Game in the Brain

I wish i can write a short fiction:

the premise is 2040 and it follows the life of a working student and his commute and work. the audience is with him as he navigates the really competitive world with AI being in everyone’s tool. They watch him learn on the job multiple engineering and IT disciplines simultaneously as he prepares a new version of an android for industrial use. His team is a quirky mix of backgrounds, from all over the world as some are working remotely.

The news fill him with dread as more and more people go into basic, but as compared to us – basic is a godsend. The scarcity that he feels that we dont is access to advanced materials and AI.

Throughout his project, for a couple of months, you see him interact with his family. His mother hinted that he should tell his dad. he, on the other hand, doesn’t want to. The raw emotion of being an independent young adult, against fragile parents who look old and worn, and troubled. Overhearing his discussions with his dad, you see him talk with him only over games – Giant robots fighting, Fantasy, and combat shooters. You can see a kid trained in these games like second nature and his ranking. A hint that he has some privilege can be seen in his scoreboard and the dad saying, “youv’e always shown a knack for this.”

He goes back to work and school, and submits his data and android test scores to overworked professor, the proceed towards a Pre-mortem analysis of his numbers. where the student finds out he failed to set up several safety redundancies. Its still an LLM and its “Concepts” and logical flow has several AI’s managing Tokens in sub-compartments – he forgot the default safety compartments for the AI to avoid doing harm.

He can’t make the deadline and is requesting an extension on the day of the product demonstration. The other team is running the latest model. Their scores are remarkable, but you hear him complain that that’s LLM model doing the heavily lifting. They’re not using the other LLMs, he complains about using the same LLM model as 99% of all androids and AI tools out there. His teammates comment that its what people want and the QMS mantra of Customer Focus.

On the stage, their Android stumbles and barely makes a passing score. A slight performance dip in response and cogency. With only one remarkable attribute, its following the audience and observing the other cues of the physically present human on the test. It seems to observe the human and make inferences but having no action to demonstrate its considered a failure.

The audience finds out that he passes; everyone gets basic, but doesn’t qualify for the Space Program which puts him on the Lunar Spin hab for the Space Elevator projects.

The Audience hears his AI, usually silent, speak up, asking for his next command. The audience notices the speech pattern is like his dad. He shrugs it and the AI is quiet, and there is a silence regarding the implication.

One of the team members is chatting with him, talking shop, when the touchy subject of the demonstration comes up. The teammates are all nice to him, and it seems to be more obvious as to why. He has a tense voice ” I get it, but it just can’t be always him. Its like the whole world doesn’t know anyone else. and they’ve surrendered to just that image.”

The story ends with him choosing to either go back home, or go on basic and find a job. He feels like whatever he chooses he will regret it.