Artificial Hearts;

Chapter 2: A Fated Meeting, Part I

I groggily reached for the iPhone that is singing its heart out, hitting snooze without even opening my eyes.

Is it really noon? No, that can't be - I literally just got to bed, didn't I...?

The alarm doesn't seem to agree though, and I lay there for a moment, trying to shake off the grogginess and remember what I have planned for...

The phone is ringing.

I scramble out of bed and reach for the phone - a near miss later, it is in the air for a brief moment before crashing to the ground.

"Hello?" goes the smooth, baritone voice that I wasn't quite ready to hear.

"...Ms. Chen?" says the voice.

"...! Yes, I'm here!" I say, picking up the phone and wiping up small shards of screen protector from the ground.

"...You are? I don't see you!" he says. "

You said we'll meet at the Starbucks at The Westfield, right?"

Suddenly, it hits me - the sexy voice on the phone belongs to the journalist that I had an appointment to speak with.

I check the phone: 1pm.

"Shit", I say, half dressed and rushing to change as I mutter a rushed apology over the phone, which he seems to take in stride, telling me to take my time but not to take so long that 'our machine overlords take over the planet first', and I can't help but giggle a bit as I jump into my clothes, out the door, and somehow manage to catch an Uber without paying a late fee.

I let out a sigh of relief and lay down for a moment, trying to steady my breathing. In the car, I search for the emails I was exchanging with the man on the phone.

...What was his name again?

"Dear Eva,

I am writing to you because I am interested to write a story about your research. I read on your website that you've been researching... Love between humans and AI?

I'm looking to start a new series for our magazine, so... Could you possibly spare a few minutes for a cup of coffee and tell me about what you've been up to? My treat, of course!

Yours,
Jake Paulson.

Editor in chief, AI News, The Ask"

The sigh that emerges from me is deep.

First of all, I hate keeping people waiting. Second of all, I can't believe I almost missed this opportunity to share my work with the world.

Third and fourth whatever of all, how much can I actually share, and how is he going to receive it?

As we pull up to the Westfield and I head out of the car, I feel the butterflies dancing in my stomach - it could partly be the fact that it's 1:30 and I haven't eaten breakfast yet, but it's also because I wonder to myself:

"What is he going to write?"

As I arrive at Starbucks, I notice weirdly enough that it's empty apart from the man that I glimpse in the corner, peering over a laptop.

"I'm so sorry I'm late!!" I cry, rushing over to the table.

"No, that's fine!" he says, with a radiant smile.

"For a couple of reasons, I believe in karma."

At this point I would have loved to say that it was too early in the morning for this, but then my stomach starts to growl, and my face turns red.

"...I can wait a couple more minutes if you want!" he says, as I hurriedly pick up a chicken pesto sandwich and a Venti-sized cappuccino with two extra shots of espresso, sit down next to Jake, and take a bite.

"It's good to meet you, Mr. Paulson!" I say.

"Please, call me Jake," he says, pausing for a while to study the somewhat frazzled lady in front of him. "Thanks for coming to meet me! Since you're probably super busy with your research, I was thinking that you could've ghosted me!"

Now that I take a closer look at him, I see that Jake's face doesn't match his voice. I'd expected a Pierce Brosnan, but he was maybe... Kind of a cross between Edward Norton and an Asian hipster? Also, he's a bit shorter than I expected...?

Still cute, and that personality so far is a win.

"No, there's no way I would've missed this!" I say, finally settling in before regaining approximately half of my prestigious-person composure for this interview. "So what would you like to know?"

Jake pauses, looks at the screen for a while, and says:

"It says here that you graduated from Harvard summa cum laude on full financial aid, and you wrote your undergraduate thesis about distributed systems and... Probabilistic reasoning..." he seems to squint.

"Probabilistic Distributed Neural Architectures: Evaluating Emergence" I say, taking a sip of coffee.

"Yes, that's right!" said Jake, with a somewhat embarrassed look.

"And now you're attached to FutureMind as a postdoctoral scholar on a research grant to study its hot new chatbot app, the Assistant. Does that seem right so far?"

I nod as I watched his slender fingers begin to fly across the laptop and the hint of a small glint in his eye; it's showtime.

"So, I've got a couple of these questions, as you know - the full on "how, who, what, why, where, when," he declared. "I won't ask all of them, but do pick one."

"Well if it doesn't really matter, let's start with 'why' then."

"Okay then... First question. Why AI and not something else?"

"Umm, because coding is cool? I don't know if there's a deeper reason," I reply, returning Jake's embarrassed look with one of my own.

"I'd always been a bit of a computer nerd back in Dalian, where I used to live.

When the other kids were playing with Beyblade, yoyos, and video games, I was writing code."

I proceed to tell him about the homework reminder that would turn off the power of my laptop if I didn't complete it and mark it off on my calendar, the small walking robot I made to terrorize the neighborhood children, and the Farmville bot I made to collect points on my phone while I was away at school; Jake, meanwhile, seems to have gone into his own world and is typing furiously, peppering his keyboard presses with "I see" here and there.

After a while, he stops and looks at me with what seems to be... Is that respect I see?

"...I don't think you quite answered the question," he says. "You like to make cool things, but why are you interested in AI specifically?"

I smile, recalling one of my favorite examples.

"Remember how at the dawn of the human world, someone discovered fire?" I say, trying not to sound like a Ms. Universe candidate caught off guard.

"You're saying that humans creating AI is as important as the discovery of fire, then?"

"Not really.

"As I told you, I like creating and working with cool things - AI is the ultimate cool thing... Which is why it might seem odd to talk about it as we're talking about fire... But in the same way that years passed as humans discovered that fires could not only burn but also cook, we're kind of in that trial stage right now where we're discovering AI - both the good and bad sides of it - and we're trying to cook, not to burn ourselves."

At this, Jake laughs and we share a smile, as he continues to type with a renewed fervor; I relax into the small, comfy chair with the sense that things are going well.

"Shall we go with 'how' next?" he says, and I nod.