Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 45

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

It wasn't a clock, but time was certainly an issue. He'd made a mistake. A big mistake.

Josef watched the metal balls on his Newton's cradle slap, one side rising, falling, hitting the adjacent ball, before the sphere on the opposite side rose. He didn't really get the point of it, but they were all the rage while he was growing up and so he'd wanted one. This was what the titans of industry decorated their offices with. His father had given it as a gift on his thirteenth birthday. This was the first step in him becoming a man. Or so he thought. His father didn't give gifts based on love, on what you needed or wanted, but for his own mirth. This was meant as some kind of metaphor, which he never quite understood.

At least until now.

He had no say. He wasn't in control. That was his father's message. And that was the result of their meeting. Hydan played him like the evergreen he was. And would always be.

Once his father had magnanimously shared his thoughts on who was going to run his own company when he was gone -- himself, apparently -- it was as if he'd lifted a metal ball and let it drop. The only possible response was for Josef to fight back with his own thoughts, on showing he was worthy in his own right, his own metal sphere lifting high in the air. What else could he have said?

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Now he was stuck with an unrealistic time frame for a working version of the True_AI module. Mathison was presumably competent enough, but he didn't have confidence in the man's ability to cope under pressure. When they'd originally met, he was emotionally tumultuous, reeling from the death of...someone. His wife? Who cares? But he still seemed to be suffering and that was bad for business.

How could he have fallen for it again? His father wanted him to fail just for the sake of it, he always had, but was it more than that this time? What was the underlying long-term goal? He always had one, it was just impossible to pick apart.

No, that shouldn't be the focus. Understanding why he failed was important, but not failing again, especially right now in front of his father's eyes, was a far more precious commodity. If he wasn't going to leave it to Mathison, then what were the other options? Pivot to a completely new technology, a cheap buy on the open market? No, that would be at best a short-term solution. He needed to think more like his father, zero in on the end game.

Josef's phone app rang. Ms Glas. I can't be bothered showing you her side of the conversation, so we'll just pretend we're in the room with Josef, listening illicitly.

"Yes, I met the board today," he said. "They all seem very capable, highly qualified."

He put on his most saccharine voice, hiding the disdain at this loss of control. He needed to regain some of it.

"They'll be happy, I've managed to secure a customer," he said. "And this for a product still in development! I've got the company on the right tra-- A name?"

Should he say it? What did he have to lose? Ms Glas was his primary investor. His only investor. They needed to trust each other, to work together.

"Raymond Sinclair," said Josef. "Integrity Values."

He watched the shiny metal balls tick back and forth on his desk.

"The cee-eff-oh, that's right. So the next step will be to--"

Oh look, he stopped talking again. Probably because there wasn't anyone on the other end of the line. Ms Glas had hung up, in a hurry as always.

He'd got his investor off his back for the time being, but it didn't provide a solution to what his long term strategy needed to be. He almost wished he had his own True_AI module with which to provide an answer.

When Josef stared at the three unmoved balls in the centre of the Newton's cradle, he saw a pale reflection of his father's intellectual might. He wasn't his own man -- that was the problem -- so why should he try to mirror his father's tactics?

"It's not just the two of us involved in this," he said, still staring at the unmoved metal balls. "There's a third."

But what would Ms Glas do in this situation? The answer came faster than he'd expected.

"Hedge," he said, snatching at the rising metal ball. "I don't need completely new technology, just a backup to Mathison's little attempts at perfecting the device."

And he had just the person in mind.