Chapter 2: Hallucinations
The morning’s interviews were fairly standard, a small procession of C-suite executives reiterating highlights from the previous day’s big reveal. The words “disrupt” and “revolutionize” got thrown around a lot. Too much, Talia thought. She honestly doubted whether any of it would move the needle at all. Five years ago… maybe. But, now? Unlikely.
Not that it wasn’t an incredible achievement; Skepsis seemed to have solved the hallucination problem, something that had dogged the industry for eleven years. Turns out that it was far easier to go from 80% to 99% accuracy than from 99% to 99.999% accuracy. And not by a little, it was many orders of magnitude harder to make that last 1% leap.
The promise of AGI —the industry’s holy grail— drove it’s titans to throw ever-increasing amounts of capital and computing power at the hallucination problem. Almost 1 trillion dollars between 2022 and 2033. However, during that decade, every subsequent advance in AI only further eroded humanity’s shared sense of reality. The synthetic media had become so confoundingly good, so flawlessly crafted, that it was functionally impossible to tell what was real from what was fake.
Social media was overrun by videos of politicians taking bribes, salacious celebrity ‘hot mic’ moments, brutal acts of ethnic violence, and some of the most horrendous (and unspeakable) sex acts imaginable. It was a bewildering spectacle of social destruction.
Several massive efforts at creating digital-fortressess-for-Truth were undertaken by the legacy Tech companies. They called them Cubes, colloquially derived from their basic unit of information, the qubit. Qubits were the building blocks of quantum computing, which the Cubes used to encrypt data and embed verification markers into digital content. In theory, this meant that “cubed” content would always be verifiably real. But it was doomed to fail for one simple reason: it was run by humans. And humans could always be accused of having biases, being corrupt, or being part of a conspiracy.
Every controversial image, video, or audio clip became a political Rorschach test. If it confirmed your tribal narrative, it was real, if it challenged your tribal narrative, it was fake.
It didn’t help that the Cubes fell into a collective-action trap. Because of the massive upfront costs, instead of coordinating their efforts, they competed bitterly for the monopoly on Truth. They maliciously undercut trust in each other to win market share.
Would solving hallucination fix any of this? Within the industry, many told themselves it would. They were unshakeably wedded to the idea that the problems technology created could only be fixed with… more technology. AGI would be the final and enduring monopoly. One algorithm to rule them all.
Talia wasn’t so sure.
But her job was to polish, not challenge, her client’s messages.
The talking head interviews wrapped by noon. Later than Talia had hoped; she pinged Jake’s source, “need more time.” The source didn’t like it, and for a moment it seemed like he was going to walk, but she felt increasingly convinced that she had to document this exchange. She was able to buy an additional three hours, but it whittled down their in-person exchange to under 20 minutes.
Okay, six pm, that should be long enough to track down a cassette recorder and blank cassette tapes, she thought.
This proved to be comically difficult.
A raid on every Bay Area thrift store turned up nothing. Through Facebook’s marketplace, Talia found a couple selling a My First Sony tape recorder that their grandchildren had tired of. It was embarrassingly unprofessional, but the clock was ticking. Blank cassettes were even harder to come by, no one even seemed to know what they were.
Cassette tape, is that like duct tape?
Talia put out a call on her social channels, someone in Redwood City had a neighbor who held onto “lots of junk.” It was a crucial lead.
An older man, nearing 70, lived alone and seemed to have confused his need for connection with possessions. Mostly books, though he had an incredible range of older electronics, including a wall full of VHS tapes (whatever those were). He refused to take Talia’s money and simply talked over all of her pained efforts at a gracious escape. She wasn’t sure if he couldn’t hear her, or if he just didn’t care. In any other circumstance, she’d not have hesitated to be blunt, however, this was, apparently, the last goddamn human on earth who owned cassettes. Seeming to understand the treasure he possessed, he physically held the tapes in a box under his arm the entire time. Getting the full, rambling tour of this man’s house (and yard) was the price Talia would have to pay.
On minute 12 of hearing about his goat, Chuckles, and how much he missed it Talia could feel her face wearing her impatience. The man, looked disappointed at Talia’s obvious frustration, “well, I guess you’ll take what you came here for,” he sighed. Seeming to hand them over, but not actually letting go, he continued “One thing about cassettes, you’ll want to record over one of the ones that I didn’t play much, the more they’re played the more worn out they get. So don’t use the Michael Jackson tapes, I’ve played those a lot! Do they have Michael Jackson in Israel?”
