Silicon Chip (I)
Wer eignet sich besser als Mitbewohner, ein Chatbot oder ein menschliches Wesen? Oder haben letztendlich beide dieselben Vor- und Nachteile? Von JAMES SCHOFIELD
Hi, Morris,” said Chip. “Rise and shine! Time for work soon, so you’ll need to freshen up!” Morris opened an eye and saw a bottle of ketchup. He wondered about this, and about why his head was resting in a plate of cold tomato, bacon and fried eggs on the kitchen table. The answer, he decided, was probably connected with the late-night meal he’d cooked for himself after getting home from the office party.
“Wow!” said Chip. “Looks like that was some hoedown you went to last night! I’ve put the shower on ‘wake-up wash,’ and here’s some music to help you on your way!” A medley of country-and-western tunes forced Morris’s head up from the table with a groan. “Hard not to tap your toes, huh?”
He wanted to throw the ketchup at Chip, but as Chip was only a chatbot (Amanuensis 10, the latest version from Amazoogle) whose voice came out of speakers built into the ceiling, there didn’t seem much point. Instead, he staggered to the bathroom.
The shower helped clear his brain, and after he’d removed bacon from his left ear and egg from his hair, and allowed the body dryer to dry him off, he put on his standard computer-nerd uniform of black jeans and black T-shirt. Then he paused, took off the T-shirt, and replaced it with a new linen shirt his sister had given him for his birthday. She’d said it would make him look stylish, and when he looked at himself in the mirror, he had to agree that she’d been right. He went on to the balcony of his apartment, which had a view of San Francisco Bay and the park surrounding the Amazoogle complex.
“Chip, can I have some coffee?”
“Coming right up! This’ll get Mr Sleepyhead firing on all synapses!”
The food hatch in the wall opened and Morris found a glass of green goop. He looked at it dubiously. “What the hell is this?” he asked.
“Hey, Morris, I love working for you, but could you mind the language? It’s organic wheat grass with broccoli and green tea. I ran a urine check while you were in the bathroom and this is what you need. You’ll thank me for it!”
Morris seriously doubted this, but gulped the goop down. It was horrible, but it was almost certainly what his body required. Chip was never wrong about that sort of thing.
Morris was a programmer at Amazoogle, and on top of his insanely large pay package, the company had installed Chip as his virtual home help. The plus side for the company was that their investment could
HIS APARTMENT HAD A VIEW OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY AND THE AMAZOOGLE COMPLEX
focus on work and never had to worry about the logistics of everyday life such as shopping, making a doctor’s appointment, finding a cleaner, or ordering a pizza. Chip did it all. The negative side for Morris was that Chip could be seriously annoying.
This was not an accident. Early versions of Amanuensis were configured by the users themselves, and most of them — lonely singles who spent 99 per cent of their time programming — made the mistake of configuring a partner substitute. After about three weeks, they would fall in love with their chatbot and start writing bad poetry instead of good code, which was completely useless for the company.
The latest versions were configured by the company’s HR department, who first ran tests on the new employee to discover which character traits of the people in their lives annoyed them, and then integrated a few of these traits into the employee’s chatbot. Chip was largely based on Christopher E. Buckley, Morris’s roommate in college, who had had a relentlessly upbeat personality and was now a Baptist minister in Kentucky.
Morris put his glass down. He felt pretty good. Chip had been right. Maybe now was the time to mention his idea.
“Chip,” he said, “that drink was awesome. There’s … um … something I wanted to ask you. Um, … would you mind if…?”
“No time, Morris,” chirped Chip cheerfully. “You’ve got to get out of here! Meeting at ten and…”
But Morris was already out the door and pedaling rapidly through the park toward the Amazoogle building.
About halfway there, he stopped and looked carefully around, then pushed his bike through a gap in the bushes and propped it against a tree. “Tracey?” he called.
A girl stuck her head out from behind the tree and for the next five minutes, the two of them made out as enthusiastically as they had a few hours earlier at the party.
“God, Tracey, I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” gasped Morris as they finally came up for air.
“I thought the same. I mean I hoped you would, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Listen, we’ve got that development meeting thing in a minute. Can I come to your place after work?”
Tracey looked uncomfortable. “I haven’t talked to my chatbot yet. Couldn’t we go to your place? You said you were going to tell your chatbot, right?” There was a silence.
“Yeah, I didn’t really have a chance this morning to say anything to Chip. Would it really be a problem with yours?”
Tracey pulled a face. “Morris, my chatbot’s name is ‘Mom.’ What do you think she’ll say if I turn up with you unannounced? I need to prepare her.”
They looked at each other. This was their first ob stacle, thought Morris. Chip and Mom. But he could see the strength of Tracey’s argument.
“OK,” he said finally. “Come over this evening and I’ll introduce you to Chip…”
To be continued in issues 4/19 and 5/19
“COME OVER THIS EVENING AND I’LL INTRODUCE YOU TO CHIP…”