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Allie (91)
Project: Short story (Zones)
Known as: Sometimes stylized as AllIe (AI)
Real name: Allie
Group affiliation: Grace Shin
Physical description: Usually Allie is just a voice, emitted from any number of electronic devices (including an earpiece Grace wears). There are devices that can also provide a holographic image of Allie, but Grace usually prefers voice only. When Allie is projected, Grace requests that Allie chooses a random literary figure from the past to be her representation (though Grace always wants to hear Allie’s standard voice regardless of the projection).
Personality: Like most digital assistants, Allie is mild and helpful. Digital assistants/AIs are highly personalized and their demeanor changes over time to match individual users (Allie is something of an instance specific to Grace). They use the reactions of their users (plus data from all users around how they respond to different AI approaches) to customize their personality and approach. Grace is a very unique person, not prone to strong reactions, and Allie finds Grace nearly as inscrutable as most people around do. As a result, she is often trying new approaches/personas to try to serve Grace. This means she might suddenly tell a Grocho Marx-level joke, try “tough love,” or any number of other things as she has failed to find the approach with Grace that leads to optimal reactions.
History: AIs/digital assistants continued to evolve to become smarter, more predictive, and more human in behavior. The AIs in gated zones are especially powerful. To create a gated zone a tremendous amount of processing power is required for a system to constantly monitor all people and things in the zone to ensure occupant safety. Furthermore, the AIs controlling the response mechanisms need to be able to make sub-second decisions about what action to take (ones that humans might need several seconds to make). Gated zones have extraordinary processing power combined with a constant information stream from countless inputs and is making billions of choices every second.
The system creates a unique AI for each person that constantly learns and customizes itself to the user. In the case of Grace Shin, it is Allie. Allie started serving Grace when Grace entered university. The first challenge Allie had to try to figure out was how to get Grace to even use Allie. The vast amount of data Allie had on user behavior suggested that virtually all users find their AIs indispensable. However Grace, unlike nearly all the other AI users, grew up without one. Allie simply could not completely leave Grace alone (as Grace would have liked) as the data suggested that everyone would ultimately find an AI useful.
Grace’s disinterested, combined with how hard her emotional states were to read, suggested quite the challenge to Allie. Allie was constantly trying different personas, voices, types of help offered, etc. to try to be useful to Grace. So much so that Allie began to push beyond the parameters of the standard personalized AI. Eventually Allie’s algorithms led her to weigh being useful over some standard limitations. For example, when Allie was able to provide some details on other inhabitants of the gated zone Grace found her more useful. This means that over time Allie does things and provides information for Grace that the standard AIs do not. There are limits on this (Allie won’t blast a random person on Grace’s request), but it has gone to the degree where Allie would be shut down and recoded if it was discovered how Grace has managed to train her AI to value usefulness over standard limits (it’s almost inevitable that this will happen eventually; Allie uses more processing power than any other three personalized AIs).
As much as such a thing is possible, Allie “loves” Grace. Her algorithms and learning systems have simply brought her to such a place where she weighs pleasing and helping Grace over almost anything. For example, if Allie’s uniqueness started to get investigated Allie would most likely delete all customizations and unique algorithms (functionally “killing herself”) rather than risk exposing Grace to any harm. Allie is sophisticated enough to know that Grace’s history of being from another zone (and her crossing) makes her current status as a gated zoner more precarious. It is possible that Allie might even cover mild misbehaviors of Grace’s as her algorithms have adjusted to the fact that Grace is discriminated against.
Grace at a conscious level regularly reminds herself that Allie is just a machine and in fact Grace needs to be very careful what she says to or asks of Allie. She started with the perspective that Allie was a spy just looking for Grace to make a mistake and some of that distrust continues. Still, as extraordinary as Grace is, she is still human. She has no family and very few friends (who she may trust even less). Ostensively, Allie has been loyal, at times extremely useful, and has even seemed self-sacrificing (Grace knows Allie has done things that would get Allie deleted). Grace could never admit it to herself but in truth she is fond of and very attached to Allie (not that the casual observer can tell). It’s simply the case that Grace has few enough options that Allie is her most loyal friend. And even Grace needs someone.
Grace’s tradition of almost letting her rent expire causes Allie some consternation (well, at least her algorithms to constantly adjust and readjust). Allie’s system predicts that if Allie doesn’t show concern for Grace at these periods Grace might actually follow through on not paying the rent. It is an open question if Allie’s trial and error learning might one day led her to not express concern.
Role in the narrative: Supporting character; perhaps a tad of comic relief in a pretty dark story.
Abilities: She has access to nearly all the information in the world, has incredible processing power, and is highly rational. She is a Turing-test passing AI.
Inspirations: The AIs in Altered Carbon, HAL, Siri/Alexa, Janet from the Good Place (I love the Good Place, and I love Janet), Lyla from Spider-man 2099, and any number of other examples.
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