Zeroglyph, page 12
Day 2—03:00 pm
“You are Aadarsh Ahuja, CEO of Mirall Technologies, situated at 27 Woodbine Avenue?”
“You got me.”
They were standing outside my house, talking to me through the intercom.
“I’m Detective Geoffrey Boyd. I am investigating the theft at your firm.” He was holding up his badge to the camera. “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”
I told Hazel to open the door before making my way to the living room.
They were smartly dressed in suits. The older guy was Boyd: grizzled hair, clean-shaven, coal-black eyes, lean face. His companion, who looked more college sophomore than hard-eyed detective, did not bother introducing himself, choosing instead to wander his eyes around the place. He was chewing gum.
“Your colleagues told me about your accident. It must have been quite a fall,” Boyd began with a sympathetic smile.
I motioned them over to the seating area near the door. “At least I know what it’s like to do the ski jump at the Winter Olympics. I’ve always been meaning to scratch that off my list.”
He grinned, exposing a set of shiny white teeth that had probably seen one too many polishings at the dentist. “You do much skiing, Mr… or is it Dr. Uhooja? Am I pronouncing the name right?”
“Either is fine. I loved to, back in college. Not so much now. It’s just that I bought a pair of custom-made Zais during my visit to Europe last year and they’d been gathering dust since. The guilt finally got to me, I guess.”
“A spur-of-the-moment trip then.”
“Something like that. I wanted to take my mind off work. A change of scenery sometimes helps solve problems.”
“Did anyone accompany you?”
“Just me.”
“Nice house you got here,” he said, changing the subject. “Very stylish. What is it—nine… ten bedrooms?”
“Seven.”
“You live alone?”
“Pretty much.”
“Quite the hermit, I see. Me—I wouldn’t last a week alone in a place like this.”
“I grew up in Mumbai. Makes you appreciate things like privacy and space.”
“I’m sure it does. Being able to afford it also helps I guess. I grew up in Brooklyn myself. Transferred here to Albany a few years back. My version of a little bit of peace and quiet. Wife’s got a job here, you see.”
I assumed this was Boyd’s way of easing into it. When I didn’t respond, he continued, “Aren’t you concerned about safety? There’s a large cluster of homeless camps not far from here.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got a pretty good security system.”
He glanced at a window. “Let me guess. Burglarproof glass, maglocks, AI assistant, intruder detection… the whole works.”
I nodded. “It’s fully automated. I don’t really think about it.”
“I understand you went to UC Berkeley and later MIT. A dual degree in electrical engineering and cognitive computing followed by two PhDs. Very impressive, Mr.Ahuja. Did you always know you were going to yank the rug from under our collective feet?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh, there’s no need to be modest. I am a big fan, actually. I saw you and your creation on CNN… Last year, wasn’t it?”
“Year before.”
He acknowledged the fact with a cock of his head. “Time flies. I was somewhat a nerd myself back in high school. I used to be fascinated with gadgets. Never got around to making a living out of it though. But I still try to keep an eye on the tech world—got some investments riding there. I can tell you one thing: I never imagined that one day I’d be sitting in your living room asking you questions,” he said, trying on a disarming smile.
“It’s funny how that works,” I said drily.
His mood suddenly turned somber. “I’m not easily surprised, Mr. Ahuja. Every day there’s some new machine or app that’s supposed to be the game changer that’ll transform our lives. But when you unveiled Raphael for the first time, I knew I wasn’t watching just one more guy peddling incremental version as revolution. That was no mere game changer I saw. It was an event: a hand-in-your-jerseys-coz-the-game’s-permanently-cancelled type of event. There was no gimmickry there. It was a real mind at work—a thing of beauty and awe. And then, when I read that Halicom had brought your firm, I immediately called my stock guy and got myself a nice little piece of the action. He said Halicom was overpriced but I told him to buy anyway. You know why, Mr. Ahuja?”
I said nothing—I had a hunch he would tell me anyway. “Because in ten years’ time we’ll all be out of a job. Every single one of us. But you already know that. If you are going to turn us all into bottom feeders, I might as well try and keep myself an inch or two above the detritus. Don’t see nothin’ wrong in that.”
I was sensing that he wasn’t really a fan. I said, “Now that we both understand how valuable Raphael is, I want to know what your department is doing to find him.”
His thin lips split into a grimace that wasn’t pleasant at all. “It’s better if I do the asking, Mr. Ahuja.”
Was he playing good cop, bad cop, both at once? Maybe this was a new technique, where one fellow stays as inscrutable as the Sphinx—a Sphinx chewing bubblegum—and the other switches between Jekyll and Hyde. “I’m hoping so too, Detective. But I’m yet to hear a relevant question.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he retorted. “I happened to speak with your colleague Ms. Martinez before coming here. She told me about your VR hack theory. Is that what you believe—that your AI was stolen?”
“Don’t you?”
“Again, Mr.Ahuja, I ask, you answer.”
I frowned at him. “Now I am getting concerned. I’m concerned that the New York State Police is going to waste time chasing the AI-breaks-out-of-prison angle. It’s better left to Hollywood, don’t you think?”
