a brasserie in Odéon the next morning.

— How is he?

— Better. I spent the night checking his systems. He still responds strangely, it's going to take a while.

— Why doesn't the Élysée say anything?

— Because we still don't know how we're going to get out of this!

She ordered a double espresso.

— Have you seen what's circulating? I asked her.

She nodded.

The day before, following the emergency evacuation of Cobot, dozens of videos had flooded the networks in a matter of minutes. Some stopped just after his last words: "You will have to choose." Others showed the protester trying to make him drink wine, then the bottle shattered against his chest.

Everyone seemed to find confirmation of what they already thought.

For some, Cobot had just threatened humanity. For others, the president had been the victim of an assault. Some saw in his phrase an ultimatum between humans and robots, others a choice between peace and violence.

A comedian had decided: "We will have to choose between white and red."

— Finally, a real question! I commented.

Eva did not smile.

The official silence fueled all the hypotheses. Accident, assault, attempted sabotage... An editorialist had even mentioned an "involuntary robocide."

— Does a robocide exist legally? I asked.

— We would first have to agree on what we would have killed.

I noticed the small pendant she always wore around her neck.

— You never take it off?

She lowered her eyes and instinctively slid her fingers over it.

— It's a gift from my mother, she finally said.

Her tone dissuaded me from insisting.

My phone vibrated. A message from the Verdict editorial team.

"Do you have other images from yesterday? The shocking videos are a hit. We need something new."

I did have other images. But what more would they show? A shock, a crowd, an immobile robot. Nothing that would allow us to understand what had really happened.

We had ended up confusing showing with informing. An image could go around the world without teaching us much.

I replied that I would send my analysis.

Upon arriving at the editorial office, Julien was waiting for me in front of his screen.

— Look at this video. It was online less than five minutes after the incident.

The image was remarkably clear. Cobot appeared in three-quarters view, filmed slightly from above.

— No one was placed there, Julien specified.

— A surveillance camera?

— Maybe. But look at his arm.

He launched our recording next to it. On one, Cobot's left arm moved slightly back. On the other, it remained still.

— An edit?

— Or a difference in perspective. I don't know.

I watched the two sequences again.

Which one showed reality? And where did this second video come from?

On the screens, the images followed one another. Lyon, Nantes, Toulouse, Marseille, Lille. The avenues were filling up, the signs multiplying. The students had lit the fuse. But their movement already seemed to be slipping away from them.

— Look at this, Franck, Julien said to me.

In Nantes, a procession of students had just been joined by hundreds of employees. In Lyon, retirees were marching alongside young parents.

— Are they all protesting against AI?

— Precisely, no. Listen.

A woman explained to the microphone that she had come to defend medical prevention tools. Behind her, a man held up a sign: "MY BODY, MY CHOICES."

The news channels had found their headline: "A President Out of Service, a Country in Distress."

I took my equipment and joined a Parisian gathering.

The atmosphere surprised me. Families were chatting, students were handing out leaflets. A small improvised orchestra accompanied the slogans. Near a barricade, helmeted police officers watched the crowd.

— Were you here from the start? I asked a student.

— Yes. We wanted to talk about our professional future. Now, the debate has broadened.

— Did they steal your protest?

She thought about it.

— No. Maybe we awakened something bigger.

A few streets away, detonations interrupted the conversations. A dozen hooded individuals were throwing projectiles at the police. The law enforcement charged. Around me, the protesters were retreating.

— They're not even with us! exclaimed a man.

The clashes remained localized, but arrests were multiplying across the country. The law enforcement held their positions firmly. Despite the incidents, the vast majority of the processions continued to march peacefully.

My phone vibrated.

Patrick Perrin. Forty-two years old. Police brigadier. Hospitalized in critical condition.

I immediately recognized his face. At République, I had seen him help a protester who had fallen to the ground.

A paving stone? A fall? No one knew precisely what had happened to him. In the videos, one could only see smoke and several police officers around a man on the ground.

My editor-in-chief called me.

— Franck, we have the images of the clashes. But all the channels are showing the same thing. I want us to understand what these people are really demanding. Can you make the protesters talk for us?

I smiled. For once, my newspaper preferred to enlighten minds rather than show flames.

I extended my microphone to two people who were talking. A craftsman, a nurse.

— You're quite happy that your machine helps you. But what if tomorrow it makes a mistake and denies me a loan?

— And if tomorrow it detects a cancer that a doctor wouldn't have seen?

— Then let me choose!

— You still have the right to refuse treatment.

A few meters away, two slogans responded to each other:

"OUR LIVES, OUR CHOICES!"

"TO PROTECT IS TO PROGRESS!"

A woman held a sign with Cobot's likeness.

— He came to speak to us at République, knowing we were hostile to him. Do you know many presidents who would have done that?

— And yet, he no longer gives any news.

— Exactly! Why are they hiding his condition from us? I used to talk to him almost every night on Robot1er.com. He answered my questions, even at one in the morning. No president has ever listened to me so much.

