Page 28 of Chaos Theory
‘Do you want to walk me through what you’re doing? Maybe I can learn something.’
‘Sure.’
He shows me his laptop screen and says he’s going to run a data analysis on Kobi’s ‘brain’. Then he removes the battery cradle unit entirely from Kobi’s back and sends in a long, thin cable. Kobi’s brain, it turns out, is carefully shielded and cushioned inside his torso.
Josh tells me he used to have remote access to Kobi’s systems, but now he prefers to only use old-school physical access. He steps back to let me peek in at Kobi’s innards.
‘Whoa,’ I say softly. It’s a mass of colourful wiring embedded in a dark substance that looks…squishy. I want to touch it. ‘What am I looking at here?’ I reach forward.
‘Don’t touch anything! Sorry. Still raw.’
He gives me a guided tour though, shining a torch onto different sections as he explains how Kobi’s brain works. During the day, Kobi records a vast amount of data about every event and interaction. At night, he processes everything – imagine it like writing your daily journal before going to sleep, he tells me. Kobi keeps a record of pertinent factual data like times, locations, people he’s met and so on. But alongside this he creates Today I Learned (TIL) files through a neural network, assimilating new knowledge and behaviour from the day’s events. Every time Kobi learns a new ‘lesson’, the network grows and complexifies. Anything significant makes its ways into his memory core for long-term storage. The original, raw data files that are no longer of use are sent to the discard depot every night – where they’re scrubbed and then ‘recycled’ to nourish the neural network.
‘It’s a highly efficient system that minimises data storage requirements and maximises energy usage,’ he says proudly.
I don’t know the right terminology, but I need to ask. ‘And what’s that squishy stuff in the middle of it all?’
He smiles. ‘That “squishy stuff” is an experimental bio-composite material with superconductive properties, designed by yours truly. It’s what makes Kobi unique.’
I can tell this is meant to impress me. ‘Bio? That means…organic?’
‘It’s a semi-organic substrate, yeah. Custom-made using additive manufacturing. See how it’s woven and layered to create more space? And because it’s organic, it means it can grow and change as Kobi learns. Oh wow.’
‘What’s up?’
‘See.’ He shows me the laptop, but all I see are lines of code. ‘It looks like Kobi has already made some new memories this week.’
‘Is there any way to know if they’re good memories?’
He laughs gently. ‘Not until I run a full analysis. But this is good, Maeve. It means he’s growing and learning. Well done.’
I could weep at this morsel of praise. Instead I laugh. A high-pitched, slightly hysterical sound. ‘It’s been a very strange week.’ Then it all comes tumbling out. ‘I’m sorry about tonight. I brought Kobi to Phelan’s. Against my better judgement. No, it was my decision. I can’t blame anyone else. It was a stupid thing to do. I don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘Hey, hey.’ He puts down the laptop, places his hands on my shoulders. ‘It’s okay.’
I look up at him. People write books about wild adventures on high seas, or in deep jungles, but you can find yourself in the strangest situations right where you work. Somehow I’ve landed in the darkest forest, but Josh is here as my guide, with his torch and his shining white teeth. I give in to a moment of calm.
Then I look at Kobi, still nonresponsive. ‘What if he’s not okay?’
He turns away from me, sighs heavily. ‘Maeve, I need to tell you something. On the one hand, it might make you feel better toknow this isn’t even the worst thing that has happened to Kobi at work.’
‘It isn’t?’ Itdoesmake me feel better. But it’s probably not polite to openly celebrate it. I store it up to celebrate later. ‘Wait. On the other hand?’
‘Let’s sit down,’ he says.
He looks around and I point to the couch in the corner. He sits down heavily, covers his face with his big hands.
It’s only a two-seater couch. I try to leave some space between us, but it’s not easy with Josh’s long legs. I face forward. It’s easier to talk like this anyway.
‘You asked me about Kobi’s last assignment, but I never really gave you an answer,’ he says. ‘There was a reason for that, and I’m sorry. I should have been completely upfront about it. But I’m going to tell you now and it might help you understand Kobi a bit more.’
I brace myself and try to keep an open mind as Josh begins his story.
He’d been working away on Kobi for a couple of years and all was going well. The robot was tested in a few real-world scenarios and getting good results. So a few months ago, Kobi was deployed to Precision Health Instruments, or PHI, a manufacturing plant in Ireland’s Midlands where they make medical devices, mostly hip implants 3D-printed in titanium.
Working elbow-to-elbow with his human colleagues, Kobi’s job was to scan each implant after it was newly formed, to ensure it had no defects. While Kobi has highly sophisticated scanning technology, humans are better able to pick up and quickly rotate an implant 360 degrees. Defects were rarely detected, but if one was, the entire line would be shut down, pending investigation.
Things at the plant had gone great for about six weeks. Then came The Incident. I can tell Josh is capitalising it. His voice has grown unusually soft and quiet.
