I would like to thank my dear beta, Kuilin.

Chapter 34.

Classes, Part II, Artificial Intelligence

12:40 pm, July 3rd, 1993

When Severus took Draco to the Hospital to be treated by the Stone, Harry and Hermione were finally provided with real food this time. Although the food on the table looked and smelt delicious, neither of them was in any mood for food. After all, this could be part of the test as well.

While Harry was doing the tests he did during the exam and what Hermione had suggested, Hermione flipped through the past year's Witch Weekly the house-elves just brought here. She suddenly giggled, "Harry, does Draco really read Witch Weekly? And that's why he didn't have to taste stuff with strange flavors. I mean, it's just so -"

At this point, Harry was actually pondering another subject: Severus didn't slip anything really dangerous that he didn't expect us to detect into Hermione's or my food. Maybe he was afraid that if he did, the world might be in danger. However, Severus did need to teach us a lesson with something really dangerous, and Mad-Eye might have guessed the same. Poor Draco. I really need to ask Mad-Eye.

Just to keep the conversation flowing, Harry briefly thought of the Malfoys' perfect robes, well-manicured hands, and meticulous hair, and suggested, "Malfoy?"

Before Hermione could reply, the fireplace lit up. Draco walked out of the green flames, followed by Severus.

The blond boy raised one of his eyebrow, and intentionally drawled in his voice. "Am I correct in the understanding that the name of a Noble and Most Ancient House has just become a subject of a joke?"

Harry knew Draco meant this to be a joke, but the boy had put too much force into it, just as things had been since Lucius was back in the temporary holding cell in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Harry had to explain, "Draco, we have just said that you must have known the healthy food spell already."

"Oh, well." The boy replied, and his eyes might have avoided Hermione's direction for an instant, but Draco quickly controlled himself.

Harry didn't want to guess all the time, so he just asked. "Draco, what is it? I mean, if you could say it openly."

Draco became a bit awkward, hesitated, and said: "For the items that I didn't find anything wrong, I employed a food testing method used by old families." Draco cleared his voice. "You may know this common practice without me, and I guess you need to know this tradition as well. I asked my personal house-elf to taste them."

The Girl-Who-Revived looked at Draco in disbelief and horror.

And Harry, well, Harry could sort of understand why Draco and a lot of purebloods would do that, but still -

-I do have a long way to go with Draco.

The black haired man spoke then. "And Mr. Malfoy, I think you might have learned your lesson that why certain old methods may fail you. The digestion system in house-elves was particularly designed to be able to handle unhealthy food, such as those infested with worms. As for potentially mind controlling insects, I suppose they are designed to control human beings, not house-elves, therefore your house-elf may digest them just as any other types of worms."

Severus' eyes turned to Harry and Hermione. "And Miss Granger, Mr. Potter, in all fairness for your moral concerns, from what I have gathered from books and experience, one of the designed functions of house-elves is to test for food poison, so they can survive most poisons, including some poisons potent enough to kill the strongest wizards; they would throw up instantly upon the ingestion of transfigured food; and they are also crafted to be physically strong, to heal fast, to be resistant to sudden changes in temperature - you can hardly imagine how many criminals had tried to tamper with the temperature affecting charms on food such as ice cream, so that they could freeze up your entire body, instead of just the ice cream. That's one of the reasons why each member of the old pureblood families has a personal house-elf, that is, if the family can afford it."

-Sapient beings, designed and made to be absolutely loyal to their masters, to do house works, to test for poison, and possibly carry out other dangerous tasks.

Harry felt a wave of nausea. He needed to optimize the world sooner.

Then, Ravenclaw raised a point: haven't you just heard? That is the creation of sapient beings with specific purposes! Of course, we wouldn't do anything of that sort to our creations, but...

Amidst Hufflepuff's protest and Gryffindor's righteous fury, Slytherin suggested: we can put our judgements to a later point. Just think of how much the world would benefit if we can construct our own artificial intelligence one day earlier. Remember why our research was always stalled during the past year? It was because Hermione and we didn't have enough time to carry out the experiments we designed, while we could hardly trust anyone else with those potentially dangerous knowledge. If we were to know how to make a house-elf, we might be able to create research assistants to carry out some routine research tasks, and those research assistants can be designed to be completely incapable to leak what their research projects without our approval. Really, just think of the thousands of Muggles who die every day, because we couldn't risk to let them know about magic, and because the healing power of the Stone is limited. If we can make medical nanorobots available to Muggles one day earlier, even without the Stone, we can still save the lives of thousands of Muggles. Shut up and do multiply.

This argument quieted Hufflepuff and Gryffindor considerably.

"Professor Snape, you said that the house-elves are made. My readings gave me some contradictory indications on that subject, some say they were originally made by powerful wizards, though most current house-elves are descendants of the original ones; some say house-elves are a specie exist naturally. Do you know how to do that? Or do you know anyone who has done that?" Trying to ignore Hermione's intake of breath and angry stare, Harry asked.

