Heimburger - Avatar Expedition

Mary slowly boards the automated bus the second the sleek white doors folded open. She used to habitually greet the driver each time, but now no one sat in the driver seat. Instead, a large electronic extension from the head board printed red digital messages that informed the passengers of their next stop. "NUROTECH OFFICES, SHIBUYA" flashed across the text display next to various other symbols and electronic images showing the geographical mapping of the route and the status of the bus's internal systems. It took around thirty minutes until she arrived at a massive, slightly cylindrical and somewhat rectangular building. She had prepared what she would tell her ex-boss after her recent firing but was worried that she would be forced to take the issue to court if her plans didn't turn out as she had hoped. After being a part of the artificial intelligence development department for about three years, being let go due to the potential for AI to conduct their own research was both unstable and targeted considering her status as the only woman employed within the department. Although her boss had joined the company from a relatively young age and stayed with the company for the last three months, nothing seemed abnormal about hiring newer, younger employees for a company on the verge of some of the most important progress in technological history. Still, she was worried about isolating her coworkers, who had figured she saw the logic in both cutting human costs as well as researching new forms of intelligence. Yet she knew they felt guilty about the fact that her contributions and energetic desire to push this experiment further as a part of the company's infrastructure led to the demise of her career and that the consequences seemed unfair for her in the long run. She had always thought of them as purely logically minded and not interested in the factors of age, gender or disability into account for employability but simply wanted the smartest people for the job. However, although she never took her doubts seriously, she always suspected that, despite her incredible intelligence in the field, being a middle-aged woman who was occasionally scatter-brained would cause them to worry about the AI project being compromised. She just never expected them to act on such unreasonable worries.

She had been walking down the hallway past several people and machines she had held no relations with for her entire tenure at the company, but approached at stopped at the glass door at the end of the hall where some of her closest peers prepared for a meeting. She took a deep breath, opened the door and saw them causally inhabiting the room but all staring at her sudden entrance. 

She glanced across the room until she saw Benjiro at the head of the table, sternly staring at her. 

“Benjiro, I need to speak with you a minute. I understand what happened yesterday, but it has to do with the future of the project” Mary said. The room went quiet and Benjiro quickly walked towards the door and closed it.

“You can’t be here while you’re on paid leave, Mary. I already told you we would have to review-“ Benjiro began.

“I understand what you told me, but I identified several problems with the social algorithms machines. Now I would understand letting me go if I lacked contributions, but you know there were several problems I identified with the social problems machines that we never implemented, so unless you want the research to go undone and start releasing dictatorial products to companies, I suggest you extend my period of time here to help.”

“It wasn’t my decision.”

Mary sighed in annoyance. “So you’re not even going to fight the people above you for this? I’ve worked longer here than anyone else and you know how much I can contribute to this project. I don’t see any other alternative besides the fact that who I am is inconvenient.”

Benjiro put his hands up in a stopping motion. 

“It wasn’t my superiors either. It was the algorithms.”

Mary paused. “What are you talking about? The social engineering machines? We’re the ones developing those!”

Benjiro sighed with exhaustion. “Yes, and the company decided to start using it to stay ahead of any advances they could give clients. We ran them hundreds of times, and it kept pointing to massive employee cuts, and you just happened to be within the giant piece of the company that was going to get cut.”

Mary couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So an algorithm told you to just fire people and now you’re suddenly listening to it?”

“No, we understand, which is why I insisted on letting you go. We wanted to take into account whether a machine or a person would be suitable for the job, and it picked the fewest number of people possible to maintain the company. It selected everything based on mathematical criteria.”

“But it still doesn’t take into account discrimination and office relationships and I know exactly how the algorithms work for that.”

“Exactly! The board found a machine that doesn’t know what discrimination is and therefore can’t commit it, so they plan on easing the company into this new version. I’m so sorry, Mary, because I wanted to let you know as soon as I found out but thought I could convince them to take their employees lives into account. They plan on using the algorithm as a defense against discrimination lawsuits. I was going to let you know earlier so that you could have a chance to look for and maintain a career somewhere else.”

Mary was silent for a few moments. How could a company even get away with that? It didn’t make sense, because that’s not how discrimination worked. But the AI work the same way human minds worked? Suddenly Mary saw the complex web of politics that she and everyone she knew in the company had been caught in.

To be continued…