Vaulter

I came across this old conversation recently when uploading artifacts to my Vaulter. I am now near the age my father was then when we were having that conversation about him. He hated interacting with his own version of the Vaulter. At that time, it was just a prototype, clunkily referred to as an AI Harvester 2027. Back when calling something artificial was not frowned upon. We thought ourselves lucky to get Dad access to the technology, only doing so through my sister Matilda’s connections. We would have tried anything to spare him and us the ravages of dementia. But he was a little bit more philosophical about it; always ready to ask what are the trade offs; and what about the natural order of things. I could never be that brave.

View conversation 1

He said it was like spending time with the Spanish Inquisition; answering a barrage of questions, being made to account for meaningless actions sprinkled randomly throughout his life and ‘always with the feelings’. I think that is what he disliked the most. He wasn’t trained to access and talk about his feelings the way our generation was. Ironically, he probably shared more emotions with his Harvester than he ever did with any of the members of his family. Those early researchers didn’t understand how draining it would be for patients to interact with machines in that way. They were racing against time. There weren’t then truly empathetic AIs. It was quick and dirty, gathering information (memories, emails, texts, images, etc.) as relentlessly as they could, desperately trying to achieve critical mass and the ability to offset the inevitable neurological shortfalls in the patient’s biological brain.

View conversation 2

There’s a very old song by Radiohead “Where I End And You Begin” when I listen to it now, it always makes me think about Dad and his relationship with his AI Assistant. That’s not me he would say. This thing has eaten me alive and absorbed me into some cloud. In a way he was right. Achieving seamless blending between AI and human executive functioning was a long way from being harmoniously realised when Dad was working with his prototype. He glitched often and the buffering could be excruciating. There could be a deadness in his delivery that meant even though the words were right the tone might be wrong. It frustrated him to function in that way.He clamed his thoughts echoed, calling attention to themselves in an unsettling way. He could never seem to appreciate that when he was without his AI Assistant, things were so much worse for us. He always maintained even with all that he lost access to, he only ever really felt his true self when he was disconnected from the machine.

I signed up for the full Vaulter package shortly after Dad passed, giving it full access to my entire digital footprint and making a practice of uploading for 20 minutes daily from my biological brain. The technology has improved significantly since Dad first tried it. The interface is much better; less inquisition, more friend, counsellor and priest. Dad had to interact with a harvester and wear his AI assistant. My Vaulter is a combination of the two and embedded in my brain. My doctors tell me that without it, given the deterioration in my biological neural pathways caused by the many years of social media consumption during the early decades of this century (if only we had known then what we know now), I would be practically non-communicative. I am grateful, I think…at least, I hope this is me, that these really are my thoughts.