Forever Yours
38
Singularity
“HELLO, AND WELCOME to Grey’s Analysis. This is your host, Gene Grey, and we are launching our 122nd edition. For today’s chat, I’m happy to have returning Henry Pascal of Open Cloak Design. Henry, this is your third time on the show this year, which I think is some kind of record. It’s always nice to have you join us.”
“Thank you, Gene. It seems things have been popping for Open Cloak all year.”
“I understand you are in a new location now.”
“Yes. We moved into offices the first of July and now we have full time employees, so it’s not just my partners and me anymore.”
“In the course of the past year, you released the Open Cloak Optimization app and the Open Cloak Search Engine?” Gene asked.
“And network editions of each of those,” Henry added.
“There’s another… what do you call it? I don’t think I have a software category for Pythia Speaks. I do know, though, that it is incredibly addictive. Do you call it a chat bot?”
“That would be pretty close, though it doesn’t behave like most chat bots you might be familiar with,” Henry said. “We call it an oracle.”
“Explain the difference.”
“You don’t really attempt to hold a conversation with Pythia. You ask a question and she gives you an answer. The answer is in plain English, but it isn’t designed for you to talk it over with her. You might put her in the same classification as a horoscope, or I Ching, or Tarot, or some such. If there’s a discussion to be had, you have it with yourself.”
“I’ve certainly had a few of those. How did Pythia Speaks come about?”
“It was really a testbed for a new product we’re announcing this week. You know we’ve been working with artificial intelligence applications. Part of our research has been to use specialized small language models to train an AI in a single area, thus reducing the AI footprint, power consumption, and relevance of the responses.”
“How many people are using it?”
“It’s still pretty small. We made some significant upgrades to Pythia in the past few weeks and we’re seeing a sharp incline in usage. This week we had our first 8,000 query day. I would expect over 10,000 per day by Thanksgiving. So, small by comparison to most chat bots or search engines.”
“But increasing. Does that make it a growing revenue platform for Open Cloak?”
“No. Like I said, Pythia was created as a testbed for some new technology, not as a profit center. It runs pretty automatically, without interference from our office. Even what we consider premium features recently released, like subscription registration, forums, and retention of conversations, are all available free.”
“With advertising?”
“Also, no. The only thing that could be considered advertising is the single link at the bottom of the page to our company website. We don’t collect user information or sell advertising.”
“Why? It’s obviously becoming popular and looks like it could be a cash cow. Why leave it free?”
Henry sighed and collected his thoughts for a moment.
“We’ve done some analysis on the kind of questions and answers that fuel Pythia. And remember, we make no guarantees regarding how useful her answers will be. It is for entertainment purposes only. But the questions asked are often—no, I’d say usually—pretty serious. They include relationship issues, job issues, people who are deeply upset or joyful or in mourning or celebrating. It just doesn’t seem right to charge them for sharing those questions and feelings. Does it to you, Gene?”
“Ah. Well. No, I suppose it doesn’t when you put it that way. But we’re not used to a company acting on what is right or wrong or altruistically when there is money to be made.”
“I agree. And I don’t want to sound like all of Open Cloak is a charity. Our financial manager reminds us repeatedly that we are not supposed to be a nonprofit. We’ve worked very hard to create good software applications that are worth the money we charge for them. We have a strong profit motive. There are just some things we shouldn’t take advantage of.”
“So, no other future for Pythia Speaks?”
“That’s where we get into a new application announcement,” Henry said. “I mentioned that Pythia Speaks was intended to be a testbed to see if we could be more efficient with a specialized small language model than generative AI is with a large language model. We consider that test to be successful.”
“What’s coming?”
“Are you familiar with Ray Kurzweil’s books The Singularity is Near and The Singularity is Nearer? I think he may soon be able to write The Singularity is Here.”
“Now you really have me on a hook, Henry. Are you talking about the consolidation of man and machine? Immortality?”
“That’s never really been the vision. Let’s say that you’ll live on, but you’ll still be dead.”
“How can you do both?” Gene asked.
“We use the word immortal to refer to things that live on, even after the source is dead. For example, in the words of the immortal bard, ‘The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interrèd with their bones.’ We all recognize that Shakespeare is dead, but we refer to him as immortal because his works continue to live on.”
“So, it’s really the same as it is now. People can look up what you said, but you won’t be speaking to them,” Gene said with a note of disappointment.
“Sort of. Our new platform is called Forever Yours. In this case, what you said is given a new dimension. It isn’t ‘alive,’ but it’s living. Let’s stick with Shakespeare’s works—his plays, his poetry, and any correspondence we could find to or from him or mentioning him. That becomes the wall on which we train our AI. That AI can only answer questions in the words of the bard. However, it might learn new combinations of words based on other ways they were used. So, the AI might answer a hypothetical question by saying, ‘Your life is your legacy, good or ill.’ That’s not quite the same thing we quoted earlier. It’s plausible that Shakespeare could have said it. When combined with images of the bard, or even animations, it comes to life and is consistent with his works. But it isn’t poetic. It’s a good summary of the meaning, but it lacks Shakespeare’s creativity.”
