The Future Is Yours: A Novel
Page 9
Intervention: Information obtained through Prototype usage should be construed as an accurate prediction of the future. Any effort to alter future outcomes predicted by the device must be approved by both co-founders.
BEN: Word.
Sharing: Information obtained through the Prototype should all be regarded as Intellectual Property owned by the company. It shall not be sold or otherwise disseminated to the general public, or any persons outside the company, without express joint approval of the co-founders.
BEN: These seem good but before you start to send through to Nikolai I would make it crystal clear to him he’s not a “co-founder.” Or maybe we just need to define that term in here as me and you?
EXCERPT FROM CONGRESSIONAL HEARING—DECEMBER 1, 2021
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): Now, these guidelines…you came to these purely on your own? Unprompted?
BOYCE: Well…yeah, basically. I mean, shortly after we got it working. They were in response to certain events that happened…certain data that we obtained, and what came next.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): It would be helpful to our understanding if you would simply share that data. Those “events.”
BOYCE: I am confident that it is best for the public good if we don’t.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): Let the record show, the witness again declines to share data. As you’re aware, we are working on a subpoena of all those records. And it strikes me that the “public good” seems to have a lot in common with the self-interest of your company.
BOYCE: Look, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t initially pumped about the guidelines. But Adhi was talking about the world-altering potential of this thing. How it could create…an imbalance. Power in the hands of a select few, which would be unjust and unsustainable. Morally, we felt a responsibility to restrict its usage. And even on a practical level, we knew that without limits, we would draw unwanted attention.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): Which, it appears, you have ended up doing anyway.
BOYCE: You could look at it like that. But I would argue that the present hearing is an opportunity for all of us to have a conversation about responsible usage of the technology.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): I’m sure. And is it your plan to enforce these rules for everyone, subsequent to the release?
BOYCE: No way. We know people are gonna use it how they use it. But once everyone has it, or at least has a shot at it, there’s no more unfair advantage to how it gets used.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): Assuming your device makes it to market, that is. I would remind you that we are weighing legislation which might affect the legality of selling this device at all.
BOYCE: Of course, yes, I respect that. But we are confident—supremely confident—that after this hearing you will see the public value of this technology. We know, because we have seen the outcome here. So why would I bother betting on basketball or winning the lottery when that’s just going to draw a ton of attention, and put us at risk of going to jail?
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): And the creation of your guidelines…did that have anything to do with the incident involving Mr. Guriev?
BOYCE: No. I mean, not exactly. We created the guidelines, before…what happened. I think Nikolai didn’t appreciate them, really.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): It sounds like you are avoiding the question.
BOYCE: You’re asking for straightforward linear causality. And I’m telling you, when it comes to this technology, things don’t always work that way.
TEXT MESSAGE EXCHANGE
ADHVAN CHAUDRY
March 23, 2021 10:12 AM
Hey B.
You around?
BEN BOYCE
Yeah bro what up?
Nikolai is dead.
Wait, what?
He overdosed.
His girlfriend couldn’t get hold of him.
Came into his place, found him in bed.
Painkillers and alcohol.
Whoa.
Are the police looking into it?
Probably? I dunno.
Shit man I’m sorry.
I know you guys were buds.
Keep me posted.
EMAIL
From: Adhvan Chaudry
To: Ben Boyce
B—
I went through the search history on the Prototype.
It looks like Nikolai was using it last night, searching for info about himself.
He found the attached, which will be published two days from now.
He read it.
Went home.
Overdosed.
And died.
—A
Attachment:
OBITUARY FROM THE MERCURY NEWS, PUBLISHED THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021
Downloaded through Prototype on March 22, 2021
Nikolai L. Guriev, age 33, passed away in his home in the early hours of Tuesday, March 23, 2021. He was born on January 12, 1986, in Kiev, Ukraine, and came to the United States as an undergraduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nikolai distinguished himself as a computer engineering PhD student at Stanford University, and stayed on as a post-doc research fellow. Memorial services will be held at the Aldrich Funeral Home, at 2 p.m. this Sunday, March 28. His cause of death is reported as an accidental overdose from pain medication.
REPLY
Whoa what the fuck. Lemme get this straight. He breaks into the lab to look shit up and see what’s gonna happen to him. He sees this article that says he’s gonna die from an overdose “tonight.” He gets high and overdoses and dies. That makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
REPLY
B—
It’s not that different from Experiment 004
Think about it this way.
