Daniel Keys was getting up to speed on the possibilities involved in the incident with the EV. He was aware of Abel's list and now was listening to John explain how the EV might have been sabotaged.
“The thing is,” said John. “You wouldn't believe the skill it took to change the programming and not have it noticed. You see, you can't just put in a routine to lock the power relays on because that could be overridden by the safety check routine. So, if you really wanted to lock the power relays in the on state you would have to change the routine that is directly responsible for that and the safety routine. Then you would need to change or fool the monitor routine into believing the safety routine wasn't changed.”
“So, what you are saying John is that it would take someone with an intimate knowledge of the software and the hardware. Is that right?”
“Yes. But the intimacy with which you would have to know all three of the software routines would be overwhelming for any one person. I mean this software wasn't written by just one or two people but dozens. And it has also been submitted to the computational software Annie, which then modified it to the point that some people wouldn't recognize their own code.”
“But what about this list. The one you made that listed people with the likely expertise to accomplish such changes.”
“Well sure, the list. It's my best guess as to who might be able to do it. But it is a guess, in all honesty I don't think there is anyone I know of on Mars that could pull it off.”
“Someone had to do it,” said Daniel. “Even if they didn't have the direct expertise, they had the motive to get it done, they could have enlisted the help of an ANI, couldn't they? We know it wasn't an accident, don't we?”
“Oh yes. We can be sure it wasn't an accident for the same reason that I don't think anyone on Mars could have done it even with the help of an Annie. Remember Annies don't evolve their programming they learn from examples. And without real-world input, the simulations needed to train an Annie would be impossibly prohibitive for any single person.”
But maybe one of the new Ems, thought John.
“What do you mean that it would be prohibitive for any single person?” asked Daniel confused.
“I mean, Daniel, that if you think about it, the chances of it being an accident are slim. Because the changes in all the routines would have had to occur in the proper order or at almost the same time. And the changes would have to be in such a way as to reinforce the likelihood of failure.
“I mean why would all the routines change in just the right way so that they all contributed to the failure? It is more likely that any changes would cancel each other not reinforce. I'd expect the same if it were programming bugs lurking in the code that caused the failure. The conditions that would cause all the bugs to occur and in the proper sequence and fail in the proper way are highly unlikely. So, you see it isn't likely to be an accident.”
“Great John,” said Daniel exasperated. “What you are telling me is that it couldn't possibly be an accident, it couldn't possibly have been coding errors, and it couldn't possibly be any one person, and it couldn't possibly be an Annie. What do you think that leaves?”
He paused. “Nothing.”
John shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “I guess I'm glad I'm not you.”
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