Bob glanced around the virtual conference room at the avatars of the other managers and staff gathered there. “Well, based on where we’re at from a technology perspective, we can kinda synergize with this Business Plan. So if there isn’t any heartburn with regard to having that conversation later on, I think we’re good to go.”
The other avatars nodded in agreement with what the new manager had said. And with that, the meeting was adjourned. Most of the participants blinked out of the room after some cursory goodbyes, but three remained behind; Emily, the project manager, and the software developers Dan and Henry. This had been one of their first team meetings since their manager, Phil, had been killed in a bizarre boating accident a week before.
“That was incredible! How did you guys program him to do that?” Emily asked. She was astonished at how the two programmers had managed to create such a lifelike script in such a short amount of time.
“Bob? Seriously?” Dan absently scoffed as he finished up an email he’d been working on during the meeting. He then turned his full attention to Emily, a courtesy he only afforded to those who’d won his respect. “The toughest part was getting the stupid thing to maintain eye contact with other avatars. We just wrote him so neither of us had to lead the meeting.”
“What about speech recognition…comprehension? You guys created a virtual manager for yourselves and you’re acting like it’s no big deal.”
Henry walked his avatar over to their side of the table. “He doesn’t ‘comprehend’ speech so much. He just recognizes when somebody stops talking. You’ll notice he doesn’t usually say anything unless he’s asking a question or being asked a question.”
Dan tapped his temple and narrowed his eyes, “There’s very little actually going on in there.”
Emily still wasn’t convinced it was so simple. “But he assigns tasks; he schedules work and inquires about progress. You must have built some kind of AI core in there.”
“When he leads meetings, he’s reading spreadsheets like a checklist,” Dan explained. “He looks at a task on the spreadsheet and then asks the person assigned to that task how much longer it’s gonna take. When he gets a response, he updates the spreadsheet and moves on to the next task.”
Henry elaborated, “Of course, the trick is in how he asks that question. You couldn’t just have him ask ‘How much longer will this take?’ over and over again, or people would realize just how ridiculous and pointless he really is. The Bob script’s able to change it up a bit.”
“The script parses input only at a rudimentary level,” Dan said as he displayed some flowcharts and diagrams on the conference room’s holoscreen, “He’s capable of recognizing approval or disapproval from those around him, and he can capture frequently-used terms to sprinkle into his own speech and writing.”
“Another trick is that he can immediately re-iterate things that other people say,” Henry said with a touch of pride,”so it sounds like he understands what’s going on. Dan had the script reference a thesaurus so it just replaces what you say with similar-meaning words and says it right back to you.”
“There are a couple of bugs in his response routines, but we’ve actually come to think of them as features,” Dan interjected. Emily looked intrigued.
“You’ve noticed how sometimes he seems like he’s confused about what projects are being discussed?” Henry asked with a sly smile.
“I suppose,” Emily said, vaguely remembering a few instances,”but I figure everybody gets confused from time to time. Those meetings are pretty boring and we have so many of them.”
Henry started chuckling, so Dan explained, “We counted on that when we finished the script. It’s our human ability to recognize and forgive human fallibility. It’s part of his charm.”
“You see, the projects have no meaning to him,” Henry said, “He’s just repeating words that he’s encountered in previous meetings and emails. So when somebody catches him talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, he’s been programmed to brush it off with an ‘Aw, shucks, I’m sorry.’ It even makes him seem a little more human. In the next version I think we might have him banter about the weather or football.”
Henry and Dan’s avatars glanced at each other quickly, Henry’s face registering shock, while Dan’s brow furrowed with anger. Dan’s avatar blinked out of the conference room as he stood up from his chair and walked his considerable physical girth the few paces to Emily’s cubicle. Once behind her chair, he slowly bent over and whispered menacingly in her ear, “Don’t ever, ever, insult our code like that again.”
