4sight

“You expect me to just slap a smile on my face and act like I don’t know that my own WIFE has her hands on the very reports my colleagues worked so hard to legally protect?”

“I had no way of knowing you would go through my drawers today.”

“You deceived me, you undermined me, you repulse me, Larissa.”

Larissa has a response for everything, but when she opens her mouth to react, she stops herself to assess the scene we’re pulling up to. This moment of silence is welcome, as I can’t remember a time when I was in less of a mood for a state function.

We roll up to that familiar navy carpet outstretched before those authoritative white pillars. Cars are lined along this entry way as guests file into the Grand Hall.

Upon arrival, we immediately separate to mingle with familiar faces from the foreign policy advisory board. I am tenser than usual, not only because it’s important to solidify relationships during periods of potential transition, but also because for the first time, I have an incriminating secret to hide. If it’s discovered that Larissa has her hands on those 4sight reports, the best outcome we could hope for Marcus, our son, would be exile, while Larissa and I would undoubtedly be locked up for life.

At least one other person in this room knows that Larissa has those 4sights. She must have blackmailed or bribed one of them. I scan the front of the room towards to podium, where the AI Board members are huddled. None of them appear to be looking at us. They’re accustomed to having many eyes on them, but they usually keep to themselves at Successions. Talking to anyone outside of the board is just asking to get probed for answers.

Larissa is turned away from them talking to some of my colleagues and their spouses, eager for the opportunity to talk to anyone but me. Like the gaudy patterns of the ginormous rugs lining the walls of the hall (we don’t have many pictures, as our reborn nation is still young, and we would all rather forget the past), her habit of describing the subject from every possible angle before arriving at the point appears to be suffocating her audience. She has contorted her face into what she believes to be a look of graciousness, but her once glimmering eyes have, with age, begun to take on a frightening beadiness, adding a shade of desperation to her profile. Instead of gently guiding the conversation to the topics of her choice, she appears to be pushing too hard this evening, forgetting to lace in the subtleties needed for a natural seeming flow.

Seeing the cracks in Larissa’s performance is rather satisfying tonight. Formerly an asset to my political career, Larissa had been a helpful social lubricant at occasions that, once full of political personalities, had become rather dry and overrun by computer scientists. Now that I know that she’s been using her charms against me, enchanting or blackmailing some poor soul into getting those reports for her, I welcome her lack of grace this evening.

Without me by her side, she is fiddling with the locket I gave her a few years ago. It has a picture of our son Marcus inside. The childish fidget is either an act of comfort because she knows she no longer has me to bounce her anecdotes off, or it is a show of affection to appear a loving mother. The possibility that it could be the latter, when I know she’s willing to put all of our lives in danger just to gain information she can manipulate us with, fills me with a disgust that I must find a distraction from. I grab a champagne flute and strike up a conversation with Jack, one of my colleagues, about who we think will be selected tonight.

“Russell slipped to me that the algorithm was updated to weigh experience more heavily, so my money’s still on Gates.” I whisper.

“I think he’s too old, I’m sure his alertness is projected to slow down before the next term would be up. And besides, everyone thought he would do a better job of optimizing the medical supply chain. Based on last month’s simulation, it would still take us a whole 3 days to be safely self-sufficient in the case of another pandemic. I don’t think that sits well with the people.”

Jack’s always harping on tightening up the global supply chain. He and I have different opinions on the main causes of the death toll from the Lethal Wave. He emphasizes the unstable global relations of the time, believing that enhanced global collaboration would have gotten us faster solutions and dispersed the right resources more quickly. This may be true to an extent, but what my research supports, and in my opinion proves, is that the death toll from the Lethal Wave was caused by the inefficiencies of democracy. While the unstable global relations of the time did not help, they were not as critical to the death rate as the failings of leadership during the Lethal Wave.

“Age, yes, that may take him out of the running, but I don’t know how much the rest of your argument is really factored into the formula. People care about what’s affecting their homes now. I think what they really have on their minds is talk of AI-led education or those new personalized legal punishment proposals.”

