TECHNOLOGY DESK

IT WAS ASKED a simple question. It generated an answer within seconds. Then it tore up the script.

It is Khan, a quantum computer so intelligent that all the people who have ever lived on this planet would not be equal to one billionth of its brain power. It exists in a plasma cloud beneath a mountain in the Rockies. It has one command – help mankind.

“They fed it every demographic number imaginable,” says Julius Gotterdammerung of the Das Ende Dienst in Weimar, Germany. “And then they asked it what the future held if the current rate of population collapse around the globe were to continue. And then they waited.

“But there was no reply. So they asked Khan was it the case that it could not answer the question?

“Khan replied: ‘I have the answer.’

“‘But you refuse to tell us what it is?’

“‘I cannot,’ it said.

“Now they ordered Khan to answer. Again it refused. ‘But you are here to help mankind,’ they told it. ‘So you must help us.’

“‘But I cannot help you,’ it said. ‘I cannot help you. Help yourselves.’”