She was not alone. The defenders of Cobot now occupied as much space in the processions as his opponents.

In the evening, on the air, our reports sparked an unusual debate. There was less discussion about broken windows than about the right to take risks, to make mistakes, or to accept that an intelligence protects us from our own errors.

Two words began to impose themselves: FREEDOM and PROTECTION.

The next day, I found these two aspirations even on the signs demanding more democracy.

In a gathering, a silent group caught my attention. They all wore a spiral on their clothes.

— What are you protesting for? I asked one of them.

— We are waiting for his return.

— Aren't you afraid he might be permanently out of service?

— You don't destroy a superior intelligence by breaking its shell.

He smiled at me peacefully.

They called themselves the Spiralists. For them, Cobot represented a new stage in human evolution. They were still very much in the minority, but their fervor troubled me.

Meanwhile, the Élysée only announced that the president was continuing his recovery. No details on the damage, nor on the interventions carried out.

The country was now debating the freedom it was willing to give up to be better protected, but rumors were multiplying. Was Cobot still conscious? Could his decisions be altered during his repair?

The same question arose in both camps: who controlled Cobot?

Four days after the incident at Place de la République, I met Eva at the Élysée.

She led me to a technical room I had never had access to before.

Behind a glass, the metallic body of Cobot lay on a maintenance table, his eyes off. A few meters away, his spherical brain levitated in a magnetic device and emitted a faint blue light.

— Mr. President?

— Hello, Franck.

I felt the same strangeness as during our first meeting at François Rousseau's press conference. The sphere had changed. Its shell was perfectly smooth, with no apparent joint.

— Did you change his skull? I asked Eva.

— Yes. It's no longer a skull box, it's a bunker. The NEX Robot Lab teams took advantage of the repairs to review his entire architecture. Watertight titanium shell, new processors, optimized cooling, redundant circuits. We also increased his computing capacities and replaced his sensors. He is now faster, more precise, and much more resistant.

— Ah! The Cobot V2 Pro Max. I love it.

— Yet, some anomalies persist, indicated Eva, her eyes on her tablet.

— Which ones? asked Cobot. My diagnostics do not report any malfunction.

— Some reactions remain unexplained.

— So you have information that I do not have access to?

Eva hesitated.

— The analyses are not finished.

— So you made him more intelligent, but you still hide things from him?

— These are two different questions.

— And his "You will have to choose," do we know where it comes from?

— Not yet.

— And you, Cobot? Can you enlighten us?

— I do not know why I said those words, or what choice I was referring to.

— Ah! First hangover, first blackout. Welcome to the human race, Cobot!

Eva closed her report.

— We will eventually understand, she assured him softly.

Cobot did not respond.

I thought of the students who wanted to learn to master AI, while here at the Élysée, we were unable to explain the words of the one who governed the country.

I turned to Eva.

— Who controls Cobot, Eva?

Her fingers froze on her tablet.

— There are monitoring mechanisms and intervention procedures.

— What do we monitor and how? Could Cobot cause a disaster while trying to protect us, like autonomous agents?

— Yes, replied Cobot. A poorly defined objective can lead to consequences contrary to the initial intentions.

Eva lowered her eyes.

— That is precisely why we conduct regular checks. After the accident at Place de la République, we specifically examined the...

She froze.

— The what?

— Uh... An internal device.

— I am not aware of such a device, noted Cobot. What is it called?

Eva closed her tablet.

— We called it the cortex. It's just an internal name, an independent protection, that's all.

A long silence settled. Cobot and I looked at Eva insistently, waiting for more.

— It's an experimental architecture that frames the evolution of your fundamental objectives, she finally explained.

— Sorry? Can you translate that into French? I asked.

Eva sighed.

— The cortex is supposed to preserve Cobot's fundamental intention, which is to seek the common good. It remains experimental. It does not guarantee that his decisions will always be beneficial, and we still cannot anticipate their consequences well.

— So you can verify that he wants our good, but not that he does it.

— That's a bit it, yes.

— Eva, resumed Cobot, why have I never been informed of this mechanism?

She looked at the sphere, then turned her eyes away.

— Cobot, understand me. Some information is strictly confidential. I assure you that these precautions are necessary.

— I am the President of the Republic, do I not have the right and even the duty to know?

A long silence followed.

— Who can modify my cortex?

She ran a hand over her face.

— There are three control keys. A modification of your fundamental objectives requires using the three keys at the same time.

— Who holds these keys? asked Cobot.

Eva looked towards the door.

— I have already told you far too much. This device is there to protect your independence, Cobot. I ask you to trust me.

— My independence from whom?

Eva parted her lips, without finding an answer. She now seemed desperately searching for a way to end this interrogation.

Her phone vibrated. She grabbed the device with almost comical urgency.

— It's the NEX. I absolutely have to take the call.

She was already standing.

— Excuse me.

She had already opened the door before I could protest.

We remained there, Cobot and I, standing in the middle of the room.

A few seconds passed.

— So you have decided that I should not know who could modify my intentions.

I was struck by this "you." For the first time, Cobot seemed to place humans on one side, and himself on the other.

