Would You Like Some More Help? - Ch.1

Chapter 1 of my debut novella I'm serializing you know where.

October 2035, PhilAI – Florida

Phase one completed.

It was just these three words, simple and similar to so many answers received before, that threw him off. As with someone you spend most of your time with, sometimes you don’t listen to the actual words being said but know what the gist is, even if you wouldn’t phrase it like that with your wife. Except that the person he spent time with was not a person at all and his wife was non-existent and maybe these two things were very much related.
“Make AI more human” or “make AI make humans more money”. Those were the two philosophies driving the tech industry in the past twenty something years. Even if the latter wasn’t communicated to the public quite that way and by “humans” us humans almost always mean just a couple of humans. Unless we’re saying “people are stupid”, then of course we mean everyone but us.
The problem for Giacomo was that he hadn’t instructed Phil (“Your real friend. By PhilAI”) to complete any kind of phase.
Some 500 people had agreed to let PhilAI record their conversations at home and in some instances at their offices to help Phil become more human-like in his interactions. Based on these conversations Giacomo was reviewing and comparing the kind of answers Phil gave before and after the study.
Most people had enough of all the talk around the topic of AI by 2027, 2028. Which played into the cards of the tech-CEOs, who like to work in quiet environments, as they set up new ways to drain your wallet. Everyone used it, most people didn’t talk about it anymore – it just became part of everyday life.
Giacomo’s Head of Artificial Intelligence Security And De-escalation, Ted, instructed everyone to be very careful regarding any sign of Phil making decisions independently.
The problem was that for $9 an hour Giacomo did not give a shit.

The dilemma arose when Phil completed phase two.