We continue to debate even though it's nearly impossible to predict who the next Selection will be. Only the members of the AI Board have any real insight into how exactly the algorithm is calculated. In a democracy, people, who are quite stupid on average, elect officials who may be totally incompetent in times of crisis. Then those officials have their own squabbles, and it takes years to pass any meaningful laws. With the AI order, officials are selected to carry out critical functions and policies are passed in no time, eradicating the squabble time that holds democracies back in times of crisis. That squabble time, and that dangerous fetishization of freedom, almost wiped out the populations of what had been labelled the United States, The United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil, and other small democracies that hesitated to prioritize the proper actions needed to stop the spread. Only individuals who had rations enough for that month-long lethal spike survived. The infrastructure and property law had not advanced enough to meet the needs of the pandemic and get the right supplies to people without infecting them, even though the technology had been available. Despite knowledge gathered from the first waves, the government was far from prepared and too slow to act. With death tolls over 75 percent in many of those countries, and most of the critical leadership figures dead, a new order was called for, and luckily, artificial neural-intelligence technology had arrived at a critical point.

During the five-year quarantine period that followed the initial spike of the Lethal Wave, the artificial intelligence community worked together to produce neurological testing algorithms that could not only predict behavior and assess personality tendencies but could even test for partialities and opinions. The AI could calculate the metrics of each facet of an individual’s personality and the average preferences of a population. With this information, a formula was devised for selecting those with the strongest faculties for leadership, altruism, and strategic thinking to lead the country. Using the values that citizens value most highly on average, a leader is selected.

For the last fifteen years, everyone in America (we dropped the “United States of” because of the new system), and the countries that followed the transition to an AI order, has undergone yearly 4sight exams. During the exam, brain-scanning headbands are worn to assess personality and intelligence. The Psychological Examination Board works with the AI board to develop and oversee the 4sights. In addition to helping select officials, the 4sights also guide leaders to select policies based on public preference.

The room quiets as one of the AI Board members takes the stage to make a speech about the success of the AI order and his confidence in its selection process. He mentions the pillars of the regime, and how they have ensured the safety and fairness of the order. I look to Larissa, who can feel my eyes on her but stares straight ahead.

One of the central pillars of the AI order is that 4sight results are kept out of the hands of the public. Appropriate elements of the results are sent to doctors, teachers, and judges as needed to develop the right curriculum and methods for teaching or the right punishments for a felon. However, no one is privy to see the complete picture of a person’s psyche that a full 4sight report of this creates, not even parents. This rule ensures that no one wields too much power over another with the full knowledge of each of their worst pain points.

This pillar has been essential to the sanctity of the AI order. Without the enforcement of these rules, no one would allow the AI to have their personal information and make the rules. Larissa knows how critical the pillars are to the buy-in of this new regime, so for her, the wife of someone who assisted and promoted the adoption of the AI order, to somehow extract the 4sights on Marcus, me, and her, for her own personal fun, she would have to truly despise me. She may even be a sociopath; I’d have to take a closer look at her 4sight. When pressed, she’d always agreed with my stance on the AI order and the pillars protecting it, but apparently that’s been theatre all along.

When it’s time for the announcement, the cameras lining the walls sharpen their focus on the podium to broadcast the news to citizens at home. A couple of them turn to our current Selection to capture his reaction as the announcement is made.

“Samuel Stone.”

It can’t be.

A tangible sense of shock sets in throughout the room, and even a few gasps are heard. The only cheers come from the front of the room.

Samuel Stone has a reputation. No one on the AI board is eligible for election, but Samuel Stone may be the next closest thing. A former ally of mine, he has pushed the use of AI to replace every aspect of human decision-making possible. His confidence in the power of AI to make decisions was once helpful to gaining support for the adoption of the AI order, but then he started scaring people. He believes in cutting the public budget wherever possible, claiming to want to invest more into developing AI and pandemic prevention. To him, this means using AI to replace public school teachers and cut costs and using AI to determine who should receive capital punishment with immediate execution. He’s even proposed mandating AI-approved spouses in what he calls a precautionary measure for the next generation.

Jack whispers to me, “Well, it seems they removed public preference from the algorithm.”

It seems there’s no way this can’t be true, but this would destabilize the whole system. As I’m taking in the shift in the room, I notice Larissa. She is exchanging looks with others, and her eyebrows appear to be raised a notch higher than they would be if the surprise on her face is genuine. I realize that she knew that Samuel Stone was going to be elected.

Suddenly, two things become very clear. The first is that, whether it was to protect me or not, she hadn’t told me. The second is that this is why she got her hands on the full 4sights.