The intelligence salesman

(As a reflection of intelligence, automation and purpose in a future world automated by algorithms. This work is purely fiction and any resemblance to persons living or otherwise is entirely coincidental.)

The sun shone particularly brightly this morning, and I struggled to keep focus. Making my way through the breezy campus of the local state university, I headed for the nearest overbearing building, more so for shelter, than any real destination. Ultimately, I would look for the groundskeeper, a quiet large man called John Chang, a third generation Chinese who spoke with still eyes, and small, squeezed lips. His job was to maintain and run the facilities of this second rate university, to ensure that the green fields remained well trimmed and maintained, that the buildings received their due attention, fixes, and that, in some small part, security breaches did not impact the external condition of the buildings. There was a separate department that handled campus security and access but I won’t be visiting them today. John had a small annual budget toward maintenance electronics, security and robotics that I had been courting for some time. He wasn’t a big fish, and he knew it, and so always appreciated people like me taking the time to see him, to chat about the meaningless details of his job, and ultimately to make him feel important and worthwhile. People like me.

I have reached the building, away from the blinding sun and now I feel the heat emanate through my suit, building from deep within me, and up toward my neck, flushing my face. I set my briefcase down on the ground, and catch my breath. My eyes fall on the long metal corridor. A quiet, empty, and monotone vision of the future. For a long time I just stare into the distance of corridor, the metal, the concrete and the pillars of light shooting in from the outside. It is summer, and there are few classes happening now. The quiet whirling of a passing janitor robot interrupts my field and I snap out of my trance. The sense of identity grips me again, and I start to move with purpose. A human operating system that has finished booting, and now engages its software components to locate itself somewhere in space and time. An identity forms in my mind, and I am back in my body, back to being hot, back to holding a briefcase. A wiry smile crosses my lips, and I start to move toward my destination John Chang, my client. Well, I hope. 

Hours pass, and I bid farewell to John after a pleasant set of conversations. I introduce him to a few new algorithms, and advances in maintenance robotics. These components are largely valuable for their software technology, and their capabilities to automate and reduce John’s thinking time. The unspoken truth between him and I is that actually, it reduces the need for John altogether. The software code that I represent plans and executes simultaneous grounds maintenance schedules for a dozen universities without breaking a sweat. For John, his modest list of duties pales in comparison to the raw power of the processing monster that I show him. Within sub-seconds, the software analyses the topography of his campus, the botanic lifeforms present on his grounds, their needs, their rate of growth, and any undesired side-effects, like allergies, that make some plant species less desirable. It then formulates real-time scans of the external elements of the building using the many thermo-graphic cameras wrapped around the campus, and otherwise serving the security systems. It sends the images inside the rooms, inside the walls themselves, looking for structural weaknesses as well as external blemishes, discolourations, etc. A total and inhumanly perfect view of the entire campus is generated in real-time. The list of scheduled tasks is produced and updated in real-time. An energy efficient overlay is created to ensure that the robots connected to the central servers are optimally efficient at executing these tasks on an ongoing basis. The energy efficiency is itself a criteria for success of the algorithm, and is continuously monitored and updated. The robots are then sent around the campus, in real-time, to scout and upgrade the grounds as required. This means management of the botanic organisms, external wall cleaning, fixing broken and damaged sub-structures, and generally ensuring that the grounds are maintained to a high standards. There are even additional adjustments to ensure that the campus is less than perfect: strategic locations for imperfections, such as those around student bars, are allowed to continue to give the feeling of authenticity and freedom to the otherwise oblivious students. It is not a form of control, we discuss with John, it is what we would do if we had the time. He nods knowingly. I have to hide a lightning thought that races to my mind: “You moron, what else are you doing with your time anyway? Its not like you’re composing Shakespeare.. “. But instead I smile and bring my brow together, an expression of thoughtful contemplation, one that I know gives my clients a sense of gravity and attention, that what we are talking about matters and that their opinion matters. But it's for show. The campus houses 300,000 students. Probably more in years to come, as universities become the home for the permanently techno-displaced. A never-ending cycle of self-education and musing, with a small portion of the population actually getting jobs that represent some kind of need of society. This makes John in some ways more and more important to me, as his field of influence will increase. But John is almost entirely redundant, and his position once commanded the loyalty of an army of technicians and grounds keepers, now there is but a handful of people that work for John, and a lot of software, backed by a much smaller number of engineers.

