BOFH: Boss's quest for AI-generated program ends where it should've begun
With SUM()
by Simon Travaglia · The RegisterEpisode 19 "Don't tell me!" I blurt, as the Boss wanders into Mission Control with a characteristically blank expression. "You're here about your printer being out of red toner?"
"Is it?" he shoots back, confused. "No, I'm here becau-"
"It's the network isn't it?" the PFY says. "There's been some lumpiness because, for some reason, one of our Beancounters is trying to mirror a VM to his desktop – and we keep turning his network port off at the 75 percent mark."
"No, I-"
"Ah, it's the meeting room free/busy displays!" I say. "We don't know how those pictures got on there, but rest assured that the Head of HR's Morris Dancing highlights will soon be a thing of distant memory."
"I'm not here to talk about that!" he snaps.
"Oh, what can we help you with?"
"I'm trying to get AI to write a program to sum up some numbers."
"What numbers?" the PFY asks.
"It doesn't matter what numbers, I just need AI to write me the program."
"Where are the numbers?" I ask.
"Well, for the moment they're in a spreadsheet, but they could be anywhere."
"And you've heard of the SUM() function?" I suggest.
"Yes, I know there's a SUM function – but I want a program in case I wanted to do something else with the numbers."
"You mean like AVERAGE(), MAX(), MIN(), LARGE(), STDEVA(), etc? The possibilities are quite extensive."
"Yes, but what if I wanted to do a math function that Excel doesn't have?"
I pause momentarily to think about the Boss's levels of creativity and mathematical insight.
"That function doesn't exist," I reply. "In any case, your underlying assumptions are flawed."
"Flawed in what way?"
"You don't need to ask AI to write you a program to sum up some numbers, you just need to ask AI to sum up the numbers."
"I don't follow?"
"The 'program' bit is redundant. It would be like Henry Ford using his assembly line to make machines to make cars, instead of making the cars themselves."
"I..." the Boss says, confused.
"Just ask AI to sum up the numbers."
"Yes, but..." the Boss says, petering out.
"But?"
"If I wrote a program, I would always be able to use it."
"If you wrote a program?"
"Well, if AI wrote a program," the Boss admits. "If I had the program, I'd always be able to add those numbers, even if AI went away."
"In the scheme of things, I think it's more likely that Excel and programming will go away before AI will."
"I don't think that's very likel-"
"Oh, it'll happen," I say. "That's why I'm so pleased to be much nearer the end of my career than the beginning. Anyway, you're working on the the wrong AI."
"You mean I should change from Copilot to ChatGPT? Or Gemini?"
"No, I mean smart money is working on a personal AI."
"Personal AI?"
"Yeah, an AI that works for you. It knows you, it understands what you want, and it can encompass the SUM() of your mental abilities."
"So it would be quite powerful?"
I contemplate the Boss again.
"I shouldn't think so. Anyway, your personal AI will be the thing of the future that'll interface with all the larger AI instances in the world. So you won't be asking AI to write you a program to sum some numbers, then asking it to not sum the numbers that way, then saying you didn't mean sum, you meant average, no, actually, on second thoughts, you wanted the standard deviation, wait a minute, could you get sum, and standard deviation, etc. Your personal AI will do that. It will likely do the simple stuff, like summing numbers, itself, but it'll talk to larger AIs for you – eliminating ambiguity in the requests and then testing the results for sanity."
"Is that even possible?"
"It's not only possible, it's happening right now. The PFY has a simple personal AI up and running on his desktop, although at the moment his main focus is on personal AI security."
"Personal AI Security?" the Boss echoes.
"Of course. You've just created a tool that knows more about you and how you think than you probably do. It's a veritable gold mine for hostile AI."
"A gold mine?"
"Sure! You get your personal AI to ask a big AI for the top ten restaurants near you serving chicken jalfrezi and the big AI – which happens to be hostile – starts a conversation with your AI to 'narrow down your likes and dislikes with related questions' – a conversation that includes what you like in a jalfrezi, how many jalfrezis you've had in the past, where else you like to eat, who you like to eat with, if you eat at home, what you eat at home, how soon after meals you go to bed, whether you watch TV between meals and bed, what shows you watch, how many pairs of underpants you have, what your social media passwords are – AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, you see your holiday snaps are on the free/busy meeting room displays at your workplace."
"But how will I know which AIs are hostile?" the Boss gasps.
"They're all hostile," the PFY says. "They all want your information."
"Although most of them don't have access to our meeting room free/busy displays," I admit.
"I... think I'll just use the SUM() function," the Boss says, slowly backing out of Mission Control.
"For now you will..." I say, as the Boss eases quietly out the door.
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