Mark Sang

“Still a crackpot, huh?” Sara said over her lobster eggs benedict, talking about my erstwhile friend, Mark Sang, former app developer and Internet sensation.

“Yeah, the deep end of all endings!” I chortled, digging into my gourmet pancake stack, fresh berries, edible flowers, and a drizzle of rare maple syrup. Everything was to impress Sara, so young and capable. Another convert, for me the company evangelist.

Her resume was made to order, like our brunch, money no object. Who worked for a salary, anyway? You build a career with those oh so important references, who you know, or have known or worked with or for…

Such a black mark was spreading on my resume, like my having worked with Mark Sang was a liability. How was I to know that he would flip out? Why couldn’t he think a little about all the people he worked with before he became a religious nut?

We try to take these things in stride. I mean we’re used to eccentricities. Sam Altman, himself, is a prepper, a survivalist with some pretty strange ideas about what might happen to society in the future.

Which was a complaint I would not air with Sara. You don’t call anyone a crackpot, no name calling, ever. What people believed in either helped at work or it didn’t.

She had this big grin suddenly. “Oliver, you’ve stopped eating!” She said, as she toyed with one of her half eaten toasted English muffins that was missing its hollandaise sauce.

I smiled. Lost in thought, again. “We really should be going.”

Sara demurred. Picking away at her food, I could imagine that she would want to draw out any time she had left with me, seeing as I’m such a company hotshot, part of the cream of presenters at AI conferences.

“So, what did Mark Sang flip out over anyway?” she asked.

I smiled again and patted my mouth with this exquisite linen serviette, glancing at the waiter. A simple nod once I caught his eye would have the bill here in literally seconds. A bill paid for by the company. But the waiter had his back turned, an elderly lady was disputing her bill.

“I didn’t order the…half salmon on…rye with this whatever…sauce!” she spluttered angrily.

I couldn’t hear the waiter. His voice was so low but I could tell he would do practically anything to stop the complaining. Anything at all.

Sara got this knowing grin. “So much like us, don’t you think?”

“How so?” I said, glancing at my watch and then at the woman’s plate. “Alzheimer’s affects so many people. Dementia. We’re going to see a lot more of this in the future.”

Sara frowned. “No, I mean we do whatever we can to make everyone happy, regardless of our personal feelings or beliefs.”

“We’re like that waiter, you mean,” I sighed. The elderly lady was slowly being led out of the restaurant with the help of what seemed to be her daughter and son or possibly son in law. I waved my hand and the waiter nodded.

Sara was still eating. “So, what did Mark Sang do to become a liability to his company when what we believe doesn’t matter?”

I was starting to get a headache. My eleven o’clock was ten minutes away. Why did I bring Sara here? To impress her, to date her? God, I’m slipping or something!

“What did Mark do?” I sighed again. “Look I’ve got five minutes to explain. Here’s what I know. Mark believes that with technology becoming more and more powerful and everything being linked, we are losing our individuality and our ability to think or act independently.”

Sara hardly blinked. She shrugged her shoulders. “So what? Lots of people have concerns about how we use technology.”

I started gathering my things. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “It’s what he did about what everyone knows that got people upset.”

#

The eleven o’clock was cancelled. Which suited me fine. I was showing Sara around when we got the news. AI outage. Again.

“It’s the gift that keeps on giving!” yelled Alan from across the hall from his office.

I could see people gathering around. Everyone could watch the news in their own cubicles, on their own screens, but at times like this, it was your team leaders and MVP’s who would step it up, getting people to gather at their terminals. Who wants to have AI narrate or explain what was going on? Especially when AI was the problem in the first place.

“Man, I’d love to have an AI over for a party!” enthused Alan who was now at my side. “AI hallucinations sure can be entertaining!”

I frowned. It was one thing to watch systems crash, and quite another to be tasked with cleaning up the mess afterward.

“We’re not affected,” he said, as if to console me.

“Yet,” I added.

Sara jumped in. “I took a course in differentiating AI. Compartmentalizing. Building autonomy. You know getting fault tolerance through contextualizing and input safeguards. Regulating the AI thought process.”

Alan smirked. “When we don’t even completely understand how AI works? Get real. Garbage in equals garbage out one hundred percent of the time!”

Sara looked at me. “I think what Sara is saying,” I started. “Is that once there’s a crash its too late to get your ducks in a row.”

“An ounce of prevention beats a pound of e-waste?” Alan replied. He was losing interest. I could see numbers flashing through his eyes as he sidled away, sitting down at a terminal. Sara and I resumed our tour.

“CrowdStrike has nothing on you!” joked Sara, unexpectedly, walking backwards as she followed me while still eyeing Alan.

I could just barely hear Alan’s reply as we rounded a corner on our way to meet the movers and shakers in our company.

“Microsoft. That’s so 2024."

#

What do you get when AI is so intelligent and perceptive that it can predict the future of anyone or anything? Do you get governments with so much power that autocracy and fascism becomes inevitable? Or do you get something far more sinister?

How about a society where freedom is an illusion? You are free to choose what you have already been preconditioned to want. It is the most perfect form of social control where people willingly cooperate and support being manipulated.

That was what Mark Sang believed. For him, belief systems that predate technology become a vital component of preserving one’s humanity and freedom from such insidious manipulation, beliefs that never change that people have followed for thousands of years.

If only it had not been so inconvenient to have a belief system that cannot change or be manipulated! Couldn’t Mark Sang have lightened up even just a little bit? I agreed quite a bit with him and I could see the logic in his thinking but telling our shareholders that our business practices were fundamentally corrupt and dehumanizing was the last straw.

“We’re here?” asked Sara as we exited the elevator on the twenty-third floor.

“Queen Bee Central,” I replied, stepping out into this plush imposing corridor while suppressing a grin.

 I instantly regretted that comment. So I drew Sara’s attention to how quiet the top floor of the building was and that it was best that we lowered our voices or even stopped talking.

“You have just made a sexist comment, Oliver. I’m obligated to tell you that,” Sara replied, briskly walking even a bit ahead of me to the CEO’s office.

I inwardly groaned while still trying to smile. “Wouldn’t that depend upon whether our CEO is female?”

“It depends upon nothing!” Sara said abruptly as she knocked on the door of the grandest most opulent office in the building.

A friendly “Be right there!” was followed by the sudden appearance of Margorie Taylor, CEO of the company.

“Oh hello, Sara!” she said brightly. “Thanks for bringing Oliver to me! Run along down to Oliver’s office will you?” Then she turned to look at me.

“Let’s have a little chat Oliver,” she said, closing the door behind me.