quite brilliant,” she insisted.
“People with the brainpower to keep up find him fascinating.”
Cam raised his eyebrows to challenge her.
“I usually can’t, but then he doesn’t talk
much about work outside of the lab. That’s why I wanted to meet at lunch, so
you could speak to person Chuck, not engineer Chuck. Once he’s here in the
Spire, he becomes very focused on the prize.”
“And what is the prize?” asked Cam.
“Assumed intelligence,” said Chuck,
approaching a whiteboard. He cleared away some space with the sleeve of his lab
coat. “Artificial intelligence is a rush fantasy, a dream birthed by men who think themselves gods . We don’t understand the miracle of
consciousness, so how can we ever hope to bestow it upon something we’ve
created? All we can do is program a crude mimicry to make a synthetic seem human. And we’ve done that, to a certain extent, done it better with each
revision of software.”
“Are you saying your synthetics are capable
of carrying on an in-depth conversation? The few I’ve encountered didn’t have
much to say.”
Chuck looked to Sava, who explained about
the cooks at the cafeteria.
“Did you get a look at their wrists?
“No,” said Cam. “Should I have?”
“We tag each synthetic,” explained Chuck.
“Knowing their astrological sign would have told you which revision they were.
I’m guessing the cooks you encountered were specialized. Their job functions
probably didn’t require advanced speech synthesis. Did you try saying their
name followed by directive and then a command?”
Cam shook his head. “No, but I saw it done.
I thought that was a little weird. It reminds me of voice-actuated elevators
like the ones we have at the BMP Tower in Los Angeles.”
“Ugh,” said Chuck, “such a horrible
comparison. Those cooks were built for a specific purpose: to make and serve
food. They take orders from a human overseer, I imagine?”
“Cosimo,” replied Cam. “Funny guy.”
“I’m sure,” said Chuck, writing the chef’s
name on the board. He stared at it for a moment, as if wondering why he had
written it down, and then promptly erased it. “Are you sure he wasn’t a
synthetic as well?”
“Well now I’m not.” He shot a questioning look
at Sava. “You would have pointed that out, right?”
“Savannah is a beautiful and talented woman,
but she is not infallible in the judgment of synthetic versus human.”
Sava shrugged in agreement. “The technology
advances so quickly. Every day, there’s a better model coming off the assembly
line and integrating into the population. Checking their wrists is usually the
only way to tell, since not all of us get the memo when a new revision is
introduced.”
“But you do, Mr. Huber?”
“I write the memos,” said Chuck.
“Well, I mean to say, my assistant writes them, but that’s semantics for you.
Michelle doesn’t have the subject matter expertise to describe our latest
advancements, so I simply feed her the information. If we called her in here
right now, she could easily recite the specifications and capabilities of our
latest model. And if you heard her speak without knowing I had briefed her
prior, would you not think she knew what she was talking about?”
“I would… not?”
“That, Mr. Gray, is assumed intelligence. It
is all a function of interface versus implementation. Your phone there, for
example, has a calculator application, I assume? And when you ask it what two
plus two equals, it gives you the correct answer, as if it knew. But without
using your calculator, let me ask you this question: what is four plus four?”
“Eight!” said Cam. He made a show of
counting on his fingers to confirm.
“See what you did there? The answer is
indeed eight, but how did you arrive at it? You spoke before you counted on
your fingers, so obviously you knew the answer even without your digital
calculation.”
“I just knew. Or actually, I remembered.”
“Yes, you
“People with the brainpower to keep up find him fascinating.”
Cam raised his eyebrows to challenge her.
“I usually can’t, but then he doesn’t talk
much about work outside of the lab. That’s why I wanted to meet at lunch, so
you could speak to person Chuck, not engineer Chuck. Once he’s here in the
Spire, he becomes very focused on the prize.”
“And what is the prize?” asked Cam.
“Assumed intelligence,” said Chuck,
approaching a whiteboard. He cleared away some space with the sleeve of his lab
coat. “Artificial intelligence is a rush fantasy, a dream birthed by men who think themselves gods . We don’t understand the miracle of
consciousness, so how can we ever hope to bestow it upon something we’ve
created? All we can do is program a crude mimicry to make a synthetic seem human. And we’ve done that, to a certain extent, done it better with each
revision of software.”
“Are you saying your synthetics are capable
of carrying on an in-depth conversation? The few I’ve encountered didn’t have
much to say.”
Chuck looked to Sava, who explained about
the cooks at the cafeteria.
“Did you get a look at their wrists?
“No,” said Cam. “Should I have?”
“We tag each synthetic,” explained Chuck.
“Knowing their astrological sign would have told you which revision they were.
I’m guessing the cooks you encountered were specialized. Their job functions
probably didn’t require advanced speech synthesis. Did you try saying their
name followed by directive and then a command?”
Cam shook his head. “No, but I saw it done.
I thought that was a little weird. It reminds me of voice-actuated elevators
like the ones we have at the BMP Tower in Los Angeles.”
“Ugh,” said Chuck, “such a horrible
comparison. Those cooks were built for a specific purpose: to make and serve
food. They take orders from a human overseer, I imagine?”
“Cosimo,” replied Cam. “Funny guy.”
“I’m sure,” said Chuck, writing the chef’s
name on the board. He stared at it for a moment, as if wondering why he had
written it down, and then promptly erased it. “Are you sure he wasn’t a
synthetic as well?”
“Well now I’m not.” He shot a questioning look
at Sava. “You would have pointed that out, right?”
“Savannah is a beautiful and talented woman,
but she is not infallible in the judgment of synthetic versus human.”
Sava shrugged in agreement. “The technology
advances so quickly. Every day, there’s a better model coming off the assembly
line and integrating into the population. Checking their wrists is usually the
only way to tell, since not all of us get the memo when a new revision is
introduced.”
“But you do, Mr. Huber?”
“I write the memos,” said Chuck.
“Well, I mean to say, my assistant writes them, but that’s semantics for you.
Michelle doesn’t have the subject matter expertise to describe our latest
advancements, so I simply feed her the information. If we called her in here
right now, she could easily recite the specifications and capabilities of our
latest model. And if you heard her speak without knowing I had briefed her
prior, would you not think she knew what she was talking about?”
“I would… not?”
“That, Mr. Gray, is assumed intelligence. It
is all a function of interface versus implementation. Your phone there, for
example, has a calculator application, I assume? And when you ask it what two
plus two equals, it gives you the correct answer, as if it knew. But without
using your calculator, let me ask you this question: what is four plus four?”
“Eight!” said Cam. He made a show of
counting on his fingers to confirm.
“See what you did there? The answer is
indeed eight, but how did you arrive at it? You spoke before you counted on
your fingers, so obviously you knew the answer even without your digital
calculation.”
“I just knew. Or actually, I remembered.”
“Yes, you
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