SHADOWS ABOUT TO COLLIDE

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “An Unsustainable Life – Book of Darwin.”

Chapter 3: Shadows About to Collide

Vincent tops off Darwin’s cocktail with fresh ice and more bourbon. Since his brother arrived days ago, Vincent’s been patiently waiting for Darwin to open up about the real reasons he’s here. He’s gleaned enough to know it’s not for the excuses Darwin’s given so far so Vincent knows he has more mining to do. “Tell me again how this crazy mess started.”

Darwin draws a drink of bourbon and sets his cocktail glass on the parquet coffee table as he settles into the sacred la-Z-boy chair knowing this will take some time and won’t be easy. “Like I said, unless you’re in Silicon Valley you have no idea what the world I’m living in is like. We’re at an inflection point Vincent. A confluence of events. The rate at which technology’s exploding is causing moral strains on visionaries who can see the direction things are going and how it all will end. People assume being able to see obvious futures is a blessing, but it’s not. It’s a burden that constantly dogs you like cold Lake Michigan wind when you’re stuck in a winter storm without shelter.”

“Cry me a river,” Vincent interjects. “You’re filthy rich and never have to work another day the rest of your life.”

“It seems that way, until you are that way. Then you realize in the large scale of things, money is not the dominate one that matter.”

“Ask a guy who doesn’t have any and see what he says.”

“You know what money does, it humbles you.” Darwin takes a bourbon moment to regroup. “It humbles you enough to bypass personal hubris as you stare deeply into Pandora’s box wondering if, how, and when, technology can appropriately commingle with society and what catalysts necessitate elements be constrained in order to save humanity from itself.”

“Really? You make this insane about of money, then question the manner in which you made it. That’s messed up. Be like me saving someone’s life with innovative drug therapies and then questioning the pharmaceutical companies who developed the drugs. Not happening.”

“Your industry is narrow and heavily regulated, mine is expansively large, lawlessly unregulated, and time to market for new ideas is measured in moments not years which necessitates being oblivious to moral consequence. A while back my buddy Jeff, who I’ve known since grad school at Purdue, started getting concerned about the work he’s doing with business systems integration. He develops software to run complex systems ranging from municipal water supplies to nuclear power plants and he feels it’s not being adequately vetted. “It’s only a matter of time,” he worries, “before a calamity caused by automation could have been avoided had humans been in the loop.”

“As industries and municipalities increasingly rely on Jeff’s software to make them more effective and efficient, his waring become exponentially true. The overriding Silicon Valley mantra is that eliminating humans from operations eliminates the risk of error, which everyone assumes is a good thing and that Jeff’s concerns are just misguided. Their prevailing sales pitch is perfectly packaged to deliver systems integration like gifts from Santa, only Jeff increasingly sees a diminishing return on the value proposition with a potential for things to go catastrophically wrong. He goes so far as to develop a formula predicting how bad a system failure consequence can be based on the level of operational control managed by nonhuman technology. He calls it his ‘shadows on the wall paradox,’ which he names after Plato’s thought experiment challenging humanity’s illusion with reality.”

“I remember that from med school.” Vincent rests his arm on the back of the avocado couch to better settle in. “When I did my psychology rotation, we studied the impact of Plato’s work on people with schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

“Jeff shares his shadows on the wall formula with me because he knows I have similar concerns. What starts out as Jeff and I occasionally meeting over coffee to discuss the state of technology and its impact on society quickly grows. Tom from Apple, who I know from previous overlapping projects, joins next. He’s a little high strung, not naturally, but lately he’s been dealing with the complex cocktail of excitement, anxiety, and fear he’s forced to consume each time he interacts with Steve Jobs. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Jobs, but the dude’s intense. He not only sees futures no one can comprehend but knows their precise realization pathway.

