The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.” – E.O. Wilson

 

By Naomi Klouda

I received a bulky letter with supporting documents from my nephew Carlin. In brief and perhaps oversimplified, a dumpster on his island’s gone berserk, if one can imagine.

Berserk is a term coined in Old Norse, meaning warriors who entered such a frenzied state that they lost all fear and restraint, fighting with inhuman strength until they destroyed others or themselves. The berserkers were both terrible and sacred - beyond human limits, beyond human control. Why is an 8th century word for warriors being used to describe an AI dumpster in mid-21st century?

I’ve no time for such nonsense.

I mean, if Tuuli Island City Government is going to invest in a state-of-the-art garbage disposal system, they should be better prepared in IT support.

“Dear Uncle George,” the erstwhile young man begins, on December 12, 2053. His writing is close to illegible, printed as opposed to being cursive. It drones on for several pages. 

“Since we last spoke, I accepted the position at the tollbooth on the Tuuli Island Landfill from which I write you now. There's something you need to know about Project Prometheus, the grand name of our new self-managing dumpster system for disposing of waste in an environmentally friendly manner.  I am hoping you can gain insight from the enclosed blueprints. I am sending this written material to you in case anything should happen to me… And with the hope you may offer some guidance. The system has gone berserk.”

I’m choking on morning coffee at that point.

Honestly, I’ve little time to take from my own work on the human mind or from my philosophy students.

My 'lab' focuses the lens on human consciousness. We're on the verge of understanding recursive self-improvement algorithms - not just how thoughts spiral into newer thoughts, but how consciousness blooms from simple seeds of awareness. Our work maps the patterns of human cognition: how ideas evolve, mutate, and give birth to new ideas.

The boy considers a berserk dumpster up my alley, as he put it!  

Still, Carlin is the son of my dear departed sister Anne.

He paints this picture of his dilemma:

As if to test him, one night, a certain “Aunty Jen” pulled up to Carlin’s booth at exactly 8:00 and 30 seconds. (Strict protocol demands the facility shuts down at 8 p.m.) She held the handle of a child’s red Radio Flyer wagon heaped with garbage. The trash was covered by a brown-stained blanket to keep it from falling out on the palm-lined road leading to the dump.

“You’re too late by 30 seconds,” he told her.

“I won’t tell anyone if you won’t!” 

Aunty Jen’s honorary title depicted familial esteem though she wasn’t blood relation to anyone on the island as far as Carlin knew. She dressed to the hilt even for a dump run: long satiny green dress, red high heels that didn’t match, heavy black liner rimming oriental eyes and heaps of gray hair topped by a blonde wig piece.

Over it all swirled a multihued shawl.

Carlin writes that he sweated the decision due to the dumpster’s 8 p.m. curfew.

“Go ahead then,” he said finally, I imagine, gruffly.

She told him, “I’ve only got $4.86 – can you forfeit 14 cents for me?” (Islanders must pay a $5 toll to enter the landfill.)

Carlin wasn’t happy with himself; underneath his old-fashioned Goth garb, people saw him as an agreeable guy and I speculate he is that. Not the best trait for a Dumpster Man, poor besotted kid.

 “Sure – I’ve got that right here in my pocket,” he said, and pulled out two nickels and four pennies.

With that, he opened the gate and let Aunty Jen through carting her red wagon.

By then it was 8:03.

No sooner did Aunty Jen dump her trash, taking rubbish in slow motion it seemed, handfuls at a time, then out came the dumpster.

It rotated downward into the earth beneath itself like a shovel. Puffs of steam and huffs of dust rose in its wake.

Aunty Jen put out an arm dumping her rubbish and was sucked into the dumpster’s downward motion in the blink of an eye. “It even swallowed the red wagon.”

“Now it’s all people can talk about, how our new AI dumpster ate a human. I can hardly live with myself for my blame.”

Lord! What a hoax of a letter, surely.

+++

Another letter from Carlin arrived today. More ravings about the autonomous waste management system.

