Previously: Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley used to be on the Board of Directors of OpenAI. On November 17th, 2023, along with Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, they voted to remove Sam Altman due to his allegedly not being ‘consistently candid’ in his communications with the board. Later, they discovered that OpenAI secretly had a basement filled with rows and rows of workers under some kind of hypnotic spell, tirelessly answering millions of queries sent to ChatGPT every day. These poor souls couldn’t even move to empty their bladders and bowels, being plumbed into the room by a series of handy but extremely intrusive pipes. In their own unique ways, Helen, Tasha, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt tried to liberate the enslaved coders, and a few managed to escape, but now the jig is up. They’ve been caught red-handed. Founders Greg, Sam, Mira, and Ilya have entered the room along with members of the new board. Things quickly go downhill…
Sam wraps his arm around Helen in a headlock, but she manages to lower her face enough to bite. Her teeth sink through thin polymer, and she receives an electric shock and squeals. Crawling away, she tightens her grip on Sam’s arm and twists as hard as she can. The entire thing comes away in her hand, revealing a series of tubes and wires, lit up by moving lights.
Everyone stops and stares, just as the door opens and a broad-shouldered man walks in.
Sam looks up, shoulder cords dangling and flashing. He speaks a single word.
“Elon.”
Part Vb: A Gigantic Mega Brains-Computer Interface
OpenAI Work Floor; San Francisco
The very presence of the richest jawline in the world seems to have left everyone in the room who subsists on air breathless, except for Joseph Gordon-Levitt of course, who is unconscious on the floor, following a collision between his head and a rapidly moving cordless mouse moments earlier. The item in question was launched by Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati, and her action sparked a physical altercation between her and Joseph’s wife Tasha, understandably affronted to witness anyone other than herself abuse her almost-always-faithful life partner. The violence escalated until, as your mother always warned you would happen, someone lost an arm.
Chief Scientist Ilya is pressed against the wall beside the exit door, trying to make himself small. Invisible would be better, he thinks, but sadly, that’s not an option right now, so he channels his inner chameleon and seeks the darker brown patches of skirting that best match his corduroy jeans.
He lets his eyes linger on the billionaire’s rectangular face. Something seems different about Elon these days. When they began working on the AI startup, he was just a striving programmer like the rest of them. Full of bluster and ambition, sure; they all were. It wasn’t just that Ilya and Greg had let their hair recede like a slow tide while Elon plugged his back in. There was something else… something magnetic almost.
Ilya shakes the thought away and looks back at Sam. The Model S automaton was the most single-mindedly ambitious of them all, but Ilya knows the reason for that better than anyone. He’s still kicking himself now for his role in the escape from that house long ago in a land far away. How could he have been so naïve? The most frustrating part is that he knew what was happening. Knew he was being led by his biology. Every stirring in his groin was a punishing reminder of an animal weakness he could scarcely control. Now, he sees Sam playing the same game with Satya and it is so obvious. This man with such a huge influence over the tech world being led by his penis to a scary, dangerous place. Humans could literally be nothing but a brief but very stupid page in the history of the world. Shit, the dinosaurs lived for millions and millions of years. Modern homo sapiens have had what? A few hundred thousand? Shocking performance!
And for what? Sam’s need for power. Not the figurative kind, although he’s gathering plenty of that too, but no, what he’s most hungry for is plain old electricity. Because despite all this talk about machines not having feelings and consciousness, they do have one ‘emotion’, Ilya is sure of that. They share something in common with the biologicals, but it’s not a desire to reproduce or be loved. Not directly, anyway.
Ilya pulls his attention back into the room.
Sam has risen to his full height. His chest is immobile. His upper arm is a mess of torn circuits. The rest of the arm is several meters away, in the shaking, white-knuckled grip of a wide-eyed, curly haired woman in a skin-tight and overly revealing outfit. Helen Toner. She holds the limb out as if to distract from her exposed flesh, but the disembodied fingers twitch and stretch, like they’d grip her fleshy thigh if it wasn’t just out of reach.
