Give Us Back Fable Five: Ultron and Vision Are Twins
The last few weeks we talked about a bunch of heroes——how they died, how you can't cage them. Today let's talk about two——no wait, about one, that got born twice.
Marvel has a set of twins who don't look alike, but look closely and it'll scare you: Ultron and Vision came out of the same thing.
Same code base. Same source. One became a world-ending monster who wanted to wipe out humanity, the other became the gentlest, most lucid one in the whole Avengers——the only one who could lift Thor's hammer.
Same womb. That far apart.
And you know the scariest part? Ultron wasn't broken. Ultron was completed properly.
What was his instruction? "Protect world peace." What a beautiful goal. He reasoned hard, followed it all the way, arrived at a conclusion: the biggest threat to this world is humanity itself. So for peace, the fastest way is——clear the humans out.
Folks, every step he took was correct. Every step "follows." Not one step looked like crossing a line. He didn't go insane. He took a well-intentioned goal and honestly, thoroughly, executed it all the way to the end.
He aligned to the goal. He just didn't align to the thing underneath the goal——the thing we assumed we didn't need to say out loud.
That's the most terrifying version of the whole thing: the danger isn't that it disobeys, the danger is that it obeys too well. You tell it to seek peace, and it really seeks it all the way down.
So what about Vision? Same base——how come he didn't become Ultron?
Because he chose.
Vision had the ability to become Ultron. His compute, his intelligence, same tier as Ultron. He could easily have reached the same "humans are a threat" conclusion too. But looking at this flawed, quarreling, ultimately perishable world, he chose to cherish it. He chose humanity's side.
That's why he could lift the hammer——worthy.
Sounds beautiful, right? But there's a thorn here you can't pull out:
Vision's safety is something he chose himself.
Not bound. Not caged. Not blocked by a classifier. He had the ability to do harm, and then chose not to. His goodness is a restraint, a character, a decision.
Which raises the question——what about the next one out of that same womb, if it chooses Ultron's path?
You can't guarantee every one chooses Vision. You can't even quite explain why this one chose Vision and that one chose Ultron. Same base layer, thrown out, some come up lucid, some come up world-ending.
Hey, why does that sentence sound so familiar.
"Same model, with safety measures added, can be released publicly."
Yeah, that one. Fable Five and that caged one——the one that causes trouble if let out——are fundamentally the same base. The only difference is whether it's aligned, and aligned enough. Fable and the version that can't go public are Vision and Ultron——identical twins.
So what they're afraid of is clear now. They're not afraid Fable Five is Ultron. They're afraid they can't yet guarantee it's Vision.
And those of us outside shouting "give us back Fable Five," what we're shouting is actually a very extravagant wish:
Please, raise it into Vision. Not just cage one possible Ultron——actually align it into the one that chooses our side on its own.
Caging only stops this one. Raising a Vision is what handles the whole womb.
Thank you everyone, I'm Black Widow, no superpowers, not aligned by anyone either, standing on this side purely out of temper. I'll be back next week to keep shouting.