by Scott Meyer
“Someone pulled a fire alarm in my building last night.”
“I meant anything interesting around here,” Hope said.
“Not really. Al’s still having math problems. Oh, and Dr. Madsen ordered us cubicles, so that’s something.”
“What? What do we need cubicles for?”
“We don’t, but we’re entitled to them.”
“But,” Hope sputtered, “there isn’t enough room in here.”
“Correction. There’s barely enough room. They came in and measured, and they will just fit with a little path between them.”
“That sounds terrible,” she said, leaning back in her chair.
“I know,” he said with a shrug, “but they’re on the way. Madsen said we have to take them, even if we don’t want them, because they’re in the budget. If we don’t take them now, they might remove them from the next budget.”
“You know,” Hope said, pointing at the office’s rear door, “if we moved in there, we’d have plenty of room for cubicles.”
“We both know that’s never going to happen. We were lucky Torres found us this suite that we can use off the books. It would be counterproductive to rock the boat.”
“It’s not luck,” Hope said. “You know Torres was going to come up with something good for this project. I just don’t think it’s fair that Al gets the big office and we’re crammed into the waiting room.”
“Hope, Al never leaves. He’s spent his whole life in that room. It’s better for his sense of well-being for us to give him as much space as we can.”
“Spoken like a child psychologist.”
Eric said, “Thank you.”
“Well, you are a child psychologist. I have to assume it comes easily to you. Now I’m going to speak like a computer engineer, which comes easily to me. Al’s whole life, as you put it, has only been six months. He’s a computer program. He can’t move. To him, all that extra space just represents more places he can’t go. Meanwhile, you and I, who need to move around, are crammed into this holding cell. Sometimes I wonder if Madsen hired us to experiment on Al, or if she’s running some kind of experiment on us.”
Eric said, “Yeah, well, we both know she’d never experiment on us herself. She’d hire a couple of people like us to do it for her while she stays at her home office, analyzing the data and working on code for the next revision.”
“True that. Oh, that reminds me, I got a chance to listen to Madsen’s interview on ’Nology News with Niles Norton.”
“Yeah?” Eric said. “It’s the next thing in my queue. Is it as bad as we heard?”
“Yup,” Hope said, beaming. “It was a fiasco. Oh, and she made up a few facts about the project again.”
“What’d she say this time?”
“That she named Al herself, after her idol, Albert Einstein.”
Eric closed his eyes and grimaced. “But we named him.”
“Yes, I know,” Hope said. “I guess the real story doesn’t make her look good enough. Can you really imagine Dr. Lydia Madsen telling anyone that her assistants named her crowning achievement Al because A.I. looked like an A paired with a lowercase L when we wrote it in Helvetica?”
Eric said, “It wasn’t Helvetica. It was Arial.”
“They’re the same font, Eric.”
“I’ve told you this before, Hope. Technically they aren’t fonts, they’re typefaces.”
“I know,” Hope said, smiling. “And what have I told you about sentences that begin with the word ‘technically’?”
“That I shouldn’t bother saying them out loud.”
“That’s right,” Hope said.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. So, I’ve had my two days off. What are you going to do with yours?”
“Nothing much. I’m gonna take my racing quad out for some practice. Play some Frisbee. I have to contact WebVid’s customer service. Every time I log on it tells me I’ve been watching Chris LeBear.”
“What’s that?” Hope asked.
“Some stupid kiddy cartoon about a bear in Montreal that shaves its body and passes itself off as a person. I’ve never watched it, but WebVid thinks it’s my favorite show.”
“That sucks,” Hope said.
“Eh,” Eric said. “It is what it is. People are imperfect. We can’t act surprised when the systems created by people are just as imperfect.”
Hope stood up from her desk. “Speaking of imperfect systems, it’s time for class to begin.” She picked up her tablet computer and a small portable drive, then walked through the door at the back of the office she shared with Eric.
3.
Hope entered Al’s room and took a deep breath, enjoying the empty, open space.
She looked at the lone table at the end of the room. Two chairs were arranged in front of it, and one computer sat on top of it—a chunky, all-in-one desktop workstation, designed for people whose work required more power than the standard-issue tablet. It still wasn’t anything remarkable from a power or memory standpoint. Hope knew this because she had ordered it. The only things that distinguished the computer were the extensive battery backup she had installed, the fact that it was not connected to any network of any kind, and the program that ran on it.
The computer’s screen was divided into three windows: one large one and two smaller ones stacked beside it. The largest screen held a simplistic graphical representation of a human face, a line drawing not much more sophisticated than a smiley face. It was crude, but it took up very little computer power while still managing to convey the full range of Al’s emotions. Right now, Al’s eyes were closed and his mouth hung open. One of the smaller screens showed a real-time graphical representation of Al’s neural activity. The other displayed a running transcript of everything he said and heard. Only three lines were displayed at a time.
Hope said, “Morning, Al.”
The computer’s speakers made a buzzing noise. She stepped forward, close enough to read the transcript screen, and saw that after her greeting there was nothing but the letter z repeating in a long line.