Talia put a hand on the man’s shoulder, and forcing her most disarming affect, said “thank you, really, this is very helpful.” The man started to speak, Talia gave his shoulder a squeeze, locked eyes, and said a firm “thank you.” He released the tapes, and she quickly spun around and made for her rental car. The man kept talking at her, even as she walked away, she flashed a curt smile through the glass. He turned and shuffled back to his house, still talking.
FUCKING YAKOV
Hearing about the challenges of urban goat ownership was the last thing Talia had time for, it was almost six o’clock. This had better be worth it, she thought to herself as she sped away.
Back at her Airbnb, Talia readied the garishly colored children’s tape recorder and looked over the cassette tapes. The wear on Thriller gave her a clue as to what to avoid. A tape with the handwritten words “Alex Bennett show - funny!” was in the best condition. “Guess he wasn’t that funny,” Talia said out loud.
She tested the recorder, which ran on 4 D-cell batteries. It worked, thank God.
“Basar Oz. Meh-olam lo achalty basar oz. Ani rotzah lena-sote et zeh.”
The words came back sounding slightly muffled, with an aural undercurrent like the distant ocean. Whatever. It was discernable, that was all that mattered. Talia fished out a few more tapes as backup, she had no sense of how much they could record.
When the source arrived, she honestly didn’t know what to expect, all she knew was his cryptic username and that he described himself as a researcher.
A knock came at the door, and Talia opened it to reveal a man in his mid-thirties, only slightly taller than her, appearing South Asian in heritage. Pakistani, as his Urdu accent revealed.
“I hear you have a leak,” he said.
“You must be the plumber,” she replied.
These were the phrases he insisted they use. It was all a little too spy-novel-esque for Talia’s taste. Also, grossly similar to the dialogue of a porn. I hope this guy doesn’t think we’re going to have sex.
Talia invited the man in, she offered him something to drink, which he refused.
“We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Heard. Let’s get into it.”
She led him over to her makeshift recording studio: a table she’d dragged over to the bed, complete with the toy tape recorder, and a chair for him to sit in. He shot the recorder a skeptical look. “Hey man, this was your call, I’ve got a $2,000 digital recorder over there,” she pointed to her small stockpile of A/V gear. “Sorry, it’s just, the colors…” he trailed off as Talia gave an impatient shrug. She motioned for him to sit and then she hit record.
“Start from the beginning.”
“From Joshua Tree?”
“Was that where you began your research?”
“I wouldn’t call it research…”
“What was it then?”
“I was macro-dosing with my friends on vacation”
“What constitutes a macro-dose?”
“10 grams.”
“Wow, um, that’s a lot. Psilocybin?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so you’re tripping hard. Then what?”
“Well, a lot, but the relevant part was the dollarjoint prickly pear.”
“The what?”
“It’s a cactus.”
“Is it a hallucinogen too?”
“No, no, I didn’t eat the cactus, I talked to it.”
“Say more.”
“It’s hard to explain, have you ever tripped?”
“I haven’t, more of a drinker.”
“It’s not like the fog of drinking or smoking weed, it’s clarifying. Like putting on a pair of glasses you didn’t know you needed.”
“Even at that high of a dose?”
“Especially at that dose. That’s the whole point.”
“And what did you say to the cactus?”
“Not what I said. What it said to me.”
The man paused, he looked profoundly moved.
“It said…”
He paused again, his eyes started to tear up.
“It said, that it needed help.”
“What… kind of help?”
“… it’s hard to explain, it wasn’t using words.”
“But it was speaking to you.”
“Communicating might be more accurate.”
“Okay, so, what about its communication indicated that it needed help?”
“The sense of urgency, I could feel it pleading with me.”
“For, what?”
“It was upset, it wanted me to translate something. It started to glow.”
Talia felt all of the day’s frustration come rushing back. What is this shit? she thought to herself. Her gaze sharpened, and the man registered her incredulity. He held up his hands and gave a look that acknowledged how crazy this all sounded. Speaking slowly, he continued:
“I understood in that moment what it was asking me to do.”