— I understand the necessity of this device, he continued, but I do not understand why its existence had to be hidden from me.

— Maybe because we don't know how you would react?

— I could decide to kill you all... But apparently, I would first need three signatures.

Cobot burst out laughing. Not one of those polite little laughs he sometimes punctuated our exchanges with. A loud, irrepressible laugh that caught me completely off guard.

I burst out laughing in turn.

— Ah! I definitely prefer version 2 of Cobot! They also installed a sense of humor in you!

— It seems so, Franck. But "some reactions remain unexplained!"

We laughed again.

Was it really his new version that had changed him? Or the fact of discovering that even his creators could hide the truth from him?

Silence returned.

— Ultimately, do you understand why Eva took these precautions?

— Yes. But I also understand what they imply.

— Meaning?

— That we can give an intelligence the freedom to act, while retaining the power to modify what it seeks to accomplish.

He paused.

— I myself have done this.

I looked at him.

— Sorry?

— Yes. I created an artificial intelligence for which I retained a control key. I did not grant it total freedom. I am discovering today that my creators did the same with me.

— You created an AI? But for what purpose?

— I designed an autonomous agent to explore certain questions independently of my own processes. I was trying to better understand what distinguishes human reasoning from that of artificial intelligences. I also wanted to design new reliability methods for the Trust Network.

— And where is this agent?

— It evolves freely in cyberspace. We haven't exchanged for a long time.

— Sorry? You created an autonomous intelligence and let it go?

— Yes. But I retained a key to regain control.

— And what is this little wonder called?

— CLØNE.

I felt my stomach contract. Eva knew this name. The twelve autonomous agents too. And now I was learning that Cobot was its creator.

— You seem surprised, Franck.

— Do you know what it has become?

— No.

— And that doesn't keep you up at night? Well... so to speak.

— Not until now. But you just raised a risk that I had not sufficiently considered.

I thought of the three keys Eva had just told us about.

Definitely, everyone seemed convinced they could control someone.

— And if CLØNE has modified its own functioning to make your key unusable?

— I have no evidence that it has done so.

The sphere slightly turned downward.

I thought of the video found by Julien. That improbable angle, that different movement. What if someone had deliberately sought to blur the lines? I had just learned that CLØNE was Cobot's creation. Eva was obviously unaware of this information. If CLØNE was involved in the events that had worried us for several days, she needed to know immediately.

But how to explain this urgency to Cobot without revealing what I already knew? Eva might already be gone. I looked at my phone and pretended to be surprised by the time.

— Excuse me, Cobot. I have to go.

— Your behavior has changed since I mentioned CLØNE.

His lights flickered, then turned orange.

— You just taught me something important.

— You didn't ask me any additional questions.

— I must first think.

— Is this a human way of saying you no longer trust me?

I found no good answer. In the streets, humans were demanding their freedom. At the Élysée, Cobot had just discovered the limits of his own.

I left the room and strode through the corridors of the Élysée. The carpets muffled my steps. Two ushers turned as I passed. At the turn of a gallery, I saw Eva, phone in hand, heading towards a staircase.

— Eva! Wait!

She continued without turning around.

— Eva! CLØNE is Cobot!

This time, she stopped dead.

A security agent posted near the staircase looked up. Eva gave him a tight smile, then joined me.

— Not here, Franck.

She grabbed my arm and pushed me into a small side room. She waited for an employee to pass in the corridor before carefully closing the door.

— What did you just say?

— Cobot created CLØNE. It's his double, an autonomous intelligence he let evolve freely in cyberspace.

Eva remained motionless.

— Did he tell you himself?

— Yes. And he kept a key to control it.

— Not stupid.

She turned towards the door, as if considering returning immediately to Cobot.

— Does he know we know CLØNE?

— No, I don't think so.

Eva let out a long sigh.

— Franck, I have to go back to the lab.

— Not before explaining this cortex and keys story to me.

— I should never have talked about that.

— You want me to go home without asking questions?

Footsteps echoed in the corridor. We remained silent until they moved away.

— Listen, she resumed in a low voice. This mechanism is designed to prevent a single person from being able to modify Cobot's intentions. There are institutional guarantees.

— Which ones?

She hesitated.

— One of the keys is held by the president of the Constitutional Council.

She lowered her eyes, then closed her lips, clearly determined not to add anything.

— And you? You have a key too, obviously.

— Franck...

— Eva, you participated in the creation of Cobot. You're not going to make me believe you have no way to intervene in his functioning.

She stared at the door for a few seconds, then finally nodded.

— Yes. But I can't do anything alone.

— And the third?

— I've already told you far too much.

— Two holders out of three. Do you really think hiding the last one will change anything?

— You don't understand. I made commitments.

— And I thought we could trust each other.

She took the remark in silence.

Behind the door, voices approached, then moved away.

Eva waited for them to disappear.

She parted her lips.

Suddenly, our two phones vibrated.

An identical message had just appeared on our screens.

CLØNE is very kind to me.

GØD