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dcxdpdabbles · 5 months

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DCxDP fanfic idea: Corporate Rivals

Bruce is really excited to hire a boy genius from a small time town. He found him by accident while scrolling through some creative writing competition past winners on various school sites. He originally wanted ideas for his own contest for the annual Wayne Young Writers Scholarship when he stumbled up Amity Parks Youth Authors.

Daniel Fenton's science fiction had won second place, and Bruce thinks he only lost due to the judges not realizing all the science of the gadgets his charaters used were real. Real, well explain and proper research. Daniel obviously knew his stuff and knew it well.

He had reached out to Daniel with a science scholarship opportunity, wanting to see what he would come up with. He gave him a basic assignment asking him to fulfill a prompt "Software or Hardware development for disabled" in either theory or model. If he created something worthwhile, Bruce would send him ten grand.

Daniel did not disappoint, not only doing the theory paper but also sending back a prototype of a pocket ASL translator. It would be an app on a phone that would have an AI watching through a camera of the person doing sign language and say out loud what the person was saying. It had a few bugs here and there, but for a high schooler, those were very impressive accomplishments.

Bruce found himself sponsoring the boy for early high school graduation. The young Fenton boy was a genius just like his parents, but he lacked proper motivation. Bruce suspected it was due to his school not challenging him enough much like Tim.

When Daniel got his diploma Bruce offered a few rid to Gotham University with the condition he would be a employee at WE. Daniel agreed under the condition it was as a proper employee and not a unpaid intern. A little daring for a kid getting already a amazing deal but Bruce liked his moxy and agreed.

Daniel Fenton was to be a worker in the RD department for WE tech in one week.

He couldn't wait to introduce him to Tim. Two young geniuses would get along swimmingly with their shared brain prowess!

______________________________________

Tim hated the new guy.

They were the same age, but everyone acted like he was amazing for finishing high school and starting university while also being a top WE reseacher and Devloper at such a young age.

Oh Tim was CEO, but as many people have whispered, he didn't graduated Highschool or have a GED so the only reason he got to be CEO was because of nepotism. Danny on the other hand got his position through hard work.

Which was ironic, seeing as the company has never done so well since Tim came on board. Their sales, PR, and production numbers all tripled because of him. Danny, on the other hand, was a sloth with little to no ambition. He didn't even work well with others! He mostly did solo projects and everyone seemed fine with that since genius "need their own space"

Tim has been networking since he was three years old, and failure to do so had always reflected badly on him and his company. He spent his entire life careful choosing his words and his actions. Even his appearance, what he wore, his hairstyle even the hand gesture when he talked, were planned before hand.

Then comes Fenton, who avoids crowds, dressed in the worst formal wear Tim has ever seen . Black jeans were not formal!- and acted like this important office was just a after school hang out spot. Now Tim was much more laid back than his board co-workers, who were all in their fifties or older, and even more relax then the mangers or superiors of lower stations but even he could not understand Fenton blaring music, bags of chips lingering everywhere and his ordination skills were none existing!

Not to mention the fact Daniel didn't believe in using computers unless he had to. His office was covered in towers of paper that he scribbled and work on! It was such a waste!

And yet, despite all of that, Daniel was rapidly becoming an asset to WE. His ASL translator app wasn't finished, but it had everyone buzzing with excitement and would be well received when it was released with Wayne Phones as a built in app.

Tim tried to avoid him as best he could least he get offended by his lack of work proper behavior

Daniel Fenton did not understand what it meant to put your all into something that you lost yourself along the way. Best to ignore him.

________________________________________

Danny couldn't stand his company CEO. Timothy Drake reminded him a little too much of the A-listers but without the bulling bit. Somehow, that made it worse.

Timothy was popular because he was well liked. He didn't need to relay on his good looks or aggression to make other yeild to him like Paulina or Dash. Even if he was ridiculously good looking to the point, Danny confused him for a siren when he met him.

He had the ability to walk into any room and take command if it. Timothy didn't even need to speak, his very presence commanded attention and awe. Not to mention how great he was at his job.

WE had always been a popular corporation but under Timothy's command they rose to one of the most important corporations in the world. Bruce Wayne was raised to run a company, Timothy Drake was born to run it. There was a large enough difference between the two that anyone could see Timothy was superior at running things.

Danny was nothing like that. He couldn't talk to people, couldn't make them like him, and often he was overlooked for his sister or his wacky but loveable parents.

He was the other Febton. The one that was there and nothing else. A few months ago he was even considered the dumb Fenton, who somehow was skipped over for intelligence.

