Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 5

"Will! Yes, I mean you. What are you doing?"

The voice was bright and impossibly energetic. It continued:

"Why are you sitting there playing with yourself when there's a competition to win? Huh? Millions of people are streaming right now."

A new voice, reverberating, shot in from all directions.

"Hype

                                    hype!"

                  hype

It was an advert, individually tailored to Will's current mood, curated to entice his involvement. All those automated processes weren't necessary in this case. He was waiting for it.

"Who will conquer the might of the dark Lord Dunkel," it continued, "the first strong aye-eye ever created for an arr-tee-ess? Will you!? Epochs of Civilisation. Forget e-sports, this is what you need to see."

"Hype

                                     hype!"

                  hype

The advert ended. Will's bulging eyes did not. He was hoping to discover a clue in the gaming footage, but it all happened so fast.

"Your eyes, mmm, so majestic," said the selfiebot, hovering nearby.

"Not now," he said, shooing it away. "I need to win the competition, show everyone how great my strategies are."

The selfiebot wavered back with the dexterity of a humming bird.

"Aren't you meant to know where to move?" said Will. "So that you don't get in my way during a game?"

"Mmm, you know I do, but when you took a well-earned break from playing, well..." It giggled. "I thought now would be such an amazing time to get a few sneaky shots in." Another giggle.

He looked around at the holographic display filling his room, the current game in its paused state. It was going well. His tech was on-par with Lord Dunkel, a feat even he was surprised by, and his economy was almost strong enough to begin a mass stockpiling of units for the battle ahead. This was despite unsuccessfully trialling a new tactic, to cloak his own units in the colours of the enemy and sneak inside their town centre. He didn't understand why the possibility existed if it wasn't useful. Perhaps it was a bug. But then, it didn't work for the player whose stream he was watching.

Perhaps I better explain. To maximise viewers for ad dollars, the competition was staggering games over the course of the week, and he'd asked for a Saturday slot. This was a risky strategy, since the first person to defeat the AI would win the competition. But it did give him the ability to steal, err, borrow the ideas of others. Will was more of an idea user than generator. In his favour -- and I can't believe I'm defending him -- solving problems creatively by employing existing methods is what we often call innovation.

And now he needed some of that as his units were being peppered by Square, the second non-player character. Until they were in turn attacked by Triangle. The alliances didn't make much sense in this game. Unless random acts by random actors could be called an algorithmic pattern.

Will felt a presence nearby. He turned right into the large eye of the hovering selfiebot.

"Yes, username, I admit it," she said, "I took a few quickies. You don't mind a quickie now and then, right? I couldn't help myself. You were just too cute!"