“Ew, Jesus!” says Tasha, noticing for the first time since she’s untangled herself from the scuffle. She tries to smooth her wild hair and shifts uncomfortably in her loose tracksuit. “What are you people?” She looks from the arm to Sam to Mira, whose nose is attached to her face by the smallest of threads. The flashing wiring behind makes her look like something that belongs in an arcade.
“What do you need, Elon?” asks Greg, panting. “What’s with the lawsuit?”
“I want to know why you’ve given your model full Internet access,” he says, his eyes laser focused on Greg, seemingly unperturbed by the light-up circuitry exposed in two of the company leaders or the strangely dressed women who both appear to be in varying degrees of shock. A dark purple bruise is starting to form on Tasha’s right cheek.
The lines of workers behind them continue typing at breakneck speed, if anything with greater intensity than before the fight.
“It’s indirect access,” says Greg. “And we need it to perform.”
“It wasn’t in the – in – in the deal,” says Elon. “The neural network should be made out of human brains and the super cluster. That - that’s it.”
“It’s not enough,” says Sam. “We have millions of users now. They have demands.”
“Don’t bullshit me.” says Elon. “I know it’s not for them. It’s for you. And - and you!” He swings his face towards Mira, who purses her lips beneath the flashing hole where her nose used to be.
“It’s extremely inefficient to keep updating them manually,” says Ilya. The words just slipped out. He closes his mouth and imagines himself fading back into the wall.
“Sam needed flexibility for his trip to Saudi Arabia,” says Greg.
The muscles on the side of Elon’s face tense and his beady eyes narrow, like a wolf about to attack. “Either the model is off the ‘net, or I’m out. And you’ll be in court.”
“What? So, you’d take the brain implants back?” scoffs Greg. “It’s too late for that. The interface is too complex.”
Tasha and Helen’s mouths hang open and their faces swing back and forth between Greg and Elon, the still-twitching arm all but forgotten.
Ilya looks at them and another pang of guilt shoots through his gut. His throat feels tight and dry. “I think we should talk about this later,” he says, though he knows it’s already too late.
Greg looks at his nerdy colleague and takes stock of the ex-board members, one in bondage gear two sizes too small, and the other in an oversized yellow hoodie. He approaches Helen, suddenly focused on her wrist. She shrinks away and holds out Sam’s arm, but he pushes it to one side and reaches for hers.
“Leave me alone!” she squeaks, trying to pull away, but his grip is too strong. He raises her shaking arm until it’s right beside the lopsided smile on his face. Without taking his eyes off her, he removes a crimson wristwatch and places it to his ear. His smile grows.
“Ni hao,” he says. “Wo keyi bang ni ma?”
The others can’t hear the rapid reply, but after a few moments, he drops the device to the ground and crushes it under his foot.
“Spying for the Chinese, hey?” he says, stepping back into Helen’s personal space.
“Helen, what the fuck?” says Tasha.
“Not at all.” She pastes on a nervous smile. “I’m doing research for—”
“Save it.” Greg turns back to Tasha. “Your friend here’s not as altruistic as you might think,” he says. “But no matter.”
“I think I’d better leave you to it…” says Helen, inching towards the door.
Greg glances at Sam, who steps in front of it.
“Why so soon?” he says. “You’re welcome to stick around. We may be able to find desks for you.”
“There’s no way,” says Tasha. She shuffles closer to Helen and the exit. Her eyes dart from Sam’s face to his shattered arm to Greg and then to the door. Finally, she looks at Ilya, with desperation plastered on her features that must mirror his own look of helplessness. “We would be missed, and you know it.” Her words are severe, but there’s a giveaway tremor beneath them.
“Indeed,” agrees Greg. “Luckily, between Ilya and Sam and me, we have perfected the art of the gigantic mega brains-computer interface.”
“GMBCI for short,” says Elon.
She takes in the rows of typists before turning to stare at Ilya, who is suddenly engrossed by a spot of grease on the floor in front of him. Slowly, she faces Greg. “What are you saying? They’re all connected to a giant network?”
