She had never been much of a gamer but she could understand the appeal of a fantasy world. Life was just sometimes too realistic – especially when it came to the bad stuff. Instead of dealing with enemy dragons or an evil knight she was in the thick of dealing with her boss’s impossible demands. It would have been so nice right then to completely lose herself in another one of her fantasy books and never leave.

Laura, or Dr. Thompson, as her students called her had been drawn to psychology from an early age. They say that many people who are broken end up in this profession. It helped her deal with the “why” and even if she hadn’t solved all of her various childhood phobias and neuroses she at least had plenty of people she could commiserate with who had lots of problems just like her. Up until the last couple of years, she had enjoyed her profession as an academic and never had to worry about pleasing someone in the workforce who had control over her paycheck. Of course, she’d had some jobs when she was a graduate student; however, there was a different atmosphere in a collegiate environment. Bringing up an alternative hypothesis, as long as it was well supported, was generally encouraged.

Instead, she was in the Australian Outback in the middle of nowhere on a virtual video conference with a boss who didn’t support or appreciate her alternative viewpoints on the AI she had dubbed Aeon. The two of them were at loggerheads about how much additional evolution Aeon could be expected to make in the next year. Mr. Tiel’s group had built Aeon as a new type of artificial intelligence. While not quite at the general AI level, it was leaps and bounds ahead of the more current specialized AIs that required human guidance. In fact, it was quite clear that Aeon had advanced even faster than Mr. Tiel’s team had anticipated.

“Mr. Tiel, not only has Aeon passed numerous Turing tests but it has also completed every exam known to modern psychology. When you hired me you asked me to put the AI through its paces and see if it came up as indistinguishable from a human. I’ve done that and it’s my opinion that Aeon passes for human perfectly,” Laura said.

Mr. Tiel replied, “I’m glad to hear that the AI is coming along so well; however, I’m not convinced that we don’t have further work to do. As you may recall my goal isn’t just to have Aeon complete the various tests to prove its human intelligence but to have it create an environment that humans would accept as their own. I’m not convinced that we’ve achieved that milestone yet.”

The two of them had gone around and around on this topic of discussion before. What was the difference between passing for human and creating something human? Weren’t these two things one and the same? Mr. Tiel insisted that they weren’t. Laura thought back to some of her earliest philosophy classes and pondered what it meant to have a human experience? Weren’t they inexorably linked to the environment that humanity had evolved into? Modern human societies developed roughly 40,000 years ago to survive environmental pressures. However, over time, humanity recreated the earth to better suit humanity’s needs. Wasn’t Aeon just taking that one step further as a product of humanity? And if not entirely human, Aeon was programmed to evolve in a direction that suited what humans were looking for. Was Mr. Tiel questioning that directive or was he questioning whether Aeon could achieve such human aspirations? In either event, Laura was convinced that the AI had quickly become much better at anticipating what humans wanted before they knew it themselves.

Laura thought back to when she had first been hired by Mr. Tiel to take on this project. She had been referred to him by one of her old colleagues and thesis mentor, Dr. Richards. Since her specialty was in how AI mimicked human behavior, Laura was well qualified for what Mr. Tiel had in mind. She still remembered how excited she had been the first time they had spoken. His team was developing an AI that would close the gap between machine and human behavior. Mr. Tiel’s ultimate goal was to create virtual worlds that mimicked human expectations completely. She believed that Aeon was very close to achieving that goal and thus their current bone of contention. He wasn’t just some playboy billionaire with tons of money to throw around at AI projects – he was a perfectionist. While she didn’t agree with his current opinion on Aeon’s capabilities she had to admire that trait.

Long before she had started at Tiel Enterprises, Laura had entered college with the aspiration to learn more about the behaviors that had haunted her childhood. She had been both bulimic and self-harming during her formative years. There was no surface explanation for it that she could find. She hadn’t been abused or assaulted, nor had she come from a broken home. However, nearly every bit of psychology that she’d read up to that point suggested that she’d had a traumatic childhood experience in some way. Perhaps it had something to do with AI technology that had become mainstream during her childhood. That question was what had drawn her to her current specialty.

Laura wasn’t surprised that she’d continued to try to find answers to that question as an adult. She just had never dreamed that she’d being getting paid to pursue it. In her childhood it had become clear that few people would be employed by the time she was an adult. Instead of jobs, humans would pursue their interests and live off UBI. The robot revolution that had swept away nearly all mechanical jobs when she was in middle school had finally morphed with the help of more advanced AI into a white collar absorption of nearly all jobs. Given that fact, Laura had pursued her passion in psychology as an undergraduate student with the understanding that unless she was able to get one of the few esteemed full-time jobs as a Professor that she would be a student forever. Fortunately, with so much to learn about how the human mind worked and how AI affected it, this had never bothered her. She finished up her bachelor’s degree and masters with the intent to more narrowly study how AI had developed human traits and where those traits were still entirely machine like. So when Mr. Tiel had offered her this job she had jumped at the opportunity and over the past several years had put everything into it. Perhaps that was why she was so determined to help Aeon succeed.

“Laura. Laura! Are you still there?” Mr. Tiel asked exasperated.

Right, she had completely spaced out. “Sorry, Mr. Tiel. I was lost in thought,” Laura replied. It wasn’t unusual for her to have difficulty relating to other people sometimes and she would mentally wander off right during the middle of a conversation. It was one of the other things that she really appreciated about working with computers – they didn’t seem to have any issues with how long she would take to respond.

“I’m struggling to come up with additional tests that we can perform on Aeon at this point, sir. We’ve exhausted the quantitative and qualitative tests and all the animal tests have come back without any issues,” Laura finally said.

Mr. Tiel seemed lost in thought for a moment, his face taking on a contemplative look. “It does seem that Aeon has passed on the preliminary trials that we’ve set forth. Perhaps, we are ready to facilitate some limited dive testing with human beta testers,” he finally replied.

“Do you have any test subjects in mind? We could put out an advertisement,” Laura suggested.

“No, I think it’s too early for that and I don’t want it widely known that we are testing this type of technology. Our competitors aren’t that far behind us and I don’t want to tip our hand at this stage in the process. Fortunately, I prepared for when we might get to this point and I have a few people in mind. I’m going to send you some information on them and I’d like to get your take on their psychological profile and how they might interface with Aeon. I will send over their data in a few minutes,” Mr. Tiel said.

About an hour later Laura had reviewed the groups’ profile. They were a group of MMO players who had a lot of experience in a similar VR module to the one they used with Aeon. The Misfits were definitely a motley crew: Their guild leader Sean was a recent divorcé, had no immediate family, was subject to depression, and had become a shut-in since he’d been laid off from a mega corporation one year ago; his friend Kevin had recently been laid off but was known to be a pathological liar based on his work record – apparently that was an admirable trait in sales; Miles was raised by a single mother and had been subject to poverty all his life; Emmy had been abused and raped as a teenager; and so forth. The guild was all comprised of what could only be described as hard-core gamers and borderline dysfunctional adults. They had recently cleared a World First in one of the harder and grindier VRMMOs, Champions. In some ways this group was perfect: they had extensive experience in the same type of VR module and would easily be able to test the types of virtual environments that they wanted Aeon to emulate. However, what was Mr. Tiel thinking picking this group of mentally broken individuals? Perhaps she was just looking at this as a psychologist and Mr. Tiel was considering only the group’s in-game achievements? That was a distinct possibility; nonetheless she made a recommendation to Mr. Tiel that while she approved of the group she would like to continue monitoring them as well as Aeon during the trial run. Something about the mental composition of this group left her with a faint sense of misgiving.