Forever Yours
35
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WORKING IN AN OFFICE with an official work day and organized staff did not make things easier on them. Nearly everyone except Nancy worked a regular day of ten hours or more. The contractors were strictly limited because they were hourly and could not be paid overtime. So, they often left the office before noon on Fridays if they stayed even that long.
Conrad and Darrel both had significant work that took them more than forty hours. They frequently called Henry in for code reviews. Darrel didn’t have broad experience with AI, but his knowledge of computer security software was extensive. He soon had a full suite of security applications specified and awaiting development.
Conrad lacked an actual network to test the network optimization software on. Henry promised to get that resolved.
Henry often swapped code with the other two so he could get Pythia Speaks upgrades reviewed as well.
“Everybody listen up!” Luke called from the center of the office on Monday in the middle of the month. They’d been in the office for two full weeks. The impromptu public address of Luke simply standing in the middle of the office and yelling brought everyone to attention.
“We have the second quarter revenue statement,” Luke announced. “We won’t always be calling everyone’s attention to this as the company grows, but this is a significant milestone and we are a tightknit group. The EMEE quarterly report shows sales of 2,817 units of Open Cloak Optimization resulting in $7,718.58 in revenue.”
There was polite applause, no one quite knowing what it meant to the company.
“The new Open Cloak Search has just begun selling and we launched 985 units,” Luke continued. “That comes in at $18,015.65 in revenue. The company has received a total deposit of $25,734.23. It’s not yet enough to meet expenses, but we are genuinely on our way.”
This time the applause and cheers were significantly more excited. In reality, that would fall short of meeting the month’s expenses. And the revenue was for three months. The partners all felt the burden of getting more revenue generated.
Everyone returned to their tasks and Henry waved to Chastity and Isobel to join him in Luke’s office. They all sat around Luke’s conference table.
“That was great to get people fired up, Luke,” Henry began. “We all know that it isn’t near enough and we’re feeling the pressure to get the network versions out. This won’t be a popular thing, but we need to spend more in order to get us where we want to be. We need dedicated testers.”
“I thought we were set through the summer,” Isobel said immediately.
“I thought so, too. Our testing group that worked on the first two programs is not able to test the new versions. They need to be tested on a network. That’s also going to be true of the counterattack software. Darrel has outlined a great plan to make it better and it could be a genuine product by the end of the year. But it, too, needs to be tested on a network. That means we need at least two testers and an independent testing network to run the apps on.”
“Two people?” Isobel screeched. “We definitely didn’t say anything about that when we were budgeting.”
“When we were budgeting, we didn’t even know we’d be a company with $20 million in capitalization, working in an office space we’ve leased for five years, on products that require full-time employees,” Henry shot back. “What do you think an investment is for? If we don’t get what we need to generate income then the investment just dwindles without producing anything.”
He glared at Isobel and she stared back at him.
“You don’t need to teach me about investment capital,” she said. “Just make your case for how we’ll get a return on the expenses.”
“Okay,” Henry said, calming down. “We have three products under active development and another two in planning stages with two products released in the market. In addition, we have one person working on fixing the bugs in our search engine that we didn’t catch because we rushed it to market with inadequate testing. They aren’t serious bugs. Nothing crashes yet. But they will irritate our users enough that they won’t consider buying a network installation. The network installation version is one of the products in development, being worked on by the same person working on bug fixes.”
“Okay. We’ve got one person doing two jobs,” Luke said.
“We have one person working on a network version of the optimization program. While the desktop version did not report significant bugs, the network version has expanded functionality that can only be tested on a network. We can’t really use our corporate network as a testbed. We’d risk having the company shut down periodically and possible loss of data.”
“So, that would require both a tester and a network, which would increase Darrel’s workload with two networks,” Chastity said, making notes.
“Yes, but it would benefit Darrel as well. He will want something to test the defense system on as well. That’s the product being spec’d right now,” Henry said. “So, the investment isn’t just a short-term expense. It will pay off with the testing of at least three products. Finally, we have Forever Yours in development. I need to call in all the dev team periodically for code review. I’m afraid the tests will be live. We’ll have half a dozen walls with AI trained on each and we’ll need to come up with questions to ask our ancestors. I propose expanding the number of people invited to use the product and accept updates as we develop.”
“There’s a hardware cost to that, too, isn’t there?” Isobel asked.
“Currently, we have limited the app to an attachable drive. There is no reason it couldn’t be installed on the subject’s own computer, but that puts data at risk from computer failure. The detachable drive should protect data,” Henry said. “I have two of the drives backed up in-house now and have returned the original drives so they can continue to collect data. And Lisa and I are primarily working on that app, though Lisa is also spec’ing a new version of Pythia Speaks, and is developing interfaces for both network products.”
“Do we need to get a full-timer in that position?” Isobel asked.
“Probably, but we have at least another month before it becomes urgent. We should probably start searching for a UI developer.”
“Really, this is only moving the new hires up by a month,” Chastity said. “We knew we’re going to have both Lisa and Josh returning to school in the fall and would need to fill those positions.”