“Hakeem joins next. He’s a defense contractor concerned about our military’s ambition to build autonomous fighter jets that don’t need pilots. Setting aside the moral implications around weapons of war, can you imagine how destabilizing the world become when countries can escalate conflict without human involvement. I can tell you this, it does not end well for humanity. Hakeem and I burn a lot of bandwidth talking about the “in’s” and “out’s” of that shit.

“Before long, our occasional coffee becomes a weekly forum for future focused visionaries needing to discuss, debate, and dry lab what if anything can be done and what our moral obligation to humanity demands. Now keep in mind, we’re all technologists with no training in moral or ethical philosophy, so we’re sort of swimming in the dark. I coin the term Shadow Dancers to define our misfit cohort.”

Vincent jumps in. “You got that from Adventure Camp, didn’t you? Remember that counselor from South Dakota who kept trying to get Anthony to do the Lakota Sioux Sundance. He kept saying Anthony couldn’t be a man until he suffered enough to have his purpose in life revealed in a vision. That was some crazy ass shit and if you hadn’t got in the counselor’s face I think he’d have talked Anthony into doing it.”

“I tried explaining the Shadow Dancers to Becky, but she’s not interested. She keeps saying she’s not like me and my fellow nerds. She’s a serious woman running a serious human resources division at a major technology firm. The last thing she needs is me putting her future in jeopardy by associating with radical idealists who are not on board with what Silicon Valley’s doing for not only the American economy and national security but for humanity itself. A few times she gets plenty pissed and starts yelling shit like, “Who are you to decide for the rest of the world what’s allowed and what’s forbidden!” She warns me to ratchet back my affiliation with the Shadow Dancers before I’m labeled technology’s Man from La Mancha.”

“She pulled the Don Quixote card? Dude, that’s cold.”

“That’s what I thought. But I love her, so I try disenfranchising myself from the Shadow Dancers. The thing is, it leaves me feeling isolated and alone in a world spinning so fast it doesn’t seem possible it can contain himself. The irony of it is that this is exactly what the Shadow Dancers are trying to convey. For us it’s obvious that the way things are going, the trajectory the world’s on, can’t be sustained and we oughta know, we’re the ones stoking the fires that drive technology’s engines.”

Vincent knows that Darwin came to Chicago because he needs to not only vent, but to bounce ideas and deal with stuff that’s all bottled up inside with someone he trusts. “I’m not gonna pretend I know what you’re talking about or what if anything I can say as counsel other than to say you’ve always had a sense of right and wrong and doing what needs to be done, so I say being part of this Shadow Dancer cohort is the right thing for you.”

“This is actually a multi-prong problem. On one end of the spectrum, you have me and my small cohort of cautionaries. On the other end are the millionaires and billionaires Silicon Valley’s spitting out at an unprecedented rate.”

“Remember what dad was always telling us?” Vincent asks. “He’d say, never forget boys, money buys alliances and fealty while burying conflict.”

“That’s the Valley’s pervasive business model.” Darwin answers. “Inside their rush to riches, murmurings of concern about dangerously inevitable outcomes are taking hold. It’s a minority voice to be sure but one that those seeking fortunes are compelled to silence. I’ve always been a technology early adapter. I’m blessed with an ability to see application potential others miss. I didn’t invent line of sight infrared technology but am the one to leverage it to convince the television industry that manual channel changing is obsolete. Doesn’t seem like much now but back in the day it’s a game changer.”

Vincent gets up from the avocado couch and walks to the glass top table in the dining room next to the antique French hutch to fix another cocktail. “A wise gambling man would have taken his chips and cashed out. I never understood why you didn’t. I mean why dump it all right back into a new start-up?”