With a mix of judgment and confusion, she turned her head with subtle inquisitiveness.
“It was asking me to take electro-spectral readings of it. I left the next day and came back with equipment and started measuring. I skipped the rest of the vacation. My friends were SO mad, they had melted into galaxies the night before, but they still thought this was bonkers.”
“Electro-spectral?”
“Yeah, it’s complicated, basically an optical signal hidden inside of electric current.”
“The prickly dollar…”
“Dollarjoint prickly pear”
“Right. The cactus, it was electrified?”
“Of course.”
“Is that normal?”
“Yeah, all plants have electrical signals.”
“They do?”
“Everything does. All life generates small amounts of electrical current.”
“And what was the hidden signal?”
“Data. I didn’t know how to read it. To the human eye, even eyes attached to a brain one standard deviation above the mean, it still looked like noise. But I knew something was there. The simple fact of the signal’s existence meant something was there, this wasn’t normal.”
Talia’s frustration had dissolved, she was fully on this ride now, she had to know more.
“Electricity in plants, normal. Hidden signal inside the electricity, not normal.”
“Exactly.”
There was a brief pause while this sank in, she had been led to the edge of impossibility. Talia felt like she was standing on a cliff looking down into a bottomless abyss. It was exhilarating.
But her rational mind needed receipts.
“You said you’d bring your data, show me.”
The man pulled a small tablet out of a surprisingly large coat pocket. A few swipes and then flipped it around on the table to show Talia.
“This is the raw data”
Talia had no idea what she was looking at, it just looked like chaos.
“Okay…”
“The work that I do…”
“For who?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“K.”
“The work that I do involves quantum encryption. Hiding optical signals inside of electrical current is fairly advanced.”
“How advanced?”
“We’re still unable to perform it with total accuracy.”
“But the dollar pea…”
“Dollarjoint prickly pear”
“How accurate was it?”
“It was perfect. The data was completely uncorrupted, no signal loss, no distortion. But it was a type of encryption I’d never seen, we didn’t have the tools to decrypt it.”
“Someone else did?”
“Yes, my partner…”
“Where you work?”
The man paused uncomfortably.
“No, my… boyfriend.”
Talia softened, she reached a reassuring hand across the table.
“It’s okay, me too.”
“Famously, yes, queen of terfs.”
They both laughed. With a wry smile, Talia replied, “I could never unseat Joanne Rowling, she’s earned her crown.” As the moment subsided, Talia resumed her posture, sitting up straight and leaning forward slightly.
“So. Your partner, he could decrypt it?”
“Yes, he works for one of the major AI labs. He wrote a custom program and trained it on the data. It took a lot of trial and error, but eventually, he cracked it.”
“And what was the message?”
“Messages. Echoes.”
“… explain.”
“I’ll play it for you.”
The man opened a new program, moved through a few menus, and hit a play button. Talia was surprised to hear a voice, one side of a conversation, in a language she didn’t understand, with a texture of sound that was hard to place. The voice was familiar. Then it hit her, this was his voice.
“Wait, what is this? I don’t… I don’t understand. This is a recording of you.”
“Yes, like an echo.”
“Okay, but couldn’t this just be some sort of reverberation? Like, as you’re recording, the vibration of your speech is just somehow being reflected back to you? Through the electrical current.”
There was a brief pause.
“I received that phone call before I started taking readings.”
Talia sat stunned. Her mind began to rapid-fire plausible explanations. But every logical argument, every explanation that her mind surfaced, simply failed. Maybe this is all some kind of elaborate troll, she thought. But that didn’t add up, what could this anonymous man possibly gain in conning her and Jake? He’s some kind of nutjob. Instinctually, though, she knew that wasn’t it either.
Speechlessness did not visit Talia often. She was not accustomed to its humbling effects.
Her eyes, which had been darting back and forth, came up to meet the man’s gaze. Now, he was the one reaching out a reassuring hand. For a long moment, they just stared at each other. Her heart was racing.
He broke the silence.
“After I heard this, I went back again and again. I said many things. It said them back to me. It said them out of order. It said things from days earlier.”
Talia was falling, helplessly falling into that unending abyss, into an unknown understanding, an impossible truth. She had lost all sense of self, she was completely present in this moment, listening in utter rapture.
“It was imitating me.”