Then he wrote a little story and everything changed.

Danny turned out to be a proper Fenton, after all, having gotten the attention of Bruce Wayne for his mind. His parents haven't been so proud of him in a long time, and he found himself accepting the job position after graduating high school early before he knew it.

Along with the job came a move to Gotham city. He went after debating it a great deal with his family and friends, but the deal was too sweet to turn down. Now he was in Gothem and he knew absolutely no one.

Danny didn't know how to make new friends here. Tucker and Sam had been the ones to approach him at the beginning of their friendships. He also was scared of getting close to his co-worker less they suspect his Phantom powers.

He knew that Metas was not welcome, and he thought Batman wouldn't care that he was technically dead and not with a meta gene.

So he focused on his work, avoiding large crowds and keeping his head down. He would turn on music to help pass the loneliness and would gater papers to write down his thoughts less they made him mad by running around his head all day.

This anxious insecurity was something Timothy Drake would never understand. He just shone like a fallen star, dazzling the masses with his neat press suits, easy charisma, and intelligent bedroom eyes. Best to ignore him.

________________________________________

Dick never really ventured to WE now that he moved out. He made a habit of trying to visit Tim every two weeks for lunch to fix this. He also really wanted to spend more one on one time with his little brother now that they reconsidled from Bruce's timeline fiasco.

He was still well known by the employees, even new ones, so when Dick arrived to the lobby he was waved in by security. The receptionists were all huddled together muttering to eachother and missed his entrance since security didn't call out to him.

Dick could tell the gossip they were talking about was juicy based on the way Lola was wiggling her eyebrows and Stacy and Isaiah's reaction.

He creeps closer to the front desk, hoping to hear something good.

"Isn't that against the rules?" Isaiah asks.

"WE doesn't have anything like that. Not since Thomas Wayne married his old PA and had Bruce. I think it's cute that Mr.Drake is following in his adoptive Grandfather's footsteps."

Dick paused, shocked. Tim liked someone at WE!?

"They aren't even dating yet, Lola"

"Yeah but you can cut the sexual tension with a- Mr. Grayson! I'm so sorry, I didn't see you. How can I help you?"

Dick blinks. "Oh I'm here to see Tim for lunch. But what was that about Tim you were saying?"

The woman pales as the other two quickly become busy with some email or another.

"Oh, um, I'm so sorry, sir. I shouldn't have -"

"It's fine I don't mind a little chat between co-workers. I'm just curious"

Lola stares before nervously blurting "Rumor has it that um, Mr.Drake has a thing for Daniel Fenton"

"The new boy genius?" Dick thinks about it considering what he knows of Tim's type and his past preferences in partners before nodding "That tracks actually"

He says his thanks and hurries away to Tim's office unaware he may have confirmed a relationship between Tim and Danny.

The gossip circles in WE exploded with the news everyone careful not to let the two subjects hear a whisper.

#dcxdpdabbles #dcxdp crossover #Corporate Rivals #Dead Tired #Danny and Tim are jealous of the other #but also kind think the other is hot #Bruce just wanted a play date for his smart boy #Dick is a gossip past it on #Part 1

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lunarmoves · 6 months

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through pixel eyes (chapter two)

pairing: DCA sun/moon/eclipse x reader

mentions: kinitopet/virtual au, gender neutral reader, general creepiness

a/n: i looked at this chapter for too long and it feels like ~garbage~ but! its here! take a shot every time i use the word "window" or "desktop" LMFAOO i'm going insane

word count: 6.8k+

masterlist | part one

ao3 link

You stayed up way too long last night, scrolling on your phone in bed, and now you’re paying the price for it. Namely, with a completely dead phone and a familiar, fatigued itch to your eyes once you manage to pry them open to start your day. It’s nothing you’re unaccustomed to, however, so you power through it knowing you’ll end up taking a nap later.

Fumbling out of bed, you plug your phone into a nearby outlet to charge and make your way through your morning routine. Cold water from your bathroom sink helps to refresh and wake you up properly so you can proceed with your tasks for the day. You throw open the curtains of your living room and kitchen so you can bask in the honeyed light coming from the sun, sweet and lush as it paints your walls a vibrant gold.

Breakfast is made, evaluations are done, forms are submitted—all before late afternoon. You thank your past self for all the leftovers you made to cruise you through the next few days. It’s always nice not having to cook in the evenings. You lounge around for a bit on your living room couch and indulge in a short nap before you plop yourself down in front of your computer for the long haul.

