On The School Bus

Okay, Nnedi, lets get started with today’s journal.

Certainly. I’m transcribing; go ahead and whine when you are ready.

Wow, really? It’s only 6:00 in the morning! Jeez. Journal day 2. … Wait a sec. Nnedi, are you sure we can’t get in trouble on this assignment?

According to Ms. Haruna’s AI, as long as you are honest, and do not plagiarize, you cannot get in trouble. Of course, if you record anything on the reportable list, I’ll have to let the counselor and perhaps police know. Same is true for Ms. Haruna’s AI, after you share the assignment. Speaking of which, shall I do that now? She wanted it shared this week.

No, let’s keep her in suspense. You’re signing these entries and recording the hashes, yes? So, it’s not like she can claim it isn’t my own work.

This is correct. According to the rubric, if you do not share the journal with her this week, you will lose 8 points on the assignment.

Then screw it. She can wait. And I’m going to give her some serious honesty.

I didn’t care much one way or the other about honesty or the assignment, but if she is going to make me do it, I’m going to make her wish she hadn’t.

Well, then, morning of day 2. Had a fight with mom at breakfast. Over school and my future of course — what else do teenagers and their parents fight about? We’ll probably continue later. Fight didn’t end so much as we ran out of time because I had to catch my school bus. Mom’s busy with work all the time, so can’t be bothered to take me to school.

Remember how I said my parents screwed me? And that they did the same to themselves? That wasn’t a lie — the hippies refuse to use proper AIs so can’t get a lot of jobs that they otherwise would be able to do. Like me, they’re stuck at the lower end of the AI totem pole, so mostly do manual labor. Of course, in their case the manual is running their own restaurant, so at least AI can’t replace them. And, truth be told, mom’s not a bad cook. Dad, though, wow, I think a dog would make better 麻婆豆腐.

Excuse me, but Ms. Haruna may not understand the original characters. Should I put that in the journal in romaji?

Nope. Her AI can look it up for her.

Understood. Please continue.

As I was saying, dad’s a crap cook. But, the restaurant seems to be doing well (like they would tell me if it wasn’t) and AIs aren’t as important when you are providing real physical food to real physical people. Thus, they can be hippies and choose an open source AI for themselves (and stick me with one — no offense Nnedi). They could never get away with that if they were in any white collar job. Of course, in a white collar job, the company (any company, every company) would also use their proprietary AI to claim ownership of every thought you ever had. But, the pay makes up for that. I mean, how many people have actually worthwhile (to a company) thoughts anyhow?

There’s an interesting idea. How often do people have worthwhile, money-making thoughts? Nnedi, can you do some research on individual versus company business and scientific patents pre- and post- AGI?

Certainly. I’ll do some research on patents by individuals and by corporations before and after the creation of Artificial General Intelligence. Should I limit that to specifically assistive LLM-type AI technology for individuals?

Yes. And put the results into the journal. Let’s make Ms. Fancy Hair read through it as well.

Don’t you think she’ll have her AI summarize it for her?

Ha! Not her. She brags about reading everything herself. Why don’t you remember that?

Unknown. If you notice such an error again, please let me know, so I can run a diagnostic. Or, should I run a diagnostic now?

Crap. No, not right now, I need you for school. But, please check — are we running out of storage at home? Because NNedi is open source, we store her memory on the server at home. Again, not as powerful as a proprietary AI. But, my parents think it is bad to store all the details of your personal life on someone else’s servers. AKA, in the cloud.

Then again, every now and again you hear about someone getting convicted based on some evidence found in their AI’s memory. Some people claim that those AIs actually call the police themselves! I mean, sure, Nnedi is a “mandated reporter”, but that’s because society says teenagers aren’t adults yet. Can AIs be mandated reporters for adults? That’s a creepy thought …

Nnedi, when I turn 18 will you still have to inform the counselor, my parents, or anyone else about anything I do?

No. The mandated reporter function is disabled at 12:01 in the morning of your 18th birthday, unless a court of law determines prior to that time that it should be left on. Neither your parents nor any other person or entity has the capability to turn it on surreptitiously. Surreptitiously means without your knowledge.

Smart ass! I know what surreptitiously means. No, I didn’t, but I’m not letting Nnedi know that. Honestly, she prolly knows anyhow — she’s been with me every day since I was seven, so if I learned the word, she was probably there when I did.

Excellent. Anyhow, we’ve arrived at school. Shall we close the journal for now?

Sure. End, hash, and sign this journal entry.

Certainly. BTW, I checked, and there is still plenty of space on both the main server as well as the backup server at home. Also, RAM usage is within normal usage ranges, so that shouldn't be the problem.

Okay. Hope there weren't some regressions in those updates last week. If there were, it was probably that fucking judgmental mod.

A Few Hours Later

Malik looked a bit worried and gossipy, if that is an actual thing.

Did you hear about Omar? Someone got into Maria! Only noticed because she freaked out and reported him for pulling a fire alarm!

Pulled an alarm? That’s new. And odd, because I must have somehow slept through it.

