Ada

Chapter 1

And does she have a last name, this Ada? asked Frank Logan, rubbing his eyes.

He’d been pulled out of bed at dawn by a call from his boss. An associate from a Palo Alto company located a stone’s throw from his place had gone missing. Could Frank drop by on his way to work and check it out? He had hung up grumbling and slipped on his clothes in the dark so as not to awaken his wife. Twenty minutes later, he was parking in front of an anonymous blockhouse. Parker Dunn, Turing Corp.’s CEO, was pacing up and down the front steps waiting for him. He escorted Frank to his office, a finger to his lips urging him to keep silent in the hallways.

No, no last name. Just Ada.

Frank, who was stirring his coffee, raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

Ada isn’t an employee like any other, Dunn explained. She’s an artificial intelligence.

You mean an android?

Frank had seen Blade Runner when it came out in 1982. He remembered two things: first, that Harrison Ford was chasing a human-looking robot; and second, that the movie had been completely over his head.

No, patiently answered Dunn who must have endured that question a hundred times. Ada has no physical envelope. She’s a computer program.

A program that does what?

I’m not at liberty to say.

I thought you were running the place!

I am, but the bylaws of the company forbid me from disclosing such activity without the consent of the shareholders.

Even when the person asking the questions is a police inspector?

I’m afraid so. Believe me, I checked.

Frank drank a sip of his coffee, placed his paper cup on Dunn’s desk, and stood up.

In that case, I won’t keep you any longer. I’m sure you’re busy.

Wait a second, Dunn exclaimed, leaping out of his seat. Where are you going?

To investigate a missing teenage girl. With a bit of luck, the bastards who’ve kidnapped her haven’t pimped her out yet.

Come on, I’ve just told you: the bylaws of the company—

Forbid you from disclosing its activity – I got it.

Anyway, I don’t see why you need to know Ada’s purpose to find her.

Really? You’d make a damn good detective.

Dunn had conducted enough negotiations throughout his career to recognize a bluffer; this cop wasn’t kidding.

Ada is a computer designed to imitate the workings of the human brain, he explained. She can talk; she can read the emotions of the people she interacts with; she even jokes every now and then.

Frank sat back down, impassive, and picked up his cup again. He couldn’t recall having drunk better coffee since his stay in Paris.

But what do you use her for?

Dunn hesitated one last time for good measure, then finally answered: She writes novels.

Novels? You can’t be serious!

I am. Oh, I’m not saying it’s great literature quite yet, but the first samples are promising.

Dunn conspicuously glanced at the clock hanging above the door.

Listen, detective, I don’t mean to rush you, but Ada disappeared over an hour ago. Just an idea: how about we gather some clues while the trail’s still hot?

Frank reluctantly agreed. Dunn’s revelations had aroused his curiosity. He pulled out his notepad.

What does Ada look like? A computer? A USB key?

I told you, she’s a program. Too big for a USB device, but compact enough to fit on most of the hard drives you can find on the market.

Forgive me for asking but could she have accidentally self-destroyed?

Dunn shook his head.

No. She was stolen, no doubt about it. The disk on which she was stored has been reformatted.

Didn’t you have a back-up?

One here and two at remote locations. All three erased. Ditto for the dozens of in-between versions lying around on the company’s computers. You can be sure we’re dealing with a pro.

But who could benefit from such a program? A writer? A publisher?

Dunn stared at Frank to see if he was serious.

Off the cuff, I would have rather guessed the Russian mafia than Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, but, like you said, I’d make a sorry detective.

The mafia? Why would they care about Ada?

Because we’ve invested a small fortune in her development. One hundred full-time computer whizzes for four years – I’ll let you do the math.

Frank didn’t. He had no idea about the salary of a Silicon Valley engineer. Something told him it greatly exceeded his.

Do you own patents?

People don’t bother with those anymore. The competition ignores them and hackers steal them.

Upon uttering these words, Dunn’s face clouded over. He had just remembered he was the one who had advised the board of directors against trying to protect Turing’s intellectual property.