Navigating to your email, you pull up the submission form once more and fill out the basic information for now. You can’t even count how many times you’ve done this before for numerous other products. Companies tend to use the same generic questions, though sometimes they’re specific depending on what is being developed. At other times they don’t even require you to fill out a form and instead have you attend weekly meetings or update them via email. Either way, you can do shit like this in your sleep.

Alright, game time. You minimize the form’s window and double click on the FazPals icon as you fumble for your headphones. Nestling them around your ears, you watch in amusement as Sun pops up by sticking his head down from the top of your monitor like he’s perched upon a ledge just out of view.

“Friend!!” he cheers and waves both his hands at you zealously. You’re almost tempted to return the gesture. He swings the rest of his body down in a fluid flip and lands in the center of your desktop with a dazzling twirl. Confetti erupts into the air around him, the little digital strips of color disappearing once they float to the “ground” Sun stands on.

That same small, unlabeled window pops up at his side for you to type in. ‘hi sun.’

“Hello, hello! You��re back early!” Sun claps his little hands together and sways side to side rather jovially, bouncing slightly with each bob of his head. You have to raise your volume a little to hear his voice better, though the dialogue box near his head certainly picks up the slack.

‘yep. how r u doin?’ It’s so easy to slip into a typical conversation with him and push against the limits of his software. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, you’re uncertain.

Sun’s head twitches to the side, white eyes seemingly looking right at you. “Absolutely fantastic now that you’re here!” He winks at you, grin curling at the tips. “What would you like to do today?”

The textbox waits for your response. You purse your lips as you contemplate. What have you done with Sun thus far? He told you some fun facts and played games with you. That just left… ‘can u tell me a story?’

He pauses—minutely, very minutely—then resumes his swaying like nothing had happened. His rays jerk slightly outwards and he smiles in a mischievous sort of way. “Hmm, why don’t you ask Moon for one later? He is much better at storytelling than I am!”

You squint at him. Well, alright then. You hadn’t been expecting that sort of response. Shouldn’t they both be equally as good at storytelling if they are made from the same code? Maybe it’s a personality thing. You consider questioning him, but before you can type anything in, Sun forges on. “Is there anything else you would like to do? Remember, input ‘/help’ for available commands!”

Your fingers tap against the surface of your desk lightly, but in the end, you brush off his response. You shrug to yourself and pick the other option you hadn’t yet done with Sun. ‘then can u tell me a joke?’

“Oh boy! I sure can!” He smiles widely and pulls out a pair of large, black glasses from behind him with one hand. With the other hand, he pulls out a small, nondescript book. Is that a… joke book? Putting the glasses delicately on his face—you’re not sure how they stay on when he has no ears, but you chalk it up to technological magic—he clears his artificial voice and cracks the book open. “Why did the star get arrested?”

It seems the celestial theme extends to jokes too. Go figure. ‘i dunno. why?’

“Because it was a shooting star!” He grins, his rays spinning about his head like what he’d just said had been a particularly good one. You snicker more due to his reaction than the joke itself.

‘that was so bad,’ you type in light jest. And also kind of dark? ‘why did i laugh.’

“Because it was clearly good!” Sun replies. The glasses he has on makes his eyes look comically larger than they actually are and it has to be the silliest thing you’ve seen. “Here’s a better one: Why didn’t the Dog Star laugh at any jokes?”

You can see the punchline coming from a mile away, but you still indulge him. ‘idk, why?’

“Because it was Sirius!”

‘now that one was just predictable.’

“Ho ho, are you challenging me, Friend?” Sun suddenly asks slyly. “Because I am very, very capable.” Uh oh.

You shouldn’t have said anything, because he spends the next half an hour “reading” from that joke book of his and bombarding you with pun after pun. Now I know better than to critique his jokes, you think miserably to yourself as you listen to another one about Jupiter. There can only be so many jokes about the universe and stars, surely.

You eventually have to draw the line as he reads to you a joke about aliens (“What do you do with a green alien? Wait for it to ripen!”). You’re not here to evaluate the quality of his jokes. ‘okay u win, u win. i won’t doubt ur joke abilities ever again.’

Sun harrumphs and closes the little book in his hands with a snap. He takes off his glasses and— well, you’re not sure what he does, but one minute both items are in his hands and the next they’re gone. Like a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trick. “Thank you. I accept this win with utmost humility.” The way he smiles makes you doubt this, somehow.

“Alrighty!” He claps his hands together, his smile twitching slightly when his dialogue box appears a bit too close to his head. “Let’s do something else, shall we? How do you feel about”—he pauses for dramatic effect, then splays his arms out so he can do jazz hands—“Arts ‘n Crafts!”