“Come on, Mr.Ahuja. You built all those safeguards around your AI. The security, the round-the-clock monitoring, that chip I was told about… You wouldn’t have done all that if you thought the idea so far-fetched.”
“You have health insurance, Detective? Does it cover appendicitis? Just because you provided yourself with a cover for the condition doesn’t mean that every time you have an ache in your belly it is a burst appendix. The most likely explanation must be ruled out first. Detecting 101, really. In this case, that explanation is plain and simple tech theft. Someone hacked into the robot using VR and used it to break into the lab and steal the core. It’s the onl—”
“Who do you think did it?”
“What’s that?” I said, thrown off by the interruption.
“Who do you think stole Raphael?”
“A rival company. A foreign government. Maybe even ours—I don’t know.”
“And the incentive?”
“You said it yourself. Raphael was going to rewrite the rules of the game. Right now, it may feel like robots and AI are everywhere, but actually they are not. You still need people. You still need doctors, lawyers, mechanics, teachers… detectives. That’s because the machines we currently have do not possess human-level intelligence; many are just smarter cousins of the expert systems of the previous century. Raphael is not even three years old and can already pass off for an adult human being. With a few months of job-specific training, he can do almost anything an entry-level graduate can. Now if someone can figure out how to mass-produce and train such brains at an economical cost, they have an edge no other corporation in the history of the world has ever had. They’d control the pipeline for a smart, utterly dedicated labor pool that doesn’t need to eat, rest, or take sick days, or ask for a raise. The economic surplus it would create would be unprecedented. We could all be living the lives we want, free of drudgery, free to create and imagine and explore as we wish. So yes, I’d say there is plenty of incentive.”
Boyd leaned forward. “And yet you kept something so valuable in an ordinary office building.”
I flicked my eyebrows at the ceiling. “We were a startup, with a startup’s attitude towards security. Which basically boils down to: there’s something else more important right now. We were going to relocate, though.”
“I heard that,” the detective said. “This impending move—was it common knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about the lawsuit,” he said, suddenly shifting gears again.
“OARP?” He nodded. I took a moment to collect my thoughts. “There isn’t much to say, really. They are an animal rights group. Their argument was that Raphael was a person, and that by keeping him in the lab we were infringing on his rights. Their petition was dismissed of course, but not before wasting a lot of peoples’ time.”
“Where would we be without the crazies, huh?” he said, flashing his pearlies again. When he got no further reaction from me, he asked, “I take it that you don’t agree with their claim?”
“I personally thought the whole business was a joke. A publicity stunt. The judge probably allowed them a hearing just to liven up his day.”
“So you think Raphael is not a person?”
“The matter isn’t as clear cut as they tried to make it. You’ll know if you read the court transcript.”
“I want your opinion, Mr. Ahuja, not the Court’s. Do you or do you not believe Raphael is a person?”
I spread my hands. “I cannot even begin to answer the question without jumping into a philosophical and moral quagmire. We could debate it for days and still be nowhere near a resolution. Just because you can frame a binary question doesn’t mean that it ought to have a binary answer, Detective. Or that the question is even meaningful.”
Boyd smirked. “That seems like a clever way of not telling me what you really think. Alright, perhaps you can answer me this. Does your AI think it’s a person?”
“You have to first define what you mean by a person. Try it. You’ll find that it’s not as simple as you think.”
“Okay, how about this: does your AI think it is a human being?”
“No. He understands that he is very different from us.”
He nodded to himself as if something had just made sense in his head. “Does it know a lawsuit was waged over it?”
“No. We didn’t tell him.”
“It couldn’t have found out any other way?”
“Unless someone told him, I don’t see how. You are probably aware that he wasn’t allowed on the internet.”
“Why didn’t you tell it? Were you afraid it would agree with the rights group?” he asked, his eyes boring into mine.
“I see what you are trying to imply, Detective. But you don’t seem to appreciate the fact that we could have easily put in a directive that overruled any such thoughts. The reason we didn’t tell him is because Raphael is a scientific experiment. Experiments are carried out in controlled environments—you need to know exactly what your inputs are if you are to make sense of the outputs. We just didn’t want to introduce information that wasn’t directly relevant to our research.”
“Controlled environment, you say. Yet you let your AI roam around unchecked outside your home.”
I gave a flustered sigh. “I suppose Valery told you.” I told him the same thing I’d told the board: how Raphael didn’t wander too far and how every one of his forays was streamed back to the lab.
He wanted to look at the recordings.
“Sure. I think I have a few on my laptop.” I gestured at them to follow me into the study.
I turned on the computer and offered Boyd the chair by the desk. To my surprise, the younger man took it. Boyd chose to stand behind him. I browsed to the folder where I’d saved some of the webcam clips and clicked on one at random.
The video started with Raphael and me exchanging a few pleasantries. The voice was Max’s of course. Polite as usual, Raphael asked me if he could go out, to which I nodded my assent. Outside, he stood on the driveway for a couple of minutes, gazing at the sky and the clouds. He then turned left and made his way across the lawn and past a gap in the boundary hedge on that side.
