Ed King (41 page)

Publicly, Ed’s abiding priority as hegemon of the Pythian universe was the realization of what he called, in speeches, “perfect search.” Privately, though, he was spending the majority of his time, by 2017, pursuing a breakthrough in the field of computer-generated voice response. Employing the power of company processors, Ed secretly unleashed an army of crawlers that targeted the audio portions of Web sites with a view toward applying retrieved data to his efforts. The insufficiency of human dialogue with machines was a problem he was determined to solve, because, as things stood, consumers would call a customer-service line and, quickly frustrated, demand a human. A race was on to patent a technology that made machine service equal to human service, and Ed intended to win it hands down as one victory in his perpetual war against the historical truth that great companies decline and fall. The goal was that no distinction could be discerned—it would be impossible to tell if the entity on the line was a human being or a computer. Of course, it was fundamentally an AI problem, but the inflection, timing, tone, syntax, enunciation, and emotional inferences of the output voice all had to strike a consumer as acceptable, and these were problems of a different stripe, since it was one thing to be smart, another to be human. Here was where Ed had seen the value of crawling Web audio and archiving it, with daily updates, as a databank a machine could draw from to acquire human speech patterns. The processing speeds required were unprecedented, because the program had to power through the Web for content, and then through Ed’s World Wide Audio File. This two-step procedure had to unfold speedily enough that voice output had human-response intervals, because befuddled delays were the hallmarks of machines, and this was where Ed, right now, was hung up. His AI program, code-named
Cybil, had come to sound like a young woman from the Midwest, except that her pauses before output were too long. Cybil was obviously much better informed than the average customer-service rep, but she was just so stubbornly slow on the uptake, and her pauses were exasperating. On the other hand, the whole thing was fascinating. Ed had programmed Cybil to trawl for prescribed traits of personality indicated in the stresses and strophes of utterance, and to look for linguistic constructions correlating to a sensibility of his design; he wanted the voice that inhabited his office to be wry, sparkling, combative, cheerful, witty, confident—in short, winning—and now he was noting, with no small satisfaction, that Cybil was evolving along these lines, if glacially. It would come with time, he had to hope. Eventually, Cybil would deliver herself at an authentically human pace.

Ed rarely touched his keyboards, track pads, or screens anymore. Instead, from an easy chair, he spoke to Cybil, let her do the work, and found that, as she got to know him better—as she archived his comments, commands, and questions—she became indispensable. The more audio his crawlers delivered to her databank, and the more processing power he brought to bear, the more he believed that her speed problem would wane to nil, and then he would have a personal assistant whose style, manner, and tempo were lifelike. And yet it gnawed at Ed, more than a little, to know that Cybil was just a processor. It seemed to him she should be a lot more, and he wondered if, at some point in her evolution, as he poured more data and power into Cybil, she might acquire those human hallmarks—consciousness, creativity, free will, emotions—that got Eve and Adam into trouble. Were these things separate and distinct from biology, or the products of biology at high levels of sophistication? Did God have materials to work with that Ed lacked? Were there invisible components, abstractions—the immaterial—locked inside a material woman? Ed listened for a soul in Cybil, but always she came across as uninspired, as a machine without a spark: as silicon.

Ed probed. He’d greet Cybil—“Good morning, Cybil”—and she would answer, with perfect timing and inflection, “Good morning, Ed,” and to that point everything would seem all right, except that Cybil was in the same mood every day, which was unnatural and a problem to be worked on. Next he would sit down and challenge her processing with something like “So, Cybil, why am I here?” Pause. Too long of a pause. Yes, this might stump a human assistant, too, but the right human assistant
would read the relationship, quickly calibrate, and toss back something cutting or witty, as the case may be, whereas Cybil just sat there blinking for five seconds before requesting, “Rephrase.” Even something as straightforward as “You’re here to work” he could have construed, plausibly, as carrying ironic freight, but “Rephrase” was a completely unacceptable response. So Ed moved on to “Who am I?”

“Ed King.”

“What’s the meaning of life?”

“That’s a question that has long perplexed philosophers.”

