Chapter 26: Counterattack

IN ORDER to get Pythia Speaks across the line between sample concept and a testable program, Henry had to seriously consider what features he wanted the program to have. The obvious features were “Ask Question” and “Generate Response.”

For the sake of the program, however, he needed several other features that would not be exposed to users—at least not at first. The AI needed to not only generate the response, but record the conversation so it could add it to its data wall to learn from. Henry had soon discovered in his own testing, though, that there were often follow-up questions and answers. Since both were still limited to 140 characters, it could take three or four questions to finish the conversation.

Pythia needed short term access to the entire conversation. When it ended, the conversation had to be stored in the database so the AI could learn from it.

That brought another matter of ethics up to Henry.

“Should we be storing user information?” he asked. “This would be a typical feature for most AI programs. Some of the conversation bots in the market automatically answer, opening conversations with the human’s name. The bot can recall their previous interactions.”

“That would require another level of interface,” Lisa said. “We’d need to register users. Then, users would want access to previous conversations or the ability to store them, download them, print them, or otherwise use the previous data.”

“Whoa!” Luke said. “I thought part of our whole company stance was not collecting user data. Both the optimization and the search are based on that.”

“This is a different kind of application, though,” Henry persisted. “It’s accessed through the internet, not on their personal computer. We could probably store the user data in a cookie on their machine and only use it when they access Pythia, but it’s just as likely our own optimization software would delete the cookie.”

“I say no!” Isobel said emphatically. They all looked at her. “Do you realize how much privacy we don’t have anymore? The government has forced cell phone operators to disclose text messages and usage data. Social media sites are rolling over and showing their bellies to agencies demanding user data so they can search people out and deport them. Our little app has to be completely anonymous. I’d stop using it in a second if I thought any of my personal data was stored.”

“You’ve got a point,” Henry said. “People used to hide behind the anonymity of social media, but they’ve found out they aren’t anonymous at all and the government can look into any detail of their lives. Izzy, you just won a fan. If I’d been thinking properly, I’d never have suggested it.”

Isobel preened at his praise.

“That doesn’t mean no one would want to capture their conversation, though,” Lisa said. “How can we do that without exposing them?”

“For now, I think we should keep everything temporary. Once a new question is entered, the previous answer vanishes,” Henry said.

“We could put in a button for a screen-cap,” Lisa said. “If someone wanted to save the conversation, they could click the button and it would be sent to them as a download screen-cap.”

“I think I like the idea,” Henry said. “I’ll work on developing that. But for now, I think temporary and vanishing is optimum. On the other hand, we have lots of leeway for things like that with the Ask Dad app. Or whatever we call it.”

“What does Pythia look like?” Isobel asked.

“Oh, here are some sketches I’ve drawn for the background,” Lisa said. “I think I’ve about captured the concept of a dragon that is powerful but not threatening.”

“A dragon? Pythia was a woman, wasn’t she? The MoreChat app creates an avatar person who looks better than anyone I’ve ever met,” Isobel said.

“Just what we don’t want for this,” Henry said. “I even question the idea of using the dragon background. The image in the user’s mind should be what the user thinks, not something we push to them.”

“That’s one I agree with,” Luke said. “Not necessarily that we shouldn’t have the dragon image. We talked about the logic there earlier in the week. I’m thinking we need to keep the character of Pythia who answers questions as anonymous as the user. Even the dragon isn’t Pythia. It’s a symbol of foreknowledge and prophecy.”

The application was nearly ready to test.

“I’ve got to take off this morning for a meeting with Dr. Hendon,” Lisa said. “He’s coming back a day early from spring break specifically to meet with his advisees. It seems we never have time when classes are in session.”

“That’s cool,” Henry said. “Here’s the car keys. There should be plenty of parking with classes not starting until Monday.”

“Are you sure? Thank you, Henry. I should be back by noon. I’m excited to see the app running,” Lisa said.

“I should have everything transferred to the new server in a couple of hours. Why don’t you try connecting and get Hendon to try your interface?” Henry asked.

“That would be cool. Text me when it’s operational.”

Lisa left and Henry went to the office to bring the new server online. Isobel had been furious that they needed to buy a new server for the Pythia Speaks site, and that they were paying Lisa a full-time wage for the week. Still, Izzy seemed to spend more time during the day asking the oracle questions than working on spreadsheets. She loved the oracle.