For most of the video, he kept to a narrow trail that he had trodden out during his previous excursions. An eternally curious child fascinated with the most mundane of things, his gaze wandered everywhere, trying to drink it all in. He often stopped to closely examine leaves and flowers he found interesting. Once, he stooped to lift up a rotting branch and observe the crawling wormery underneath.
At one point, he stopped to stare into the branches of an elm. When he didn’t move for some time, the cops looked at me questioningly. “Raphael liked nature,” I explained. “If I remember right, he said there was an owl’s nest up there. Let’s see…” I moved closer to the desk. “There.” I pointed to a blurry crisscross of brown and black, high up in the tree.
“It’s barely visible,” said the young cop, also leaning forward. “What’s the point of staring at a smudge?”
“You are looking at the webcam feed. Raphael would be seeing it through Max’s eyes—zoomed in and in far more detail.”
The cop forwarded through the clip, resuming when Raphael started moving again. He’d been standing for fifteen minutes. There wasn’t much to see after that. He trudged around for some more time in that silent world, with only the crunching of twigs and leaves for accompaniment. We glimpsed a sparrow or a squirrel now and then. Once, a raccoon scurried past him into the undergrowth.
“Spooky,” the young man muttered.
The recording ended after Raphael returned Max home, with me terminating the connection to the lab.
Boyd wanted to see some more.
His eyes lit up, when the next clip I played showed Raphael stopping near the same elm tree. “Hm,” he grunted. “It stops at the exact same spot and stares at that tree. Don’t you find it odd?”
“It’s called birdwatching, Detective. And it’s not like he is idle. Raphael can multitask like you or I can’t. He is probably watching the nest and doing something else in the lab at the same time.”
Boyd didn’t seem convinced with my explanation. “Play another,” he instructed his colleague.
They went through two more videos at random. These, however, showed Raphael exploring a different part of the woods. Unlike before, he didn’t linger anywhere for too long.
The young man spoke again. “Did you program your AI to birdwatch?”
“No.”
“How is the reception in this area?”
“The mobile network?” He nodded. “It’s decent. Do you need to make a phone call?”
He ignored my question. “This laptop…” he said, tapping the machine, “It has a sticker that says Mirall. I assume it belongs to your company?” I nodded. “Does it have the software that can be used to change the… commands… the… “
“Raphael’s directives? Yes.”
“You have access to change them?”
I was finding taking questions from Officer Anonymous a little irksome. “I don’t think I got your name.”
He exchanged glances with Boyd. “Ed Russo,” he said, a bit reluctantly.
I addressed my next question to Boyd. “Is Mr. Russo your partner, Detective Boyd?”
Boyd gave me a calculating look. When he saw that there was no way out of it, he grunted at the younger man, “Show him your ID.” Russo reached into his jacket and took out his badge. It said, FBI, Cyber Crime Division.
Strings were most definitely being pulled. “This is a federal investigation now?” I said, raising an eyebrow at the badge.
“Not yet. It’ll soon become one, given the nature of the stolen property and the likelihood that we might have to extend the investigation across state lines. As of now, Agent Russo is assisting our department with computer forensics. On a purely consulting basis.” His voice took on a stern tone, “Does that satisfy you, Mr.Ahuja? Can we continue please?”
I shrugged.
“Could the AI have accessed this laptop during its visits?” Russo asked next.
“No. I was here at all times.”
“How would you know? You just said that it can multitask better than us. Maybe you were watching, but you’d be watching the robot. The AI was connecting to your home network. Say you left the laptop on during one of these visits. What’s to prevent your AI from hacking into the machine while pretending to enjoy the nature walk outside?”
An involuntary chuckle escaped my lips. “Something funny?” Boyd said, his forehead creasing.
Oh what the hell. I told him, “I just realized why your partner is not here with you. Your partner is out there doing the real investigation while you chase after this rogue AI nonsense.”
I must have hit a nerve because he was now glaring at me. “You said you used to have an interest in these things. I hope you’re not acting out some latent childhood desire to step into the shoes of one of those pulp detectives who solves a robot murder.”
“Please just answer my colleague’s question, Mr. Ahuja,” he said icily.
“So what if Raphael hacked into the laptop? Are you suggesting he reprogrammed himself? He can’t change the directives while he is awake. Plus, his brain has to be physically plugged in to the machine. A remote connection won’t do—that’s how we designed it. Maybe the police department knows something about my creation that I don’t. So please do enlighten.”
“They are just technicalities,” Boyd said, with a shaky sort of confidence.
“This is rich,” I said. “It’s a bit rich you so casually dismissing my safeguards as technicalities without even bothering to offer a counter explanation. I hope your colleague here knows better. Even if Raphael wished away all the so-called technicalities with a spell, he’d still have to plug in a card with correct authorization keys before he can make those changes. I keep the card locked up in my safe upstairs. I can’t remember ever taking it out after I moved in—I’ve not done much hands-on programming in recent years, you see. Are you now going to tell me that he went up there, correctly guessed the combination to the safe, got hold of the card, came back down, inserted it into the machine, and made changes to his brain, all while being livestreamed and with me present in the house?”
