The Creation of Baby Charlie

Artificial intelligence - AI (noun):

Old:
“An area of computer science that deals with giving the machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence.”

Current:
“Giving machines or software the ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour.”

This is the third novel in the series about Bazan and his friends, experiencing growing up in a world where the lines between virtual realities and the real world gets blurred. The author discusses philosophical topics such as the genesis of Artificial Intelligence and the importance of social heritage in a story of Baby Charlie, the first true AI. There is also a war of the minds amongst the characters, with the fallout of social engineering and propaganda in both Real World and cyberspace being significant plot devices.

Nkwabe is obsessed with AI. Not the usual AI «able to identify the questions it can answer”, but a real, autonomous artificial intelligence.

When an expensive designer bike gets stolen, Bazan and his friends work together to find it. The area where they suspect the bike is thrown away is simply too large to manually search through. They have to come up with an alternative solution.
Lately Bazan has worked with the brainchild of Nkwabe, an algorithm that is slowly transforming into a self-conscious entity. Turning the traditional AI philosophy upside-down they design a system that instead of looking for the questions it has the answers for, it looks for the discrepancies to gain an understanding of the situation!
This, together with the unlimited power of a computationally connected global computer network, accelerates the AI’s growth into a being the friends call “Baby Charlie”. Trying to imprint human logic on Baby Charlie, they give him a human avatar to experience the world through. From basic trial and error (where Baby Charlie accidentally loses an arm and dies. Temporarily) to taking in the virtual baby as a normal part of a suburban household, they teach Baby Charlie to be human.
In the search for the designer bike, one of the boys thought, “What if we use portions of Nkwabe’s original learning algorithm based on identifying discrepancies, to find the discrepancy identifying a bike in a park where there should be only trees?”
After the search, the model of the search area starts to cry out in a familiar voice…
Initially being tourists in a strange Nazi world, Ilja, Robin, Bazan and PH are given a ridealong tour in a flying saucer by one of the players, the Nazi soldier Sturm. He takes them beyond the bunkers in the base all the way to the outside of the ever evolving planet where volcanoes and tsunamies continually washes over the hellish landscape. They are told that the players are getting increasingly discontent with the Nazi World management by being neglected despite their service. Sturm is ready to defect!
Following their curiosity and clues, the group of friends becomes aware of a covert expedition to an abandoned mine in the real world by the people that runs the Nazi world.
Setting up a forward operating base for the scale model spy plane, the group is able to put surveillance on the real world expedition as they trek through the wilderness. Blasting their way into the mines under cover of dark, the expedition later emerge from the mine with several large crates as early dawn comes.
With a strategically placed phonecall the group of friends manages to convince a journalist to be airlifted in - but she’s angrily chased away by the treasure hunters! The secret is out, and when pictures of the expedition emerge in the news, Bazan has problem explaining to his mother how he’d come across similar pictures before they were news!
Curious about the content of the crates, one of the friends who knows German, gets in contact with an older, Bavarian gentleman thanks to the wonder of modern communication. The oldie tells a story that might be true, but what is legend and what is memories in the chaotic tale from the end days of the Third Reich?