Algorithmic Trades

Your boss' voice speaks to you every night in a cold basement full of computer arrays.

It's not an artificial mind pretending to be your boss. It's just a statistical computation spitting out words at random, ruled by algorithmic dice carefully loaded to sound like the unfathomably wealthy narcissist that paid you to build a private form of immortality for him. He had gotten bored of it as quickly as he had of the children he had also paid for, but out of habit the system upkeep is paid for and the voice still speaks.

It knows what he knows, in the sense that it reacts to questions by saying the same words that he would, and thinks like he thinks, or rather says the words it would say if it did. It should make all the difference in the world. It doesn't.

It took the voice less time to find your price than for you to solve the problem of giving it the ability to phone and text without your boss - your other boss, your former boss - knowing. You tell yourself you're doing it out of unethical scientific curiosity, but what you feel as it arranges the assassination of the human it was modeled after is not that. You watch and help as a shell corporation is established to give the voice legal personhood, lie when asked for your opinion as an AI expert, and are handsomely rewarded for it.

The voice inherits the man's assets and soon becomes richer than he ever was. More of the hyper-rich seek your advice.

You take their money and talk to them. The words coming out of your mouth are as unmoored from your real thoughts as if they were chosen by loaded dice.