Darwin follows Vincent into the living room to reload his drink. “That’s what entrepreneurs do. Their’s is a continuous cycle of risking everything you have on an idea that may or may not work. Then, as soon as you demonstrate your idea is commercially viable, you sell it to finance your next new start over. Each time using the lessons learned so you don’t keep repeating the same old mistakes. I really thought I was being noble, helping improve people’s lives. I hang a banner above my building’s entrance that read, ‘Science Serving Society.’ It’s a marketing logo I lifted from a technology vendor at a conference I once spoke at. Above my office door I hang another banner that reads, ‘Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should.’ It’s meant to be a cautionary reminder to my employees. I’d conclude every team meeting reflecting on these core values; encouraging younger colleagues to discuss concerns they might have with the work they do. We’re developing a capability to provide people with advanced Parkinson’s disease an ability to walk. It isn’t anything that’s going to make us rock-star rich like many of our California colleagues, but it’s a contribution that positively impacts people’s lives and everyone on the team’s damn proud of that.”

After finishing the two cocktails, Vincent hands Darwin his and walks back to his spot on the couch. “I remember you telling me about. I did some checking in my medical journals, and you’re right, if you did it right, it could actually work.”

“There’s no if, brother. My team nails it, but not without a cost. As I focus on getting my capability ready for commercialization, tensions between me and Becky escalate. She refuses to yield and my refusal to step away from the Shadow Dancers leaves us at an impasse. Her solution is to issue an ultimatum; either I stop with my Shadow Dancer nonsense or else. She tells me several Silicon Valley companies are launching investigations into employees who aren’t fully on board with company missions. “Heads will roll,” she warns. “And careers are going to get canceled.”

After staying in the dining room for a few moments, Darwin returns to the living room and sits back down in the sacred La-Z-Boy. “She claims to be worried about me getting canceled but I own my start up, so what she’s really worried about is being connected to me, and by extension, my cohort Shadow Dancers. She tells me straight up it’s a deal breaker and at this point I don’t know whether to believe her or not. I try to talk to her about it, but she says there’s nothing to discuss either I break up with them or she breaks up with me.”

Darwin waits for Vincent to finish his current sip of cocktail before continuing. “So, there it is, the first moral consequence the Shadow Dancers foretold. No one expected it to arrive this early or in this manifestation, but there it is, nonetheless.

“How can she give me an ultimatum like that after we’ve committed to each other? I love her Vincent and truly believe she loves me. You don’t push people you love into corners devoid of exits, that’s not how love works. At least not how I foolishly believe it works, yet here we are with a cold callous line definitively drawn. At first, I’m angry, how can the woman I love act with such indifference? How can she not see that the man she loves is struggling with a crisis of conscious? From there the precipitous unraveling is both callous and cruel. I withdraw into despondency as I wrestled with the provocation of having to sacrifice morals for love. That’s a dichotomy that should never be tested. I always assumed when technology’s divine dilemma strikes, it would be about morals versus money and since I don’t care about money it would be readily resolved. But love versus morals? That’s a horse I’m not ready to ride.”

“Who needs dessert?” Ilene asks. Her sudden appearance startles Vincent more than Darwin.

“Honey. We were just talking about Darwin’s company.”

“Interesting.” Ilene says as she sets her tray with two coffees, one tea, and two large pieces of carrot cake on the parquet table.

Darwin sets his bourbon down and takes the small plate with a large slice of carrot cake. He samples the smooth cream-cheese frosting first. “This is amazing but not surprising. Your cooking is always worth coming to Chicago for.”

“Thank you.” Ilene says. “You’re always the gentleman who appreciates the small things a woman does.” She turns to stare at Vincent. “Unlike someone who shall remain nameless.”

Vincent pops up from the couch to hug his wife. “I appreciate you dear, even when I forget to tell you.” He helps Ilene into the green avocado couch, hands her the green tea and saucer, then grabs his carrot cake and sits down beside her. Ilene dunks her tea bag a couple cycles before using the string to squeeze out moisture. She sets the bag on the saucer and uses her spoon to make sure the honey is fully integrated. “Tell me more about, what did you call it, technology’s divine dilemma?”