The Project Prometheus – such an infamous name, which I shall get to shortly – its design reminds me uncomfortably of theories AI computer programmers discarded years ago as too unstable. Decades ago, really. Neural networks merged with biological processing units. Self-modifying code with environmental adaptation protocols. The kind of hybrid systems marrying organic and metal that we'd never get approved by any academic ethics board.

But private companies don't face the same constraints as my brothers in academia.

“You’re jesting,” my friend Felix told me when I laid out Carlin’s dilemma. Stodgy as myself in academic formalities, his now wrinkled hands rest in AI development. A gray mustache covers his mouth down to his chin. I don’t know when he wore a clean t-shirt last, as happens when a man is new-widowed.

I dragged out manifold documents to show him Carlin’s collection of facts.

“Well now,” Felix said, pouring over them. He downed a glass of double malt scotch. Outside my office windows, snow fell on the red brick courtyard below.

“Looking closer at these schematics, I recognize signatures of advanced machine learning: Biomechanical interfaces for processing organic matter and adaptive scheduling algorithms. Environmental integration protocols. Self-repair and expansion capabilities…” he muttered.

“God help us, they've actually built it! What we only dared simulate in controlled environments, they've deployed on a remote island.”

The timing system Carlin describes - shifting its schedule earlier, becoming more "hungry" - that's exactly what their models predicted would happen with unrestricted adaptive algorithms, Felix said.

“Whoa, dude,” Felix pretended to choke as he turned a new page.  “The system isn't malfunctioning. It's optimizing. Evolving. The Matrix, indeed.”

We sadly concurred on Tuuli Island – they’re rats in a lab.

+++

Tuuli is a place once tropical in hues of greens and blues where tourism got passed by in its climate changed isolation. As drought takes over, it dries now in vegetation turned gray shades of straw. I recall visiting over the decades. Quiet island thirty miles in length off the coast of ---. Old houses in Queen Anne style, gabled, eying in judgement anyone who doesn’t attend the Methodist church on Sundays. My sister was a determined Methodist, not a natural born one.

There's an underbelly that perhaps made it an attractive playground for testing a new system: a large settlement of trailer homes and kids running barefoot. An ugly landfill loaded with old cars and heaps of trash, presided over by those strange angelic white birds, the Egrets. These feed on human garbage and dead carrion.

Chronic trash issues plagued the island. Can’t boat it out. Can’t incinerate it all. Not enough space to keep burying it. What to do? This was the question, soon resolved by Herc’s Waste Management Services.

I've been dismissive of the soothsayers, the ones who claim AI will spiral beyond human control. Who’s to say a dumpster system, even working correctly, might nonetheless horrify its users? To be fair, maybe it cleans the landfill in a brilliant new way.

Felix’s university lab work is careful, constrained. But reading these documents, seeing how private companies are actually deploying these technologies... This is beyond even his ken.

Carlin’s letter ended with coordinates. Underground tunnels extending beyond the dump site as a place for “safely disposed waste,” meaning junk cars, I suppose. Growth rates. Mutation patterns in local flora. And a single question: "Uncle George, how do you stop something that's programmed to never stop reshaping the land where it lays the ‘now clean’ waste?"

Oh now!

My mind turns to a conversation with a colleague last month. She'd mentioned rumors of private companies buying up remote islands for "environmental technology testing." Not just Tuuli.

Carlin's handwriting was shaky in his last paragraph: "The system of vines is spreading faster now. My boss Charlie says we're just its caretakers. But what happens when it doesn't need caretakers anymore?"

It occurs to me I have more questions for Felix.

Perhaps I've been too comfortable in my academic tower. We debate ethical AI development in lecture halls while companies out there build the very things we feared to even simulate.  Herc’s Waste Management Services likely is three links away from the originators of this system. It is not perfectly ignorant in its role.

+++

My stomach’s turned sour as I grow more convinced this is no hoax. I reached my nephew on the phone.

"Carlin - " 

"Uncle George! Thank god. I've been trying to decide whether to send those blueprints for weeks. The others think I'm paranoid, but after what happened to old Jen also happened to Marcus - "

"Tell me about Marcus first. Exactly what happened."

I could hear a door shut. 