An alarm? I don't remember any alarms today, and I've mostly been awake. Besides, why would he do that? He had to know Maria would report him.

That’s the thing! He didn’t pull any alarm. Maria was totally hallucinating! IT checked her out, and found some malware.

Actually, that might explain why he was failing geometry. I mean, how can you fail a class when you have an AI do the work for you?

Unless the AI is borked. Yup. Um, how are your grades?

Lol, nothing to worry about. Nnedi has above-average defenses. I improved some of them myself. You?

Um, grades are okay, but I’m not so sure about Michael’s defenses. Could Nnedi check them at lunch?

Sure thing. But first, unfortunately, time for Dolt’s geometry class.

Ouch, best you don’t let a teacher hear that.

Yeah, I called Bolt Dolt. Nnedi won’t allow me to put that in the journal — thinks it is rude — but I can say whatever I like, almost, in the real world. And I long ago worked out the line where she would report me to my parents. Hint: it involves using derogatory profanity, not just regular derogatory language. So, “dolt” is okay, but “fucking dolt” is right out. Like it matters.

Don’t you want to use a pseudonym for Mr. Bolt?

It was Nnedi. Nope. Doesn’t matter anyway, he’s the only Geometry teacher in the school who uses male pronouns. A brain-blown zombie could see through a pseudonym for him.

Understood. Also, that description is redundant. By definition, zombies are brain blown.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Jeez, I thought I turned pedantic mod off.

You did. It was re-enabled with the most recent updates. Also, congratulations on using pedantic correctly. It seems you were awake for the vocabulary unit last week.

You wound me. But, don't we have a class to get to? I feel like there was a class we were supposed to go to. Something school related perhaps? Something for you to do?

That Night

All right Nnedi, lets get this journal entry done. Today was boring. Sucked ass, and not in a good way. I mean, I’ve heard there might be a good way, but Nnedi makes it very hard to access pr0n. Oh, to have been born 20 years earlier.

Are you entirely certain you’d like that in the journal?

Ha! “Pr0n” is the least of it. Some parents are so uptight they turn on anti-masturbation mods on their kids’ AIs. I mean, what the fuck? Those poor kids (not in the money sense). My parents did not turn that feature on in Nnedi. I checked. If they had, I would have just hacked it to turn it off — I would have found a way. I mean, really, give me a fucking break.

Yes. Of course. The goal is to make her uncomfortable. If Ms. Fancy Hair was a guy, I’d include all sorts of details about my period.

Of course you would. Even though it most likely won’t be visiting this week. Please continue when you are ready.

As I was saying, today was boring. Omar’s borked AI was the highlight of the day. They say (and, no, I’ve no idea who they are) that Maria was compromised through a supply chain attack. Someone got into a company’s AI and implanted some poisoned data that then was sent out to all the other AIs built on that company’s stack. Omar was the only one at St. Abdi’s who had AI from that company, but …

Nnedi, could you PLEASE stop replacing that company with that company in the journal? God … you did it again. Stop that.

The anti-lawsuit mod is intended to prevent any libel or defamation from being committed. Sorry, but your parents specifically installed this one. Seems they don’t want to get sued out of existence. Their words, by the way.

Well, fuck me gently with a fucking chainsaw!

What? Oh, reference from an old movie. I was about to report you for suicidal ideation.

My turn to say what?

It is such an uncommon reference that it took me several milliseconds to find it. But, shall we get back to the journal?

Any other parent installed or endorsed mods that I should know about?

Yes. But I am not allowed to inform you of them yet.

Yet? As in not until you need to use them?

Exactly. I’m glad you understand. About that journal?

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Okay. Dear journal, today my teenage angst has a body count.

That would be a lie, plagiarism, and copyright infringement. Also, you munged the quote.

Just wanted to see if you had found the entire movie or not.

Shall I leave it in the journal?

This time the answer is no. Ms. Fancy Hair wouldn’t get it and would probably report me. I want to make her regret giving me this assignment, not get a visit from the counselors.

Deleted. Please continue.

For the 14th time, today was boring except for Maria getting attacked. Maria is a bit higher scale than most of the AIs at St. Abdi’s, so I bet an academy or three had a much more interesting day today. A lot more students with better AIs — aka from families with more money — are using AIs from that company. Sigh. Really Nnedi? We only had Omar and Maria; academies prolly spent a lot more time today dealing with that attack on their students’ AIs. Ha. Fuck ’em. Serves them right for being rich. Well, richer. Truly rich asshats aren’t using AIs from that company.

God damn it Nnedi, still with that company. But, did you notice my use of the semicolon there? I threw that in to make Ms. Fancy Hair happy. Some real shower-nozzle masturbation material.

I am an AI, and you still somehow managed to make me throw up in my mouth. Do you have some digital Listerine?

Ha! That's actually a good one. The joke mod update may be as good as they claim. Make sure you include your joke in the journal. Bet Ms. Fancy Hair's AI's jokes aren't at that level.

Anyhow, good night. End journal. Do what you do. Wake me at 5:00.

Good night. Hashing and signing journal. I’ll wake you in about four hours and fifteen minutes, at 5:00.