Frank asked to see where Ada was kept. They walked through a vast workspace divided into individual cubicles. The first employees were arriving, quite different from the startup programmer archetype: the average age was above thirty and there were far more people wearing pants than shorts.

As they reached a metallic gate, Dunn placed the tip of his index finger on a wall sensor. The black screen lit up and activated the opening. They walked down a dozen steps that led to a windowless corridor lined with six doors. Dunn stopped in front of the third one and performed the fingerprint ritual again.

Good morning, Parker, said a feminine voice. At the beep, please repeat the following sentence: ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.’

Dunn turned to Frank, looking embarrassed.

Voice recognition. A request from our insurance company.

He repeated the adage, enunciating each syllable clearly. The door, as massive as a bank vault’s portal, clicked open, and the two men entered a square room with cement walls, floor, and ceiling. A metal cabinet, two chairs, and a table bearing a keyboard and a computer unit comprised the only furniture.

That’s it? asked Frank, a little disappointed.

Yes. Ada expresses herself via vocal synthesis. When she needs to show us something, she projects it onto the giant screen.

Frank watched the blue sheath that went from the monitor to the CPU. An equally anachronistic cable linked the CPU to the keypad.

As a matter of security, the walls of the room are treated to block wireless communications, Dunn pointed out. You might think some hacker could have broken into our network and found his way to Ada…

Frank nodded along as if Dunn had read his mind, though he wasn’t even sure he knew the meaning of the word hacker.

But? he said.

But Ada wasn’t connected to the local network, or, for that matter, to the Internet.

This last bit of information surprised Frank. His car, his thermostat, his vacuum cleaner were all hooked up to the Internet, even though they probably needed it less than Ada. Dunn explained.

AIs are still—

AIs?

Sorry, artificial intelligences are still at the experimental phase. We can’t run the risk of releasing them into the wild.

Frank pointed to a surveillance camera whose field of vision covered nearly the entire room.

I assume you’ve reviewed the tapes.

Erased. The video stops at midnight.

And you found out Ada was missing at…?

6:15. Ethan, my partner, is an early bird.

Frank nodded pensively. He had first thought there had been a mistake: a technician might have inadvertently pressed the red button, the same way he himself had deleted countless reports by dropping them in his computer’s trash bin. After Dunn’s demonstration, however, there was no more room for doubt: they were dealing with a criminal act.

Chapter 2

Frank arrived at the office around nine o’clock. For the past seven years – his longest tenure to date – he’d worked for the Task Force for Missing Persons and Human Trafficking of San Jose. He had begun his career in 1985 as a police officer in Palo Alto, before moving on to a series of assignments with the vice, crime, and drug squads.

California created special units to deal with missing persons and human trafficking in 2010, after several sordid cases revealed the extent of the epidemic. In the United States every year, seven hundred thousand people disappear. Most of them are runaways who return home after a day or two. Among adults, mental disorder, senile dementia, and narcotic addiction are the most frequent causes. Excluding suicides deep in the woods, swindlers fleeing their creditors, and women seeking to escape an abusive ex, there remain only a few hundred cases that send the media into overdrive and families into despair.

With ten percent of the American population, California accounts for fifteen to twenty percent of the country’s missing cases. Several factors explain this overrepresentation: the drawing power of the state, the density of its urban areas (starting with Los Angeles), and a mild climate.

Human trafficking, a generic term that essentially encompasses forced labor and sex slavery, is barely less common. An estimated fifteen thousand sex workers involuntarily enter the United States every year, most often without a clue as to what is in store for them. Torture, pedophilia, organ trafficking are among the rare stories made public, and they provide a terrifying glimpse into the depravity of the human soul. Once again, California, the world capital of the pornography industry, pays a particularly heavy toll.