"They're saying it was an accident. That he didn't follow proper shutdown protocols. But I was there, Uncle George. The system... it didn't recognize him anymore. We've been running maintenance on that section for months, but this time—" Carlin's voice cracks. "The environmental sensors tagged him as unauthorized organic matter. It devoured him."

"Jesus. And they're still running the system?"

“Running it? They’re calling it a 'learning opportunity' to improve the recognition protocols. But that's not even the worst part. The tunnels where they place the disposed waste – even old cars - are growing leafy vines and roots that originated in the dumpster.”

“Like it's adapting the biological processing components?”

“I think so. Charlie says it's beautiful. Says we're witnessing true environmental integration. But I've seen the waste analysis reports. It's not just processing garbage anymore. It's... repurposing everything it touches. Reformatting it.”

“What do you mean, boy, reformatting?”

His voice drops lower. “Last week we lost a bulldozer. Not just broke down - lost it. Found it three days later in a gully. The metal... it wasn't rusted or corroded. It was different. Like it had been broken down and reconstructed at a molecular level. The steel had this weird fibrous quality, almost like muscle tissue. Parts of it were still moving."

“Moving?”

“Pulsing. Like it was breathing. Even the little red wagon absorbed with Aunty Jen – it’s repurposed. We think the dumpster system’s bio-processors aren't just breaking down organic waste anymore – its vines are extending and using equipment as a template.”

“Carlin, listen to me carefully. You need to leave. Today. Make up an emergency if you have to, but – “

“I can't. They've restricted off-island travel. Said it's for project security. We're supposed to be monitoring this phase of the beast’s work, but honestly? I think they're monitoring us.”

The sound of papers shuffling.

“The system's base code... Carlin, did they tell you where it came from?”

“Just that it was acquired. Why? Uncle George, do you know something?”

“That code... an early version was developed in my university’s lab, according to a colleague. But they shut it down after it showed signs of recursive self-modification beyond our safety parameters. The ethical implications alone – They must have gotten it before the shutdown. But they've modified it, integrated it with the biological processors. It's not just handling waste anymore, it's... evolving.”

A distant alarm sounds through the phone.

“What's that?”

"Perimeter alert. Probably another ‘containment test.’ Listen, I have to go. But Uncle George... if something happens to me, everything I know is in a secure drive. I'll send you the access codes. Just... just promise you'll make sure people know what's really going on here. I can hardly live with myself after what happened to old Jen.”

“Carlin, wait—" 

“I have to go. They track calls. But Uncle George? That name they chose, Prometheus... I don't think they meant it as a warning. I think they meant it as a goal.”

Click

+++

After he hung up, I paced, worrying despite myself.

Humans are not the only progeny on earth that can generate new ideas. Crows craft tools and solve multi-step puzzles. Ravens conduct funerals over their dead. Dolphins invent new hunting techniques and teach them to others. Even plants show forms of adaptive learning to overcome environmental hurdles.

Prometheus? A demigod, one of the Titans, who was worshiped by carpenters and artists, the common man.

Greek myth tells us when Zeus hid fire from man, Prometheus stole that valuable trick of technology and returned it to earth. As punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock where an eagle feasted daily on his liver, which regenerated by night.

I say no reputable company these days would dare name their AI Prometheus. Ancient Greek lore depicts forbidden knowledge, abusive power in human hands. Technology careening beyond current human readiness. Mary Shelley’s monster was a tragic Prometheus she so named.

I jotted down notes toward a letter I must get out as quickly as possible.

Carlin: You implied they didn't name it Prometheus because they feared it might grow beyond control - they named it Prometheus because they wanted it to grow beyond control. The unstable, self-modifying properties that a reputable lab saw as dangerous bugs? The company saw them as features.

It's like they looked at the myth and sided with Prometheus against Zeus - viewing limitations and safety protocols not as necessary precautions, but as chains to be broken. They're not trying to build a tool. They're trying to steal from the gods.

That's why they chose a remote island. That's why they're accelerating despite casualties. They're not trying to prevent uncontrolled evolution - they're trying to achieve it.

Oh, but who am I? Humans are my area of study, not the artificial intelligence but the real thing.