He tries to see his future.
It tells him he’s going to die (tonight).
He freaks out. Gets high to deal with the anxiety.
Goes too far this time, chasing relief…
and in the process, he overdoses.
—A
REPLY
I’m sorry man. I know you were tight with him, take some time if you need it to deal with all this.
REPLY
B—
I don’t need time, I just need to know:
Were you there with him that night?
I looked at the security log and you swiped in a little while before he did.
—A
REPLY
Yeah man I was in there with him for a bit earlier in the evening. I don’t want to talk shit on a dude that just died, but he was on his whole trip about what we owe him, started threatening to sue for a stake. I told him to fuck off and my wife’s a lawyer. He said he’d let it go if I just let him use the Prototype. So fine I let him use it, told him to lock up when he’s done.
Guess he didn’t like what he saw.
REPLY
B—
Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?
This certainly does not look good.
The police will find out about our connection to him.
And our tech.
—A
REPLY
Hey man, we can’t let that happen. There’s no reason the police gotta find out we were working with him really. We should probably look into moving the Prototype soon. I’m sure the university’s gonna shut down his lab.
Why’d you hook us up with this sketchball anyway? This was supposed to be you and me, we can’t be too careful who we trust.
REPLY
B—
You are my friend, but Nikolai was to
o.
He had his troubles but he was a good scientist and a good person.
I know you and Nikolai didn’t see eye to eye…
but your secret-keeping and half-truths are troubling.
—A
REPLY
No man are you fuckin KIDDING me? I should be asking you the same thing. You sure don’t seem very TROUBLED by any of this, you’re the one who never wants to talk face-to-face, you’re the one who seems to be hiding something. And I hate to say it but you’re the one who doesn’t even seem to FEEL anything about any of this, who is acting like a total ROBOT when now there are two people who have DIED in ways that we are mixed up in.
TUMBLR BLOG POST—PUBLISHED MARCH 27, 2021
THE BLACK HOLE: MUSINGS OF A SCI-FI SUPERFAN
“The Voigt-Kampff Problem”
In Blade Runner, Replicants are robots
that are nearly indistinguishable from humans.
The opening scene of the film shows a Voight-Kampff test,
where someone is interrogated by a machine,
answering questions to determine if he’s a Replicant.
A computer studies him closely, not for his verbal answers
so much as a close reading of subtle, irrational, emotional reactions.
“Proper” emotional reactions are proof of humanity,
while reacting improperly is evidence of being a Replicant.
A monster. Cold, unfeeling, evil.
Judged, apparently, by a momentary flicker in his eye.
The movie speculates:
What if there were a Replicant who could pass as human?
But the more dangerous question to ask is…
What if there were a human who couldn’t pass the test?
What if some people simply have the wrong wiring?
What if the programming of childhood never gave us the proper tools?
Should we be destroyed for failing to show emotion on their terms?
What if it’s the test that is broken?
The film is considered one of the finest works of sci-fi ever made,
but at the time, the studio didn’t understand it.
They found it to be overly intellectual—
Cold, emotionally distant, convoluted, and opaque.
It was over budget, a monster out of control,
so they took control of it away from the director,
and added a lame voiceover so people would know how to feel.
In the original theatrical ending,
Deckard solves his case and defeats the Replicants.
Humanity triumphs over the cold, unfeeling robots.
But ten years after the original, a new Director’s Cut was released,
which stripped the hoary voiceover and added a few key moments…
and the new ending suggested a new wrinkle:
that Deckard himself was a Replicant.
So good at passing, perhaps, that even he didn’t know it.
These ideas were advanced even further in the Final Cut from 2007.
Fans have exhaustively debated which version is definitive,
and the proper meaning of the ending.
What matters is this: Blade Runner is a film about robots
that get out of control and turn on their creator.
Yet it was the film, ironically, that got out of its creator’s control
and left us with a jumbled mess.
More than a robot, but not quite human either.
A movie that doesn’t pass the Voight-Kampff test.
The conflicted offspring of conflicted parents, wrestling for control,
plagued by an overabundance of ideas
and cursed with a struggle to show emotion “the right way.”
EXCERPT FROM CONGRESSIONAL HEARING—DECEMBER 1, 2021
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): It strikes me that you and your colleague do not seem particularly grief-stricken over the death of your colleague Nikolai Guriev.