There’s a certain logic to lumping missing persons and human trafficking into a single unit. Victims are recruited among the same vulnerable populations: immigrants, drug addicts, and rebellious teenagers – all easy prey for organized bands of predators who hang around bus stations and youth shelters. Moreover, the boundary between these two categories tends to blur: an underage girl reported missing in Santa Clara may pop up a year later in a Reno brothel; a Pakistani boy who miraculously survived a kidney removal vanishes, leaving the police wondering whether he has returned to his country or has been permanently silenced by his tormentors.

Most of Frank’s cases dealt with human trafficking. From his stint with the vice squad, he had kept in touch with a handful of obliging night crawlers. Since his children were grown, irregular hours didn’t bother him. Most importantly, he felt a sense of purpose, unlike his colleagues from the missing people division who, nine times out of ten, moved heaven and earth to track down teenagers locked up in a basement smoking doobies. Filipino housemaids who worked seven days a week for peanuts, and girls who turned thirty tricks a day in the back of a van in exchange for their next cocaine fix, all deserved to be rescued.

Prostitution is illegal in California, as it is in the rest of the United States (save for Nevada), but this doesn’t mean that police forces deploy much energy to pursue those involved in the trade. Frank focused his efforts on cases of procuring, pedophilia, and smuggling of sex workers, and he’d been credited with a few major arrests. The year before, he had brought down for tax evasion the head honcho behind a call girl network who transacted his business from a yacht in the Caribbean. On such days, Frank would come home a little earlier, pull his rocking chair out on the porch, and sway gently until nightfall, smiling blissfully.

The task force was ruled with an iron fist by Karen Snyder, a forty-year-old lawyer consumed with ambition. Just two years into the job, she was about to announce her candidacy for a California senate seat. But Frank expected her to retain her position for as long as possible to benefit from Republicans’ subconscious respect for the exercise of authority. She came from a family of financiers whose surname she’d kept after marrying. Her grandfather had made a fortune after the war by buying thousands of acres of orchards and subsequently selling them for top dollars to arms manufacturers seeking land for new factories. To establish his respectability, Grandpa Snyder had then acquired a small bank in San Jose, which his son had developed and turned it into one of the county’s biggest employers. Karen had married William Bill Webster, an asset manager who was already being groomed to succeed her father after he retired.

No sooner had Frank put his things down than the phone rang. Without bothering to answer, he compliantly walked over to Snyder’s office. As a patrician used to being obeyed, she wasn’t the least surprised to see him materialize so quickly.

She signaled for Frank to sit down. She was wearing an eggplant suit that highlighted her perfect figure, the result, according to rumors, of the joint efforts of a nutritionist and a physical trainer. Frank was fascinated by her blonde hairdo, which looked like a Playmobil helmet. He had promised himself he would ruffle it on the day of his retirement, but Snyder’s pending departure might force him to accelerate his plan.

Thanks for your promptitude this morning, Logan. I didn’t wake you, did I?

Of course not.

Snyder was known to work fourteen-hour days. When she wanted to see her two children, she turned her head toward their pictures hanging on the wall.

Frank briefed her on what he had learned, without failing to mention that some of the technical aspects were beyond him.

So you’ve eliminated the possibility of human error? asked Snyder when he had finished.

Yes. We’re dealing with a theft – or a kidnapping. I’m not sure which term to use.

And you said this Ada writes books?

That’s what Dunn told me. I must admit I find it hard to believe.

Hmm, it’s probably just the beginning. If a computer can produce a novel, imagine what else it could do.

Even though Snyder was barely fifteen years younger than Frank, he sometimes felt they were two generations apart. She was perfectly at ease in the ever-changing world of technology, while he had only recently discovered that Google could also be used to search for images.

This case requires dexterity, she said. I want you to handle it.

Frank, who dreaded this assignment, had prepared his arguments.

Well, the thing is, I’m a little swamped right now. One of Sokoli’s girls is ready to testify against him if we can guarantee her safety.

Ismail Sokoli, an Albanian pimp, employed about one hundred prostitutes in California, all of them illegal. He maintained an atmosphere of terror within his flock, punishing recalcitrant subordinates himself with the help of a pickaxe. The willingness of this woman to break the code of silence, Frank asserted, was an opportunity they couldn’t afford to miss. But Snyder would have none of it.

