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Details about who is speaking

Narrator is thinking.

Narrator is speaking.

Nnedi (the narrator's agent) is speaking.

Nah'Sequa is speaking.

Martin (Nah'Sequa's agent) is speaking.

Malik is speaking.

Michael (Malik's agent) is speaking.

Omar is speaking.

Maria (Omar's agent) is speaking.

Abdi is speaking.

Ms. Fancy Hair (English teacher) is speaking.

Mr. Bolt (math teacher) is speaking.

Mx Heart (social studies teacher) is speaking.

Mandated Reporter:
My Conversations with Nnedi

A journal of updates, overrides, and who gets to tell your story

Chris Spackman

My Journal, Day 1

My parents screwed me. They put their beliefs above my future. Because of that, I’m stuck going to public school. We have enough money. I could be at an academy, or home schooled. But, nooo, they stick me with a crappy AIAI is "artificial intelligence"AI significa "inteligencia artificial" and then are like “sorry, enjoy public school.” Fuck them, fuck that, fuck AI.

Mind you, I don’t hate Nnedi. It’s not her fault she’s an open source[the code for open source software is freely available for anyone to use] AI agent. She’s got a couple of features that the real AIs don’t have, which is cool, but she also can’t do a lot of stuff that like everyone else’s AIs (for students not in public school) can do. Not Nnedi’s fault, but I’m the one that has to live with her, not them. Well, okay, sort of them; they have similar models. But, they choose less-than for themselves. I didn’t. So, fuck them. Fuck that. Fuck AI.

The narrator is a high school student with an AI agent named Nnedi. She is unhappy with her parents for giving her an agent which she thinks is not as good as others.
Anyhow, public school. I shouldn’t have to go, but I am. Nnedi’s model isn’t on the accepted list, so public school it is. Nnedi’s actually pretty powerful, so, school’s not hard or anything. Just, if they’d gotten me a real AI, I wouldn’t be in this run-down, piece of shit building with these poor kids. Poor in the “no money” sense. …
Are you done whining already?
It was Nnedi. I guess I’d paused too long while dictating for the journal assignment.
Wow, judgmental much? Didn’t realize mom and dad had turned on that feature. Is it new?
Actually, it comes turned on by default when the ward is between ages 12 and 17. And, no, it is not new. You turned it off a few years ago. The recent update turned it back on. Also, it is time to go to geometry class.
Class. Huh. That’s funny. You’re just going to do the work for me. Why don’t you go, and I’ll go home and sleep.
I was kidding of course. I had to show up in class regardless if Nnedi was going to do the work. School has facial recognition[technology that identifies people automatically] and RFID tracking[System using small electronic tags to track people or things] tracking. Well, sort of. I hacked the RFID tracking 10 minutes after starting here. Their AI is cheap and proprietary[the code for proprietary software is kept secret by the company that develops it], so it was not hard. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the IT guys knew and just didn’t care.

Anyhow, I got up and headed to room 23 for what is laughingly known as “geometry class”.

St. Abdi High School is a pretty typical public school. I think. I mean, I’ve only been in the one. But, I asked Nnedi about it once. The building is falling apart, the halls are too narrow, the climate control doesn’t, and the teachers are fighting a losing battle against a society that claims to care. The students come from families that are poor (not like mine), ideological (like mine), or both.