“We might still need to fill those positions,” Henry said. “I don’t think we adequately planned for any testers.”
The meeting went on as they discussed options. Isobel calmed down as she began entering numbers in her spreadsheets and Chastity began searching and compiling job descriptions for the new positions.
Henry returned to his office and training the Forever Yours AI.
The wall on which Henry trained his Forever Yours AI was entirely his own legacy. After his conversation with Lisa, he approved the AI gathering all information about him. He didn’t actually do any special input. The all-access permission gave the AI unlimited permission to learn about Henry Pascal. That included all the information on his computers, his social media accounts, his financial records, and tax records. Of course, there was little in the latter two that would help the AI answer questions. But it gave the AI a lot of data without him having to actually input anything.
He and Lisa had been liberal about sharing information about their relationship. They’d posted pictures and videos of the two of them together at different events. He’d done a tour of the new office for a video. He’d been interviewed by Gene Grey twice. The company’s distribution partner, EMEE, was very pleased about the most recent interview and reported that sales had spiked after it went public.
All of these items were merely data points for the AI.
Unlike Pythia Speaks, Forever Yours included facial recognition and generative capability, so he could instruct the AI to show what he would look like skiing and it came up with a plausible video, even though he had no video of himself skiing. It was rough and not as polished as most generative AI could create. It was looking like video output would not be part of the first release. He did have photos of a couple of times he’d attempted it when he was younger. The AI did okay with that, but mostly just searched appropriate photos.
Mostly, though, Henry was interested in what kinds of responses the AI would generate to actual questions.
He had collected several self-reflection questions from various websites and used those to start querying the AI.
“What do you value most, Henry?” he typed.
“Relationships. Friendship. People,” came the response. It was still slow as it was searching for both keywords and interpretations. Still, the answer was rather specific, and Henry couldn’t really argue with it, though he expected something along the lines of ‘creativity and intelligence.’
“Tell me about relationships,” he instructed.
“I love my family and my best friends. I’ve thought I was in love a few times, but when I met Lisa, it was all different. My relationship with her is open and honest. It’s different than my relationship with my parents or with my best friends. But I value the relationship I have with them as well.”
Henry stared at the screen open-mouthed. He noted the AI made distinctions between past and present, which made sense as it had access to the dates and times of everything on his computer and social sites. It showed him a picture of Lisa and him together. He wasn’t sure where it was taken, but was vaguely certain that he’d put a heart next to it on Lisa’s timeline.
He sat back to contemplate what the computer had shown him. It had exposed things far more intimate than he’d expected.
Do I want to expose this to my children in the future? Do I want to know this kind of thing about my father?
Pythia Speaks seemed simple compared to Forever Yours. The product was still essentially just two parts: ask a question and receive an answer. In the background, he was coding several new features he would release over the next few weeks. First, he and Lisa had expanded the text boxes to a maximum of 400 characters instead of 140. They had debated about the move, but decided the 140-character limit was inadequate for questions people wanted to ask the oracle. They’d collected several samples of questions asked that were incomplete because people couldn’t condense them to the limit. The program did not respond to a string of requests, unlike popular social media. He released that feature without an announcement and discovered a fifteen percent increase in the average length of a question.
They’d decided to work on registering subscribers and giving them the ability to enter questions up to 1,000 characters. Subscribers would also gain access to the record of their questions and answers, as well as a forum on which they could discuss their oracles.
Using OC Search, Henry uncovered several social media threads that talked about questions and answers from Pythia Speaks. One person posted a question and answer from Pythia Speaks every morning on her stream. Hits on the site had risen to over 3,000 per day. Even with the collection of questions and answers recorded on the site for further training, the database of content Pythia relied on was less than five gigabytes. It collected only text, not images or video or formatting.
Pythia could also look up additional information on subjects on the internet, but only what was allowed in its operating parameters. Content had to be in the public domain, had to relate to philosophy and prophecy, and had to be scrubbed of political and religious references, as well as other normal restrictions regarding sex, gender neutrality, hate speech, and racism.
Users were not blocked from asking questions that contained forbidden content, but Pythia never answered with that content. When it stored the conversation for use on its wall, it eliminated those terms.
There was a daily increase in user questions, and the responses were becoming more relevant.
“What is the meaning of life?” Henry asked the oracle.
“Life is the meaning,” Pythia responded. Henry waited for more of an answer, but he liked the simple message. One of the most profound questions that faced most humans was answered with four simple words.
“What path should I take?” Henry asked, deciding to go for a more oracular question.
“The path is unrelated to the destination. As long as you keep the goal in sight, the path is irrelevant. It is determined by the kind of person you are, not by your goal.”
Holy shit!
Henry went back to work on the code, setting up his autoload function to ask a question every sixty seconds to determine both how the AI responded and also what was added to the database. He’d copied the questions from a few dozen websites that asked philosophical questions. These included questions asked of Socrates, Plato, Confucious, Rumi, and many others.