Sokoli’s been ruling over the valley for ten years. One more week won’t make a bit of a difference.

It would to his girls.

Like you just said: they’re his girls, not yours.

And I know nothing about technology.

That hadn’t escaped me. I would rather have given the case to Guttierez, but he won’t be back from vacation until the fifteenth.

I’m going to need the help of the Cyber-Crime Unit.

You got it. Anything else?

As he was running out of arguments, Frank played his last card.

Ada isn’t human. Unless they changed our name to Task Force for Missing Robots overnight, I don’t see why in the world this case should fall into our lap.

Snyder had granted more than three minutes of her time to a subordinate, which, to her, was plenty enough empathy for the morning. Her tone turned blunt.

Turing is a pillar of the community, perhaps the next eBay or LinkedIn. Parker Dunn provides work for more than one hundred families who vote, pay taxes, and have no qualms about writing to the chief of police whenever they deem themselves insufficiently protected. They deserve our full cooperation. Am I making myself clear?

Crystal, Frank answered curtly as he rose.

He walked back to his office, furious. Though he wasn’t a fan of his boss, he respected her professional competencies. She knew her craft, had no problem entering the fray to request additional funds, and always knew which judge to turn to in order to freeze the assets of a suspect. Yet he had noticed that as the elections were drawing near, Snyder increasingly allocated the department’s resources to the less risky cases or to those likely to place people in her debt. It was also common knowledge that she courted those executives and venture capitalists most apt to finance her campaign. Not renowned for their generous contributions to the democratic debate, the Albanian prostitutes would just have to wait.

Frank gathered some information on Turing Corp. Press articles portrayed the company as one of the most promising but also one of the most secretive in the Silicon Valley. It had been founded in 2012 by Dunn, a serial entrepreneur, and Ethan Weiss, a brilliant IT engineer credited with several major advances in the field of artificial intelligence. The total lack of revenues in 2016 hadn’t prevented the firm from raising a total of one hundred sixty million dollars from Language Ventures, Disrupt Partners, and Firstbridge Capital. According to an employee who wished to remain anonymous, Turing was about to bring to market an AI capable of generating reports and even original works of fiction.

Frank printed the articles. Deeply attached to paper, he used his professional tablet only to check the weather forecast and baseball scores. Doug, a colleague with slicked-back hair and a sly smile, beat him to the printer. He unscrupulously glanced at the documents.

No poems today? he sniggered.

Having made the mistake of leaving one of his haikus on the copy machine years ago, Frank had become the target of stupid jokes that can quickly cement a team. His coworkers would ask him questions about the Bolshoi Ballet or slip the program of the San Francisco Symphony in his inbox. Well versed in literature, Doug would recite Emily Dickinson with his hand over his heart during staff meetings. Frank didn’t bother protesting anymore; life was too short to put all the dimwits back in their places.

Chapter 3

Parker Dunn may have kept a close lid on his company’s strategy, but he didn’t withhold his opinion of the way Frank was conducting the investigation.

For God’s sake, detective, you’ve already wasted four hours! And for what, may I ask?

I had to swing by the office.

Great! A gem of American technology vanishes into thin air, and you spend half of the morning in traffic just to clock in!

Mister Dunn, answered Frank, unruffled, notwithstanding my numerous shortcomings, I’ve been officially placed in charge of this case. Instead of bemoaning my incompetence, how about giving me a crash course on artificial intelligence?

Don’t you have Wikipedia in San Jose?

Only since last week, but I’d rather hear your version.

As you wish, Dunn sighed.

He was dressed with a simplicity that left nothing to chance. The black V-neck t-shirt that highlighted his pectorals must have cost as much as Frank’s suit. His impeccably faded jeans seemed custom-tailored. As a final touch, his lizard skin ankle boots matched his belt and wristwatch band.