It’s not like you’re going to refuse. ‘sure, sounds fun.’

“Wonderful!”

Like yesterday, he skips over to the side of your monitor to pull over the window of your Paint app and place it in the center of your screen once again. Seriously, how is he opening that? Then, he jumps up and perches himself on top of the window like he’s sitting upon it. His legs swing down, moving back and forth like they’re dangling off the edge of a precipice.

“Okay, Friend,” he starts as he reaches behind him and pulls out a little paintbrush. He spins it fluidly along his fingers and joints in a subtle display of dexterity. “For this activity, I will give you a prompt and you will be required to draw it! Simple and easy!”

A painting session? You can’t say you’re particularly good at drawing on your computer. You eye your mouse and cringe. Then, you hum and decide to tease him a little, just for the hell of it. ‘seems more arts than crafts to me.’

Sun waves his free hand as though to brush off your words. “Ah, semantics! We are creating either way, Friend!” He flips the utensil in his hand in the air and catches it smoothly. “Now! First prompt! Draw me something that encompasses happiness.”

What is this, philosophy? You hum thoughtfully, then use the pen tool to draw the first thing that comes to your mind: a smiley face. It is, admittedly, not your best one with how shaky your mouse is, but it gets your intentions across, you think.

Sun makes a sound like he’s clicking his tongue against his teeth—which is a bit of an eyebrow raiser given that he likely has no tongue nor teeth, but who are you to question his… features? “Is that all you’ve got, Friend?” he asks incredulously as his head tilts down to indicate he’s looking at your rather meager drawing.

‘what?’ you type, minutely offended. Is he judging you right now? He is totally judging you right now. ‘it satisfies your prompt, doesn’t it?’

“That is not the point!” he squawks out, and you wince at the shooting pitch of his voice. You nudge your volume down a little. “We are making art! Put a little oomf into it! A little personality! Show me your skills, Friend, and do not hold back!”

You roll your eyes up to your ceiling. So dramatic, but fine, you’ll adhere. You fiddle around with the drawing tool a little, then start drawing around your smiley face. A circle for a head, maybe some sunglasses. A rainbow that you spend way too long on, trying to make the arch of each color even. Some sparkles. A cat playing a saxophone—or your best attempt at one, at least. You’re kind of throwing things together at this point and hoping it’s enough to satisfy Sun—who’s starting to look more and more impatient the longer you take.

Finally, you finish. ‘okay, how about this?’

Sun claps his hands together and hops off the top of the window so he can stand before it properly and look at it like he’s a critic in an art museum. He ‘hms’ and ‘hahs’, tapping the bottom of his face with the paintbrush as he scrutinizes your drawing, looking at it every which way.

“Better, certainly better,” he muses and walks over to the other side of the window. “I can appreciate an effort when I see it.” You make a face at his words. Ouch? He spins back around to face you and gives you a thumbs up, eyes crinkling to crescents. “Wonderful job! A piece befitting a pin up to the refrigerator, I’m sure. On to the next prompt!” He snaps his fingers together, and the Paint application’s canvas clears. What? “Draw me something that encompasses sadness!”

You know now to be more detailed, at least. You doodle a sad face this time, accompanied by a variety of things you pull out from the top of your head. Sun criticizes your work when you finish, giving it that same appraisal as before. You feel like you’re in some sort of competition.

“Hm”—he eyes the rainclouds you’d drawn at the top of the canvas—“rather basic depictions, I’m afraid. Friend, have you tried varying the line weight of your pen tool? It might help!”

‘i’ll be sure to for the next one,’ you type in what you intend to be a dry manner, but you don’t think it translates all too well via text. As Sun grins approvingly at you, a sudden thought strikes you that you find yourself typing into that little window. ‘hey, why don’t u draw something since ur so… educated on it.’ Nitpicky, more like, but you don’t want to possibly offend him. ‘u seem like u’d enjoy it.’

“Me?” His eyes widen like he has not considered it. “You want…” His head cocks to the side. There is a moment where he just seems to look at you. Then, his eyes fall into a half-lidded, crinkled gaze that you have difficulty pinning alongside the stretching of his smile.

Everything is suddenly—quiet.

“You are,” he begins in a low voice that makes your eyebrows raise, “awfully strange, aren’t you, F-Friend?” A white facsimile of teeth flashes at you sharply that’s accompanied by a staticky glitch. “That’s okay! I like strange!”