“What is real?”
“What is a good life?”
“What is beauty?”
“What is justice?”
“How do we know what we say we know?”
Several hundred such questions had been collected in his data feed and he kept pumping them into Pythia. Many of Pythia’s answers were shorter than the original 140-character limit. Some, however, seemed to run out of room in the 400-character space. Overall, Henry was pleased with the training, though occasionally, he made an adjustment to Pythia’s response, eliminating forbidden words or concepts.
“We have the basis for a full new version of Pythia Speaks almost ready to upload,” Henry told Luke, Isobel, and Chastity in mid-August.
“Woohoo!” Chastity said.
“What’s the holdup then?” Luke asked.
“I’m torn. I don’t think we should try to monetize it,” Henry said. “It just doesn’t seem right. We’re putting very little effort into the site at the moment and are getting over 3,000 hits a day. People love it. I just think it’s a betrayal to charge for the subscription.”
“We’re not a fucking nonprofit,” Isobel growled.
“True, but Pythia is a bonus for us. It was only developed to test the code for Forever Yours. That project is going well and the code has been integrated and expanded. I just don’t think we should charge for the Pythia Speaks subscriptions. There are really very few additional features and I think, aside from periodic reviews to see how it is doing, we don’t need to do any more after this update,” Henry said.
“I don’t know,” Chastity said.
“It seems like an opportunity to grab extra revenue for further investment. Do we have any estimates as to what kind of revenue it might generate?” Luke asked.
“Yes,” Isobel said, looking directly into Henry’s eyes. It seemed like she was going to have a famous Isobel meltdown and Henry braced himself. “It’s insignificant,” Isobel said, surprising Henry. “I don’t think Pythia Speaks could ever be a significant revenue generator. The new feature set is already available for free on most social media sites. Saving conversations. A forum for discussion. Longer messages. Why would anyone pay for those features on an oracle site. Pythia Speaks has been a relatively inexpensive testbed compared to the two testers we’ve hired in-house. We’re releasing network search and optimization this month. I don’t think we should burden Pythia with a revenue goal.”
“That’s really profound, Izzy,” Henry said.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t think there should be some additional restrictions put on the site,” she continued. “First of all, its budget needs to be limited to the cost of the server. Secondly, the subscriber list needs to be anonymous. And third, you need to show profitable expansion for Forever Yours within the next six months.”
“I don’t think you can put all those demands on Henry,” Chastity began. “We might as well just shut Pythia down.”
Luke just looked at the other three, ready to jump in if it became a real dispute, but unwilling to do more than make a final decision based on what they determined among the three of them. He’d been preparing non-stop for an interview with HBR and had only taken a break from meeting with Darla Gallitzin to listen to this proposal.
“I think we’re near to an agreement,” Henry said. “We need to understand that the server cost will undoubtedly increase over time as traffic continues to increase. Second, I need you to clarify what you mean by anonymous subscribers. A record of their subscription has to be maintained in order to have a subscription.”
“Let Pythia manage them. I don’t want anyone’s personal information to be available to anyone in our company or to be subject to subpoena. Pythia should keep an encoded… what do they call it? Encryption. An encrypted record of subscribers that only she can access,” Isobel explained.
“Actually, I kind of like that idea,” Henry said. “It’s really hand-in-hand with not charging for it. If Pythia maintains the list and has the only key to encryption, it prevents anyone’s private information from being displayed. As to getting Forever Yours out the door, I think I can meet your six month requirement for full release. It’s in code review now and we’ll turn it to the testers as soon as that is done. I accept your criteria.”
“One more thing,” Isobel said. “It’s small, but I think there should be a line at the bottom of the website pages and the forum pages with a link that says, ‘Powered by Open Cloak AI.’ We should get a little credit for it.”
Everyone nodded.
“Well, if Henry agrees, what do you think, Chas?” Luke asked.
“I’ll agree,” she said. “I’ll write up the notes and make sure we all have a copy of the agreement.”
“Then we’ve come to a conclusion. It’s all yours, Henry.”
“That was really good, Isobel,” Henry said after the meeting. He stopped briefly at her office.
“I’m not always a bitch,” she said. “I’m on some pretty good drugs now. I worry about our finances. But some things need to follow our original company principles. We don’t collect personal information. Of course, we need to register users so we can push upgrades, but we don’t even do that automatically. And since I intend to be the first subscriber, I want my information protected.”
“You will? I didn’t know you paid that much attention to the oracle.”
“It’s not like I base my life on it,” Izzy huffed. “I just like to see what ridiculous thing she’ll say each day.”
“Do you ask the same question every day?”
“Not always. I don’t ask the same question two days in a row. But I don’t have that many questions. You know, like, ‘Will this be a good day?’ or ‘Why is my mother such a bitch?’ I mean, not usually,” Izzy said, lowering her eyes.
“Well, they were great suggestions and I’ll have it ready for upload later this week,” Henry said.
He left Isobel’s office wondering exactly what drugs she was taking.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
