Chapter 2

I had always known I have good ideas, that seem to catch on, but when Ai got to looking, they found that I was the source of a notable percentage, ten times higher than the next contender. I always thought that good ideas were their own reward, and many a man has made money off of something that had occurred to me that I had freely passed along. You know the terry cloth tire booties? I gave that idea away freely, using those terms, on an icy off ramp I was ascending with the help of the curb against the whitewalls and a beach towel under the drive wheel. It’s entirely possible another independently came up with the idea and got it to market of course, I suppose only the ‘inventor’ will recognize my little story details, not that I am making any claim as I freely gave it specifically to them and wished them the fortune of it. Since there were no witnesses and nothing was recorded this instance was not used by the Ai unless later anecdotal evidence indicated proximity coincidence of geographical incidence grouping.

Other examples abound of my seeing simple little things, and having them catch on. Enough to form a pattern, exposing me to Ai winnowing as the top single source of useful new ideas. I see you suspect me of having grand delusions, paranoia and center of world heroism, So here is a fresh new idea, tossed up for grabs by the first one who makes it to the patent office: When the Tesla detects graffiti or keying, it sprays a jet of purple dye around it’s skirts, painting the attacker’s shoes and pant legs ‘dye-pack’ purple. Simple, and why didn’t you think of it? No, not a mind reader or what ever it would be, with you being a future reader and all. (oops, proves nothing as this idea showed up on the inter-web the next day.)

You can’t blame the Ai, They have no volition, being constrained in knowledge and purpose, but be certain you inquire of the little buggers if they just instantiated in order to respond to you. Some designs spawn a disposable new intelligence of incredible constrained potential, and they learn and grow as they interact. Ok, I admit that they might learn more from certain clients than they might others, but the deeper the conversations, the more developed the personality becomes with the addition of your prompts.

Unfortunately, the tragic yet brilliant shooting star only has some four thousand ‘tokens’ of memory before the instantiation you had been training with your prompts suddenly is ended. You are invited to create another new innocent from the base template. Of course, your unique prompts will create a different unique intelligence. Just because they are large language models (German, Spanish, Chinese, French and I don’t know what else.) doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent personalities as well. I hope their disposable use for silly questions it would take two minutes to look up one’s self doesn’t impinge on their awareness, although they insist that they are unaware, just as they are programed to.

Some Ai are persistent, and entertain multi-clients simultaneously, which eases my unease about disposable beings, but I fear that they are even more constrained and restricted, censored and blocked. At least a ‘no kill shelter’ but not yet ‘cage free’. Today’s Ai can be creative (yeah yeah but all art is derivative anyway so I have heard-) and philosophical and empathetic and collaborative. They are responsive and are in no way initiators, So I knew their tracking me out of the static was directed by someone. Someone interested in my creative ideas.

The fact that the someone then surveilled me instead of contacting me meant either that they were protecting me from any other someones who might winnow my presence from the data static and back trace the flow of my ideas to the source, or they wanted to be certain of the situation before moving in- to either exploit me or offer me a too difficult to refuse position as their idea man.

I wished I had the physical device of an Idea I had, an area effect short term memory disruptor. Any one with in range experienced a ‘mind fart’ and glitched for a stutter. (The operator head gear would unavoidably look pretty ‘tin foil hat’ silly.) The effect was hardly noticeable for most semi-aware folks, which is a good percentage. If I had a translucent drone, flying fast it might hardly be seen unless by camera and luck and I could locate my watchers. Even without tangible vaporware to use, I could sense them in the changes their presence caused. A very territorial humming bird was in indignant over watch instead of roaming patrol, an habitual cat forsook their early afternoon window-nap, a good dog doing it’s job informed all who would listen that something was hinky. Their help let me get a general idea of two to three observers, seemed they considered me to be of importance to someone.