“And…. Send!” Bella did her trademark sign off flourish while pressing the send button, as always.
In this day and age of instant advice on tap, people still waited to
hear from her.
She only posted two answers a day, but the views on those two answers
made up 20% of the total traffic on the website. Not a mean feat by any
standard. No wonder brtdr.xyz paid her so well and did everything to retain
her.
Bella, born Bela Ravindran, moved to the USA like a lot of people from
her state, to complete her master’s degree in computer science. Admissions were not easy then, and every win
was celebrated by the whole community. She still remembered the sendoff party
thrown in her honour. The entire neighbourhood was there.
Bella had come to the Land of Dreams. She got help from the seniors who
had travelled before her. She completed her Masters successfully, graduated
(how proud her Amma and Appa were that day), and got a job.
That went on for five years – job, marriage, and a divorce. At the end
of five years, Bela found herself divorced, alone, and laid off.
It was the season of layoffs. She just happened to be on the wrong list
at the wrong time. That’s how it was for literally hundreds of folks like her.
In some cases, like hers, the person losing the job was also the sole
breadwinner for the family.
Desperate times, as they say, call for desperate measures. While
browsing, she bumped into this website – brtdr.xyz. Random strangers could
share their problems and offer advice to each other. Just the thing she needed.
Pretty soon, she was addicted – spending hours on the website – venting
out her own frustrations and giving advice to others.
******************************
“I am here to confess.” The voice was calm. The speaker was standing
straight. Not tall, but straight enough. Her hair looked matted. At any rate,
they were open and not tied up or styled in any way. She was dressed in a loose
one-piece western dress.
Arundhati, the lady constable, got up very quickly. Something about the
tone was sinister. In a police station, one rarely heard the words, “I am here
to confess” voluntarily. From women, even less so.
“Please come this way.” Arundhati pointed to a room to her left.
Later, Arundhati’s boss would praise her for this moment of poise and
equanimity. Probably, this one moment of poise made all the difference to the
case.
In the room, the lady started by saying that her name was Swapna. She
was the survivor of fifteen years of domestic abuse – physical, financial, sexual,
and emotional.
Being an orphan, she had no one to go to – a fact well understood and
exploited by her husband, Nagesh. Nagesh wooed her softly for over four months,
whispering into her ears how good-looking she was and how little his life meant
without her. After her parents’ death, the relatives had given her only
shark-like bites to eat into her inheritance. No love. She was an easy prey.
They married within six months of being introduced. And she was put to
work the very next day.
Nagesh was a mathematical genius in his own way. During the day, she was
a teacher in a government school. This ensured job security, minimal work, and
pension after retirement. Also, access to free health and medical facilities.
By night, she was a worker in a very different industry. This ensured highest
revenue per minute of time spent working. Sure, the work was dangerous, but
Nagesh wasn’t the one getting hurt.
This way, he maximized her earning potential. When not playing one of
these two roles, she was, obviously, his default housekeeper and bartender.
And this was the hell that Swapna suffered for two years before breaking
down in front of a colleague one day. The colleague, Shanti, was shocked and
didn’t know what to say. Most of them did face some kind of domestic abuse, but
many of the girls these days were able to save themselves by threatening
divorce. No one wanted to divorce a government employee. It was tough to become
one (government jobs have the toughest selection criteria), and tougher still
to find one worth marrying.
Shanti advised Swapna to meet an NGO lady. The NGO lady counselled her
and threatened Nagesh. Things got better for a fortnight or so. Then, slowly,
they began again. In innocuous ways. “Won’t you get me a drink, the queen of my
life?”, “Who will I share a drink with, if not the one who rules my heart? All
my thoughts are about you. All my dreams are yours.”
Then, they slowly became sinister. Until, six months later, she was in
the same hell all over again.
She blamed herself, of course. But didn’t know how to break this cycle
with Nagesh.
After nine years of this perennial cycle, everyone, including herself,
just gave up. She surrendered to her fate.
The pattern perpetuated.
“So, what changed today?” Arundhati asked gently.