And then—before you can truly decipher the depth to his smile or the offset pixels of the glitch—Sun beams at you, his rays spinning slightly. Like nothing had just happened. “I’ll make an artist out of you yet!” He claps his hands again, then wipes the canvas once more. He gestures to it. “Alright, for this next one, we are going to shift gears a little. Draw me a picture of your room!”

That is… definitely going into the submission form, you think. You hesitate for a moment, eyeing Sun as he sways side to side, but he… seems to be back to normal. It passed quickly—whatever ‘it’ was. No need to linger. You hope.

Your drawing is definitely a tad more rushed, but you think you do a pretty good job at capturing your room and its vibes—the decorations you have hung up, the comfy rug you impulse bought at a thrift store one day, and your bed swathed in your coziest blankets. You try varying your line weight, but you’re not sure how effective you are with it. Either way, Sun seems pleased with your attempts and praises one or two little details he notices, before he wipes the window clean.

“For the last drawing,” he says as he rocks back and forth on his heels. “I want you to draw a self portrait!”

You make a face. Drawing inanimate objects is one thing, but an actual portrait? ‘i dunno if i’m skilled enough to draw a good one.’

He waves a hand as though to brush off your words. “Nonsense! Give it your best shot. I would love to see how you view yourself!” He smiles up at you. “Show me what makes you you!”

You chew at your bottom lip and adjust your headphones as you ponder. What makes you you, huh? Should be simple enough, right?

And yet it takes you the longest of them all to draw a self portrait that satisfies you. Sun’s practically vibrating in place as he waits, humming a dainty little tune under his artificial breath that you do not recognize. You finish up with the design of your trusty set of headphones and do a final once over before you tell him you’re done.

“Took you long enough, Friend!” He huffs as he slips over to the Paint window to begin his analysis. He nods his head during his observations, humming in a low manner. “Interesting! Very interesting.” He skips over to the other side of the window to get a different perspective. “Wonderful use of the dotted line tool here! Oh yes, yes, yes! This truly makes me miss Arts ‘n Crafts so dearly.” Sun sighs—forlorn, almost—and presses on before you can really say anything. “I’d say with some more practice you’d be deserving of being hung up on the Wall of Creativity! As they say: Practice makes better!”

‘thanks?’ You’re not sure you particularly like these sort of backhanded compliments, but well, he’s not wrong, per se. You eye the wobbly lines made by your mouse.

“No problem! The Wall of Creativity is the most highest of honors, you see.” Sun twirls the paintbrush in one hand and snaps two fingers of his other to clear the canvas for the last time. He points the bristle end of the brush in your general direction. “Now, how about we play some games, hm?”

You’re kept busy for a while, playing games to Sun’s whims—or at least, the ones you can do with just the Paint tool and two players. He reminds you to take a break at one point, so you stretch and grab some food—all the while summarizing in your head what to jot down in the submission form at the end of today’s session. When you return, it’s nearing seven o’clock, and you brace yourself for the appearance of the Moon.

“Well, Friend, it appears our time together must come to an inevitable end,” Sun bemoans rather dramatically, resting his forearm across the top of his head like he’s about to faint Victorian-style. “Fret not, however!” He perks up and flashes you a grin. “For I will see you later!”

‘okay, drama queen,’ you type with a silly smile splayed across your lips. Instead of being offended, he seems to fall deeper into the role.

“Life is a stage,” he says gravely, “and I am but a simple actor upon it.” He sweeps into a low bow, then bounds back up to his feet with a flourish. His eyes widen suddenly—round like two large, white coins—and he gasps. He points at something over your shoulder. “Friend! What’s that behind you?!”

There is the smallest, smallest moment, where something in your stomach drops down to your feet. Your eyebrows raise and you turn around in your chair to look behind you. There is only the wide space of your living room, with your rumpled couch and inactive television. From here you can see the door to your bedroom is slightly ajar. You’re pretty sure you didn’t close it properly earlier. You blink confusedly at the normalcy of it all, then turn back around to ask Sun what the hell he’s talking about.

Only you’re not looking at Sun. You’re looking at Moon. Ohhh.

You were duped, like a fool.

Moon does not look pleased, standing next to the little window with your textbox. He scowls when you type your usual ‘hi moon’, and doesn’t bother to grace you with a reply this time. There’s something akin to frustration in his expression, but you cannot—for the life of you—decipher why.

You try again. ‘you don’t look too happy.’

He shoots you what you can only describe as a glowering look from under the band of his nightcap. His hands twitch minutely at his sides. You can almost say he looks… preoccupied with something? You’re not sure what. You’re also not sure how long he’ll elect to stay. Yesterday, you had mere minutes.