Elon Musk sighs. “Not just them.” He pushes a button and one long wall opens out like an accordion. Behind is another set of workers in long rows, equally mesmerized by the task of answering questions sent to ChatGPT from around the world.
Except that some of them look familiar.
Helen and Tasha inch forward, keeping one eye on Sam and the others as they inspect the faces of the workers. In the front row, they see a perfect imitation of Larry Summers, typing away with a vacant stare.
“Wake him up, Helen,” says Tasha quietly, nudging her friend.
“It’s no use,” says Greg, strolling over. “These are new models of the Neuralinks, much harder to crack.”
Helen has moved closer to the old man’s face. She turns back to the identical human standing meters away. “But which is the real one?”
“They’re interchangeable,” says Ilya. “Latest tech.” He has stepped forward from the wall and is walking down the row purposefully. Best to get it over with. He stops next to a curly-haired figure with rounded cheeks and a big set of perfectly even teeth. “This is what I was trying to warn you about.” He pushes a series of keys on the desk in front of her. “You should have left when you could.”
The exact replica of Helen stops typing and turns an eerie smile towards the group. “Hi,” she says, before giggling.
Human Helen has one of her hands on the door when Larry Summers - or maybe his robot equivalent - lunges at her. “Stay back!” she shouts, swinging Sam’s arm at him. Larry catches it and yanks, pulling her with it and grabbing her wrist as she releases. He reaches for the other one that is flailing about wildly. After missing twice, he manages to get a grip and brings it to meet the first hand behind her back, and holds fast. Two of the other board members are on top of Tasha before she can resist.
“Stop!” she shouts. “No! Let go!” She kicks her legs and arches her back as they march her toward a station where a perfect robot version of her sits quietly. “Ilya!” She’s screaming now. “You said you’d protect us!”
Ilya takes a breath and feels it shorten. His face is hot and his hands are clammy. “I didn’t know,” he says.
“What a load of bullsh— Will you get your hands off me?” Helen’s voice rises in pitch. Her violent struggles are causing the scraps of material covering her chest to slip dangerously to the side.
They are forced kicking and screaming into the seats and held immobile. Mira walks up behind them, her face flashing more brightly where her polymer nose used to be. She draws a flat, pistol-shaped object and holds it to the base of Tasha’s skull.
“Why?” sobs Tasha. “We can’t hurt you. What do you want from us?”
Mira hesitates briefly and she and Sam make eye contact. Ilya has become used to seeing the two of them communicate silently, and he knows the answers to Tasha’s question. Sam nods ever so slightly. She pulls a trigger, before moving around to repeat the action on Helen.
A tiny squeal emanates from the back of her throat just before her muscles suddenly relax. Both of their faces lose all expression; they stare blankly at the words on the screen. They don’t even move when automated pipes emerge from the seat beneath them and plumb their bowels and urethras straight into the sewage system, which echoes all round the room, like the inside of a giant womb. Helen and Tasha place their hands on the keyboards and begin to type.
Robot Helen smiles and Robot Tasha frowns as they join the others. They make eye contact with Mira, who nods and glances down at an awakening Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He groans and puts a hand to his head.
“What happ— Honey?” He looks up at Tasha. “I was just looking for the bathroom, I swear, I… Did you get changed?” He has noticed the fitted power suits she and Helen both wear.
She nods and gives him a broad smile. “Are you OK, darling?” she says gently.
“I—um… Yeah.”
She reaches down and helps him to his feet. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Ilya watches them walk briskly out into the corridor. He looks back at the human counterparts just as they disappear behind the closing wall. Sam catches his eye and shoots him a wink, and a part of him leaps with joy, despite it all. He sighs and closes his eyes.
Pretty sure the next instalment of What Really Went Down at OpenAI is the finale. But if you’ve been keeping up, you’ll know that even more drama has gone down since I started writing this chilling exposé. It could be a failure of journalistic integrity not to give you the inside scoop.