“How does that relate to people today and the singularity?” Gene probed.
“You could upload everything about yourself to a kind of private wall and train the AI on it. Let’s go beyond the stories you remember and the photos and videos you upload. Let’s let the AI have access to all your social media accounts, your podcasts, your high school and college transcripts, the records of what you spent money on, and the recollections and contributions of those people closest to you. Maybe even the places you’ve visited. You give your descendant access to Forever Yours. Then you die.”
“That’s encouraging, isn’t it? But everything I’ve done and said is given to the AI and it can answer like me, the same way your Shakespeare AI did?”
“Exactly. It has the record of your life and can sift through that as it is being trained. So, when your descendant has a question, he goes to Forever Yours and says, ‘Dad, I think I’m in love. She’s really sweet and we get along great. But is it real? How do I know I’m really in love?’ You might or might not have ever said anything about how to tell you’re in love, but the AI sifts through all the information it has about you and compiles an answer for your descendant.”
“But I didn’t actually say what they hear!”
“No. It’s just an answer consistent with other things you’ve said.”
“So, in a way, I’m living on because my thoughts and words are being used to answer new questions I never considered before. Immortality,” Gene said.
“Yes. But you’re dead. Your consciousness is not part of the machine. Depending on how strong a wall it has compiled, it might even give answers that are totally irrelevant. That often happens with Pythia Speaks. It doesn’t have an exact match for a question, so it compiles what it deduces would be the most likely response.”
“What’s the downside, Henry? It seems like my descendants could benefit from my words of wisdom,” Gene said.
“Well, aside from the fact that you’re dead in this scenario, the first downside is in who has access to you. Maybe your descendant thinks everyone should have access to his dad’s wisdom. So, he makes it public. Then you have something like Pythia that grows and adds data to her wall based on questions everyone asks. Eventually, the voice of Dad is no longer giving answers you might plausibly have given, but is expanding its training wall with irrelevant bits and pieces. Maybe you’ve got people asking you for twenty dollars and the car keys. All you can say is ‘no.’ The whole system, including Pythia Speaks, is designed simply to answer questions. She cannot grant wishes. Essentially, that is the same way the great oracles of ancient Greece worked.”
“Okay, I guess. It’s a little scary, but I can live with it. Or be dead with it. This can get confusing, can’t it?”
“More than you imagine. One of the great dangers I see is people depending on the AI for answers and not thinking things through for themselves. It’s the old saga of people blindly following the GPS instructions off a ferry dock or down a dead-end road. Society changes. There are new fashions. New behaviors are acceptable that weren’t acceptable when you were alive. Ethics, morals, culture, music—it all changes. But the people asking you only see a snapshot of the time when you were alive. Forever Yours can’t anticipate how you would respond in the new world.”
“Hmm. They could be getting advice that is completely out of date. It just happens to be what I might say.”
“Yes,” Henry said. “It’s not a new problem. In fact, it’s the Shakespeare example again. It is derived from a snapshot of his life and times. The wisdom is not always going to be wise. You see that all the time with religious writings and the people who follow them. They were written at a specific time with a specific understanding of the world, and they were locked in. So, we have people studying this thousand-year-old or ten-thousand-year-old snapshot and trying to apply it to a society and culture that have changed by multiple orders of magnitude.”
“I need to let that sink in for a while,” Gene said. “May I ask a question about the technology itself?”
“I’ll answer if I can. Some things we have to hold closely to protect the IP.”
“Of course. There are eight billion people in the world. Let’s narrow that down to a third of a billion people in the US. We’re told that AIs require trillions of parameters to function well. Are we headed to a time when there are entire cities of nothing but AI servers?”
“That is a frightening prospect. I’ll answer it based on what we project,” Henry said. “It’s true that a generative chat AI uses a couple trillion parameters and consumes enough energy to power at least five million homes each year. But there are specialized small language models that are more economical, faster, and don’t generate as much heat. They might have only seven or eight billion parameters. Their power consumption might be equivalent of powering a small city for a few days. We anticipate—though there has to be a lot more research done on this yet—that a singularity AI focused on the legacy of a single person might take less than a billion parameters to be fully operative and run on the equivalent of a car battery. We’re talking about storage that is measured in gigabytes instead of petabytes. And with a few new tweaks to the AI engine itself, we might be able to cut the footprint even further.”
“Henry, I want to thank you for taking time to be on Grey’s Analysis. You’ve given us a lot to think about. Some of it is exciting and some is frightening. And a lot, I can’t make up my mind about yet. It’s both exciting and frightening. To all our viewers, it’s your turn to discuss the topic. This is Gene Grey signing off.”
The interview aired the following Monday and the release of Forever Yours was announced on Wednesday. The office was busy celebrating and watching for comments. But they had more to deal with on Friday.
“Captain Bernard, welcome to Open Cloak,” Henry said when the young army captain arrived at the office. Conrad stood beside Henry and smiled at his girlfriend.
“Mr. Pascal, it is a pleasure to meet you again. May I pass on the greetings of General Schwartz?” she said.