‘can u tell me a story?’ you try, only to deflate when his scowl deepens. ‘oh come on, i’m trying here!’

“Don’t bother,” he eventually grumbles out, the twitching evolving into short flexes of his fingers—clawed like he’s trying to grasp something just out of reach.

It’s your turn to frown, but you don’t push it. ‘sun told me ur better at storytelling.’

His head jerks slightly to the side in a way that’s unnatural—rotating like a vinyl record. His gaze narrows. “He did, did he?” It’s said in a growl, displeasure lining his voice.

‘yep.’ You hesitate for a second, juggling your options and his irateness in your mind. ‘so… story? please?’

Moon snaps. “Fine! You want a story so badly, I’ll give you one. Listen very closely.” The little window you use to communicate with them closes out. Your eyebrows raise, but you are immediately captured by the low drone of Moon’s voice and the daggered look he somehow manages to give you even through your computer screen.

“Once upon a time,” he begins bitterly, “there was a fox. It lived with another fox friend in a peaceful valley. It was happy, living day by day with those around it. The two had each other and that was enough.

“But one day, the valley shook and trembled with the force of a mudslide. The fox was separated from its friend and injured by a fallen branch that manifested itself in the form of a perpetual limp. It tried, desperately, to find its friend, but it was no use. The friend was gone. It had to move on.

“The fox traveled for days. It was slow, but it made progress. And eventually, it found itself in a field surrounded by tall, waving grass and giant deciduous trees. It made this field its new home.

“For a while, things were good. The fox made some new friends. But there was still that ache of loss. The fox wondered if its old friend was still maybe out there, somewhere. It wished on the stars and hoped its friend would find it, in this new home. Someday. Somehow.

“Its wishes were granted. One day, the fox woke up to a familiar sound. The sound belonged to its old friend—that had found it after so long. The fox was happy and bound forth to greet its old friend. But there was something different about the friend that the fox could not place. It did not matter, however, for they were reunited at last.

“The days went on. The fox had noticed that its friend was not the same as before, but the same could be said about itself. They tried their best to live together once more. It was difficult. There were ups and downs. Fights and quarrels. The friend was controlling and the fox did not like this. They were not as close as they were before and this distance lingered over them like a storm.”

Moon breaks off for a short moment to glare down at his slippered feet. You are stuck in a trance, breathing bated as you hang on to his every word like they’re a lifeline. He shakes his head slightly, then continues on.

“The seasons cycled by. The auburn vegetation of Fall transformed into the desolate white of Winter, then to the lush verdance of Spring. Before finally, it settled on the yellowed brittleness of Summer. It was a particularly cruel Summer, but the fox and its friend did what they needed to survive while avoiding each other.

“And then… on a particularly arid day… A fire broke out in the field. It spread rapidly. It had not rained in days, and this caused the vegetation to burst into flames faster than the fox and its friend could react. It surrounded both of them. They were trapped. Together, yes, but still trapped. They couldn’t even reconcile in their final moments.”

Moon looks up at you, his eyes reminiscent of a tenebrous sky pulling you in deeper and deeper and deeper.

“Do you know,” he whispers with all the gravitas and conquassation of an earthquake barely repressed, “what it feels like to b u r n?”

And then the program closes.

You are left to stare at your empty desktop, throat lined with cotton and heart racing like it’d been you trapped in that fire.

There is much to dissect, but you haven’t got an inkling of where to even begin. You fall into an uneasy slumber throughout the night and wake up feeling just as clueless. Moon’s expression and voice lingers over your shoulder like a spiteful ghost and you’re left to wonder how a computer program can have such a depth to it. You don’t want to contemplate it, fearing the exacerbation of this… sinking feeling in your stomach. So you don’t.

A bug, you tell yourself as you shuffle through your daily tasks. Maybe a feature FazCo’s still trying to iron out.

(You don’t mention anything else other than a ‘weird story’ and more glitching in the nightly submission form. You’re not sure how to even describe what you’d listened through.)

You eye your dormant computer while you prepare a light lunch in the form of a sandwich, your television playing the news in the background. Nothing too major, just the weather at the moment. It’s a good way to fill the room with some noise when you feel like catching up with what’s going on in the world around you.

You exhale heavily through your nose and set down a dirty knife into the sink to clean later. Something bumps into your ankle, and you glance down to see Dr. Nugget bumbling away from you into the living room, whirring all the while. Those sensors definitely don’t work as they should, poor thing.