“You heard that?” Darwin finishes his current mouthful of cake and leans over to grab his coffee. “That’s a topic that could easily take all night to explain, but I’ll give you the elevator version.” He takes another bite of cake and washes it down with coffee. He sets his cup back on the table and leans back in the sacred La-Z-boy. “The Divine Dilemma. Every generation has one. I call it that because for each iteration it seems God is testing us, looking to see if we are still worthy of remaining the world’s apex species.

“After World War Two, communities of people across the globe complete their evolution in various forms from agrarian societies living predominately in dispersed units of rural enclaves into large consolidations of urban clusters. Instead of toiling all season in their fields for little reward, men increasingly work year-round for little pay and the dilemma is; was the gain in trading in their old world for a new one worth the cost of what was lost? The sixties saw the dawn of our age of convenience, where people traded the health of their bodies for the convenience of processed food and the evidence of that cost is ever so clear. Are hot dogs that don’t rot, milk that doesn’t spoil, produce with no flaws worth the loss of taste and the diminishment of our bodies?

“We’re now at the beginning of the computer era, where the promise and potential are boundless. Or so it seems. Lately, a handful of technologists have been asking ourselves whether technology’s temptations are not coming at the cost of our souls. I know you don’t see it. No one really does yet. But no one foresaw the impact of our evolution toward urbanization or the cost of unhealthy eating either. There were those who did, people who see their world in terms of outcomes, who sound alarms that no one hears.” Darwin takes a sip of coffee and sets his cup back down. “A few of us in Silicon Valley, a small cohort to be sure, see the outcome of the computer age and that what’s at stake is not where we live or how we eat, but whether humanity itself survives.”

Ilene motions Vincent for her cup. She stares into the tea, stirring not so much to reintegrate the honey but to find understanding from the leaves she wishes were there. She hands her cup back to Vincent without taking a taste and motions for him to help her up. She stabilizes her balance before softly rubbing her belly to let her baby know that despite everything Uncle Darwin said, things are gonna to be okay. She looks at Vincent for emotional support, but it’s just as lacking as his expressions of appreciation. “You always seem to be operating on a different level,” she tells Darwin. “And every time I try to sit in on one of your late-night rants, you somehow manage to scare the hell out of me.” Without taking her tea, Ilene walks briskly toward the kitchen trying her best to hold back tears she can’t keep from coming.

The boys are silent for more than a moment. “I could be wrong brother, but I think this is one of those moments where you’re supposed to go after your wife.”

Vincent looks toward the kitchen. He trades his coffee for his cocktail and takes a stiff taste. “I know it seems that way, but trust me, she needs a minute to pull herself together then everything will be alright. In the meantime, finish your mea culpa.”

“My saga picks up the fateful morning three weeks ago that not only changes my life forever, but humanity’s as well.”

“Whoa bro. I know you have a flare for the dramatic, but even for you that’s a bit over the top.”

“Wait til you hear what happened. I’m at Berkeley for a presentation to potential investors. They have this venue on campus called the Faculty Club for just these sorts of interactions. My buddy in the engineering department sets everything up. After two intense years of research and development my capability for assisting Parkinson’s patients is ready for commercialization. The goal of any entrepreneur, as we discussed, is to sell their technology outright so they can use the money to launch their next new something. I don’t know what that is yet but I’m also not worried, ideas come to me at the pace of passing mile markers along a fast-moving highway.

“I arrive an hour before my presentation to dry run the audio-visual to confirm everything’s working. I’m trying not to be distracted because I need things to go well to get Becky off my back. Once today is done and I’m on to my next new something she’ll calm down, and things will go back to normal. As I work through my pre-prep checklist, I’m distracted by something a fellow Shadow Dancer said about the way things can go sideways at investor briefings. He shared his experience with how technology he thought was for one purpose wound up being sold to investors with less noble ambitions and he didn’t find out until after contracts were signed and checks cashed.

