THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE WATSON INTELLIGENCE

Madeleine George

Seriocomic

ELIZA, 30s

ELIZA is a computer genius who has plans to develop a system far superior to IBM’s Watson, which beat the three Jeopardy champions. Here, she is having a conversation with Watson (the computer), about her recently torrid love affair with a computer technician from the Dweeb Squad—whose name is WATSON.

ELIZA Anyway it’s not just the sex. It’s that . . . this guy knows me. And his learning curve is insane, I mean, I’ve only been with him a few times and he already knows things about me I didn’t even know about myself. Like, the third time he came over he brought me an LED color-changing showerhead—I don’t know if you’re familiar with the technology? You screw it in and it turns your shower into a wet and wild disco, or that’s how he described it when he was standing there in my bathtub installing it without even asking my permission. It’s actually a pretty ingenious little piece of engineering, and it turns out you can have a pretty great time in there if you turn off the lights and—anyway the point is, this is not an item I would ever, ever have brought into my home, and how did he know? That I would actually love a wet and wild disco shower? It’s some kind of crazy predictive algorithm he’s running—not just mirroring; it’s enhanced, somehow. It’s way more sophisticated than anything you can do, buddy, no offense. He always knows what I want. Half the time he gives it to me before I even ask. And he genuinely doesn’t seem to want anything in return. With Frank, everything he ever did for me was just the opening move of some calculating transaction. This guy is . . . I would have to describe him as preternaturally chill. Purely, perfectly self-contained. I mean, I don’t understand the mechanism. I can’t begin to guess how he actually came about. And I know it sounds too I-Robot-y to be real, but I honestly can’t think of any other rational explanation for what’s going on. There’s no way I could feel this way about a normal human guy. And you know what they say: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.