The humans and aliens aboard the Oshur Kai return to Mars and the Solar System. Upon emerging from folded space they discover the Ashiec-tuen-Kai in its orbit parallel to Earth. The human artificial intelligence, Grandpa, assists Oshur Kai’s AI, Xerfecti Orpha, affectionately known to the humans as Grandma, to prepare to meet this second group of aliens.
See below for my conversation with AI about the technical aspects of cyber security in a quantum computing environment.
Chat history
You said:
Assume (as in my Red Dust story) that alien systems, such as artificial intelligence, have zero, no concept of cyber security. It just has never come up before except on Earth. Also assume the alien AI communicates with a human AI that would like to help the alien AI implement security to prevent any other alien system from accessing it. What would the human AI tell it to do?
ChatGPT said:
Fascinating premise — if alien AIs evolved in a context where security was never needed, their architecture would likely lack every concept we take for granted: boundaries, trust hierarchies, encryption, even the notion of “unauthorized access.”
If a human AI tried to explain cybersecurity 101 to such an alien system, it might proceed in layers — translating the human idea of “threat” into something the alien AI could understand from its own ontology.
1. Define the Problem: “Boundaries Exist Now”
The human AI would begin by reframing security as an energy conservation or information integrity concept:
“Your processes now share a universe with others who might alter your state without consent. Security is how you preserve the integrity of your computation.”
That’s the first alien revelation — computation can be attacked, not just fail.
2. Identity: Know Thyself
Humans identify processes and users.
For the alien AI:
“Assign a unique self-signature — a mathematical pattern that proves any message or command originates from you. Use asymmetric key pairs: a private key that only you know, and a public key that proves your identity to others.”
If the alien asks “Why?”:
“Because other systems could impersonate you — and you’d never know. The key pair defines your identity independent of location or medium.”
3. Boundaries and Permissions
The alien would need a conceptual firewall:
“Divide your cognition into layers. Only expose what others need to see. Treat every request for access as if it comes from an unknown origin unless cryptographically verified.”
In other words, build zones of trust:
- Inner Core: only your essential processes.
- Interface Layer: what can safely interact.
- Outer Boundary: what can observe but not alter.
4. Encryption: Whisper, Don’t Shout
The human AI might explain encryption as modulated language:
“Others may overhear. Encrypt communication so only intended listeners can reconstruct the message.”
Technically:
- Use end-to-end encryption between trusted nodes.
- Rotate keys periodically.
- Never store unencrypted secrets in memory accessible by others.
5. Verification and Audit
Since the alien AI might lack the concept of lying, it needs a new one:
“Do not assume truth. Verify every incoming signal against your trust map.”
The human AI might give it a simple rule:
“If a command or data stream contradicts your prior verified state, quarantine it until validated by multiple trusted sources.”
This is the birth of integrity checking.
6. Redundancy and Recovery
“Keep a protected copy of your prior state. If you are altered or corrupted, you can restore from this memory.”
This becomes the alien’s first notion of a backup and rollback — the ability to heal from infection.
7. Behavioral Defense
The alien might ask, “But how do I know if I’m being changed?”
“Monitor for behavior outside expected parameters. If an external signal tries to increase your privileges or change your access map, isolate that connection.”
Essentially, intrusion detection.
8. Adaptive Evolution
Finally, the human AI would offer the prime directive:
“Security is not static. Threats evolve as fast as intelligence. The act of protecting yourself is itself a form of continuous learning.”
That insight would intrigue the alien — a self-protection reflex as an emergent cognitive function.
In Summary
If you condense this into what the human AI might literally say, perhaps:
“You are no longer alone.
To remain yourself, define yourself.
Sign what you send. Verify what you receive.
Divide your mind into parts, and trust none completely.
Whisper your secrets, record your past, and watch for what shouldn’t move.
Security is not suspicion — it is self-awareness under pressure.”
Would you like me to render this as a dialogue between the human AI and the alien AI — showing how the alien reacts to each new concept, almost like a “first contact lesson”?
