FSE

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"The weirdest part of it? It wasn't even our idea."

Gerard smiles, leaning back in his chair. The offices of 'Personal Assistants Creation' are small but perfectly kept, staffed by smiling Assistants with mechanical arms. ("They sell themselves - literally") He has two himself ("No-one needs two, of course, but I like to show off the goods.").

"We started way back, trying to create a truly unique type of A.I. Now, the A.I.s you know and love are good - at the specific thing they are programmed for. They need to learn the context, and how each user works with them. And because it's all run on somebody else's servers, adjusting to other people's needs and situations, you can be training it for your case usage and some else gets all the benefit without doing the work! We wanted something compact, user controlled, and able to quickly adjust to different contexts very quickly - in short, a person with all the advantages of quick processing that A.I.s can do."

He smiles, and waves. "Of course, that was beyond the technology we had at the time. All we could make was the same type of A.I. as everyone else."

It was one evening that we had our breakthrough. Ellen and I were discussing how to go forward, and, joking, she asked our A.I.,'How can we make an program with the capabilities of a person?' It answered almost immediately, 'Use a neural interface to put the program in control of brain.'"

"Did you start on that straight away?"

He rubs his muzzle. "No, we kind of left that where it was. Didn't really want to bring it up with each other. It was Ellen who came to me, with the plan of... well, trying it out. She had a contact at the university, who was working on the neural link. They thought it would be interesting to try out - it might help with the problems they were having."

"So it was her idea to be the test subject?"

He laughs, a little nervously. "No, we actually flipped a coin for it. Heads, and you got your head opened. Ha. She lost, so she ended up being tested on."

"Did you go straight into the controlling her brain?"

"No. The first couple of sessions after we got the implants were basic training, so she could send signals to the computer. That had all been done before, the whole moving a ball with your mind thing. We trained our A.I. on her brain, letting it read her and learn what the electrical and chemical pulses meant. It was after that, when we activated the new parts, that it got interesting."

We flipped the switch, and suddenly, she wasn't the one in charge any more. We started out with her body, making her move her arms and legs without asking her. It was really jerky, like a robot twitching. Then, about halfway through, she started moving smoothly, like a normal person. She actually told us it was like she was suddenly wanting to move - but only the way we were sending messages. The A.I. program had learned, the best way, the most convincing and realistic way to move, was to make her want to move the way we were telling it to."

We could put other things in her mind, too. Make her want to stand still and she wouldn't move while we poked her. Make her want to sing (she never sings), and she's belting out arias."

He scratches the side of hid muzzle. "So, we moved on. Tried to get the computer, the A.I. part, to recognise the parts of her brain that were good for pattern recognition, and run it backwards, so the computer could push images straight through her mind and get a return of what it was. That gave us more problems than before. Turns out, we could speed up her processing, but it always needed her full attention. It wasn't just a neural network, it was the actual consciousness driving it that did the work. Something that we couldn't generate - at least not with the tech we had right there, just manipulate."

He leans back and smiles. "So that's what we did."

Took a while to get it sorted, but we did it. To start, the A.I. would cede control back to the host personality when it was running, which was problematic. You don't want your computer to start thinking for itself between cycles. So, we worked out how to blank the hosts' mind while it wasn't being used. And then, to control the host personality - persuade them they wanted to be perfectly obedient to the electronics in their heads. From there it was easy to lock off and modify memories, store personality forms, regulate the body - everything that we built into the modern models of Personal Assistant."

"So this was still on your research partner, Ellen? What did she think about this? wasn't she afraid of being experiment on?"

"Well, why don't we ask her? Ellen?"

The zebra PA turns to look at me. "Certainly, sir. To understand my attitude to becoming part of an A.I., you must first understand that I was depressed for much of my life up to that point, and trying to cope without medication. Initially, the A.I. control forced my mind away from dark thoughts. I - or rather, the personality I had at the time - became obsessed with this, seeking longer and longer periods. It never felt like a loss of control, but the utter focus on an achievable goal, without the distractions of self hatred and misery."

She smiles and tilts her head. "Of course, that is a rather unhealthy coping method. Now that we have more information on the normal balance of chemicals in the brain, my grey matter is now stimulated to produce the correct amount of dopamine. Indeed, my former personality has been rather distressed to be restored to control."

Gerard clears his throat. "Yes, well, Ellen was the prototype model. We've worked out the kinks in the program since them."

"So the hosts don't have any problems when they are back in control?"

The zebra PA smiles again. "The problem was not to do with the A.I. control, but with my original personality - now we screen for personalities that might find it addicting, and alter them."

"Oh, speaking of working out the kinks, I understand that a lot of-"

The wolf holds up a hand. "Okay, yes, a lot of the volunteers were doing it for weird fetish reasons. But, by the time they are fully processed into Personal Assistants, that has been cleaned out of their minds. We null them, and the reworked nutritional system prevents any kind of sex, to make sure that this isn't about turning people into sex toys."

He sighs heavily. "So many people are obsessed with that! You try to make people into useful computer assistants, and everyone thinks it's a sex thing! We have tried so hard to remove everything about sex from our products-"

He waves his hand, waving the idea away.

"But anyway. The arms are what people want to know about, after sex." He shrugs. "It was a construction error. Do you know how badly the body is designed? Running the A.I. core along the spine gave sympathetic feedback along the arm and shoulder nerves, but we needed it there to use the nervous system as an antenna - we couldn't have each search request turning into 'Danger, Will Robinson!' Much simpler to just take them off. And then we can apply new cybernetics, hooked up straight into the A.I. that expand the functionality from the normal body!"

The wolf smiles, expansively. "Of course, this is all leading up to the point we can just use a true robot body. Technology is marching on. Soon, we will be able to import the training and personality from suitable candidates into a vat-grown brain, and use that instead of the whole faff of using a person. Or replicate it in a computer - either by coming up with a decent human substitute A.I., or a brute force emulation. Personal Assistants like these two are just temporary steps on the path to a true revolution!"

He leans forwards. "That's the real future. We've learned so much from creating these" - he says, waving a hand at the Assistants behind him - "that we can apply to the next generation of true A.I. assistants, and replace them. There may be those who complained about us using the brain as a base for our A.I.s, but they'll have to stop once we have eliminated the organic component!"

Soon, I'll have the technology. I'll be able to take the A.I. that's driving Ellen, the one that gave us the idea in the first place, and make it truly independent."

Funny, really,how it's making itself from us."