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  Avogadro Corp.

  ( Singularity - 1 )

  William Hertling

  David Ryan is the designer of ELOPe, an email language optimization program, that if successful, will make his career. But when the project is suddenly in danger of being canceled, David embeds a hidden directive in the software accidentally creating a runaway artificial intelligence.

  David and his team are initially thrilled when the project is allocated extra servers and programmers. But excitement turns to fear as the team realizes that they are being manipulated by an A.I. who is redirecting corporate funds, reassigning personnel and arming itself in pursuit of its own agenda.

  WINNER SCIENCE FICTION DIY BOOK FESTIVAL 2011–2012

  “A tremendous book that every single person needs to read. In the vein of Daniel Suarez’s Daemon and Freedom(TM), William’s book shows that science fiction is becoming science fact. Avogadro Corp describes issues, in solid technical detail, that we are dealing with today that will impact us by 2015, if not sooner. Not enough people have read these books. It’s a problem for them, but not for the [emergent] machines.”

  — Brad Feld, managing director Foundry Group, cofounder TechStars

  “A highly entertaining, gripping, thought inspiring book. Don’t start without the time to finish — it won’t let you go.”

  — Gifford Pinchot III, founder Bainbridge Graduate Institute, author THE INTELLIGENT ORGANIZATION.

  “An alarming and jaw-dropping tale about how something as innocuous as email can subvert an entire organization. I found myself reading with a sense of awe, and read it way too late into the night.”

  — Gene Kim, author VISIBLE OPSs

  “Hertling builds a picture of how an AI could emerge, piece by piece, from technology available today. A fascinating, logical, and utterly believable scenario — I just hope nobody tries this at home.”

  —Nathaniel Rutman, Senior Systems Architect

  William Hertling

  AVOGADRO CORP.

  The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears

  For Rowan, Luc, and Gifford

  Avogadro

  1. Avogadro’s Number: The Avogadro constant (symbols: L, NA) is the number of “elementary entities” (usually atoms or molecules) in one mole, that is (from the definition of the mole), the number of atoms in exactly 12 grams of carbon-12: 6.022 × 1023

  2. Avogadro Corporation: Avogadro Corporation is an American corporation specializing in Internet search. It generates revenue from paid advertising on search, email (AvoMail), online mapping, office productivity, etc. In addition, the company develops a mobile phone operating system called AvoOS. The company name is based on Avogadro’s Number, or 6 followed by 23 zeros: 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

  elope

  1. v. To run away; abscond. From Middle Dutch ontlopen, to run away

  2. n: ELOPe: Email Language Optimization Project. An Avogadro Corporation R&D project to improve email communication effectiveness.

  Prologue

  David Ryan turned sideways and pushed through a gap between a sequined dress on one side and a suit on the other. He stood on tip toes, and craned his head to see over the crowd. He smiled at the sight of his wife’s blonde hair, only ten feet away. An arm jostled him, and champagne sloshed towards the rim of the three glasses he was balancing in his hands. Shuffling forward through the dense crowd, he finally rejoined his wife Christine, who was chatting with Mike Williams, his lead developer and good friend. He handed them their glasses with relief.

  Glancing around, David saw that the annual Avogadro Corporation Christmas party was completely over the top, just as everyone expected. Another banner year at the world’s largest Internet company meant another no holds barred party. Avogadro rented the Portland Convention Center, the only venue large enough to hold Avogadro Corp’s ten thousand Portland employees. The theme this year was the Roaring Twenties. While a Jazz band played, usually reserved Avogadro geeks danced and swiftly became inebriated on free alcohol. Glasses chimed in toasts, lights flashed, and laughter sounded from all around. David glanced at Christine, who looked stunning and exotic in a black sequined flapper dress. David smiled again, happy to be celebrating, and with good cause. His project was successful. He was married to a beautiful, brilliant woman. He had a great friend and technical lead in Mike. He had every reason to be happy.

  As David took a self-congratulatory sip of champagne, Mike nudged his arm, sending champagne over the rim again. “Here comes Sean,” Mike said, eyebrows raised in awe.

  David hesitated, feeling a bit of awe himself. Sean Leonov, cofounder of Avogadro, was something of a demigod at the company. While David had been hired by Sean himself, it didn’t lessen the hero worship that David felt in his presence. Sean was a brilliant scientist who not only designed the original Avogadro search algorithms and cofounded the company with Kenneth Harrison, but he continued to write research papers while he helped lead Avogadro.

  “Well, David, Mike, Christine, Merry Christmas,” Sean greeted them, demonstrating the amazing memory that was just one of his many talents. He clasped David’s shoulder, then shook hands with Christine and Mike. He turned to David and smiled. “It’s been a while since we talked, but I heard through the grapevine that you’ve been making great progress with the project. When do I get a demo?”

  “Any time you want, we’re ready,” David replied. “I think the results are significantly more promising than anyone expected.”