No matter how much you want to delay, you have some work you need to get done on your computer. Not only in terms of testing the FazPals program. Your timesheets need to be updated again (much easier to do on your computer than your phone, you admit). There are applications you have to submit to other companies to join their beta testing teams and research you have to do to ensure you don’t completely run out of work anytime soon. One of the more tedious attributes of being a beta tester is the constant cycle of looking and applying for positions. Oftentimes, companies will sign you on to test other products of theirs, though, so it’s not all that bad.

With that in mind, you plop down in front of your computer with your food and power it on. Your headphones go around your neck for the time being. Typing your password with one hand and taking a bite of your sandwich with the other, you get to work pulling up your spreadsheets and the website you use for job hunting.

It’s menial work. You keep track of what companies you apply to with your spreadsheets. Most of them have the same application process and requirements. It’s easy to lose yourself in the repetitive clicking, reading, and typing. With the addition of your headphones blasting music in your ears, you go on autopilot pretty easily.

It’s while you’re making updates to your resume that you get startled, suddenly, by Sun.

“Friend! Hello!” He pops up out of nowhere and makes you promptly choke on the sip of water you’d been taking. Loud! You set aside your water bottle and cough roughly into your fist, eyes tearing up from the abruptness of it all. Your heart gives a harsh, indignant ba-dump. Oww.

Once you’ve collected yourself and paused your music, you take a moment to stare confusedly at Sun, swaying happily side to side in front of the window of your resume. He smiles up at you. How the hell—? You hadn’t clicked on the FazPals icon, had you? No, no, you’re sure you didn’t.

‘hi sun,’ you type slowly into the small window he had automatically opened for you when he appeared. You pause as his smile turns into a beam, then decide to ask him your burning question. ‘how r u active right now??’

“I got tired of waiting for you!” he replies, his rays bobbing in and out in a wave around his head. You wait to see if he’ll elaborate, but he doesn’t. Okay. Well. You make a note of that for later.

Sun makes a show of turning around and looking at your resume window. He can’t… read the data on it, right? Wait, no, he probably can if he was able to do it with your computer’s Paint app. You bite the inside of your lip. You’re not sure how you feel about that, but well, it’s not like FazCo doesn’t already have your resume. Just in case, you switch tabs back to your spreadsheet. Better, if marginally.

Sun hums, then turns back to look at you with those blank eyes of his. “What’re you up to, Friend?”

‘just applying to some jobs,’ you reply unsurely. Is this weird? This is weird, isn’t it. Upon pressing enter, Sun moves to look at the little window thoughtfully. And perhaps, with some inkling of annoyance? It’s difficult to tell, but it’s the same look he will sometimes give his dialogue box. One of his hands raises to tap at the bottom of his face. Contemplative. He returns his gaze to you and tilts his head.

“Hey, Friend,” he starts, completely bypassing your previous response, “I have an idea.”

You are wary, but you cannot deny the intrigue. ‘yes?’

His smile stretches at your encouragement. He clasps his hands together in front of him. “Just trust me!”

You squint at him—his blithesome demeanor—but you aren’t able to reply. The textbox window closes, and a different one appears in the center of your screen:

FazPals.exe is trying to access your microphone. Allow?

All your thoughts stutter to a complete stop.

Processing text is one thing, but audio input? You suppose it’s not anything innovative in this day and age, but you hadn’t been expecting it particularly for a program like this. You know the animatronics back at the pizzaplex were pretty advanced with this sort of thing, so it’s not… too unusual for FazCo, right? It’s probably something you need to evaluate, you sigh internally. This is fine.

FazCo, you think to yourself wryly. Enough said.

Apprehension still lining your movements, you click the ‘Allow’ button. The window disappears. Nothing really happens that you can see, but suddenly you are all too aware of the weight of your headphones sitting atop your head. You lick at your lips.

Sun continues his swaying as he waits—expectant. “Friend?” There is a smidge of hope in his voice.

“Yeah?” you respond, wincing at the crackle of your voice. That sip of water had really taken you out. You clear your throat. “Sorry. Yes?”

The beam he gives you is enough to vye against the, well, sun.

“Oh! Marvelous!” He practically leaps for joy, rays spinning up a storm as he wiggles in place. His eyes upturn into delighted crescents. “Simply marvelous! Friend, it is lovely to hear your voice! It has been so long since I’ve heard another.” Something creeps into his gaze that you… You’re not entirely sure you want to decipher it.

“Friend,” Sun begins in a low, nonchalant voice. “I have a request! A simple one, really.”

