Page 13 of Insidious Threats
“Of course not,” Gar lied. Finally, his brain shifted into gear. “I called to give you an update on the project.”
“No need, pal. I reached out to Antonia last week, and she sent over the code. It looks great.”
“Wait. What? No, Brian, it’s nowhere near ready.”
Rosen laughed at his obvious confusion. “My bosses were getting impatient, and Antonia said you can be a perfectionist, so she just sent the work in progress so I could give them a demo. Don’t worry, I made it clear that the program’s not finished.”
Gar groaned.
“Man, Antonia’s right about you. Bro, with some minor tweaks, it’s there. You did it. Mjölnir put on one helluva show.”
Rosen’s confident, optimistic tone made zero sense.
“It's...working?” he said slowly.
“Yep,” Rosen confirmed. “The investor is thrilled.”
Gar raked a hand through his hair, and said in an uncertain voice, “That’s good news, I guess.”
“No, bro, it’s phenomenal news! Just put on a bow on that puppy and ship it,” he instructed, oblivious to Gar's discomfort.
He cleared his throat, hesitating, but he had to ask. “You didn’t see anything strange in the demo?”
“Strange how?”
“Strange like Mjölnir predicting user tendencies toward criminal behavior.”
Brian’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because no matter what input I feed it, the AI doesn’t just share the predictions I ask for. Like, for instance, I ask will this person be more likely to buy if they get a coupon code or free shipping? And Mjölnir spits out they’re forty-seven percent more likely to buy if there’s a free shipping offer and then randomly adds and there’s a twenty-two percent chance she’ll sell street drugs in the next six months. You didn’t see anything like that? Nothing at all?”
There was a long pause on the other end. So long, that Gar wondered if the call had dropped.
“Brian?” he prompted.
“I’m still here,” he said slowly. “You really are good, aren’t you? That criminality modality is designed to function beneath the surface. It should be undetectable unless you know to look for it. How’d you find it?”
Gar stared at the phone in his hand, trying to make sense of what Rosen was saying. Just as Petra had suspected, Mjölnir was designed to predict criminal behavior. But nobody was supposed to find out.
“How’d you find it?” Rosen asked again, more firmly this time.
“I always poke around under the hood when I’m cleaning up code. Sometimes a program can look clean and elegant, but underneath, it’s a tangled rat’s nest of old functions or bloated commands. I always look for the bones.”
“Well, you found them. And that’s a problem. Because nobody can know about that modality.”
“I don’t understand. Why is an AI program designed to learn consumer buying habits built on a framework that assesses criminal tendencies in the first place?”
“You don’t need to know. You already know too much, and that’s a problem.”
Gar didn’t like the ominous tone behind his words. “What you do mean I know too much? Who’s behind Mjölnir, Brian?”
“You should stop asking questions.” Rosen’s voice was cold and hard.
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m telling you to be smart. Forget what you saw. Wrap up the project and mark it complete. Move on, and don’t mention your work on Mjölnir to anyone. You haven’t told anyone else about what you found, have you?”
Gar thought of Petra and lied. “No.”