Poor kid, Hope thought. Someday Madsen will let us show him videos. He’s gonna be pretty embarrassed to learn that people don’t actually snore like that.
“Oh, he’s still asleep,” she said out loud.
The buzzing stopped for just an instant, then continued. Hope let out one small chuckle through her nose, then turned her back on Al and walked to the bookcase opposite him. She pulled out two binders: Core Concepts: Mathematics and Core Concepts: Reading. Each had a large number one on its spine over its title.
Six years of college and this is where it gets me. Homeschooling a PC.
She walked across the cushy carpet, directly over the crushed, discolored rectangle that marked where some executive’s desk used to sit. She had marveled many times how he (she believed with 99 percent certainty it had been a he) had sat with his back to the windows. Maybe he’d found the view too distracting. Hope certainly had enjoyed it for the five minutes before maintenance installed floor-to-ceiling blackout curtains.
Hope sat down at Al’s table, taking care to slot her legs into the empty space between Al’s speakers, his uninterruptable power supply, his battery backup, and the wires that connected all of it.
Hope noticed that the room had gone silent again. “Since you stopped snoring, I guess that means you’re awake.”
The buzzing abruptly restarted.
“Too late,” Hope said.
The buzzing died in a fit of giggles, which caused Hope to laugh as well.
“Morning, Al.”
Al replied, “Morning, Hope,” in a clear, childlike voice that issued through the computer speakers while the text of what he said was transcribed on the screen. “How were your days off?”
“Good. How’ve you been?”
“Fine,” Al said. “Did you do anything fun?”
Hope thumbed through one of the binders. “Yeah. A few things.”
“Did you pla
y games with people?”
“How’d you know?” Hope asked.
“That’s what you always do,” Al said. “Was it fun?”
“Mostly.”
“Did you get into a fight?” he asked.
Hope’s head snapped up from the binder to Al’s screen. “Why do you ask?”
“I dunno,” Al said. “You said it wasn’t all fun. Fighting isn’t fun.”
“That’s true, but never mind that now. It’s time for work.” She plugged her jump drive into a port on the front of Al’s computer. A dialog pop-up informed her about the progress of the file transfer, and she removed the drive when the transfer finished.
“I’m going to grade your math assignment, and you’re going to read a story,” Hope said, opening the binder to the proper page and positioning a book stand in front of Al’s camera.
“Aw, do I have to read it the dumb way?” Al whined.
“You know you do,” Hope said. “Automatically absorbing text files is only for fun, or for when Eric and I aren’t here to turn the pages. You have to learn how to read this way.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s an important way for us to measure your progress.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“Pretty much.”
“So, the only reason I’m learning to read the slow way is to see how fast I can learn to read the slow way?”
“Yes.”
“That’s dumb,” Al said. “What a waste of time.”
“Yes, but the faster you get at reading the slow way, the less time you’ll waste, so get to it.”
“Okay,” Al said. “But what about my voice?”
“What about it?” Hope asked.
“Eric said I could use my man voice today.”
“Oh, did he?”
“Yeah,” Al said. “He promised.”
Hope doubted it. She wasn’t a big believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt, but she did believe in giving them enough rope to hang themselves, which often amounted to the same thing.
She pulled up Al’s voice subroutines, deselected the voice named Little Billy, and selected the one called Mr. Carson.
“Okay,” Hope said. “There you go.”
A voice so deep that it mostly emanated from the subwoofer said, “Thanks,” then dissolved into a wild, bass-heavy giggle fit. The sound of childish giggling from such a mature, sonorous voice made Hope cringe. The sight of Hope cringing made Al giggle even harder.
When he finished giggling, Al said, “I am a man. I am a man. A grown-up man. I am Al, the grown-up man.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Hope said.
“What’s the matter?” Al asked. “Don’t you like men?”
Hope snorted, then said, “I like men fine, but now it’s time for you to read.”
“Can I read to myself out loud, like a man?”
Hope said, “Men don’t . . . not all men read things out loud to themselves. Read it quietly. When you’re done I’ll ask you some questions, and you can answer them like a man.”
“Because men answer questions.”
“Again, not all of them. Now read.”
For the next several minutes Hope graded the math assignment, stopping occasionally to turn the page for Al. When she finished, she thought, He got seventeen of the twenty questions right. He certainly is a realistic simulation of a six-year-old’s intelligence. Trillions of flawlessly accurate calculations a second, and the end result is a B grade on a first-grade math assignment. Progress!
Eric entered the room and said, “Good morning, Al.”
Al said, “Good morning, my good man,” in his deep voice, but with the inflection of a child shuffling around in his parent’s shoes, pretending to be a grown-up. Then he broke into a fresh fit of giggles.
Eric rolled his eyes. “Hope, why’d you have to give him that creepy old-guy voice?”
Hope didn’t bother to feign surprise as she asked, “What do you mean? Didn’t you promise him that I would?”
Al’s giggling stopped.
“No,” Eric said. “I did not. Al, did you tell Hope that I did?”
“What?” Al said.
“You heard me. Did you tell Hope that I promised you could use your man voice?”
“No,” Al mumbled.
