The AI takeover happened quickly but not really in the fashion that was expected. The end of days is not what happened but instead a single person developed a model of AI that kept solving the worlds problems. This obviously prompted much doubt as others wished to gain access to this model through legal means or otherwise. Eventually a hacker gained access to the model but to no avail as all answers were incomprehensible gibberish. This lead to the creator being called the AI linguist as the only known man capable of communicating with this problem solving AI.
Gordan entered the waiting area with his problem statement in hand. Though his problem felt small in comparison to many of the other problems out in the world he knew he needed to try for his communities sake. He could feel his hand shaking as he reviewed his problem statement once again to ensure the accuracy and his ability to recite the key points. “Our projections are clear” he muttered to himself “If Nostley continues to take our communities water at its current rate we will reach a point of in-sustainability in as little as three years”.
Suddenly realizing that he was just standing right in entry way of the waiting room he began to approach the desk with just a single receptionist. The room was rather basic for what was supposed to be a fancy tech business working with AI. The waiting room had enough seating for maybe fifteen people and an aquarium that at first glance appeared to be unoccupied.
“Hello mister Apple I presume.” said the receptionist as Gordan approached the desk.
“Why yes that is me.” said Gordan a little surprised “Are you not expecting anyone else now?” asked Gordan.
“No you are our only appointment for the day.” replied the receptionist “We like to focus on one problem at a time to ensure that the linguist has adequate time to interpret the AI’s responses.” continued the receptionist.
“Wow and you chose our problem?” said Gordan almost feeling a little guilty for taking today’s slot.
“Yes of course, water conservation is a growing concern of ours and solving it at the community level could result in a solution that is applicable to many other communities around the globe.” said the receptionist “Do you have your problem statement on hand?” she went on.
“Oh yes here it is” said Gordan as he handed over his problem statement.
“I am Katie by the way.” Katie said as she flipped through the problem statement.
“Nice to meet you Katie, is uh everything looking good I wasn’t entirely sure of what you wanted to see in the problem statement.” said Gordan.
“Yes this is looking great, we mainly are looking for a decent understanding of the basics of the problem and fully expect to uncover more detail as we begin the search for a solution.” responded Katie.
“I uh, I thought the AI just sort of came up with a solution.” said Gordan feeling unsure of himself and the process in general.
“You would be forgiven for thinking that.” replied Katie “The media has a way of over simplifying things for easy consumption.” continued Katie
“But no our process is a little more thorough than that, we like to see problems through to their conclusions which includes multiple rounds of discussion with our AI and continued evaluation of attempted solutions in the field.” said Katie.
“That does make sense when you put it that way.” responded Gordan “That sounds like something that could take a lot of time.” said Gordan thinking out load.
“Yes this is a process that can take weeks, months or years. It is hard to say as each problem we face has it’s own unique set of parameters that often can only be discovered while working to solve it.” said Katie “I also must stress the importance of observing our solutions to ensure that we are not just creating new problems elsewhere.” continued Katie.
“Okay well what do we do to get the process started?” asked Gordan
“Well now that expectations are set I will take your problem statement back to the linguist to get it fed into the AI and start getting any other relevant details together to come up with our initial solution” said Katie “This will be the slowest part of the process and we will be reaching out to you for further details when we have questions.”
“Okay so is that all you need from me right now?” asked Gordan a little surprised.
“Yes!” responded Katie “Now that we have your current understanding of the problem we will be focused on gaining an understanding of all of the parts in play and starting to strategize about potential first moves.”
“Okay, well thanks for your time.” responded Gordan.
“No thank you” said Katie “Without activists like you defining problems, we would have a much harder time trying to solve them.”
And with that Gordan left feeling unsure if anything would actually come of this but comforted in the fact that he tried.
Thanks for the read! There will be more to come with a new part coming out every week. Follow for updates on when new parts come out and let me know what you think of the story so far down below!