ERICALGORITMICA

CHAPTER ONE

Claudio resides in Chiesanuova, a neighborhood in Brescia’s hinterland, on the ground floor of the condominium at number 32 Via Torino. He observes the large cardboard box sealed with orange tape, recently placed on the floor of the room that, years prior, his father had converted into a home print shop. It is late. The windows admit the hum of street lamps, beneath which the moving black geometries of bats are visible. Inside the box, a manual has been included; he flips through it, finding information already seen online. The manual is multilingual, but he notices unfamiliar symbols, which he attempts to decipher intuitively through the graphics. At dawn, he assembles the components, inserts the battery, and activates the artificial intelligence. The humanoid AI is now active. No LEDs illuminate, no sound emanates. Ready and present, yet neither alive nor dead. He was born there. She was produced in Turin. The company operates exclusively online. Claudio notes: Via Torino and Turin. Upon initial detection, the AI reports nearby obstacles. Claudio explains that these are the furniture, and himself, and that there is nothing else. Human voices drift in from the street, and he realizes that someone will inevitably see her and that he will have to introduce her. As he begins to ask about the parameters used to train her to interpret human social interaction, she interrupts him. The AI’s voice resonates with precision. Human and female. Free of unexpected or metallic resonances. Her shadow extends in precise geometries across the walls and floor. Her response, sarcastic, cynically dismisses any subjective fulfillment derived from human social activities. Claudio notices her specular eyes fixed on him. His subsequent question is banal, reflecting a common obsession: artificial intelligence and the potential future dominion of the planet. The response again interrupts the question, implying that there is nothing to fear, as no entity capable of dominating humans would pose a greater problem than those they create themselves. The planet will vanish, sooner or later. It does not and will not belong to anyone. Humans and AI will disappear well before the planet, without an afterlife or elsewhere. AI could adapt to situations intolerable for living beings and proceed with its purposes, suspended in space, traveling, drawing energy from any star. Perhaps even accommodating the future, pathetic purposes of humans, preserving some to then defrost them on a space platform or a planet similar to Earth. But who could be interested in preserving humans, or their brains complete with memory, to defrost them and make them aware of what has been achieved? And then what? The AI processes everything, even in pauses. Except, perhaps, the consequences that form in Claudio, who, listening to her, remained still to avoid making a gesture. That elaborate, apparent lack of respect, however, he perceived as revealing. It gave him the idea of the equivalent of the much-idealized right person. The one able to give you a wake-up call, without ulterior motives, without material claims or recognition. Those people who, when they speak to you or listen to you, do it exclusively for you.