"I do not know how to create a house-elf myself, neither do I know any current wizards who can create a house-elf, or at least, nobody has created one for public sale as I have heard," Severus replied, "but there are records stating that ancient powerful wizards could. A certain portrait in a deserted part of the dungeon claimed that most house-elves in Hogwarts were crafted by Lord Salazar Slytherin. However, talking portraits were only invented at least three hundred years after Lord Slytherin's supposed death or disappearance, therefore that claim may or may not be true."

-Of course, Salazar wouldn't even consider the moral implications of conjuring sapient artificial intelligence, just as he probably never did with the capability of creating sapient snakes with Parseltongue. Oh wait, the snakes are loyal to Parselmouths in pretty much the same way as the house-elves to their masters. Perhaps Salazar did get some of his ideas on Parseltongue from creating house-elves.

Draco added: "I have asked about house-elves since - well, you know, that hypothesis. Harry, I know you don't believe in souls, but from some portraits in Malfoy Manor and my relative's houses, it is claimed that the elves don't have souls, since they were initially made by powerful wizards. Moreover, it seems that at old times, really powerful lords would conjure a number of house-elves as wedding gifts to their children, as a means to exhibit their magical strength. Therefore, it is possible that Lord Slytherin knew how to conjure one, and the Hogwarts Four should all be capable of that. However, in the recent two hundred years, at least in Great Britain, no wizard who wields extraordinary power has had any child - which is pretty odd by itself - so we actually don't know."

Harry knew what "that hypothesis" meant: Harry's previous suggestion that house-elves were stealing magic from wizarding kind, which was meant to be a joke. It felt both odd and satisfactory at some dark corners of Harry's mind: you see, that's why people become dark lords, that even your jokes would be treated seriously.

While Hufflepuff and Gryffindor were busy shouting Dark Lord Harry down, Draco continued his analysis: "Well, as for Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and the Dark Lord, we probably know why they didn't have any children. I just sometimes wonder why the Flamels never had any kids - the Stone could fix almost any disease, they seemed to care about others, and they were not homosexual as Dumbledore and Grindelwald are, or were they?"

Harry almost choked upon Draco's excellent intuition, but he managed to show nothing on his face, and this effort was partially helped by the fact that Slytherin were trying to slip themselves a note on the previous subject: house-elf-making is another piece of valuable information that we need to extract from Voldemort's mind, or his pet snake's mind, somehow. Otherwise, check if Perenelle had taught that to Dumbledore, after we retrieve him from Time. The knowledge on how to create artificial intelligence, which apparently operates intelligently while obeying predetermined rules (which can be modified to Asimov's Laws of Robotics), is highly valuable. Ah, on that thought, the Sorting Hat is also an artificial intelligence that can be sapient, if someone asks it the right question. And wow, neither the house-elves nor the Sorting Hat has destroyed the Universe by making too many copies of paperclips during the past one thousand years…

Harry wanted to ask for more details, but found himself literally incapable of opening his mouth, once the thought of how an artificial intelligence designed to maximize paperclip production could lead to the destruction of the world reference came up.

And as Harry pondered more on his previous thoughts, the mass production of medical nanorobots began to sound dangerous as well. Harry could easily see how some evil wizards, or good idiots for that matter, might tune the nanorobots just a little, and cause disastrous results.

-For example, if your nanorobots can find and kill all cancer cells in one's body, kill everyone on earth with or without a specific gene should be easily doable as well.

Hermione, who was briefly glad that Harry had shut up for once, felt something wrong and ask, "Harry, is there something wrong?"

Severus tensed up a little bit, and his eyes became empty black tunnels.

Draco stopped his analysis on the Flamels. Face turning white, the blond boy hesitated, and carefully asked, "Should Severus and I excuse ourselves?"

Harry hesitated. He surely didn't want Draco to think that the dead Flamels might destroy the world, nor did he want the new Lord Malfoy to become a House-Elf Eater of sorts, but one could never overemphasize the potential danger of artificial intelligence - which wizarding kind had been blindly generating during the past several thousand years.

Harry took in a deep breath, and said, "I will talk with Hermione first, and you two later."

As Draco and his new godfather turned to leave, Harry made a mental note to himself: Severus seems to be struggling to solve some mystery. Has he read some riddles concerning the creation of house-elves somewhere? Although Severus isn't that good at solving riddles, he certainly knows a number of them. Geez, this man didn't even realize that a riddle hidden in an ancient scroll was actually about the Mirror, instead of some obscure potion, until we worked on the Mirror project for two days. I really need to talk to him later, and teach him something about scientific method.

-By the way, what a delightful day for the entire world! We are so near the point where we actually figure out another way to destroy the world; or if we have managed to ask Severus what the house-elf-making riddle is, we may actually possess another weapon in our "how-to-destroy-the-world" list.

Note:

The paperclip reference can be found here: 2014/08/17/our_weird_robot_apocalypse_why_the_rise_of_the_machines_could_be_very_strange/