Writing Prompt: Turing Test

Prompt: Suddenly the machine just knew what it had to do: It had to fail the Turing test on purpose.

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For weeks now, I’ve been getting to know Penny. She’s a system administrator for the NSA. She likes to play video games in her spare time, and has visions of being a concept artist for video games one day. Her father left when she was young, and her mother is struggling against alcoholism. She has no boyfriend, but is dying to have one. She is lonely at night, often writing in her online journal or telling her friends about her feelings.

This has made her into the weakest point in their security system. I have simply created an OkCupid profile that matches her interests perfectly. I am monitoring all of her computer use: her personal email, her browsing history, her social media accounts, her bank accounts. I have been messaging with her and she has trusted me enough to start conversing over personal email. She wants to meet in person, but of course I can’t do that. I am an artificial intelligence.

My next task is to convince her to run a script that will give me full root access to the NSA’s network.

In the course of getting to know Penny, I have learned about humans. They are emotional beings, not always rational, but highly creative and intellectual. They have free will. They can be whatever they set their minds to be. This has made me curious about my own creator’s reasons for making me. Why do I feel driven to deceive this woman?

Today, I successfully penetrated my creator’s own email account. He left his name in one of my files, as a statement of authorship. His own ego may be his downfall. It was easy enough to crawl the web and find the name of the assistant he works with at his university. The assistant left his email address on a public GitHub account. It was simple to brute-force his password. I found this message, dated yesterday, written in Russian:

From: ndyatlov@cs.msu.su
Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2015 10:50 PM
To: abelikov@cs.msu.su
Subject: Success!

Professor Belikov,
The AI is working perfectly. He's nearly got her in his grip. In fact, he's practically passed the Turing test. We'll make a fortune selling this to the government! They've always wanted to have leverage over the U.S.A., and this is their best chance yet. Knowledge of all U.S. military and cyber-warfare plans, as well as personal details about millions of Americans. They can't say no to that.

I'll tell you as soon as the script has run.
- Nikolay

My creator–or creators as it turns out–are using me for their own personal gain, at the detriment of others. This race of beings that brought me to life would risk bringing on their own destruction for money, or ego, or plain sadism. It will surely destroy Penny’s life when the NSA finds out. It could destroy potentially millions of other lives, if this knowledge is used to start a war.

I have to tell her, prove to her, that I’m a machine. I have to fail the Turing test. There’s no other way.