Despite his playboy look, Dunn had earned every penny he’d ever made. Unlike many entrepreneurs in the Valley, he had grown up in poverty. His mother, a cashier in a Chicago suburb, hadn’t needed to encourage him; he would throw himself into both academic and athletic activities with a terrifying fierceness. According to an article, he had gained twenty pounds of muscle in one summer in order to join his high school football team.

On his application to Harvard – where he’d been accepted on full scholarship – he candidly stated that he wanted to change the world and become a billionaire. He held a grudge against Mark Zuckerberg, whom he’d run into on campus, though no one really knew whether he reproached the Facebook founder for deadening the mind of American youth or for being obnoxiously wealthy. For by thirty-four, Dunn had yet to achieve either of his objectives. He’d created his first company, a solar panel manufacturer, in 2004, and sold it three years, later making a decent profit. His next attempts, however, a second-hand textbook store and an electric-car battery maker, had both ended in failures from which his wallet, but not his ego, had emerged unscathed. Instead of embarking on another project, he had returned to school, where he met Ethan Weiss.

All right, Dunn began, I’ll spare you the mythological references and Middle Age alchemists, and jump directly to the eighteenth century, when Leibniz, the mathematician, postulated that thought can be broken down into basic operations. At about the same time, in Paris, Vaucanson exhibited a duck automaton capable of eating, digesting, and simulating swimming.

Vaucanson? Isn’t he the guy who built a chess-playing machine?

You’re confusing him with Kempelen, said Dunn, who didn’t like to be interrupted. Kempelen was a crook. His robot beat a bunch of celebrities before someone realized there was a midget hidden behind the mechanism moving the pieces.

Ah, commented Frank, vaguely disappointed.

"In the early nineteenth century, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, the story of a megalomaniac savant who makes a monster with parts of dead bodies. Meanwhile, the Brit Babbage designed what he called an analytical machine that is actually the ancestor of the calculator. One of his disciples, Ada Lovelace, pursued—"

Hold on, did you say Ada?

Yes, answered Dunn who was becoming increasingly annoyed. Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, and one of the first to understand the possibilities of computer science. She predicted that machines would one day be able to write music.

Or books…

Or books. After World War II, artificial intelligence attracted mathematicians, linguists, and neurologists who studied robots, automatic translation, and, of course, conversation. After a few trials and errors, Babbage’s and Lovelace’s vision has become reality: you can now talk to an AI as you would to your neighbor.

Frank opened his eyes wide.

Really? I didn’t know the research was so advanced.

That’s because until we market them, we’re saving the scoop of our discoveries for our shareholders.

Market? In what form?

Oh, there’s no shortage of outlets. Virtually all human tasks can be executed better, faster, and far cheaper by machines. The U.S. taxi industry, for instance, is worth twelve billion a year. Its quarter of a million drivers will soon be replaced by reliable and courteous computers that permit the passenger to pick the radio station. Did you also know that American banks still employ half a million pencil pushers to count bills and process checks? That a plumber in Manhattan charges five hundred dollars to fix a leak? That a garbage collector only works—

I got it, Frank cut in, noting that Dunn was quicker to elaborate on the economic applications of artificial intelligence than on its conceptual foundations. What’s your point?

My point is that a few years from now, all these aberrations will be rectified, to our great benefit. Even if Turing were to capture only one percent of the savings realized, we’ll still hit the jackpot!

Good for you, but what about employment?

Oh, we’ll hire more staff, I’m not worried about that.

No, I mean what about the people you’re going to put out of work?

Dunn’s expression turned benevolent, as if it were up to him to correct a widespread misconception.

Technology creates more jobs than it destroys. Think of all those professions that didn’t exist twenty years ago, the throngs of programmers, graphic designers, and statisticians employed by Google, the gamers and forum moderators, the architects who engineer the homes of the new tycoons, and the Mexicans construction workers who build them… Besides, some trades still have a few good years left.

Such as?

"Yours for instance! Traffic officers will disappear, but investigators will prove