“There’s this website. My friend told me about it. I go there to just
vent. We can just talk to strangers, get advice, give advice, just speak our
heart out. It’s all anonymous. No one knows anyone else. I found this to be a
very safe space where I could really say what was happening with me.
On this website, there is this feature – Bella’s Advice Column. Bella
picks up any two posts and shares her advice on them. Bella’s advice is usually
spot on. It is very specific. It tells the person what to do, how to do it, and
when to do it. Like, it’s as if a guide is standing there talking to you.
So many people have followed Bella’s advice and their life has changed.
Whether it is doing simple things like melatonin to fall asleep, or bigger
things like community property in divorce cases, Bella is very real in what’s
possible and what’s not, and very helpful.
I have been writing to Bella for advice for years now. Never got
accepted.
Last week, Bella finally featured my problem.
I followed her advice.”
“What was her advice?”
“The only way out of this mess is to kill my husband. Nothing else. Just
kill him. If I want to live my life in peace, even inside a prison, that life would
be better than what I am going through now.”
Arundhati wanted to gasp. But didn’t. She repeated slowly, “Bella… told…
you… to…kill…your…..husband…..and….go….to…prison?”
“Yes.”
“And….you…..followed….that….advice…..to…..a…..T?”
“Yes.”
“Why? You could have run away. You didn’t even need to kill. You could
have divorced the fellow!”
“I tried the divorce route. You, madam, know what hell it is for a woman
seeking divorce from a man who refuses. You make women go from family
counselling to father judges who advise us to “adjust”. You never have that
advice for the husband. In the meantime, he would come and threaten me. Create
public nuisance until no friend would have me in her house. No owner would rent
a property to me.
You said I could have run away after killing him. But I could not have –
for two reasons. One, you would have found me. Two, I don’t want to live my
life like a fugitive. I want to use my own documents and be my own self.”
Arundhati had the presence of mind to show absolutely no emotional
reaction whatsoever. She got a glass of water for Swapna to drink.
A police psychologist was summoned. She spoke with Swapna and certified
that she was in a sound mental state and was making this confession voluntarily
- no duress or influence – of people or substance.
While this was not necessary, the police officers thought it best to go
through this before deploying any manpower on the case and sending police
personnel to a so-called crime scene.
Once the formalities were completed, Arundhati sent a team to the crime
scene.
The man was dead. No doubt about it. Other than that, the house was neat
and clean. There wasn’t that much to process at the crime scene, but they still
took pictures and fingerprints.
The police team, led by Arundhati, took Swapna into custody, and made
the case file with the chargesheet. This was an easy case.
*********************
ACP Rajeshwari Das was rocking her flexible office chair. Her face was
tilted upwards and the eyes were closed. This usually happened when she was
thinking her way out of a tricky problem. The “Do Not Disturb” sign outside her
door was on.
But the seats in front of her were not empty. One of them was occupied
by Jatin. Jatin was Swapna’s lawyer. Swapna, who had confessed and requested a speedy
trial, was not granted her wish. A government lawyer was defending her. That
government lawyer was Jatin.
After meeting Swapna a few times, Jatin had been convinced that he did
not want this woman to suffer for a murder that was inevitable.
The poisoning was deliberate and pre-meditated, so he could not argue
insanity or self-defence.
He then used that brilliant lawyer brain and filed for “influence”. The
columnist called Bella had a position of influence as far as the subject
(Swapna) was concerned. She had used that influence to not just encourage, but
almost coerce Swapna into committing an illegal act – by saying that this was
the ONLY way for her to live peacefully. Not only that, it must also be noted
that prior to Bella’s “suggestion”, the idea of murder had not occurred to the
person accused. It was neither her original intent, nor her idea. She had only
been used as the execution device.
Therefore, the chargesheet must be modified to include the columnist who
writes as Bella as the primary accused. Swapna was under undue influence at the
time of committing the murder. Further, Bella materially coerced the subject,
Swapna, by indicating that this was "The only way” for her to live
peacefully.
Arundhati had forwarded the submission to ACP Das. She had to admire the
creativity of the young man. She wanted this case disposed of quickly. In the
interest of time, she asked her assistant to reach out to Jatin and call him
for a meeting.