I shake hands with John and promise to send him some prototypes to upgrade some of the external road-monitoring and repairing softwares. It’s a little bit like selling drugs to a junkie, you know that they are hooked and dependent, and there is little resistance. John accepts my offer with a docile nod and smile, a lamb knowing his usefulness is limited, but accepting his powerlessness, and ultimate irrelevance.

I leave into the blazing sun outside, as the warmth of the Australian summer washes over me. All this great technology, and no-ones been able to moderate the weather. Ridiculous. 

My mobility robot, or MR, a modern name for a car, knows the end of my meeting, and has been tracking my companion’s (yes, that’ll be my phone's) location. It then calculated the average time it would take me to walk, and started its motor and air conditioner in time to welcome me to a cool, metallic interior. It’s not exactly a new model, but it doesn't need to be really. Software is all that matters, and software is easy to upgrade, the physical body can stay and be used over and over again. I drop my suitcase next to me, and confirm my phone’s suggestion to head back to the office. That is, my house.

My head aches as I roll to my side, as the robot I am seated in, begins its journey. This afternoon is difficult to be motivated, and I let my reflection linger in a chrome plated side panel. I can stare at the reflection looking back at me. An older and more tired version of what I remember. 

I sell intelligence. 

Automated intelligence to be exact. There are no machine overlords, no large alien spaceships, no terminators. Just simple automations of what you would have done anyway. Just quicker, more consistent, and more inclusive. Whereas when you decide to wash the car, or take the kids to the movies, the automation tools we have would suggest activities that are more suited to the weather today, to the weather tomorrow, so that you can get the most out of weekends, and optimisation of your season, your year, and ultimately your life. Even a simple weekend planner represents some of the higher end technologies we use. They incorporate information about hobbies, nearby events, your neighbours habits, your children’s recent activities at school, your wife’s shopping needs, and the list goes on. Then it neatly gives you the choices to plan the weekend. The freedom is yours of course, and you can go off course as much as you want, after all its your weekend. But you rarely do. It’s just too much effort.

There are other ‘closed systems’ that somewhat more prohibitive. You are legally required to take your MR (car) into a garage, so the gentle automation reminders are not optional after a while. Something similar with traffic control which is centrally managed. Yes, you can drive yourself if you like, though little good it will do you. Your speed is limited now, because they have found that while automated driving vehicles do well to anticipate each other, a human just makes things more chaotic. We’re not compatible. 

My gaze meets the passing road, zooming around me, and I reflect on the change in my lifetime alone. It began with friendly, easy small bite sized applications, called apps. They gathered basic information about your environment, ordered taxis for you, ordered your meals, suggested bars to hang out in, and if you allowed it, co-ordinated drinking sessions with your friends. They replaced that part of you that would plan your daily life, that was overwhelmed by the different types of insurance, the different colour schemes of your new wall paint, that didn’t care about the details of your life at all. That longed for freedom of thought. 

This grew out into an industry that specialised in the simple automation of your every day life, and making it easier to have free time. And it was very successful. It was successful because when you really looked at it, you really were just a collection of a large number of small, every-day decisions, that didn’t need to be thought about again and again. Your great intellect, your ingenuity and humanity could be wrapped up mostly in the mundane, day-to-day. Automation did not remove people’s obsession with the mundane, it merely made it more efficient. Ironically, or not, the void left by the efficiency gains was not filled with higher pursuits of knowledge or art; it was merely filled with more mundane. Efficiently organised mundane. It seemed like ‘lower level’ thought, as it was coined as the playground of the artificial intelligence programmers, was here to stay for the majority of the population. The automation tide took away the water to reveal that we weren’t actually creative geniuses bogged down by the daily grind of the mundane, no… we were actually exactly what we appeared to be. That didn’t stop the software companies, and leaving behind the same stupidly mind-numbing population, they quickly moved onto light industry. 

