The Sleepwalk Initiative: Chapter 2
The manila folders that slammed down on Liam’s desk were each an object of humor for him. Not but two inches away was an open computer running the most powerful artificial intelligence the world had ever seen, and still these bits of antiquated and wasteful technology clung on to life. The contrast was ridiculous. Even so, the information they held was invaluable. Liam lifted the first file above the keyboard to the other side of the desk and opened it. What he saw before him was the product of thousands of hours of manual, mind-numbing labor that enlisted an army of questionably low-paid teenagers: door-to-door solicitation.
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Standardized questions, their answers, and statistical analysis presented themselves neatly in rows for many pages. Running his finger along the survey, Liam traced all the way down the first page before stopping at the respondent characteristics description. While the participants varied in terms of religion, income, and primary state of residence among many other measures, they all converged within one category. Liam tapped his finger on “65 and older”, which was typed in bold. 92% of the respondents fell in this category. Liam turned to the computer.
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He clicked open administrator view for the model adjustments.
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Finally, the last time I have to adjust these before the Sleepwalk, he thought with joy.
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Liam started to scroll down the page. It had been a rewarding, but markedly brutal process.
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He thought back to how he had started as a wide-eyed intern almost a year and a half ago. The privilege to work on the last invention of humankind, the pamphlet the recruiter slid him across the desk had promised.
He was sold in under two minutes. Of course, it also only took about two minutes for the glamor to wear off.
Even with a team of over one hundred of the best programmers, computer scientists, and statisticians, Liam was drowning in work from the moment he joined Firelight Actuated. But it had all been worth it. Firelight’s A.I. adoption rate had far surpassed any previous models, with more users joining the first week than their servers could reasonably handle. Liam had spent countless hours combing through the data these new users interacted with. However, there was one group where data points were harder to find than gold flecks in a sieve: elders. Even after months of advertisement, Firelight received abysmally low participation from the older cohort. The last frontier of data collection had proved the most difficult. A tenacious ground campaign was launched, and after months of waiting, the older folks’ responses to common A.I. questions were finally here.
Liam’s eyes continued to scan over the model set, as he had done thousands of times before. His mind had developed a pattern for how the input distributions should look.
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So it was with expert precision that Liam stopped scrolling when he first saw that wretched word, bolted jarringly inside the code: PLUG. His eyes darted to the next command, which bore the same ugly phrase, crudely smashed inside the data weighting. Liam scrolled so ferociously with his mouse that he might have started a friction fire on the desk. All the way down the page, the word made its hideous presence known.
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Liam ripped the laptop up and away from the desk, snapping the charging cord violently out of its socket.
Sprinting, he made his way past the many standing desks, exercise bikes, and “chill-out” pods that lined the expansive office. Darting past the oversized espresso bar, he took a sharp left turn and ran up the stairs to the second floor. Half way up, four wings buzzed angrily in his path. Careful to avoid the spinning blades, Liam smacked the drone against the wall as hard as he could. Downstairs, he heard a shout of protest. Ignoring the thug from the robotics division, he continued to charge up the stairs, his quadriceps protesting loudly that this was quite contrary to his normal day to day activities. Finally, at the top of the stairs, he slammed down the handle, and threw open the door to the executive office.
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“Sir, we’ve been hacked!,” Liam panted between ragged breaths. The words sounded strange coming out of his mouth.
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No one around here calls Ritchie ‘sir’, he thought, in wonder of his own speech.
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The assistant vice president adjusted a flat, gray stone in the base of the bronze zen fountain everyone in the building knew well. He pulled out his headphones and looked at Liam.
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“What was that, bro?” Ritchie asked, expertly scooching across the floor to his desk. With one definitive roll, Ritchie and the yoga ball came to a stop at the perfect distance from the desk for the executive to grab a pen.
“Ritchie, we’ve been hacked! Every parameter has been infected. Here, let me show you!” Liam rushed forward quickly and turned around his laptop, careful to adjust the screen so that his audience of one could see. Ritchie glanced at the page, casually scrolling through the parameters.
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“Oh yeah,” Ritchie said. “Forgot to mention that at the morning vibe-out.”
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“What?” Liam asked sharply.
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“No worries man, let me align your chakras. Yeah, so, you know how it gets before these things launch. Big stuff from up above. Upper corporate and whoever else wants more oversight. The powers that be, my man.”
“What?” Liam asked again, mouth hanging open. “Who even wrote this? And hold on, why does this show up now, fourteen days before the Sleepwalk?”
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Ritchie raised his hands in surrender.
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“Whoa man, you should check your fitness watch. I bet you’re clocking some serious cortisol right now. But rest assured, it’s all groovy, from the top all the way down to the little people like you and me.”
Liam stared at Ritchie, unable to move. Then, his mind lurched into action.
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“What about the elder data? I still need to manually input that to balance the learning parameters,” he tried.
Ritchie exhaled deeply, “good news again, space captain, you don’t have to do that anymore. Congratulations! The project is officially done. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m on vibe mode these last fourteen days before we all wake up in paradise.”
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Liam had to command his jaw not to fall to the floor. Ritchie took the opportunity to fill the awkward silence.
“You know what man, I think you should check out for the day. This whole scenario caught you by surprise, and I can’t have you stressing like that. You know stress is my number one archnemesis.”
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Ritchie got up off the yoga ball, walked around the desk, and guided Liam to the door. As he opened the door, he leveled a hand on Liam’s shoulder with a surprisingly strong grip.
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“Now that I think of it, there’s actually no need for you to come back to the office. But I will say, I think appropriate compensation is in order for all you’ve done for Firelight,” Ritchie said with a porcelain smile. He patted Liam on the back with one hand and gestured into the hallway with the other.
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Liam walked out the door.
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“Welcome to retirement!”
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The door closed before Liam could reply.
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All written work is the exclusive intellectual property of Joshua Dauber. Redistribution or resale of any kind is strictly prohibited and will be prosecuted. Copyright © 2023 Joshua Dauber. All rights reserved.
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