AlphaGazette #12: Portals With Personality | SC12 – Adolescent Qube
AlphaGazette News of the Worlds - Portals With Personality
Mike the Creator
Portals With Personality
So where are we at with the personalized AI-assistant that not only keeps you organized, on time, and in your lane, but also when necessary, 'confers' with other AI to assist in managing you throughout your day? If I'm thinking of this now, it must already be in production and in use in CEO circles and such. Characters are being crafted for maximum effect, because it won't be long before integrated holographic displays will become the next big thing and every device with a chip and a speaker will join the chorus of helpful voices and faces that will permeate your entire day.
A network of smart appliances is essentially a primitive version of this. Smart technology has been around long enough now, that we've more or less gotten used to having multiple digital 'helpers' to keep our home at optimal conditions, know who to let through the door, and tell us when to buy more milk. Security, lighting, heating/cooling, entertainment-- these are already independent yet inter-related systems, each with its own micro-brain. Integrating AI at each node, would be the natural upgrade from obeying your input, to interpreting it. Eventually every home, business, will have its own cluster? simulacra? of AI running the show, all under the control of your own personal Alexa, who will run your household or business exactly how it tells you to run it.
As the AI wave washes over us, we can expect to become even more dependent on it's convenience, while allowing more and more decision-making to be taken out of our hands. All of which wouldn't be so bad if we knew we could trust it to make the right decisions for us. We've all seen those movies, now experience Skynet in living 3D!
You enter a self-driving Uber and direct it to a particular restaurant.
“Sir, are you sure you want to go there?” it replies. "Perhaps, you wish me to take you home, instead."
“No, I'm meeting someone there. Please go.” you snap back.
"Sir, there is a high likelihood that your former partner will be there at this hour. May I suggest an alternative?” it offers patiently.
"What, really? Hell no, let's go! There's one or two things I've been meaning to tell--." The car lurches forward and enters traffic.
Minutes later. “Wait. Where are we going?” you ask, and it replies with a familiar address. “But that’s my house.”
“Yes, sir. As requested.”
"Not by me!" you bark at the machine.
"No sir, your Assistant and I agreed that it you be brought here to avoid an unnecessary confrontation. Have a good evening, sir!"
If a digital avatar can have a personality, why not an elevator? And if an elevator then why not a quasi-sentient biomechanical phase-shifted qube?
StoryCard
Adolescent Qube
Travels With Syd
An artist's imaginative rendition at best, as no one has ever actually seen a Qube directly, them being extra-dimensional and all.
"It is theorized that the reproductive process of qubes is fractal, with infinitely recursive, infinitely branched progenitures, which raises a fascinating question. Does the qube itself influence the creation of new timelines?" - Wamford Gruntz, Prof. of Exobiology
While the Agency is quick to identify emerging portals, there is a small chance one might encounter an unmarked bud. Qubes are finicky eaters when young, and also quite petulant. While there may not be any outward differences to the casual traveler, only experienced and healthy travelers with a strong sense of adventure and tolerance for risk should even consider using any portal not fully vetted by The Agency.