“Have old power structures caused the bugs in the AI?”, part 13 of the series "After The Pandemic. A Fictional Story" by Karin Sawetz

 

"What happened after the pandemic? Was there a point in time that the pandemic was officially over? Or were the people so exhausted or so occupied with their ‘burn out’ - such as it was fashion at that time I learned in the history lessons - due the inflation and the war sceneries in Europe and Asia that they didn’t adequately appreciate the end of the health crisis? It was such an effort to develop the medications and organize and to comply with all the protection measures. Was it an unsung end after all the achievements of the people, the health system and the sciences?"  

Joyce listened to her daughter Sarah and remembered last year’s family meeting during Christmas time. “Last year you wanted to know if the data about grandmother Naomi collected during the pandemic are still available. And Snowball with its special access level to data answered you the question.” 

Sarah throws the orange gum ball to Sweetie. The German shepherd jumps and catches the spiky toy and brings it to her. “And the dog still jumps like a sheep. You are a shepherd - not a sheep, Sweetie.” The young woman crawls the dog’s head with one hand, with the other she gestures for the dog to give her the ball. “And again Sweetie. Show me how to jump like a sheep!”

Joyce is annoyed like always when Sarah degrades her sharp trained guard dog.  

Naomi comes back from the green house plantation. “I see; nothing has changed. It must be the ancestry. My family still makes fun with security systems.”  

“I’ve heard from Demian that there is a bug in the system. Is Snowball’s AI affected by the bug?” Joyce uses the AI as an assistant for almost everything. The first time the especially for Joyce modeled AI was activated through a snow globe. After the activation, the AI began to communicate through almost every device near Joyce. It’s not location bound. 

“Currently I can’t give you closer information about the bug because we are still analyzing damages which have already happened. The first damage occurred during space travel. Accidentally, your brother Demian was part of the mission. I have a suspicion but it’s too early for accusations.” Naomi  raises her hand and waves - as if she wants to banish a bad thought.

“You can’t stop the story when it becomes interesting. You know that this can change our society. This can throw us decades back!” Joyce is angry.

“And I think this is the motivation of the makers of the bug. We have to take into consideration that in the beginning of the usage of the digital era even more trustful organizations like for example the labor union weren't great fans of the online business. This does not mean that I suspect any of the organizations for the problems we detected now. But we have to remember what happened in these years and how the power structures looked like. For online journalists it was a hurdle run with many job-damaging accusations such as that the journalistic work is minor when it’s published online than on paper. It seemed as if the labor union stood not for the labor of journalists but for the industry of paper processing and print. Funnily enough, it was actually one group: Media like magazine publishers were in one group with printing, communication and paper processing.  Even the funding of journalistic work through the state reflected that view. Unfortunately, the conservative structures with the labor union and other organizations had such power that the AI models which were released for the public for the first time at the end of the pandemic were fed with information from sources of media which counted to the beneficiaries of the system. The same with the news sections on smartphones…”

Sarah “Oh, smartphones. That's great. Do you have an old one?” 

Naomi wasn’t unhappy about the granddaughter's interruption. She takes a cookie from the table and bites into the sweet vanilla-almond pastry so that the sugar-like applied vitamin crystals jump into the air and envelop the woman's face with a powder cloud.

“Wow. Grandma. You managed to get the vitamin crystals into sugar form!” Sarah takes a cookie and bites into it. The crystals bounce shimmering into the air and completely disappear after a short time. “How do they dissolve?” “They couple to the oxygen molecules and thus enrich the air.” 

Naomi stands up from the rattan armchair. She's still eating her cookie and says with her mouth full. “Here in this old commode I have some of the old smartphones.” She takes a blue-metallic device with a large screen. “They were so unwieldy. But they were functionable! This one has an assistant which hasn't been updated since the early years of AI. It’s connected with the AI archive we are using for our research. So let us try out to produce an image through AI.” Naomi enters some letters. Sarah stands beside her grandma. “Is this your code to access the phone?” “Don’t be so curious.” Naomi turns away. “So let’s see if the DALL-E AI from 2022 serves a classical New Year’s pig in a glass bubble.” Naomi commands the phone assistant. “It was so advanced already in the early years. Here it is - a cute picture in retro style. So nice to play with these phones. Let’s apply the greeting ‘Happy New Year 2023’!”