westedge | PC: Kyoko

[ hi kyoko. jonas is tilting his head and kind of eyeballing all of the movie posters. ]

Pick a genre and you can find just about anything good. I've seen a lot of these, I think. What are you into?

I'm not especially picky when it comes to movies. Which is your favorite?

Monika asked me for a genre when she was trying to pick out a book for me and I couldn't come up with something specific either. [ which...hm... he kind of pauses as he thinks. ] I think my favorites probably aren't that interesting for other people? So it's better to let other people pick.

Jonas. [ Thoughtful. ] I really don't watch movies. I don't know what's good here.

[ kyoko. ]

Do you just not take breaks for stuff? [ he shakes his head a little, but it does give him a little bit of an idea. ] I think I've got a good one for us.

[ give him a sec, he's leading her over to a poster for the matrix. ]

Check this out.

I'm usually very busy.

[She's a workaholic, is what she means.]

Let's give it a try.

[They watch it and Kyoko is watching the movie incredibly intently. When it's over and they leave, it's kind of hard to know what to say about it.

The silence stretches on, becoming uncomfortable before she manages to speak.]

How do you feel about machines?

[ he makes a noise at the idea of being very busy, as if he doesn't quite understand why she can't just take a simple break, but they go and watch the movie!

when it is done, and they're walking out, jonas seems to have his hands in his pockets and he's eyeing her carefully for her reaction. he doesn't mind the silence (entirely) until he starts to psych himself out that he made a terrible choice, but then kyoko speaks up. ]

...like, in general? Or in a specific manner?

[Jonas did pick a movie that Kyoko was absolutely going to end up invested in, but the problem with that is then she's turning the thing over and over in her mind.]

In general, first. And then I suppose, your feelings on artificial intelligence. Do you think that could happen? [The robot uprising?]

In general, machines are fine. They do what we need them to do and certain ones can improve quality of life for a lot of things. [ ...he's thinking though. ] That being said, uh, yeah. I think it's possible for artificial intelligence to get too smart and flip around to figure out things on its own. If it's being taught and programmed certain things by humans what's to say it can't learn other behavior from those same humans by observation?

...or maybe that's crazy.

[From a digimon game and feeling like 🧍‍♂️

That's not Jonas's fault.]

Artificial intelligence made by humans is only so clever. Even if its given a huge dataset to interpret, it's not really capable of creating on its own. It's more akin to rearranging the data it already has. What it learns is deliberately fed in.

[ he tilts his head at this. ]

You don't think it can't read a dataset and come up with an arrangement humans didn't program it for based on the information available?

It really depends on what its being fed during the initial teaching rounds. AI like that isn't so clever that it can suddenly work out a solution to a problem it was never given.

[ there's a slow nod. ]

I don't know that much about it. But it sort of sounds like you've had some experience working with and training AI of some kind. Is that true?

I have experience with AI and virtual reality.

Somehow this tracks. [ musing on it. ] What...kind of experience?

VR is a big business where I'm from. I often take cases involved with it.

The AI are used for hacking and protection from hacking, depending on who's using it.

But if your cases are involving VR, how do you have a good gauge for what is and isn't real? [ that's maybe not quite an issue, but it's what he's thinking. ]