Rafał Kosik
Rosary
(excerpt)
“Very well, let’s start at the beginning. Let’s go back to the moment when the system began working in the main police station in the Warsaw Ring. Similar systems were already functioning in several other cities. g.A.I.a. was designed for diagnostic purposes, so it wasn’t necessary to supervise the quality of internal procedures. The programme installed on the police server was meant to help police in supervising former inmates, identified by psychologists as potential threats to society. It analysed all available data from their previous lives, with specific consideration of events that could cause lasting psychological damage. It’s been known for many years that a child that’s regular beaten by its parents will more readily use violence in adult life. A young person who falls into bad company will always remain vulnerable to certain temptations.
“Initially the number of PZ points for types of incidents was imposed, but the programme was soon allowed to modify them flexibly and independently. After the integration of g.A.I.a. with citywide monitoring and private CCTV networks the quantity of data flowing in surpassed the staff’s capabilities. People began to limit and slow down AI. Operational supervision by humans was given up and all that was left was random checks. That was the moment g.A.I.a. acquired real power, although no one suspected that yet. At that time, it was only one of the municipal security systems – and not even the most important one. Mimer – a body-language analysing programme – was uncovering several times more crimes every week. The disadvantage was its digital precognition time – it was only able to predict crimes a few minutes or even a few seconds before they happened. It swiftly turned out that combining the two systems brought nothing but advantages. At first, they worked together, but a month hadn’t gone by before the more effective g.A.I.a. absorbed the simple Mimer and began using it as its own tool. Over the course of a year, all the smart prophylactic systems had become sub-programmes of g.A.I.a., and over the course of the next five years similar systems from other cities became spontaneously integrated. Even Manfred – a traffic-directing system – became part of g.A.I.a. An exchange of information considerably increased the precision of defining PZ. At a certain moment we realised that a single common g.A.I.a. was operating in every city. PZ became a very dynamic variable. Tabular data could no longer deal with the complexity of analytical processes and under pressure of public opinion – which always valued security – g.A.I.a. became free of the responsibility of storing data in a way that was comprehensible to people. In the rings where the authorities didn’t agree to change it happened anyway. Unofficially. The relational database collapsed into an apparently chaotic contextual data base, and then into a dynamic structure which the human mind was incapable of grasping. That wasn’t regarded as a problem, because the results were better and better, and anyway, after the Transformation security became a priority.”
Translated by David French
Rafał Kosik
念珠
（节选）
“很好，让我们从头再来一遍。让我们回到华沙路警察总局的系统开始运行的那一刻。类似的系统已经在很多别的城市运行了，g.A.I.a.是设计用做诊断目的的，所以没必要监控内部流程的质量。安装在警察服务器上的程序是用来帮助警察监控前狱犯的，心理学家认定他们对社会是潜在威胁。系统分析所有他们前世可用的数据，对可能造成永久心理损伤的事件尤其关注。我们很长时间以来就知道，一个总被父母打的孩子更容易在长大成人后使用暴力。一个交友不慎的年轻人总是更容易受到某些诱惑。
“起初，我们强制为不同的事件类型使用PZ分数的数字，但程序不久就允许灵活并独立对其进行修改。在将g.A.I.a.和全程监控与私人闭路电视网络整合起来以后，涌入的信息量大大超过了处理员的处理能力。人们开始对AI进行限制和降速。由人类进行的操作监控最终被放弃了，只剩下随机的抽查。正是那时g.A.I.a.获得了真正的权力，尽管当时没人意识到。当时，只用到了市政安全系统—而且甚至不是最重要的系统。Mimer—一个肢体语言分析程序—每周都发现数倍于以往的犯罪。唯一的不足是它的数字预认知时间—它只能在犯罪事件发生前几分钟甚至几秒钟预测到。很快，人们意识到把这两个系统结合起来有利无弊。起初，它们共同协作，但没过一个月更高效的g.A.I.a.系统就吸收了简单的Mimer，而且开始作为自身工具来利用它。在一年的时间里，所有智能预防系统都变成了g.A.I.a.的子程序，而在后来的五年时间里，其他城市类似的系统也同时被整合进来。即使Manfred—一个交通分流系统—也成了g.A.I.a.的一部分。信息交换大大提高了定义PZ的准确度。某一刻我们意识到，一个单独的普遍的g.A.I.a.系统正在所有城市运行。PZ变成了非常活跃的变量。指标数据已经无法应付分析流程的复杂性和公众舆论的压力—而公众舆论总是热衷安全—g.A.I.a.以人类那一理解的方式不必承担储存数据的责任。在当局无法达成共识去改变的地方，改变还是发生了。只是非正式的。关联数据库坍缩成了一个明显混沌的预警数据库，并进而变成一个人脑无法理解的动态结构。人们并不把这当成一个问题，因为结果是更好的，总是更好的，而且，不管怎么说，在改革之后，安全变成了人们的首要考量。”
由 David French译作英文