“That led to an hour’s long debate on technology’s impact on humanity and where, if anywhere, Shadow Dancers and others like us have an obligation to warn, if not outright intervene, on humanity’s behalf. The debate didn’t end well, mostly because I became frustrated by the fact all we seem to ever do is sit around pontificating about what ought to be done but no one’s defined who to warn, how to make technology’s counter argument, and why we even should. Another issue that had my fuse functioning was my increasing consternation about the fact that while most Shadow Dancers can see the problem in a panoramic sense, everyone’s convinced their piece of the mosaic is not problematic. For me that’s the crux of the paradox, one I keep coming back to as my AV finally reboots moments before investors arrive.

“Next thing I know, I’m thinking about my next new something. I’ve been looking at virtual reality; how can I not be enticed given the name. A colleague at Boeing recently challenged me with an interesting problem. Assembly of their new 777 aircraft is paced by how fast they can run the electrical and hydraulic cabling harnesses. Currently, each harness is hand crafted by laying out the pattern on a pegboard wall the length of the aircraft and painstakingly customizing each harness for each individual fuselage. The bean counters believe if they can develop VR technology that runs off a wearable computer and virtually impose the wiring diagram onto the aircraft, they can speed up production by ten percent, which in the aircraft industry is worth billions in profit.

“People don’t realize aircraft are assembled in sections and the line of sight down the center of a fully assembled plane can be off by as much as two feet depending on how the fuselage sections are manufactured and shimmed. That means each aircraft is custom made, requiring custom electrical and hydraulic harnesses. VR potentially allows harness customization in real time with precise modifications, which greatly increases assembly efficiency and aircraft effectiveness. As enticing as this opportunity seems, it requires moving to Seattle and that’s a nonstarter for Becky; at least as things currently are between us. What Becky and me need is time to heal. A chance to work on rebuilding so what we once shared doesn’t wilt away in worry.

“Artificial Intelligence is another emerging technology with appealing allure. I’m fascinated by the potential, both for good and evil, and have already invested considerable bandwidth talking about it at Shadow Dancer meetings. While the name’s not as sexy as VR, the potential for AI to influence humanity up to and including its demise is too intoxicating not to consider. Currently, AI is just a fancy term for rule-based programming and database conglomeration but it’s something that could be fun to tinker with. The dystopian thing about AI though is if it ever does become self-aware as promoters suggest it will, things get real-scary, real fast. The Shadow Dancers are already contemplating strategies for when that day arrives, but I can’t really bring himself to get worked up about it. Who knows, maybe because Becky will blow a gasket if she catches on to my involvement. More likely though, it’s because unlike other Shadow Dancers, I’m wise enough to know, AI’s coming and there ain’t a damn thing any of us can do about it.

“That sounds like some pretty scary ass stuff. Not the kind of shit I want young Joesph born into.” Vincent looks toward the kitchen uncertain if now’s the time to check in on Ilene. “I think we should agree, best we don’t talk about it in front of Ilene.”

“As long as AI remains in the realm of science fiction and rule-based programming, we don’t have to worry. However, the building blocks are falling into place faster than anyone predicted and the issue is, who’s going to be the moral weathermen if not the Shadow Dancers. We’re the only ones who seem to be coming to terms with humanity’s willingness trade freedom for convenience and there’s little that can be done to prevent or alter the way it will one day lead society to ruin like lemmings leaping off a ledge.”

“Something’s happened to you dude. You weren’t always this full of doom and gloom.”

“There’s a worry hanging over me Vincent. It’s like a stalled storm I can’t outrun. It’s why I left California. Why I’m here. With my AV working and investors arriving, everything’s about to come to head. The whole time I’m making idle chit chat with early arrivers, I’m thinking about what all this means in relation to Becky. Just as I’m uploading whether love can exist in a post AI world, or even be permitted, it’s time to start my presentation. Next thing I know, my forty-minute slide show is followed by 90 minutes of intense questioning that leads to multiple offers, any one of which represents a fantastic outcome. What seals the deal is demonstrating how I combine a wearable computer with augmented reality in a way that tricks the brain into believing there are obstacles in the way that must be avoided.