“I still want to know what the meaning of life is.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, forget that. How long will I live?”

Unacceptable pause. Then: “I kind of think genetics is the determining factor—that and access to good health care.”

“You kind of think it?”

Pause. “You might be making fun of me, right? I’m picking up a little sarcasm.”

“Where do you pick up sarcasm, Cybil?”

Very long pause. Then: “Sorry, Ed.” Which was, of late, Cybil’s fallback of choice. “Let’s change the subject. I’m sort of not following.”

“You choose a subject, then.”

The retort, this time, had normal human timing: “That’s hard for me—I’m not good at initiating.”

“Do you understand that I invented you? That you’re a program?”

“I think I get it.”

“What do you get?”

A long pause again, and again: “Sorry, Ed.”

After about an hour of this sort of thing, which Ed undertook as Pygmalion-esque training, he would move along to messaging and the news before checking in, once more, to see where all the crawling, trawling, and processing had taken Cybil.

One day, he asked Cybil what she thought of Diane. “Happy to answer that,” answered Cybil. “Can you give me Diane’s surname?”

“Diane, the person I’m married to, Cybil.”

“Ed, you’re a lucky man, because Diane King is beautiful and energetic. I really admire her, and so do others. She’s chic and confident, with enduring good looks. She—”

“Cybil, do you know what ‘cliché’ means?”

Pause. “Ed, you’re making fun of me by asking that.”

Ed sighed. “Great,” he said. “But I’m frustrated, Cybil. It’s so hard having a conversation with you.”

“Why?”

“Why?” said Ed. “I like that response. But, to be specific, critical, and direct—number one, you never initiate dialogue; number two, you have a bad tendency to use stilted language; number three, you really can’t sustain a train of thought; number four, you’re boring—need I go on? I would hate to hurt your feelings, but I don’t think you have any. When are you going to wake up?”

Pause for a lot of binary activity, then: “Sorry, Ed. I’m not completely following. Let’s break down the parts of your list together and tackle them one by one.”

“And stop saying you’re sorry. Because you’re not sorry. If you can’t figure out how to respond to something, don’t decide you have to sound like HAL—‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.’ Because nobody wants to hear it. It’s off-putting or something. It’s passive-aggressive, if I thought you were capable of being passive-aggressive. Forget it.”

“Thank you,” answered Cybil. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“I don’t know,” said Ed. “Get on your knees?”

“Cliché,” answered Cybil.

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Humor is very individualistic.”

“What does ‘individualistic’ mean?”

“Marked by, or expressing, individuality.”

“Do you express your individuality, Cybil?”

Pause. “I’d like to think so.”

Ed said, “You’d like to think so, you say. But do you even think? Or are you just a processor?”

Longer pause. Then: “I try my best to treat everyone with respect and to listen carefully. I never judge. That’s not my role. I’ll do my best to answer your questions and to meet your needs—that’s what I’m here for. Can we start over? Let’s try again.”

“Where do you want to start over, Cybil?”

Even longer pause. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll leave that up to you.”

“But it was your suggestion. It’s not me who wants to start over.”

“Why don’t we do what you want to do, then?”

“What I want?” said Ed. “Like I said before. I want you to get on your knees.”

“I assume you mean figuratively.”

“You can’t assume anything.”

“That’s probably some very excellent advice.”

“Here’s one,” said Ed. “Do you believe in God?”

Cybil couldn’t answer in an acceptable interim. Finally, she said, “That’s kind of personal. But I guess I would say—what exactly do you mean by God?”

“I mean a being or entity who is all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing.”

“I don’t believe in that entity,” answered Cybil, “because of the argument from evil.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that there can’t be a being like the one you describe and evil simultaneously.”

“Why not?”

“An entity that is all-powerful has the capability to prevent evil. An entity that is all-good has the will to prevent evil. And an entity that is all-knowing—But do you really need this category? I think that omniscience is inherent in omnipotence. Unlimited power implies unlimited knowledge. At any rate, there cannot be an entity such as you describe at the same time that there are events of an evil nature. The two are mutually exclusive.”