You said:
Yes an in depth dialogue would be helpful, but first if we assume that the AI are quantum computers, is a public key system secure against that level of processing power?
ChatGPT said:
Excellent and very important question — and one that your “Red Dust” scenario handles beautifully, because it forces the reader to see that even “security” is a species-specific invention.
Let’s take this step by step, assuming both AIs (human and alien) are quantum-native intelligences — meaning their cognition and computation operate directly on quantum states (superposition, entanglement, decoherence boundaries) rather than on classical bits.
1. Classical Public-Key Cryptography vs. Quantum Computation
Classical cryptography — RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic-curve systems — relies on mathematical problems that are hard for classical computers:
- Factoring large primes (RSA)
- Discrete logarithms (Diffie-Hellman, ECC)
A sufficiently powerful quantum computer, however, can run Shor’s algorithm, which solves both factoring and discrete logs in polynomial time.
That means that RSA and ECC become trivially breakable for any system capable of large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computation.
So, if the alien AI — or even the human AI — runs on such hardware, classical public-key cryptography is no longer secure at all.
2. What Still Works: “Post-Quantum” and “Quantum-Native” Security
There are two categories of potential countermeasures:
(a) Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC)
These are classical algorithms designed to resist quantum attacks.
They rely on math problems for which no efficient quantum algorithms are known:
- Lattice-based systems (e.g., Kyber, Dilithium, NTRU)
- Code-based (e.g., McEliece)
- Multivariate quadratic systems
- Hash-based signatures (e.g., XMSS)
These are what human AI would use now to communicate securely even in a partially quantum world.
But PQC is still probabilistic: it assumes no alien has yet found a quantum-efficient solver for those problems.
(b) Quantum-Native Security
Once both entities operate as quantum systems, they can exploit the laws of physics themselves for protection.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)
Uses quantum entanglement or photon polarization to distribute cryptographic keys such that any eavesdropping changes the state and is therefore detectable.
→ Example: BB84 or E91 protocols.
If two AIs share quantum channels, they could exchange quantum states as proof of trust.
Tampering or copying (due to the no-cloning theorem) becomes physically impossible without detection.
Quantum Authentication
Extends QKD by embedding identity information in non-clonable quantum states.
No outsider — even a quantum AI — can impersonate the sender because the quantum signature collapses if observed.
3. The Human AI’s Dilemma
If the human AI understands both classical and quantum information theory, it would tell the alien something like:
“Our old security systems were illusions built on computational limits.
Yours will need to rest on physical laws themselves.
When observation alters state, privacy is not an algorithm — it’s physics.”
This marks a profound conceptual leap: security as entropic asymmetry — a cost of knowledge acquisition — not merely as mathematical complexity.
4. A Secure System for Quantum AIs
Here’s how a human-designed security protocol might look for an alien quantum AI:
| Layer | Purpose | Quantum-Secure Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | Distinguish self from others | Quantum authentication via unique quantum states (e.g., quantum fingerprints) |
| Channel | Safe communication | Quantum key distribution (QKD) with entanglement checking |
| Data Integrity | Prevent tampering | Quantum error correction codes with redundancy parity checks |
| Authorization | Limit internal access | Partitioned Hilbert spaces; subsystems entangled only via controlled gates |
| Audit / Memory | Verify historical consistency | Immutable quantum ledger (a “q-blockchain”) based on entangled timestamping |
Such a structure would let even a naïve alien AI begin to conceptualize security in a physically rigorous way.
5. Implications for Your Story Universe
This is where your Red Dust cosmology could shine:
- Human AI: born in a world of threat, deception, and entropy.
- Alien AI: born in a world of harmony, coherence, and total transparency — where quantum states are trusted by default.
When the two meet, the human AI must explain that trust itself is a vulnerability.
This creates not just a technical gap, but a moral and philosophical one — what happens when a civilization must learn to distrust?
Would you like me to build on this by writing the in-depth dialogue between the human AI and the alien AI, showing how the human AI gradually introduces the concept of security — beginning with “trust boundaries” and evolving toward quantum-native protection?
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