People were warned. Articles circulated in the mass media for years before the big roll-outs began. Soon, secretarial organisational activities were redundant, then came administrative and clerical activities. Next, some sales jobs became redundant, as any product that could be described within two dimensions, with a photo and written text, was splashed out for free. The middle man was suffering. Financial services, legal professions, some medical fields, manufacturing, retail, wholesale, and transportation services were on the front line of the offensive. The consumer won, because they could now access these goods and services for a fraction of the price. This did not create a boom in consumption as was expected, because those very same people were the ones displaced from their jobs. If anything, it eased their boredom. Better social welfare systems became increasingly necessary to support the suffering lower middle and middle classes of the masses. Some countries were better insulated toward these changes, and ironically, the more populous emerging markets managed to keep their labour markets for longer than the developed markets. But all fell before the onslaught of intelligent automation, fuelled by cheap capital markets efficiency gains, and the promise of a better life.

I lost my job as a commercial real-estate agent, but was fortunate enough to secure a job in sales for a mid-sized software company that acted as a re-seller of artificial intelligence software for a variety of clients. Basically, what you would think of it as a $1 shop, where you can get anything from budget toothpaste to plastic chairs, so long as they cost $1. That's pretty much me, selling cheap, but effective bits of code to just about anybody or anything that will take it. Its not the latest and greatest, but it works, and for people like John, who sit on a second rate job in a third rate university, it may as well be fine after a few laughs with his friend, the software sales guy. Like John, it was not lost on me, that my job was only effective at present because I was dealing with humans. We were both replaceable by more efficient modes of decision making and communication, and probably would be, but not yet. 

I climb out of the MR, and the low setting sun shines into my eyes. It’s getting toward dark, and the sun will set soon. In my mid 40s now, but I recall a young teenager who revelled at this time of the day. After sleeping and moping through the sunshine hours, the night provided excitement. It was when the young gathered together, with cheap alcohol and some money, the night was endless, and it was here to stay. Now my night felt uncomfortable, a kind of testament to the passing of time, a kind of hopelessness that worked its way through the pit of my stomach. There was little point in fighting it. I rose and looked around in a daze. My children were somewhere, my wife was probably with friends. We used to keep a routine that was fixed around hours related to activity, like working, but when you are not working for most of your life, these routines lose their power quickly. Even my ‘job’ a you may call it, kept its own irregular hours. In short my family could be anywhere, in any part of their day. I glanced over to the other side of the yard, and see the shape of our house, it's metallic and grey class perfection, with a hint of sun glistening on it's edges, as the last the day winks out. I feel out of time, and out of phase with it. And yet, I think sometimes it senses my presence, that it knows me even without it's recognition software. Perhaps I hope it does. As I approach, and it greets me, and embraces me with its many software applications, heaping praise, comfort, love, and affection on me as I enter its compound, glad to be home, glad to be out of the glaring sun, the harsh elements of nature, and glad to be bundled in its completeness.

It starts.

A persistent beeping begins to rise in my consciousness, as if someone is turning up the volume on a radio nearby, gradually but steadily. Awareness enters my consciousness as a wisp of smoke, at first entangled in my stories and dreams, squirming and tingling around it, wrapping themselves around and around in circles, embedding that sound in their narratives, and then suddenly falling away, leaving a bare and raw reality: there is a loud beep. And I am awake instantly. The beep. 

I jerk into motion like a long-mummified corpse, only now feeling my muscles as I lurch upright. The house assistant’s voice, Amy, fills the air around me: ‘Mr Thomas, I have a call for you, from… ‘ Then silence. I wait for a moment, but nothing. Its confusing, and I frown. Finally, a soft, perfectly modulated and algorithmically generated voice of a man speaks into the space around me ‘Mr Thomas, I’m afraid I have some bad news. It’s your wife.”. A pause, and more confusion.

Then I reacted badly. 

‘Amy! Who is calling? Amy, what’s going on?’. I know, I had missed the point. Amy was a programmed voice, not a person, had no presence, and couldn’t help me. But in that moment, I reach out to ‘it’. At that moment, it was the only thing under my control. I am not sure why. 

The smooth generated voice, now modulating to reflect my nervousness, and adjusting its tone and frequency modulations to appear more calming continues ’Mr Thomas, your wife was killed this morning in a mobility robot accident. We will send someone to pick you up shortly.’ 

The gentle click signals the end of the conversation. And all I keep thinking is how melodic the tone felt in my ear, how smooth the sheets between my gasping hands are, and .. where, if not here, Amy could be. Then the algorithms usher me upright, encourage me to gather my thoughts, get dressed, and monitoring my condition, they ready me for my guests.