Forever Yours
©2025 Elder Road Books - Lynnwood WA
Chapter 38: Singularity
“HELLO, AND WELCOME to Grey’s Analysis. This is your host, Gene Grey, and we are launching our 122nd edition. For today’s chat, I’m happy to have returning Henry Pascal of Open Cloak Design. Henry, this is your third time on the show this year, which I think is some kind of record. It’s always nice to have you join us.”
“Thank you, Gene. It seems things have been popping for Open Cloak all year.”
“I understand you are in a new location now.”
“Yes. We moved into offices the first of July and now we have full time employees, so it’s not just my partners and me anymore.”
“In the course of the past year, you released the Open Cloak Optimization app and the Open Cloak Search Engine?” Gene asked.
“And network editions of each of those,” Henry added.
“There’s another ... what do you call it? I don’t think I have a software category for Pythia Speaks. I do know, though, that it is incredibly addictive. Do you call it a chat bot?”
“That would be pretty close, though it doesn’t behave like most chat bots you might be familiar with,” Henry said. “We call it an oracle.”
“Explain the difference.”
“You don’t really attempt to hold a conversation with Pythia. You ask a question and she gives you an answer. The answer is in plain English, but it isn’t designed for you to talk it over with her. You might put her in the same classification as a horoscope, or I Ching, or Tarot, or some such. If there’s a discussion to be had, you have it with yourself.”
“I’ve certainly had a few of those. How did Pythia Speaks come about?”
“It was really a testbed for a new product we’re announcing this week. You know we’ve been working with artificial intelligence applications. Part of our research has been to use specialized small language models to train an AI in a single area, thus reducing the AI footprint, power consumption, and relevance of the responses.”
“How many people are using it?”
“It’s still pretty small. We made some significant upgrades to Pythia in the past few weeks and we’re seeing a sharp incline in usage. This week we had our first 8,000 query day. I would expect over 10,000 per day by Thanksgiving. So, small by comparison to most chat bots or search engines.”
“But increasing. Does that make it a growing revenue platform for Open Cloak?”
“No. Like I said, Pythia was created as a testbed for some new technology, not as a profit center. It runs pretty automatically, without interference from our office. Even what we consider premium features recently released, like subscription registration, forums, and retention of conversations, are all available free.”
“With advertising?”
“Also, no. The only thing that could be considered advertising is the single link at the bottom of the page to our company website. We don’t collect user information or sell advertising.”
“Why? It’s obviously becoming popular and looks like it could be a cash cow. Why leave it free?”
Henry sighed and collected his thoughts for a moment.
“We’ve done some analysis on the kind of questions and answers that fuel Pythia. And remember, we make no guarantees regarding how useful her answers will be. It is for entertainment purposes only. But the questions asked are often—no, I’d say usually—pretty serious. They include relationship issues, job issues, people who are deeply upset or joyful or in mourning or celebrating. It just doesn’t seem right to charge them for sharing those questions and feelings. Does it to you, Gene?”
“Ah. Well. No, I suppose it doesn’t when you put it that way. But we’re not used to a company acting on what is right or wrong or altruistically when there is money to be made.”
“I agree. And I don’t want to sound like all of Open Cloak is a charity. Our financial manager reminds us repeatedly that we are not supposed to be a nonprofit. We’ve worked very hard to create good software applications that are worth the money we charge for them. We have a strong profit motive. There are just some things we shouldn’t take advantage of.”
“So, no other future for Pythia Speaks?”
“That’s where we get into a new application announcement,” Henry said. “I mentioned that Pythia Speaks was intended to be a testbed to see if we could be more efficient with a specialized small language model than generative AI is with a large language model. We consider that test to be successful.”
“What’s coming?”
“Are you familiar with Ray Kurzweil’s books The Singularity is Near and The Singularity is Nearer? I think he may soon be able to write The Singularity is Here.”
“Now you really have me on a hook, Henry. Are you talking about the consolidation of man and machine? Immortality?”
“That’s never really been the vision. Let’s say that you’ll live on, but you’ll still be dead.”
“How can you do both?” Gene asked.
“We use the word immortal to refer to things that live on, even after the source is dead. For example, in the words of the immortal bard, ‘The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interrèd with their bones.’ We all recognize that Shakespeare is dead, but we refer to him as immortal because his works continue to live on.”
“So, it’s really the same as it is now. People can look up what you said, but you won’t be speaking to them,” Gene said with a note of disappointment.
“Sort of. Our new platform is called Forever Yours. In this case, what you said is given a new dimension. It isn’t ‘alive,’ but it’s living. Let’s stick with Shakespeare’s works—his plays, his poetry, and any correspondence we could find to or from him or mentioning him. That becomes the wall on which we train our AI. That AI can only answer questions in the words of the bard. However, it might learn new combinations of words based on other ways they were used. So, the AI might answer a hypothetical question by saying, ‘Your life is your legacy, good or ill.’ That’s not quite the same thing we quoted earlier. It’s plausible that Shakespeare could have said it. When combined with images of the bard, or even animations, it comes to life and is consistent with his works. But it isn’t poetic. It’s a good summary of the meaning, but it lacks Shakespeare’s creativity.”
“How does that relate to people today and the singularity?” Gene probed.
“You could upload everything about yourself to a kind of private wall and train the AI on it. Let’s go beyond the stories you remember and the photos and videos you upload. Let’s let the AI have access to all your social media accounts, your podcasts, your high school and college transcripts, the records of what you spent money on, and the recollections and contributions of those people closest to you. Maybe even the places you’ve visited. You give your descendant access to Forever Yours. Then you die.”
“That’s encouraging, isn’t it? But everything I’ve done and said is given to the AI and it can answer like me, the same way your Shakespeare AI did?”
“Exactly. It has the record of your life and can sift through that as it is being trained. So, when your descendant has a question, he goes to Forever Yours and says, ‘Dad, I think I’m in love. She’s really sweet and we get along great. But is it real? How do I know I’m really in love?’ You might or might not have ever said anything about how to tell you’re in love, but the AI sifts through all the information it has about you and compiles an answer for your descendant.”
“But I didn’t actually say what they hear!”
“No. It’s just an answer consistent with other things you’ve said.”
“So, in a way, I’m living on because my thoughts and words are being used to answer new questions I never considered before. Immortality,” Gene said.
“Yes. But you’re dead. Your consciousness is not part of the machine. Depending on how strong a wall it has compiled, it might even give answers that are totally irrelevant. That often happens with Pythia Speaks. It doesn’t have an exact match for a question, so it compiles what it deduces would be the most likely response.”
“What’s the downside, Henry? It seems like my descendants could benefit from my words of wisdom,” Gene said.
“Well, aside from the fact that you’re dead in this scenario, the first downside is in who has access to you. Maybe your descendant thinks everyone should have access to his dad’s wisdom. So, he makes it public. Then you have something like Pythia that grows and adds data to her wall based on questions everyone asks. Eventually, the voice of Dad is no longer giving answers you might plausibly have given, but is expanding its training wall with irrelevant bits and pieces. Maybe you’ve got people asking you for twenty dollars and the car keys. All you can say is ‘no.’ The whole system, including Pythia Speaks, is designed simply to answer questions. She cannot grant wishes. Essentially, that is the same way the great oracles of ancient Greece worked.”
“Okay, I guess. It’s a little scary, but I can live with it. Or be dead with it. This can get confusing, can’t it?”
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