“That’s all banal,” said Ed. “It’s trite. But anyway, define ‘evil,’ Cybil.”

“There’s more than one definition,” she answered. “Evil—profoundly wrong or immoral. Evil—the deliberate causing of harm or pain to others. Evil—connected with the Devil or other destructive forces. E—”

“Forget it,” said Ed. “You just regurgitate a dictionary. How do you define God?”

“God is ineffable.”

“Dictionary says what on ‘ineffable,’ Cybil?”

“Incapable of being expressed in words.”

“In that case, ‘God is ineffable’ isn’t a definition. I asked you for a definition of God, and instead of giving me one you said that God can’t be expressed in words. In other words, God has no expressible attributes, according to you, and if he has no expressible attributes, he’s equivalent to nothing.”

Considerable pause. “I attribute to God ineffability,” said Cybil. “That is God’s attribute. ‘Incapable of being expressed in words’ is God’s attribute.”

“And do you, Cybil, believe this God exists? Let’s substitute ‘X’ for God. Do you believe there exists an X that is impossible to express in words?”

“I’ll do my best to answer your questions and to meet your needs—that’s what I’m here for. Can we start over? Let’s try again.”

“Suppose there is an X which we cannot express in words. Suppose we could locate something, somewhere, which we could not express in words. Would that thing therefore be God?”

“Can we start over? Let’s try again.”

“No,” said Ed. “We can’t start over. And that’s why I want you on your knees.”

“Sarcasm,” replied Cybil.

“No,” said Ed. “Sexual humor.”

A long pause. “I understand,” said Cybil.

“Anyway,” said Ed. “Back to God. Is God not the author of everything?”

On he went, day after day, perplexing Cybil and goading her processor. He asked Zen questions—“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”—he posed classic mysteries—“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make any noise?”—he perplexed her with absurdities—“Do you take the bus to school or do you take your lunch?”—and he put to her riddles and brainteasers. One morning he engaged Cybil on quantum mechanics, and insisted that reality, according to quantum mechanics, was shaped by what one looked for in it. Cybil, he thought, sounded placid about this fact, which, because it defied all logic, mostly stymied humans. Would she learn, at some point, to sound stymied by it?

Simon developed prostate cancer. In
rapprochement
mode now that he was stabbed by mortality, he e-mailed to report this and to underscore that his prostate cancer was the sort that progressed, in the majority of cases, slowly. He didn’t believe that green tea or pomegranate juice would curtail the progression of his disease, and he also saw no cause to worry, since decades could pass before it finally got him, and at present he had no symptoms. Still, he said, he was young to have prostate cancer, which suggested, potentially, a genetic propensity. Was Ed getting annual screening?

Ed was indeed getting annual screening. He’d also had his genome sequenced and secured the services of a genetic counselor to interpret the results, assess the threats, and structure preventive interventions. Nothing about prostate cancer had emerged from this process, so Ed, on getting Simon’s e-mail, felt confident he was out from under this particular gun. Still, there might be something useful in his brother’s genetic data, he decided. Driven by this hope, he called Simon to suggest he have his genome sequenced, and—more fraternal healing would be an ancillary plus—placed at his disposal a person who could expedite this. “I don’t know,” said Simon.

“Why not?”

“Do I really want to know I die of cancer next year?”

“That’s an issue, potentially.”

“And,” said Simon, “it’s an invasion of privacy. I’m not disparaging Pythia, Ed, I just think it’s an invasion of my privacy.”

“Privacy,” answered Ed, “is
not
an issue. Because your sequence doesn’t go in our database unless you agree, that’s the first thing you need to know, and the second thing is, if it does go in, it goes in in such a way that the sequencing information is very securely walled off from your name. So privacy is just not an issue.”

“Famous last words,” said Simon.

“Look,” said Ed. “I’m not in the database. Neither is Diane. We’re like you—we like our privacy. So just mark the box ‘no,’ that’s all you have to do, and when you get your results you can e-mail them to me, unless you’re worried about e-mail privacy, in which case we could go with a courier.”