“This marvelous machine, Doctor Pockley, is called PAINN, which stands for Presidential Artificial Intelligence Neural Network.”
This is karma, isn’t it? As Abe continues his exposition about the “president of the United States”, his words start to muffle and Harry can only hear his own intrusive thoughts. He cannot decide if this moment is the strangest reality, or the most disturbingly realistic nightmare. Either way, Harold Pockly feels a brand-new kind of discomfort, and so, with his well-developed analytical skills, he does his best to rationalize this unexpected situation. I deserve to be here. To feel this, I mean, what do I do for a living? Sit in my chair, and, let’s face it, judge a bunch of people…study a diverse range of…misfortunates…like… lab rats! Mice in a maze! Then make money off of it! A LOT of money! But it helps people, right? People say therapy saves their life. Shit, that’s not why I do it! Does that even matter? Damn. Harry then remembers a haunting quote from his college days: ‘The greatest of all treasons is to do the right thing for the wrong reasons’ (or something like that). T.S. Eliot. Or was it E.B. White? Fuck both of those guys. Oh, hell! What does it even matter!?
Although still slightly conscious of his manners, Harry slowly turns his neck to the right as his eyes shift away from Abe the Poindexter. Saigon, respecting Abe as the center of attention, stands with unflinching swagger: his hands are at his hips, somewhere in between resting on his slick Versace belt and coolly grasping his posh striped vest. Under his fedora rests a stern expression with pursed lips, as if to say, “This better be good.” Harry shifts his gaze to Doctor Brown who stands stiff, clutching the same clipboard and staring right back at Harry, gauging his reactions. Karma! Now I’m the mouse in the maze! Even after they make eye-contact, she does not budge, standing strong and accepting her part in this game of Chicken. Sure enough, Brown wins, as Harry breaks eye contact and snaps his attention back to the Ringmaster. Abe, however, notices he’s losing the focus of his guest of honor.
Just then, the Irishman, Rooney, withdrawing his pipe, offers a resounding first-impression, “He don’t need to know all this shit! Just show’em how the damn thing works!”
Another coat of blush is added to Abe’s cheeks. “You’re right! I’m sorry! Here I go talking tech: ‘blah blah blah! ’ Let me just get to the good stuff! Watch this.”
Abe steps over to PAINN and hovers over a holographic keyboard. He pushes the bridge of his glasses up his nose, squints his eyes at the screen, and starts typing at an olympic pace. All lips are sealed as the continuous tap tap tap tap provided by Abe and the soulful sounds of the pistons combine to make a rhythmic, mechanical symphony. Harry tries to imagine just how much better this strange man is at communicating with computers than with humans.
“Ok!” pipes Abe. “Get your phone out.” Harry obliges. “Surely you follow Mr. Sanchez on Twitter, right?”
“Uh…yeah” Harry instinctively bluffs. He clicks on the social media app and searches for the presidential Twitter account. He nervously mashes the “follow” button to make up for his light deceit.
“…Read the most recent Tweet.”
“‘It was a pleasure to meet with my friends in Syria today. We are different from each other in the most beautiful ways, but we are all the same on the inside!’”
“Great…now…check out this picture.” He motions toward the monitor, which shows a light-brown-skinned girl, pretty, wearing a hat and gown and tilting her head as she smiles.
Harry slowly nods his head and furrows his brow to indicate that he does, in fact, see the picture, but that he also does not see the point in this presentation.
“And…Look at the feed now!”
Harry glances down at his phone, and, there it is! The same picture. The same girl. Same hat. Same gown. Same smile. The caption reads, “So proud of my beautiful daughter on graduating high school! The future never looked so bright!” Harry, stunned, fixates on the time stamp: “Uploaded just now.” But, how?
“You see! That was just your president in action! PAINN automatically generates a message based on an array of algorithms, and, in this case, photos as well, and then sends the live data to be posted on President Sanchez’s Twitter account. And that is just one of the thousands of things PAINN can do! Not to mention, this activity probably falls under the category of ‘low-priority tasks.’“
Harry does a double take at his phone. He feels compelled to say something, but nothing escapes his mouth.
“Check this out!” Abe returns to his keyboard, and continues the mechanical symphony. A document displays on the screen, which seems to be updating every nanosecond. “I am now under the module ‘congressional legislature.’ Let’s see.” Harry squints his eyes. “‘Pharmaceutical Reform.’ PAINN runs this document through thousands of simulations, testing out its effectiveness. After the simulations are completed, this legislation will be submitted to Congress as part of President Sanchez’s reform program”.
“But Abe” Harry finally manages to interject. “I see that you keep typing everything. So, aren’t you, in a sense, acting as the president of the United States on these matters?”
Abe cackles. “ Yeah right! Me? I’m just accessing the modules as an observer! PAIN calls the shots! At first, our team would vet and approve PAIN’s decisions but eventually PAIN reached such a high level of analytical precision, we found that our judgement is no better than his. So although we do keep track of it, we find no need to intervene in her decisions. As you can see, it is being self-corrected based on those simulation outcomes. When it is finished, this bill will, sure enough, be voted upon. Unfortunately, we do not control the human factors of congressional voting…yet! You see this is really just the start of our ultimate plan. Phase 1, if you will. The technology is much too expensive at this point in time. You do not want to know how much this costs to create and maintain. We figured, if we’re gonna do this thing, we might as well start with the most bang for our buck-the head honcho himself! We are hoping that years down the line our government as we know it will be primarily an optimal digital community. Of course, people will work alongside the machines for…well, sensitivity purposes…but c’mon! Imagine the advantages of such a system! You will have, in effect, a bunch of unbiased, incorruptible, artificial minds running the country! I mean, try bribing PAINN with a C-Note! Believe me, he won’t take it!” Abe, wonderfully amused by his own sense of humor, laughs. Unsurprisingly, he is the only one that laughs.
His laughter fades into a smug smirk. “And of course, at that point, everyone will know and we won’t have to work in secrecy. Until then, mums the word. Ok, I’m sure your head is just teeming with questions. Or even just thoughts. Anything else you want to ask me?”
“Well…If this thing is the real president as you say…What does Sanchez do?”
to be continued…