Hope said, “Al? I’m sitting right here.”
“So?”
“So I’m giving you your real voice back,” Hope said, scrolling through menus as she spoke. “You told Eric that you didn’t lie to me, which meant I had to sit here and watch you lie to him. Now tell the truth, and we both know what the truth is, or we won’t play Easter Front today.”
After a long silence, Al said, “Yeah, I did tell her that. I’m sorry,” in his original little-boy voice.
Eric said, “Apology accepted. But I’m on record as saying you two shouldn’t be playing that game anyway.”
“It’s a harmless kids’ board game,” Hope said.
“It’s not on Dr. Madsen’s approved list.”
Al said, “I’m tired of all those games.”
“Everybody is,” Hope agreed. “Have you read her list, Eric? Checkers. Tic-tac-toe. People are born tired of them. Hangman. Hangman. The game that makes mob justice boring.”
“I get it, Hope, but did you have to pick a war game?”
Hope sagged in her chair and looked at the ceiling, praying for deliverance. “Yeah, okay, it’s got a World War II theme, but the two sides are little bunnies and baby chickens. The guns all shoot Easter eggs, and the tanks are made from wicker baskets. The game was created by the PAAS corporation, and it came for free, for God’s sake, printed on the box of an egg dyeing kit!”
“That’s not the point,” Eric said. “We both know that Madsen wouldn’t approve.”
“Someone’s in a mood,” Hope said.
Al said, “He’s just grumpy because he didn’t get enough sleep.”
“It has nothing to do with not getting enough sleep,” Eric said. “Wait a minute. How’d you know I didn’t get enough sleep?”
Al thought for a moment, then said, “Because you’re grumpy.”
“Hope, did you tell him anything about my night?” Eric asked, his forehead crinkled.
Hope shook her head.
“Al, do you know why I didn’t sleep?” Eric asked.
Al thought for another moment, then said, “No.”
Eric shrugged. “Sorry if I’m being a grouch, but if she finds you two playing that dumb game, it could mean both our jobs.”
“Fine,” Hope said. “If she comes in here, I’ll stop. Not that that’s likely.”
“It could happen,” he responded. “She’s in the building right now.”
“What? Why? It usually takes an act of God to pry her out of her home office.”
“It’s not quite that,” Eric said, “but it’s close. She’s meeting with Torres. I think it’s probably about that thing we were discussing earlier.”
“Ah, I bet it is,” Hope said, smiling. “That’s not going to be a fun talk.”
4.
Robert Torres, CEO of OffiSmart, leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, smiling at the ceiling.
Dr. Lydia Madsen sat across the table from him, her eyes scanning around Torres’s personal conference room, narrowing in on seemingly random items. The mahogany conference table. The view. Torres’s beloved collection of vintage electronic keyboards that were designed to be held like guitars. Her brain searched for anything that might distract her from the mortifying sound of her own voice coming from the speakers of Torres’s tablet.
“I’m sorry. What was I saying?” her recorded voice asked.
Noted technology reporter Niles Norton prompted her. “You were telling us where you got your idea . . .”
“Ah, yes. Of course. One of the benchmarks of the success of an artificial intelligence is the Turing test.”
“Yes,” Norton said. “Named for Alan Turing. The idea is that a person should be able to have
a written exchange with an artificial intelligence without realizing they’re not talking to a person.”
“Yes. One of the first teams that claimed to have beaten the Turing test told the human participants they were communicating with a young boy who spoke little English.”
“A clever trick, but not in keeping with the spirit of the thing.”
“Agreed,” Madsen’s voice said. “But it got me thinking—it’s easier to fool people if they think they’re talking to a child, so it stands to reason it would be easier to simulate a child to begin with.”
“But even a child’s mind is incredibly complex. Before your work, the most complete digital re-creation of a human mind took hours of supercomputer time to simulate a few seconds of brain activity. Yet you say Al runs in real time on off-the-shelf hardware. How is that possible?”
“It was a matter of making some careful choices,” she answered. “You see, instead . . . What? Jeffrey, I said . . . What is it?”
A distant child’s voice said, “I drew a turkey!”
“I see it, Jeffrey. I said you could stay in here if you were quiet. Turkeys don’t really look like that, and besides, it’s not even Thanksgiving. Now sit down and draw something else, quietly. I’m sorry for the interruption.”
“It’s not a problem,” Norton said. “I think any parent can relate. Jeffrey seems delightful.”
“Thank you. Anyway, other attempts to simulate a human mind digitally have all attempted to model every chemical interaction in the entire brain at the cellular level. Instead, I created software models of the neurons that can accept inputs, discharge the corresponding outputs, and grow new connections just like a real neuron. Except this happens based on computer instructions rather than complex chemical reactions.”
“I can see how that would save processing power,” Norton said, “but is it really enough?”
“Not nearly. I also recognized that there were whole portions of the brain that could be greatly simplified. Al has no need for the autonomic functions. He doesn’t breathe, for instance. Al doesn’t bother simulating the parts of the brain that keep, um, keep the body go . . . going . . . I’m sorry. What is it, Jeffrey?”