**************
After listening to Jatin’s thoughts, ACP Das was inclined to agree with
him. A battered woman anyway loses half her mind every day. Added to that was
the fact that Swapna had tried every other choice – separation, divorce, police
case for domestic violence, family counselling, everything. This man was making
it impossible for her to lead a normal life. To such a person, the idea that
murder was the only way to live peacefully, would appear to be logical and
true.
And it was also true that prior to this advice, Swapna had never
considered murdering Nagesh. The idea was planted in her mind for the first
time by that advice columnist. The specificity of the plan had made it possible
for her to execute the said plan. Both the idea and the method were given by
the columnist. Swapna executed it, presumably under undue influence.
“Madam,” Jatin was still speaking, “This is the same as a woman who
kills her children under the influence of some tantrik[1].
We also charge the tantrik under the same Section 302[2].
This case is identical. These advice columnists are the new tantriks.”
“Where does this advice columnist live?”
“We don’t know, ma’m. The Whois entry[3]
of the website itself is also masked. We know nothing about where this Bella is
from. But that alone should not stop us from making her a co-accused.”
“Jatin, the difference between the tantrik and Bella is this – we have
jurisdiction over the tantrik. The main reason you are doing this is to get
bail for Swapna, no? You apply for bail. I see no reason for us to contest it.
She is a good person. Don’t think she will go out and do anything stupid. Let
this case be. Don’t weaken it unnecessarily with this Bella nonsense. I promise
to think about this some more. You have raised an important point. But in this
case, I am not changing the chargesheet. Sorry.”
ACP Das closed the file with finality.
“Madam, I am not asking to add Bella only for bail. I ask because Swapna
will not be the only woman going to these anonymous websites to vent. Do think
about what I am saying. You are in a state that prides itself on its track
record on prosecuting digital crime. Isn’t this also a form of digital crime?
Inducing murder, sitting far away from the hands of the law? Do think, madam.
You may not be able to prosecute this columnist. But at least you will send a
message across.”
ACP Das knew, even in that moment, that the decision was not hers to
make. She would have to consult her seniors.
**************
The seniors did get involved – all the way to the CM, who was the
darling of the tech moguls. He dined with them at industry events, gently
cajoling them to invest more money in his state – renting offices, providing
jobs (creating a market for thousands of homes made and sold by his
construction company).
When he heard about the case and the request of the police to file for
getting the identity information of the columnist and then making her a
co-accused in the trial, he kept quiet for more than a minute. Saying no would
mean antagonising the police – never a good idea. Saying yes would mean raised
eyebrows at the industry dinner this Wednesday.
“Let me get back to you.” He said to the state police chief.
**************
Swapna, meanwhile, had used her bail time to log back on to the site and
write on the forums how she followed Bella’s column and was now accused of
murder. The forums were divided – some ridiculed her for not using her
judgement on something as basic as “Not killing someone”, while some others
blamed Bella for suggesting something that was clearly illegal, in every part
of the world. “Does Bella have a conscience at all?” Many posters asked.
The editorial team of brtdr.xyz had reached out to Bella, demanding an
explanation. Now that they knew that the person had followed the advice (like
everyone before her), they had to cover their backsides against any legal and
user backlash. So far, they were not doing a very good job.
Bella was stunned. Her column had advised someone to kill their husband,
and they had done it?
At first, she did not believe it. When the brtdr team showed her
the post, she read through her own advice and was amazed at the specificity of
it. The answer was worded in a very persuasive manner. Anyone reading this,
even Bella, would have agreed with the answer. Now she knew why people always
followed the advice given in her column.
“Is there a legal liability for me, personally?” she asked Stella, her
contact from brtdr.
“My dear, the legal liability is all yours. We publish a disclaimer,
see, that we are only intermediaries. The advice being sought, and given, and
any liability arising out of actions therefrom, belongs completely to the two
parties involved – you and the poster. Having said that, we won’t be able to
avoid the backlash, I’m sure. I would suggest you get a lawyer. In the
meantime, I am sending you an email, terminating our relationship with
immediate effect. I’m sorry, Bella. You really were our rock star.” Stella
signed off.
