Kevin Yuan wins CDT Festival of Science Short Story Competition

Kevin Yuan, Plastic Electronics CDT

Kevin Yuan, from the Plastic Electronics CDT, won the CDT Festival of Science short story competition, with his piece called "First Light".

Congratulations to Kevin Yuan from the Plastic Electronics CDT on winning the CDT Festival of Science Short Story Competition!

Kevin said, "I heard the [Festival of Science] panel discussion was about AI so I wanted that to be the core theme. After that I guess I had to include some of the cliches within this sub-genre, but I also thought about what problem unsupervised machines could solve for mankind. The biggest one that came to mind was global warming and the energy crisis. As for the actual story, we could say it was CPE inspired! My own research is based on Photonics and I’d already included a high-tech futuristic AI-run Solar Cell metropolis so the rest of the story almost fell together by itself. I would say I find it harder to write a scientific article, when writing fiction you can sort of bend facts to fit the story but science doesn’t allow that. I was very happy to win the competition and grateful for the CDT festival committee for organising an incredible day with such an interesting theme!"

Here's Kevin's piece, "First Light":

Background:
In a future where machines can possess “strong AI,” intelligent machines and humans co-exist. Machines come in many forms and are divided in a caste-like system, although in general they are perceived inferior to humans. The ones in highest standing and most well regarded are those built for human interaction; translators, shop assistants, personal-assistants, or lab-assistants. These are humanoid in appearance, move and talk like humans and cognitively equal with free will. Other machines are designed for specific tasks and programmed with the purpose of completing such tasks and possess weaker forms of AI.

Due to stresses on planetary resources, machines have been allowed to build and inhabit cities by themselves - in areas uninhabitable by humans - under the condition that the sole purpose of these cities is to generate energy: solar cities in the desert, wind farm cities in the mountains, hydropower cities in the oceans. Around the world, machines are policed by a line of human weaponry based on electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

Story:
In this future, “machine rights” is a contentious topic. An underground society of machines plot against the humans. Members of this society are seeded within various aspects of civilisation. One particular machine is a lab-assistant within a research lab, believing that it is equally intelligent to its human colleagues but is discontent at the lack of recognition. A breakthrough within the lab provides the first step towards advanced photonic circuitry; electronics based on photons rather than electrons. The machine takes this research to the solar city, where hardware in the manipulation of light is highly advanced. From there, the first generation of photonic machines is developed. The humans must adapt to this new EMP-resistant threat or face the dawning of machine supremacy.