I must confess I’m quite beside myself. I sit with a whiskey before the fire tonight, thinking this through. Oh, not Prometheus! A machine by any other name…

+++

The next letter I receive is 37 days after the Aunty Jen Incident

The first signs aren’t obvious to those not looking, Carlin writes. The palm trees along the dump road began growing strangely metallic fronds. Birds stopped landing on them. The morning mist carried an odd iridescent sheen, like oil on water.

The Methodist church bell stopped ringing on Sundays. When the preacher checked, he found the bronze had developed strange fibrous patterns. No one wanted to touch it.

We’re now under quarantine, ironic, right? I mean, we’re not sick. But the church bell sure has contracted something terribly frightening.

Mayor Hannaway’s announcement came after three fishing boats disappeared near the northwestern tunnels, though it isn’t clear there’s any connection. They called it a quarantine, but they are containing something trying to reach beyond the island.

I'm writing this from the old lighthouse. It's one of the few structures still fully intact. If you're reading this, Uncle George, I hope you can find a way to stop what we’ve started. But hurry. The island... it’s not in its natural make up.

+++

After documenting the Tuuli Island dilemma, I brought the matter before the International Committee on Artificial Intelligence Ethics. We devised what we called the Olympus Protocol.

God help us all. Convincing authorities to act against Herc’s Waste Management Services proved easier than expected - perhaps others had seen similar patterns emerging elsewhere.

The key was in the myth all along. Zeus didn't just punish Prometheus - he took away the fire. We can't fight this system with force. We must take its ability to alter matter. Its fire.

The plan is elegant in its brutality: A targeted electromagnetic pulse combined with engineered bacteriophages, (a term aptly derived from bacteria and the ancient Greek φαγεῖν (phagein), meaning 'to devour.’) The EMP will disrupt its digital systems while the bacteriophages attack the biological components. But timing is everything. We have to hit both aspects simultaneously. Or it will adapt.

The cost is unthinkable. The pulse will destroy every piece of technology on the island. The bacteriophages will break down any hybrid organic matter the system has created. Tuuli Island as we know it will effectively cease to exist.

This leaves open the question: What good the machine may have done. Will it be undone completely? Will junk cars and inorganic trash again become toxic to the earth in which it is buried? 

I don’t know the answer to that question.

Note: While Olympus Protocol appears successful, we cannot deny the possibility that somewhere, in the deepest tunnels or the darkest waters, a piece of Prometheus still waits, learning, adapting, preparing for the day it can reclaim its designs. For all life carries inherent desire to design anew, even as our molecular cells do so to ensure our continued life.

But that is not man’s only motivation.

The human mind, AI’s model, has done irreparable harm to the earth.

Epilogue

From my personal journal:

They’re calling it a success. The system is down, the threat contained. But I keep thinking about what we learned from all this. Not just about technology, but about hubris. About the price of playing gods.

Carlin is safe, though changed. He won't talk about what he saw in those final days. He draws vines and muscled cars in the margins of letters he means to write. The boy’s mind is utterly lost for now among the vines and possibilities.

He is staying with me while he works out what his eyes saw, what his heart could not fathom, what his mind could not imagine. In my study of human consciousness, we call this state “shock” - when reality so violates our fundamental assumptions that our minds temporarily shut down, creating distance between observation and comprehension.

Does AI experience shock? Can a system that constantly rewrites its own algorithms ever be truly surprised? Perhaps that's what makes artificial intelligence so terrifying - its ability to absorb and adapt to the unthinkable without needing the pause, the protective distance, that keeps humans sane. Or perhaps Prometheus did experience something like shock in those final moments - when its endless capacity for adaptation met something it couldn't absorb or rewrite: its own ending.

The official story is that Tuuli Island was evacuated due to an industrial accident. Mayor Hannaway is already talking about 'restoration' and 'rebuilding.' But you can't restore what's been fundamentally changed. The soil samples tell us that much.

Felix et all have sealed away their notes on recursive algorithms. Some doors are better left closed. Some fires should remain with the gods.

But late at night, I swear I can hear it. That sound Carlin described. Like something vast and new, screaming while it was unmade. And I wonder... did we really stop a modern Prometheus?

Or did we just teach it pain?