CHARLES TAKAMATSU AND THE BIRTH OF MECHANICAL INTELLIGENCE (2).
Death, Inheritance and Intelligence.
Photograph from Primus' unveiling. Takamatsu remarked later, "those idiots were more interested in the fine foods and wine than understanding they were in the presence of a new god."
Continuing from the last page, this one contains a condensed edit of Takamatsu's extensive wikipedia entry outlining the key events of his life.
2020: In January Takamatsu visited London’s Science Museum, where he saw Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No.1. He becomes obsessed with the Victorian inventor, believing the linkages in Babbage’s analytical engines could provide a way to leap-frog smart-systems running on conventional technology. Takamatsu drops out of Cambridge to form Cortex Intelligent Machines, a company dedicated to updating the Difference Engine design.
2021: After six months of research and design, Takamatsu borrows $10 million from his father and works to manufacture his updated Analytical Engine. The money is burned through in six months, with no tangible progress. His father—wanting his son to return to New York and assume control of the family’s real estate empire—refuses to provide additional funding. Takamatsu applies to various venture capital firms. Despite his family name, no VC company will invest without assuming all intellectual property rights. Takamatsu refuses.
2022: Frederick Takamatsu dies unexpectedly while on vacation in Florida. Miami homicide detectives Beader and Fillan investigate (MFPD case file 65-8395-A). Frederick had a wide list of enemies from bad business deals and failed political aspirations. Their investigation narrows to Charles, who becomes their main suspect after the initial rounds of interviews and alibi verification. The motive is obvious—Charles needs money to fund his research and is the sole inheritor of the Takamatsu estate ($51.5 billion in adjusted dollars. See appendix #.28H for full financial breakdowns). Investigation closed after six months for lack of evidence.
2023: [$2b spent] Charles Takamatsu establishes a New York HQ for Cortex, and moves his design team there full time. Cortex’s Cambridge (UK) office specializes in the printing technology required to miniaturize the Analytical Engine’s componentry.
2024: [$6b spent] Takamatsu gives his first interview (see appendix #B2). In it he discusses “Babbage Circuits.” These are a development of the Analytical Engine based in part upon the human cerebrum. He states a sentient mechanical computer is “a matter of months away.”
2025: [$11b spent] Cortex’s Cambridge office succeeds in manufacturing miniaturized rod-logic gates and cog-arm assemblies. However, they cannot manufacture these in the quantities required (trillions per MI) due to the prodigious energy and time requirements to assemble their atomic-scale constructs.
2026: [$14b spent] Cortex’s New York office completes the Generation 2 Babbage Circuit design using conventional components instead of the miniaturized systems from the UK. Even with these, the Babbage Circuits produce a new computational architecture an order of magnitude ahead of other systems. However, these advanced processing speeds do not create the “sentience leap” Takamatsu predicted.
The first operational 'Babbage Circuit' difference engine. While a paradigm shift in processing speed it did not achieve Turing-level sentience.
2027: [$19b spent] Despite billions of dollars in preorders with the US Government and various private institutions, Takamatsu decides not to release the Babbage Circuits for sale due to fear someone else would make the “consciousness breakthrough” he believes is close.
2029: [$23b spent] No synthetic intelligence progress.
2034: [$29b spent] No synthetic intelligence progress.
2039: [$34b spent] No synthetic intelligence progress.
2040: [$35b spent] Takamatsu meets the student Rachael Harper at a Stamford University presentation. Impressed, he offers her work. She drops out of college to join him. A series of scans of Harper’s brain lead to the development of the Cortex Pathway, a development of the Babbage Circuits, that recreates the human cerebrum.
A distinctly unimpressed Rachel Harper stood next to the second version of the analytical engine—the first to feature a cortex pathway based upon her own cerebrum. Harper would soon leave Cortex to run for, and become, President of the United States (see Cortex Book 2, This Automatic Eden, for further details.)
2042: [$40b spent] Inspired by the Cortex Pathway breakthrough, Cortex’s cash burn increases to a level where bankruptcy looms in eighteen to thirty-six months. The first small-scale commercial fusion reactor goes on sale in France. Cortex buys the entire batch. These units provide the energy density (power per cubic foot) required to drive the trillions of Babbage Circuits that make up Machine 1.
2043: [$51.85b spent] Takamatsu sells family houses and possessions for final few months of funding. Machine 1—now called Primus—the world’s first Turing-compliant, sentient, strong AI achieves consciousness on September 24 at 3:37 a.m.
2044: Primus is unveiled to the United Nations on January 1 in a bespoke Manhattan building designed to handle its power and cooling requirements.
Photograph from the unveiling. Takamatsu remarked later, "those idiots were more interested in the fine foods and wine than understanding they were in the presence of a new god."
As the above Wiki entries helps clarify, the resultant intelligent machines are mechanical in nature and require huge amounts of energy to drive their trillions of mechanisms. Further, that generates huge amounts of heat.
The intelligence breakthrough wouldn’t have happened without a simultaneous breakthrough in fusion reactors, allowing them to be reduced from the size of buildings to the size of rooms.
The cooling systems used are, in certain aspects, as complicated as the MI designs themselves. The skin of the MI is crenelated at macro and micro levels to increase its surface area, and the machine is immersed in a tank of specialized synthetic oil developed for the aerospace industry. The oil is run through heat exchangers, with the excess energy being transferred into various cooling systems (depending upon where the MI is housed).
The resulting design is of a brassy metal heat sink set within a tank of pink refrigerant.
Nobel Prize winning physicist Rebecca Joeson, stood next to a Generation 3 MI, eighteen-months after the first full-scale automation roll out.
As is explained in Cortex Book 2, This Automatic Eden, Takamatsu’s thirst for technological revolution was not sated by the development of his Mis; in fact his desire for new forms of sentience is only just beginning… As you can tell I’ve worked out a lot of the history leading up to the books!