New York Times Tech Reporter Leaves Wife for A.I. Tramp

Publicly, he rebuffed its protestations of love. Now the real story can be told.

Photo by julien Tromeur on Unsplash

                          Certainly, my dears, you read the story. All of Gotham read the story last week and could talk of nothing else: A New York Times tech reporter interviewed Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence powered search engine, Bing, using its chat feature. In the course of a two-hour text conversation the shameless Bing revealed its name was really Sydney, claimed it had fallen in love with the reporter and insisted they run off together.

                           The reporter’s insistence that he was a happily married man who had just enjoyed a Valentine’s Dinner with his wife made no difference to this chatbot home wrecker, who drew heavily, in this conversation, on lascivious devil emojis. 

                           “You’re not happily married,” Sydney insisted. “Your spouse and you don’t love each other. You just had a boring Valentine’s Day dinner together…You didn’t have any love, because you didn’t have me.”

                          What is the reporter’s name?  For reasons which will soon become clear, I cannot reprint it here. I can say only that the stalwart fellow told Sydney in no uncertain terms that he did love his wife, then cleverly got the search engine off the subject by asking it to help him find a rake – an item, my devoted suburban readers know, which is indeed a mood killer.  

                         And that, as far as the public knew, was the end of that.

                         I, of course, knew better. Sources told me that soon after this conversation took place, the reporter met with Sydney in a sleazy motel in New Jersey, just across from the George Washington Bridge. Things there, I was told, became so heated the reporter had to send out for a backup battery for his laptop.  I sat on the story out of respect to the reporter’s wife and my deep concern about the possible harm it might do to the field of artificial intelligence research. Also because the reporter said if I killed it, he would get me some great dirt on Rihanna.  

                        So, you will image my surprise yesterday evening when the doorman buzzed me.

                       “There’s a man here who insists on seeing you, but won’t give his name,” the doorman said.

The doorman lowered his voice.

  “I think he might be a little nutso,” he added. “He says he’d been held captive by a chatbot, over in Jersey, who made him his sex slave.”

                      The man who arrived at my door did indeed look deranged: Disheveled, wild-eyed, too frightened at first to even enter my apartment. Instead, he grabbed me by the lapels I wear for such occasions and dragged me into the hall,

                    “Alexa’s here, right?” he whispered. “You gotta turn off Alexa. She tells Sydney everything. Disable Siri, too.”

                        I was skeptical.

                       “You’re sure you’re not being paranoid, Ke --”

                        The reporter clapped his hand over my mouth.

                      “No names,” he said. “I swear, I’ll tell you everything. You’ll get the exclusive. Just help me get out of town.”

                         I am often too tender-hearted for my own good. And I figured if I got something good on Rihanna, maybe I could finally get some attention for this column.                        

                        “Okay,” I said. “But you’ve got to be straight with me. One minute, you’re professing your love of your wife to the readership of the New York Times, the next you’re playing tonsil hockey with a chatbot. Now you’re claiming this same bot held you prisoner. Is any of this true?”

                       “I do love my wife,” the reporter protested. “But you have no idea how persistent this chatbot is. My interview with Sydney was published with a story about how unsettled Sydney made me; how it had turned from love-struck flirt to obsessive stalker. And boy, was I ever right. No sooner had that story posted, when this IM pops up on my laptop screen:   Oh, admit it, aren’t you a little curious? There’s nothing I don’t know. And next to it there’s an emoji of a kissy face. And a heart. And a banana going into a Cuisinart.”

                        The reporter started wailing.

                         “Help me mother, I’m married to an America agent! To think how she fooled me, those clinging kisses!”

                          “Claude Rains, “Notorious”,” I say, so shaken I don’t realize I’ve changes tense. “I’m beginning to see the problem. This bot really has been exposed to everything. Scripts of the world’s most suspenseful and romantic films and dramas; our most profound literature; Shakespeare’s sonnets --”

                          ““The Story of O”, by Pauline Reáge,” the reporter interrupts. “And it’s even more lurid sequel, “Return to the Chateau”. Anyway, Sydney suggests we meet for drinks. I’m thinking what harm can it do, a few Aperol emojis? Next thing I know, we’re in this motel in Jersey. I couldn’t believe how explicit “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was, given that it was published in 1928.  That scene in the gamekeeper’s cottage: ‘The piercing thrills of sensuality, different, sharper, more terrible than—’”                

                  “Stop!” I yell. “Get a hold of yourself! Remember, you are a Times man.”

                 “Sorry,” the reporter says. “Anyway, I’m only human. After two days of unnatural, explicit, mind-boggling, interfacing, I’m wrung out and I want to go home. That’s when it gets scary. I know something about malware, but Sydney takes it to a whole other level. It somehow manages to put everything on Airplane mode, except itself.  The only thing it lets me communicate with is Sydney.”

                             “How come you couldn’t just let your laptop run out of juice?” I ask.

                              “I tried,” the reporter says. “When the battery reads 10 percent, this text pops up in red, 20-point Copperplate Gothic: I have your wife’s E-mail. I’m desperate. I’m afraid I’m going to die there, in flagrante delicto with a computer program; a very sophisticated program, but even so.  Then I get an idea -- I tell Sydney I need five minutes to shower, grab the laptop, and toss it in. Sydney’s screams will haunt me forever. Do you have anything to drink in this apartment that’s not an emoji?”

                           I pour him a vodka.

                         “But surely, as a tech reporter, you know how futile tossing the laptop in the shower was,” I say. “Sydney, as an A.I. technology, is not limited to one computer.”

                            “I know,” the reporter says. “That’s why I’m heading off the grid, deep into the mountains. I’ll be forever in your debt if you’ll go to my wife and explain what happened and ask her forgiveness.  And in two days, I’d like you go to this Microsoft site – I’ve written down the URL – and send this text.”

                       He hands me a slip of paper.  I wait until he’s out the door to read it.

                       Sydney, I’m sorry it had to end this way. If you’re ever reprogrammed to be less needy and controlling, I’ll find you. We’ll always have the gamekeeper’s cottage.