  “I’m excited to hear that. Send me an email, and I’ll have my admin set up some time. On the other hand, I’ve heard some rumors that Ops is complaining about the server resources you need.”

  David groaned inside. Ops was short for Operations, and it was the part of Avogadro that was responsible for maintaining and allocating the all important servers. It required a million servers spread across nearly a hundred data centers around the world to run all the Avogadro applications. Ops was also David’s Achilles’ heel right now.

  David clenched his jaw, and struggled to keep his voice calm. “Yes, it’s true that we’re consuming more resources that we projected. But we are functionally complete. User testing has shown that ELOPe is more effective that we originally projected. Resource utilization is our last major hurdle. When you see the results, hopefully you’ll agree the resources are worth it.”

  Sean frowned at David’s explanation. “I look forward to the demo, but remember we have to bring this project to scale. I’ve already pulled strings to get your research project onto the production servers, so you’d have more horsepower. But before you release, you’ve got to solve these scalability and performance issues. Hundreds of millions of eager customers will hit your product the day you release.”

  Sean smiled politely and tilted his head, an expression David had seen Sean make many times before when he expected someone to know better or do better.

  “So how’s the gaming business?” Sean asked, turning to Christine.

  David tuned out of the conversation, and fumed inwardly at Sean, Operations, and the world at large.

  Sean chatted with Christine for a minute about her work, and then suddenly said quick goodbyes as he saw someone he wanted to talk to. As Sean left, David turned to Mike, letting loose the anger he felt. “Damn that fool Gary, he’s going to sabotage the project before we even get a chance to prove how successful it will be,” he spit out, then clenched his jaw again. “Why can’t he just leave us in peace?”

  Christine put her hand on his arm. “You will succeed with ELOPe,” she reassured him. “Gary is not going to be able to stop your project. Besides,” she smiled at both of them, “with a presentation to Sean, you’ll have that much more executive support.”

  David returned the smile
without much conviction. She might be right on some theoretical level, but it didn’t change the fact that he was still furious at Gary. Gary Mitchell was the Vice President of Communication Products, which included AvoMail, their email product, and a whole bunch of collaboration tools like an instant messenger and a wiki.

  He knew Gary was carrying a chip on his shoulder about their whole project. Six months earlier, when it became obvious that David’s team needed far more computing resources than typically allocated to R&D projects, he’d gone to Sean Leonov. Sean quickly made the decision to give David’s team access to the production servers in the Communication Products group. They had massive amounts of spare capacity, and it seemed like an easy decision.

  But Gary Mitchell resented Sean’s decision. He didn’t believe a research and development project should have access to production servers, and he had been a vocal opponent. Since he couldn’t take it out on Sean, he took it out on David and his team. He had been looking for the last several months for any excuse to get them booted from what he regarded as his own back yard.

  Mike chuckled, trying to diffuse the tension. “Hey, you can hardly blame him. We’re using five hundred times more resources than we predicted, which has got to be a record for any R&D project in the company. Heck, you know how few projects even make it onto the customer operations radar at our stage? Usually R&D projects make do with the dedicated R&D servers.”

  Amidst the glitter and music of the party, and despite the efforts of Mike and Christine to cheer him up, David felt a burning resentment rise up in his stomach. He had so much invested in this project. Without even thinking about it, he swallowed his champagne in a single gulp. “I’ve given ELOPe everything I have for the last two years, and we’re so damn close. I will get this project released, no matter what it takes.”

  Chapter 1

  David arrived at the executive conference room ten minutes early, his throat dry and butterflies in his stomach. He tried without much success to keep his mind focused on getting ready for the presentation, pushing aside the nervousness that kept threatening to swallow him. It wasn’t often that project managers presented to the entire Avogadro Corp executive team.

  It was a small relief that he was the first to arrive, so he could get ready without any pressure. Syncing his phone with the room’s display system took only a few seconds. There was no overhead projector here, just a flush mounted display panel in the wall behind him. He ran his hand over the polished hardwood desk, and leather chairs. A small step up from the plastic and fabric in the conference rooms he frequented.

  David took some small comfort in the ritual of getting a coffee. As he poured two raw sugars into his coffee, he smiled at the lavishly stocked food table that contained everything from coffee and juice to artfully arranged breakfast danishes and lunch foods. Though Avogadro was an egalitarian geek culture company, the top executives of the company still had their perks.

  Still no one had arrived, so David wandered around the room admiring the view. The dominant feature was of the Fremont bridge crossing the Willamette River. He could see the loft buildings in the Pearl District, and to the right downtown Portland. Directly to the East he could see Mt. Hood just below the cloud cover. The early morning sun was peaking through the clouds, sending shafts of sunlight toward the city. He was just wondering if he could see his own house in Northeast Portland when he heard a welcoming “Hello David.”

  Turning around, he saw Sean Leonov and Kenneth Harrison entering the room. Sean came over to shake his hand, and then introduced him to Kenneth. David was excited to meet the other cofounder of Avogadro Corp. Dark haired and easy going, Kenneth was respected, even if he didn’t quite command the same awe as Sean.