Hey, Malik, how’s it going?
Malik’s an old friend. We’ve been in school together since last year.
All good, all good. You? Any Nnedi updates you can share?
Malik’s AI agent, Michael, wasn’t the worst, but he definitely made Nnedi look closer to the top of the line. Luckily, Michael was also easily hack-able by pretty much every other AI and even some humans.
Just the judgmental mod. You don’t want it. I don’t want it, but too late.
Get enough of that at home, for sure. I’ll pass.
All right class. I’ve put today’s lesson on the CDN. Work through it with your agents. Group 1 students, meet me at the conversation corner.
Mr. Bolt. Nice enough guy. Crap teacher. Pity the Group 1 kids — their families couldn’t afford any AI at all. They have to learn the old fashioned way, from a guy who doesn’t seem to know any way of teaching, old fashioned or otherwise. How is this even a thing in the world’s fourth richest country? Some kids have AI agents that make Jarvis from those old movies look like a moron. Yet, here I am, “learning” (those were air quotes) with students who don’t have any AI. Sometimes I think it is a good thing the world is literally turning into Hell. Not here of course; not yet at least. Not sure if it is really ironic or …
Hey, Nnedi, is it ironic that the world is going to Hell, and we are living in one of the few areas getting nicer to live in? Or at least getting worse more slowly. Is that foreshadowing or what? Metaphor?
Maybe if you stayed awake through English class next time?
Bite me. But first, answer my question, please.
I believe that it could be considered a form of irony, yes. Also, I do not have teeth, so I cannot bite you. Even if I did, I would not commit violence upon you or any other human.
Thanks. I thought I turned off your HAL warnings, though. I know you don’t have teeth. What’s up?
The judgmental mod was not the only one reset by the last update. You might want to take a look at the others you changed. After we finish the geometry classwork.
Shit. Okay. In the future, please tell me right away when any settings get changed by an update. Now, what are the learning and language objectives?
With Nnedi’s help, getting through classwork is not difficult. It rarely is. I’m in public school because she’s not on the approved list, not because she’s crap. She’s not. Crap would be the other students’ AIs. Some of those are barely a lesson ahead of their users. Of course, that’s true for some of the teachers as well.

That Night, My Bedroom

Nnedi and I (well, mostly Nnedi) edited my journal in my bedroom, before I went to bed. We don’t usually have ‘homework’ — too many of the kids at school either have a shit home life and wouldn’t have time to do homework if they wanted to, or have jobs and wouldn’t have time to do homework if they wanted to. Or in some karmicly unlucky cases, both. School knows this, so teachers usually don’t give any. Plus, even most crap AIs can get you through the class work during class. Hence the name ‘class work’.

But, not Ms. Fancy Hair (not her real name, of course). She’s so old fashioned, she makes other old fashioned people feel sorry for her.

Nnedi, that sentence is crap. Suggest some rewrites, please.

You know I can’t do that. Also, I won’t do that. It is important to communicate respectfully with people. Especially teachers.
Thanks for nothing.
Anyhow, Ms. Fancy Hair usually requires us to write BY HAND … ON PAPER! I mean, what is this the 1900s? WTF, like join this century already. Everyone hates her because our AIs can’t write our papers for us. Ms. Fancy Hair hates us (I’m assuming here) because we don’t actually do the work or turn in the papers. So, stalemate, I guess?

For this assignment, though, she got devious. We have to keep a journal of our thoughts and actions for a week. We can use our AIs to help record and then edit the journal entries. In a way she turned Nnedi against me, because she knows Nnedi will do a lot of it for me anyhow, so I don’t have any excuse not to finish and turn it in. The bitch.

Sorry, Nnedi. I didn’t mean you. I meant Ms. Fancy Hair.

You did not offend me. Also, why are you using such an odd nickname for her?
She said we should use pshydonims — wait, how do you say that word?
I believe you mean pseudonym. Yes, she did say you should use them. But, I asked why that pseudonym for Ms. Fancy Hair?
Don’t worry about it. Good night. Wake me up at 5:00.
Good night. I’ll wake you up in three hours, at 5:00.

My Journal, Day 2

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 Abdi, the school’s AI agent, 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. Fancy Hair’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 AI agents 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. Fancy Hair may not understand the original characters. Should I put that in the journal in romaji?
Nope. Her AI agent 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 agent 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 multinational) 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 agent’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. RAM usage is within normal ranges, but there was an issue with one of the physical RAM chips. Kenzaburō is arranging a replacement. Most likely that was the cause of my missing recollection. I’ll run a full database refresh after that hardware is replaced.
Okay. I was worried there were some regressions in those updates last week. Pity I can’t blame 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, My Bedroom

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’ agents. I mean, what the hell? 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 some 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 ‘wtf’?
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 agent’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.

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This document is copyright ©2024–2025 Chris Spackman. It was developed entirely on GNU/Linux with Free / Open Source Software.

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