Bella’s head was spinning. She didn’t know what to do next.
************
Brtdr thought that once
it released a statement terminating its relationship with Bella, people would
move on within weeks, if not days. But the opposite happened. The user
community started shrinking rapidly. Within two weeks, brtdr’s traffic
was down 50%. Average active users per day dropped even more quickly – as many
as 60% of the daily active users abandoned the website.
Brtdr had a business
problem on its hands. The other internet forums were quick to pick it up as a
‘case study’ and discuss it threadbare.
It had no idea about the legal problem - yet.
*********************
Jatin reached out to a few media outlets on his own. Even though it was illegal
to discuss sub-judice cases, he made the leak – discreetly. The journalists
would report as if they had picked up the story on international forums.
The story of a columnist sitting in a first world country influencing a
mentally battered person in India to commit murder, was too good to pass up. It
was national news within two days. Opinion pieces flew thick and fast, and TV
debates soared. Everyone was unanimous in demanding criminal action against the
columnist – wherever they may be physically located.
That is how someone in Delhi read about the case. A few phone calls
later, someone from the Union ministry got involved. The ambassador of the
first world country was called and “encouraged” to share the details of the
website owners, as a “small gesture of goodwill.”
The Ambassador made some enquiries and realised, much to his relief,
that the said columnist was of Indian origin. Promptly, the personal details of
the columnist were passed on to the Indian government.
************************
“So, help me understand. This is your column?”
“Yes”
“You write this advice, and you did not know that you have advised
someone to commit murder, with very specific steps?”
“For the last six months, I have not been the one writing that column. I
use AutoChat – an AI driven LLM[4],
to write out the answers. Earlier, I would check them. But they are so good
that now I don’t even read. I just copy paste the answer from the chat window
to the email and send. No one else knows this.”
Jim stared. If there was a word for being speechless, he needed it now.
“Your column answers are written by AutoChat?”
“Yes. I am a computer science graduate. I learnt prompt engineering and
then invested in a professional generative AI product for writing. I give the
prompts for style, etc. But now the engine pretty much knows my style based on
user id, and is fairly automatic.”
“So, why are you here?”
“The thing is, if I am sued, I would like to sue the makers of AutoChat
for releasing a public solution before it has been tested for safety. If their
product is making a kill recommendation, it has obviously not been tested for
safety, right?”
“As it turns out, madam, they have gone public with the information that
the solution has biases and is not tested for safety.”
“I am a professional, paying user of AutoChat. The ‘service’ being
offered by AutoChat AI Solution is writing. If the writing is not reliable or
even safe, what am I paying for? Why is this a commercial product?
If any liability comes to me, that is directly attributable to the work
product generated by a paid product, that liability has to be passed on to the
creators of the product.”
“Madam, that is how it would work in the normal course of things. But in
this case, the ‘service’ you have bought is flawed, and openly so. Therefore,
you assume the risk. I am sorry, there is no legal case here. I could represent
you if the website sued you for a subpar or potentially damaging work product.
But we could not represent you on a case against Big Tech.”
A sly smile played on Bella’s lips. “What do you think will happen if I
go public with the fact that this advice column was written by AutoChat? I have
lost my job already. What’s to lose? It is one thing to say a product has not
been tested fully for biases. Quite another to cause a death. Do you think
enterprise customers would still pay for integrating AutoChat as the base LLM
in their own enterprise chatbots? After all, how much editing oversight can an
enterprise provide in its own chatbot? What if the solution recommends to a
user that the only way to deal with an abusive boss is to kill them?”
Jim stared, for the second time, at the woman sitting in front of him.
This time, his jaw openly dropped.
“Madam, I am a corporate lawyer. I have no expertise in this kind of
case. Maybe you should speak to our criminal law team. I will have a partner
sent out shortly, if you would just wait here for some time.”
And Jim exited that room as quickly as he could. Any partner in the
criminal team, he knew, would be more than willing to be in that room. An
actual case on criminal liability of AI! And theirs would be one of the first
firms to handle it!