“You and I have talked about this, how I’m tapping into a little-known neurological construct where brain functions sending muscle memory signals override brain functions damaged by Parkinson’s. The hardest thing a human does is initiate motion but once motion begins, the bandwidth required to maintain it is relatively small. “People with advanced Parkinson’s don’t lose the ability to walk,” I explain to excited investors, “they lose the ability to initiate motion, and my technology overcomes that.”

Vincent once again looks back toward the kitchen. “Each time I hear you talk about that, I regret not taking the PhD route in med school. It would be fun to research that kind of shit.”

“Investors are eager to make offers, including one who won’t say who he represents without a nondisclosure. I became aware of him during the presentation because of the odd way he never takes notes and never asks questions. Now though, here he is, not content to bid on optioning strategies like the other investors but wanting to buy whole damn company outright. At first, I politely declined. Sure, my team talked about that being the holy grail outcome, but I would really like to be involved in parts of the commercialization process, but the investor makes it clear that isn’t an option. When he nonchalantly hands me a slip of paper containing an obscenely high offer, it’s impossible not to take him seriously.

“What I want is time to consider his offer. What he needs is a decision right now, take it or leave it; and as he points out, at the level of his offer, I’m in no position to think I can do better. From there things happen so fast that it isn’t until after the lawyers arrive, contracts are signed, and cash transferred that I remember the warning from a fellow Shadow Dancer. I call back to the office and ask them to find out about this guy and his company. In the time it takes to load my car, Tien has an answer. You remember Tien?”

“Yeah, she’s that mathematics grad student you hired. We met that time Ilene & I are at your place for a barbecue.”

“Best Tien can ascertain; the investor’s company is a facade for the Chinese military and speculation is they’re tied to the development of autonomous nonhuman soldiers. The last part she gets from some personal source, she has family history in China.”

“She’s not a spy or something, is she?”

“No. Not really. Maybe sort of. Not her though, her family. But that was a long time ago.”

Vincent almost gets up but then settles back into the avocado-colored couch. “Let me see if I can recap; you unknowingly sell your company and its technology to the Chinese government for more money than Howard Hughes every had.”

“I’m horrified by what I’ve done and race out of the faculty club hoping to catch the investor in time to rescind the offer. I’m screaming at this guy that his deception nullifies our contract but to my dismay, his lawyers had included a contingency clause in the contract. According to the terms of our deal, once the funds were transferred the contract became binding regardless of what was or wasn’t disclosed. As he and his entourage leave, I stagger back to the faculty club chair falling into the first chair I find. I cup my hands over my eyes to keep what happened contained to nightmares.

“Instantly I see the full impact of what I’ve done, something I never considered until this moment because I was so enamored at how my technology would help humanity. Now it’s all so clear, they’ll use my work to provide the fundamental building blocks for fully autonomous nonhuman soldiers. How could I not see this potential before? How could no one at my company not see it? In all the scenarios we postulated over the past two years, not once did someone broach anything near this nefarious. The sin of what I’ve done is overwhelming, I’ve just enabled the one thing the Shadow Dancers fear most; countries exploiting technology to gain the ability to wage war without humans. There is absolutely no way I can un-own the role I’ve played in that.

Vincent starts to agitate. He knows he needs to be in the kitchen with Ilene but is also aware he can’t abandon his brother. It’s another one of those Adventure Camp lose-lose situations where he has to figure things out.

The Faculty Club’s become my perfect metaphor, a place where great ideas collide with even greater greed. “My God! My God!” I shout in anguish as I sit alone in this once great room with afternoon sun filtering through the large round window like a beacon from heaven. “What the hell have I done!”