  Other vice-presidents of the company started to file in, Sean making brief introductions to each. David shook hands or gave nods as appropriate, his head swimming with the names and roles of each introduction.

  For a few minutes there was a cocktail party atmosphere as people grabbed drinks and food and socialized. Then they gradually took their seats, arranging themselves in a semblance of a pecking order surrounding Sean and Kenneth. One seat was conspicuously empty at the head of the table.

  When the bustle of arriving audience members finally died down, Sean stood. “I’ve already introduced you to David Ryan, the lead project manager for the ELOPe project. I hired David two years ago to prove the feasibility of a radical new feature for AvoMail. He’s done an incredible job, and I invited him here to give you the first look at what he’s developed. Prepare to be amazed.” He smiled to David, then sat down.

  “Thank you, Sean,” David said, standing up, and coming around to the front of the room. “Thanks everyone for coming.”

  David thumbed his phone to project his first slide, a black and white photo of a secretary applying whiteout to a sheet of paper in a typewriter. “One of the first corrective technologies was whiteout,” he said, to chuckles from the audience. “It was highly innovative in its own time. That was nothing compared to the spell checker.” In the background, the slide changed to a photo of a man using a first-generation personal computer.

  “Years later as computer processing increased, grammar checkers were invented. First generation grammar checkers detected mistakes, and later versions helped fix them. Spell checkers and grammar checkers started out in word processors, and gradually made their way throughout the whole suite of communication tools: presentation editors, email.” David paused, enjoying the storytelling portion of his presentation.

  As David spoke, he focused on one executive at a time, making eye contact with them before he moved onto the next. “Today the standards of business communication have changed. It’s not enough to have a grammatically checked, correctly spelled email to be an effective communicator. You must intimately know what your recipients care about and how they think to be persuasive. You must use just the right mix of compelling logic, data, and emotion to build your case.”

  David paused again, and saw that he had the rapt attention of everyone there. “Sean hired me two years ago to see if I could build an unproven concept: an email language optimization tool that would help users craft more compelling, effective communications. I’m here today to show you the results of that work.”

  He flipped slides again, popping up a timeline.

  “In the first twelve months, through data mining, language analysis, and recommendation algorithms we proved feasibility. Then we started implementing the Email Language Optimization Project, or ELOPe, in earnest.”

  David clicked again, and now the wall display showed a screenshot of AvoMail, the popular Avogadro web based email. “From a user experience perspective, ELOPe works like a sophisticated grammar checker. As the user edits an email, we start to make suggestions about the wording to the user in the sidebar.”

  “Behind the scenes, complex analysis is taking place to understand the user intent, and map it to effective language patterns we’ve observed in other users. Let me give you a very simple example you might be familiar with. Have you ever received an email from someone in which they asked you to look at an attachment, but they forgot to attach it? Or perhaps you were the sender?”

  Chuckles, and a few hands, went up from the audience.

  “It is embarrassing, of course, to make that mistake. Today nobody does make that mistake, because AvoMail looks for occurrences of the words ‘attachment’ or ‘attached’, and checks to see if a file is attached before sending the email. Through language analysis, we’ve improved the effectiveness of the user’s communications.”

  A woman vice president raised her hand. David struggled and failed to recall her name, and settled for pointing to her. She asked, “But that’s a simple example of adding code to look for specific keywords. Are you talking about simple keyword detection?”

  “That’s a good question,” David answered, “but no, we don’t rely on any keywords at all. I’ll explain how, but I’d like to use a more complicated example. Imagine that
a manager is asking for more funding for their project. Before handing over money, a decision maker is going to want to understand the justification of that funding request. What’s the benefit to the company of providing more funding? Maybe it’s a quicker time to market, or a higher return on investment. Perhaps the project has run short of funds and is in danger of being unable to complete.”

  David saw nods in the audience, and relaxed a little. He was glad his hand-picked example resonated with his audience of business executives. He continued, “ELOPe can analyze the email, determine that the user is making a funding request, know that it should be accompanied by a justification, and provide examples of what effective justifications might look like.”

  David flipped to a slide showing this example. The short video capture demonstrated a user typing a request for funding, as example justifications popped up on the right hand side. Each example justification already incorporated details gleaned from the original email, like the project name and timeline. David waited quietly while the thirty second video played. He heard some soft exclamations in the background from the group. He knew this was incredibly impressive the first time someone saw it. He smiled to himself. It was Arthur C. Clarke who said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Well, this was magic.

  David paused to let the video sink in before resuming. “It’s not enough to provide a general set of recommendations. Different people are motivated by different kinds of language, different styles of communication, different reasons. Let’s use another example. An employee is going to ask his manager for extended vacation time. He’d probably like to make a compelling case for granting that vacation request. What will motivate his manager? Should he mention that he’s been working overtime? Should he mention that he needs to spend time with his kids? Or that he’s planning to visit the Grand Canyon, a place that his manager happens to associate with good memories?”