“General? Certainly. Thank you. Conrad, why don’t you give a tour and let me know when we’re ready to start in the conference room,” Henry said.
He went to his office and Conrad conducted the captain around the office, pointing out the things that had changed since her last visit. It wasn’t long before the couple met with Henry and Darrel in the conference room. Nancy wheeled a cart of refreshments in behind them and then left, closing the door softly behind her.
“We have invited Captain Bernard here to review the spec for our commercial level network defense system,” Conrad said to get the meeting started.
“Conrad, let’s dispense with titles,” the captain said. “If you all don’t mind, I’m Rebecca. I’d love to take off my jacket.”
“Please do,” Henry said. “I’m Henry and I think you’ve met Darrel before as well. Darrel is the author of the spec we want to develop and release.”
“Is this the entire team?” Rebecca asked, shaking out her blonde hair.
“So far,” Henry said. “We’re shopping for at least one more developer for the project so Conrad can focus on management.”
“Okay,” Rebecca said. “Then congratulations. You have stirred a pot full of controversy at the Pentagon once again. Let me say there are a few of the brass there who still aren’t happy with the deal General Schwartz cut with you last spring. They are, however, in the minority, and the general has powerful backing for continuing our relationship.”
“I guess I’m happy to hear that,” Henry said. “Please enlighten us.”
“Well, the biggest objection is from those who believe the government should own this and have exclusive use of it. Even they are in favor of the posting of your office as a military asset and keeping CIA, FBI, and anyone else off premises. But General Schwartz has pointed out that the methods and processes used in the defense system are patented and available for study by anyone. Only your unique application of them has created the defense system everyone is interested in. He holds—and top brass affirm—that the development and marketing of such a system belong in the private sector, and we should limit our direct involvement to ways in which we can capitalize on the development and possible ways we can influence your direction,” Rebecca said.
“Are you planning to write specifications for us?” Darrel asked. He was the most suspicious of the Defense Department’s involvement with the company, even though they had been fairly hands-off.
“Not exactly,” Rebecca said. “There is an area or two that we question your implementation plan, but mostly we’d like your input to our specification for DoD’s equivalent of your defense project. We’ve been working on our spec basically since we received the license last spring and may share some of the same features you have specified in yours. We believe they are close enough together that we could contract the development to Open Cloak, capitalizing on the overlap in both directions.”
“You don’t have requirements for our spec?” Henry said.
“A couple of suggestions, but not requirements. On the other hand, we’d want strict adherence to our spec for the version you sell to us.”
“It’s feeling like we’re going to need more people than we budgeted,” Henry said.
“If we can work out an arrangement, DoD has resources to assist with that,” Rebecca said. “The biggest problem might be in cementing the security arrangements for the DoD product, though we think we can get around that by doing an agency check – that’s running the names of people with access to the product past the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc., to see if any concerns pop up—and compartmentalizing the key modules that are different for the DoD version.”
From that point, they got down to basics, reviewing the two specifications side by side. There was significant overlap, but the army version was focused on broader security than any specific network. It needed to function across departments and operations to provide national security.
Eventually, Rebecca revealed the Pentagon was willing to place two people in the office and to fund two more positions for Open Cloak development. That led to a separate meeting with the board in Luke’s office. The result was a new $5 million contract that both sides needed to have reviewed by attorneys and then signed.
By Election Day, the contract had been signed and the company received an initial payment of a million dollars. A development contract like this would change the complexion of Open Cloak’s finances significantly.
Of course, much of that initial payment was earmarked for the development itself. Henry was interviewing for two new developer positions to work on the project and a third to work specifically on power issues. That last would be a tricky position to fill because there weren’t many power specialists who understood the potential of AI tools.
The company also received equipment to set up an entire sub-office for the security project. Henry trusted General Schwartz and, mostly Captain Bernard, but he didn’t want people in his office who didn’t report to Open Cloak attached to his corporate server. They set up a miniature network with a server and all the software needed for the development, including the current code for the defense software. A section of the office had been partitioned off and required RFID access for the members of the team to work with each other. They had a separate internet connection that did not go through the company server. They could send and receive email from the company, but could not download files.
Henry was unboxing computers and preparing to help Darrel with the setup when the older man stepped into the room on Wednesday morning.
“Hey, boss. Congratulations,” Darrel said as he moved to break down boxes. “Pythia hit a new milestone.”
“That’s good news,” Henry said. “Did we hit the 10,000 query mark?”
“Blew past it about eleven yesterday morning. We closed the day at midnight Pacific time with over 25,000 queries,” Darrel laughed.
“Whoa! 25,000? What happened? Was there a robo attack? Did the servers handle it okay?”
“Not a single hiccup. And no sign of it having been automated. It was 25,000 unique queries.”
“How could that happen?”
“Your interview with Gene Grey happened.”
“That was, like, two weeks ago.”
“Yes, but it’s been discovered. He cross-posts on YouTube a week after his own channel and it went viral. The interview has half a million votes and people are rushing to try out Pythia Speaks.”
“Can you take over here? I need to check in with the partners and figure out what effect this is all having on our projections.”
Henry hurriedly left the mini-office and went to look at the statistics himself.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
