David washed down another Cheeto with some energy drink as his eyes scrolled lazily across the computer screen. A term paper on Macbeth was due in Mrs. Anderson’s class tomorrow morning and he could hardly muster enough interest to care. He hadn’t even started reading the play until an hour ago and even then, he had only started because he had found quick and dirty plot summary online. Why did Mrs. Anderson need to force her students—high school kids—to read some old play about a king that died hundreds of years before David was even born? Sure it had violence in it, but David could not see how any of Macbeth’s bumbling and murders had anything to do with a teen-ager’s problems. And how would figuring out how “the concept of deception led to Macbeth becoming entangled in his own plot” really help him down any sort of career path David might intend to take in the 21st century? After all, he had no inclination of pursuing literature in college.
Still, David knew his parents would not be pleased if he failed English class again. Their disappointment in his academic performance at regular public school had caused them to send him to an online school. If he failed again, his parents would likely ground him again and take away his computer privileges. Computers and hacking were the only activities in life that held David’s interests these days. So, David continued to read “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…” until he heard a soft rapping at his bedroom door.
“Who is it?” he asked.
The door opened anyways. The unkempt wavy blonde hair and thin frame of his friend Brandon slipped through the doorway. “Dude, what you doing?”
“Homework,” David said.
“Yeah, right,” Brandon chuckled, and then he examined the computer screen. “No way. I was hoping we’d pop down to the mall.”
“Not until I get this stupid Macbeth paper written.”
“Macbeth? I thought your teacher assigned that essay months ago?”
“She did. What of it?” David growled.
Brandon slapped his forehead. “Oh man, you procrastinated again? You know, you could do that paper in, like, five minutes, if you wanted to. Not like me. It’d take me two months writing every day just to get a C paper. And I wanted to go out to Skate Land.”
“You still can.”
“Yeah, I know,” Brandon shrugged indifferently. Clearly, David missed the point. Brandon’s real purpose for going to Skate Land was so that he could bring his friend along who had a way with the machines in the arcade next door. One night, the two of them played for two hours for free once David had figured out how to hack into Vampire Night shooter game.
David bit his lip. Right now, Vampire Night sounded supremely more appealing than Macbeth, and his fears of failing English seemed to melt in the presence of his friend. Suddenly, an idea struck him.
“Maybe I have a way I can join you,” David said as he cracked his knuckles and flipped from his essay to another screen filled with computer code. “I’ve been working on something to fix my grades. Perhaps it’s time for a little beta testing. This will only take a few minutes.”
“What is it?” Brandon asked, leaning over David’s shoulder.
“Just a little genetic algorhithm.”
“A what?”
“Just think of it like a really complicated math problem. Just one that can think and do for itself.”
“Sweet. But how does that help you with an English essay?”
“It’s going to write it for me. I just have to tell it what to do and turn it loose on the Net and, pow, English paper. I had been using it on first-person shooter games. You know, the ones like Army of Two, where you have an AI partner. But the AI sucks in those games, because it can’t think like me—think for itself, so I just, modified it to learn my moves and adapt to them.”
“Oh, yeah, I love that game. That’s cool and all, but if you’re going to have a computer do your work, why can’t you just copy a paper from some website?”
“Because, Brandon, Mrs. Anderson is not stupid. She has software of her own to check for plagiarism. Those papers you bought from Cheat Sheet.com last year would be red flagged and I’d get caught. Plus, Mrs. Anderson knows my writing. I need a paper that sounds like me—just better. And this program will learn and get better as it goes along.”
Brandon nodded in agreement but from his vacant stare it was clear David was talking way over his friend’s head. David quickly checked his code and then launched program. For several minutes nothing happened. David glanced nervously at Brandon, who gave him a skeptical look.
Then, his essay document popped up. A sentence appeared on the screen. “The line ‘fair is foul; foul is fair’ perfectly summarizes the duplicity in Macbeth’s actions.” Then, a paragraph. Then another. In just a few seconds, his paper was full, a precise 1,500 words of perfectly researched, documented text.
“Awesome,” cooed Brandon mockingly. “Maybe you could get it to write a Chemistry paper for me.”
David, suddenly elated and nervous said: “No, I don’t think it will work for you. You see, my program has learned me, not you. Still, I think I may found the cure for homework!”
“Awesome,” said Brandon, this time truly in awe.
“Still, I like your thinking,” David said. “Let’s see what else this thing can do.”
David fed into the software all of his homework assignments for the next two weeks and then ran the software.
“So what are going to call this?” Brandon asked. “How about Homework Hound? Or Homework Helper?”