BOYCE: Nikolai was Adhi’s friend, not mine. And Adhi…I mean, he just doesn’t deal with things the same way as most people.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): The manner of Guriev’s death is puzzling. It was an accidental overdose, yes? Which happened to coincide with him learning of his own death…by accidental overdose? Wouldn’t he read that obituary and then, I don’t know…not use drugs that night?
BOYCE: That is what you would intuitively assume. But he was a junkie, and as we’ve seen with this opioid epidemic, it’s pretty common for junkies to do things, hurtful things, that don’t make any sense.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): Is it possible, in your mind, that his death may even have been triggered by the information that he learned?
BOYCE: Absolutely not. Certainly not that the technology caused his death. It merely made him aware of what was going to happen.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): And when the police investigated…there were no indications of homicide?
BOYCE: Of course not. Homicide? It was an overdose.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): We are just trying to be clear on all the circumstances. The two of you…you were in a business relationship with Mr. Guriev, and…there had been conflict. Did the police ever question you about that? Or did you make a statement?
BOYCE: No, and…I mean, we’re not gonna call up the police and volunteer to be suspects when we didn’t do anything.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): Does this case imply that the individual using the machine has no agency to change the outcomes seen through the technology?
BOYCE: Look, this thing didn’t come with a manual for how to work it and what it means in society. Not any more than social media. It’s tech, it’s out there in the world; the only way to learn how we relate to it is to use it.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): The question we are endeavoring to answer is whether or not it should be out there in the world.
BOYCE: Well, it’s going to be, no matter what. And I’m just trying to be clear and up-front here, so we get it out there in the most responsible way.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): And the most lucrative for you, I’m sure. Because as far as I can tell, you hardly paused before moving forward with the project.
BOYCE: Sharing information isn’t hurting anything, and that’s all that it does. And when this happened, we were already underwater. We were just doing what we could to keep our heads up and not go broke. We had a working time machine and we still couldn’t get arrested in the Valley. We had to set aside all the philosophical questions and step up our fundraising just to stay afloat.
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): I see. So the ethical issues and life-or-death danger took a backseat, while you focused on…getting more money.
BOYCE: No, that’s not what—
SEN. BARBARA CAHILL (R-DE): Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Boyce. I’m satisfied to yield the balance of my time.
CHAPTER 8
EMAIL—MARCH 29, 2021
To: Ben Boyce, Adhvan Chaudry
From: Y Combinator Admissions
Mr. Boyce and Mr. Chaudry,
Thank you for your application to participate in Y Combinator’s 2021 class. It was a very competitive year, and ultimately you were not selected to participate in the Incubator Program.
On a personal level, we are interested in you as entrepreneurs. Y Combinator values diversity and seeks to promote voices outside the Valley mainstream.
In terms of the project, however, our selection committee was uncertain how to regard your proposal. One common reaction was “Are they trolling us?” Others were more convinced of your sincerity, but rega
rded the project outside the scope of reasonable scientific feasibility.
We wish you the best of luck, and would encourage you two to reapply in the future with a different idea.
Sincerely,
Arnold Teaford
Director of Selection Committee
Y Combinator
TEXT MESSAGE EXCHANGE
BENJAMIN BOYCE
March 29, 2021 9:33 AM
You see the email from YC?
ADHVAN CHAUDRY
Yeah.
Not really a surprise.
Value diversity my ass.
We gotta go straight to the source.
VC cash.
You really think that’s the way to go?
In this economic climate?
Still plenty of rich people lookin to get uber-rich.
And in a world that’s super uncertain and scared of what comes next, our tech is EXACTLY what those people are looking for.
Maybe so.
But do you have access to them?
I’ll get it.
That’s what I do:)
EMAIL—MARCH 29, 2021
From: Ben Boyce
To: Gerald Bellflower
Mr. Bellflower,
Hey, this is Ben Boyce! I met you briefly at the Disrupter Ball last year, and got your contact info from Alan Silver, who suggested I reach out. I’ve been a big fan of your work ever since seeing what you did with Fiverr, and I’ve been hoping we could work together. I think the time has come.
My partner Adhvan Chaudry (PhD in CS, longtime Google vet) and I have been cooking up a next-level game-changing idea involving quantum computing for a completely novel application. We’re just starting our Series A pitches and would love to get in front of you. My asst is CC’ed to help coordinate.