****************
Unfortunately, that didn’t go as planned. The deliberations fell flat.
Big Tech refused to assume any liability. No settlement was offered.
But someone (possibly from the law firm, but who knows?) leaked to an
online AI news website the details of the case. They reached out to Bella
immediately, offering her some money to share her story with them.
In tears, Bella came on video and shared how she was one of the first
adopters of new tech. She had become a paying customer of AutoChat as soon as a
paid version was released. She told the story as is, blaming AutoChat for the
murder and for her own loss of livelihood. “My only fault is that I trusted the
solution. A solution I was told to trust
and a commercial solution that I was paying for. But this is not about me. This
is about what the future of humanity will be if we allow this to go unchecked.
I did not provide human oversight. But this AI solution will soon form the
backbone of hundreds of chatbot solutions in corporate America and global
corporations. What human oversight will they provide to each answer going out
of the solution? Who is responsible if this AI solution tells an employee that
the only way out of their predicament is suicide? Or murder? Or mass shooting?
After my experience, that doesn’t sound so impossible, does it? Their solution
for an abusive husband is murder. Can you imagine the impact of that on our American
society? On American families?”
The response was immediate. And widespread. Corporate America shut down
every single chatbot project that included this LLM solution. Other LLM
solutions came under the scanner too. “What if?” became the national question.
Like the flu, it spread – first to Canada, then Europe, then South East
Asia. Pretty soon, the lawyer who had offered no settlement to Bella did not
look so smart to his employers any more.
*****************
The murder case ran on in India. Jatin placed the facts of the case
again in front of the judge. The sessions court decided in a record time of
four months. Swapna was given life imprisonment, but parole application could
be allowed in due course.
Jatin convinced her that she should be out in two, at most three years.
Swapna looked at him and smiled, “And go where, Jatin ji? Who is waiting for me
outside? No house, no money, no family. This is my life now. I am happy.”
But it was not the prison sentence that made headlines. It was the quote
in the judgement.
“We are possibly looking at the first crime attributable to the
influence of AI. This should serve as a strict warning to all of us in general,
but the architects of AI in particular. AI optimises outcomes in a rational,
inhuman manner. What is to stop AI from recommending mass culling of humans in
the event of a drought, famine, or, say, a global pandemic? That is the
mathematically optimal solution, but is it the right one?”
**********************************
The US Congress invited the CEOs of the top four AI companies for a
Congressional hearing.
The CEOs admitted that the product probably should not have been offered
as a commercial solution just yet, but denied any deliberate wrongdoing. They
maintained that they acted ‘to the best of their ability’ but were not in a
position to provide any guarantees in the foreseeable future.
All commercial AI LLM solutions that provided chat output were
immediately taken off the market.
Big Tech was not happy, of course. Every day without revenue is a loss-making
day. More importantly, LLMs were, so far, free of any regulation. This
Congressional hearing meant that future LLM AI solutions were likely to face
some sort of standards requirement.
Brtdr.xyz received a legal notice.
Instead of trying to fight the Big Tech behemoth, they decided to shut
shop.
Brtdr closed the website a month after receiving the legal notice. All
employees were paid the highest severance the company could manage – the CEO
personally saw to that. Thousands of users who were still loyal, wrote
heartfelt posts about what the website had meant to them.
In her house, Bela Ravindran sat with a friend. Two cups of coffee were
on the table, and there was silence.
“Say something, Bela. Anything. What comes to your mind first when you
think of everything that’s happened? Is it your job loss? How will you earn
again? What will your family think of you? That poor woman? What is it? Just
tell me!”
“Only this, Sharada – Who, really, is responsible for that man’s death?
His wife was under undue influence. I relied on a professional writing service.
And the creators of that AI? Who, really?”
[1][1] Tantrik – Magic healer
[2] In Indian criminal
law, Section 302 applies to murder.
[3] Whois entry tells us
who owns a website, their address, etc.
[4] LLM – Large Language
Model. These AI programs are fed on a vast amount of conversational data and
are then used to create chatbots like ChatGPT and others.