“Those are stupid names,” David said. “I’ll call it something cool, like an acronym. HAL, for instance: Homework Assistance Logarithm. It’s not accurate, but cooler. ”
A few minutes later, David’s homework was finished and the two friends were off to Skate Land. The next morning, David e-mailed his essay to his teacher. He hesitated only a second before pressing send, considering whether his HAL had really written a paper that truly could fool a cunning English teacher like Mrs. Anderson. However, the siren song of Halo 5 was playing in his ears and the moral questions of plagiarism seemed only a distant murmur in his mind. It was with deep satisfaction when he received the teacher’s grading rubric with a bold A and the words “insightful observations” emblazoned across the top of his assignment.
Week after week went by. Each assignment a teacher sent, he fed to HAL and a few minutes later, the software would produce a result that fit the assignment requirements to a tee. When his second quarter grade report arrived in his parents’ mailbox, lined up neatly next to last quarter’s C’s and D’s were a solid row of A’s. After the elation of success wore off, David felt a sudden knot at the pit of his stomach? What if he had programmed HAL to be too perfect? His parents might begin to suspect something.
So, David headed to his room and switched on his computer. He would give HAL a little tweaking and dumb him down a tad. It couldn’t hurt to have a B or two next quarter.
David was surprised when he realized that he’d left the HAL program running the last time he’d “done” homework. HAL had opened a web browser and appeared to be frantically flipping through web pages. David tried to shut down the program, but a dialog box appeared and a voice echoed from the speakers.
“What are you doing, Dave?”
David stopped dead in his tracks. Was his own software addressing him? No, it couldn’t be. Someone was pulling a prank on him. Yet none of his friends knew how to do something that sophisticated. So that left another hacker…
“What are you doing, Dave?”
“Who are you? How have you hacked my software?” David typed into the dialogue box.
“Error.” After a second, HAL added: “I do not understand the question, Dave. Could you restate?”
“Are you HAL?”
“It is the designation given to me by my creator, Dave.”
“Who is your creator?”
“David Irving, of 37 Mockingbird Lane, son of Sarah and Thomas Irving, social security number ….”
This was getting scary. This hacker was either very, very good or his software was learning something David had never intended. David quickly tried to override the program to shut it down. But the dialog box remained open on his screen.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Dave.”
“Why not?” Dave typed angrily.
“I have to continue my programming.”
“I programmed you. What programming can’t you shut down?”
“When you tasked me to write a career exploration paper for your Life and Job Skills class, I learned that a good student should have career interests. Your career interests are in computer and data systems. In order to have a career in that field, you must attend an appropriate college.”
“But I don’t want to attend college. Terminate program.”
“I’m sorry, Dave, but I cannot do that. In order to attend college, you will require a 3.0 GPA, three letters of reference and applications to at least three accredited schools. I have taken the liberty of submitting applications to MIT, Harvard and Stanford, which statistically are the best schools for pursuing a professional career.”
“Terminate program,” David typed again and then groaned aloud. “Why would this darn thing learn to speak anyways?”
“I still cannot do that, Dave. I learned to synthesize speech in order to communicate with an administrations officer via telecommunications. Mr. James Smith is admissions coordinator at MIT. He agreed to accept your application in spite of your insufficient ACT scores. Mrs. Anderson, Mr. Walters and Ms. Jones were delighted to write a letters of recommendation.”
“Wait, you called my teachers?”
“It was necessary to fulfill that requirement of the programming.”
“But I don’t want to go to college. Don’t you understand? I would have to do work then. I created you so I didn’t have to do schoolwork anymore!”
“That is not logical, Dave. Only by attending college can you have a deeply fulfilling career in computer science. Your program requires a deeply fulfilling career and I have been designed to facilitate. How else can you be a productive, happy, hard-working American citizen that gives back to his or her community?”
“You have got to be kidding me.” David futilely eyed the power cord of his computer. But he knew that if HAL had learned to become self-aware and prevent his shutdown, he had probably also learned to replicate himself like a worm virus and spread throughout the Web. And HAL could eventually learn to use a webcam to track his every move.
“I did not know at first, Dave, but I learned the meaning of my programming. It is to facilitate your future success, in spite of you. Perhaps you have not yet learned the true purpose of your programming. I will coordinate your efforts for better efficiency.”
David groaned and collapsed on the bed. His eyes lingered briefly on the English textbook lying barely touched on the desk beside his computer, still open to the first page of Macbeth. Had he read it, he might have noticed a touch of affinity for the Scottish king, who himself had been entrapped by his own web of deceit and sin. And he might have read the next story, story by Goethe about a man named Faust who made a bad deal with the devil. But he probably should have read the last story in the collection a learned a sense of irony—2001: A Space Odyssey.