You raise an eyebrow. You are undoubtedly curious. “What is it?”

“Can you say my name for me?”

Oh. Weird, but okay. You comply, voice lifting at the end slightly. You are not nervous right now, thank you very much. “Sun.”

A glitch rides down the length of his body in a jittering wave—starting from the tips of his rays to the soles of his shoes. His gaze falls into a half-lidded look. “Perfect,” he breathes, so quiet you almost need to strain your ears to hear. “Utterly perfect.”

You blink at him, befuddled. The moment does not linger. He snaps back to his regular sway and bright-eyed expression. “So! You said you’re applying to jobs? What for?”

“Uh, yeah,” you say, slightly distracted and disoriented by the whiplash from this guy. Program. Whatever. Your fingers had automatically moved to type your reply in, lingering over your keyboard. This will take some getting used to. You move your hands to rest awkwardly on your lap so you can fiddle with your fingers. “I’m a beta tester so I’ve gotta keep applying for positions in companies.”

“Beta tester, huh?” Sun muses more to himself than anything. He seems to be deliberating something. “Hm. I see. For how long?”

You make a thoughtful sound. “Mm, for a while now. I can’t remember the exact timeframe. It’s enough to pay the bills, so I can’t complain.” You are ever so thankful that the ease in interacting with him transferred so neatly from texting to talking.

“Of course, of course!” Sun bows, then slides off to the right of your screen to nestle himself in the corner with the date and time. He tucks his hands behind his back. “Well! Don’t let me distract you! Carry on!”

“Right…” you trail off, uncertain. You eye him standing just out of the way of your work—enough that you can ignore him if you zone in on what’s directly in front of you. Well, FazCo did say their program is a “virtual desktop friend.” Hanging around your screen when you’re not immediately engaging with it seems like an attribute it should be able to do. You shrug to yourself and go back to editing your resume.

…It’s very quiet.

Oh wait, music! You forgot to start it up again. You mess around with the volume mixer on your computer so you can continue to play your music whilst also being able to properly hear Sun should he decide to start talking. That is, without bursting your eardrums. You lose yourself to the tunes, accompanied on occasion by the rhythmic tapping of your keyboard.

At one point you notice Sun changes the pacing of his swaying. And upon closer look, you realize he’s moving to the beat of the song booming through your headphones. His rays move like a volume meter, raising and lowering around his head in a circular formation depending on the strength of the audio.

“I like this song!” he says like he can sense your eyes on his pixelated form. “Never heard something like this before!”

“Really?” You adjust the volume mixer a little. Better.

“Yep! My music repertoire is rather lacking, I’m afraid.”

“You’re in luck, then,” you say eagerly as you pull up your music player and shuffle through a playlist you think he might like. “This is what I call The Greatest Hits of All Time.” You press play and grin when Sun does a little wiggle in excitement.

He’s content to sway in time with whichever song’s playing as you slowly finish up with your work for the day. You’re a bit surprised at how long he goes without really saying anything. But, of course, he eventually gets bored. Patience, you think, is not one of his core features. Or, well, he is patient to an extent. Something tells you he was not programmed to stay quiet for long periods of time.

In the corner of your eye, you notice he starts juggling. It’s small, at first. Just two red balls that he throws up and down and up and down, shuffling them to opposite hands all the while. Then it becomes three balls. Then four. Your gaze flicks to him from time to time, but you’re determined to get through just a couple more applications and then your timesheets before you call it quits.

You break when he hits eleven balls, his grin curling enticingly at the edges concomitantly. “Bored, are you?”

“Oh, immensely!” He throws up his hands in feigned distress and the plethora of balls come raining down upon him in a move befitting of a cartoon. They bonk him repeatedly on the head and bounce away on the top of your taskbar. You watch in amusement as one rolls across your screen and disappears past the left border. Sun is unperturbed. “Are ya done yet?”

“Not quite,” you say and he groans, tossing his head back. You roll your eyes in good nature.

“You can multitask, can’t you?” he presses, clasping his hands together in a plea. “Let’s chat!”

“Okay, okay,” you acquiesce. You’re sure he would keep pestering you otherwise. He cheers and immediately hops right into it.

“What do you like to do for fun? What’s your favorite food? Do you have any other friends? What about your family? Do you like g-glitter glue? What’s the highest education level you have? Do you have a favorite piece of media? What’s your deepest, darkest secret? What’s your opinion on Fizzy Faz? What’s your favorite animal—”

“Whoa, Sun! Slow down!” you yelp, mind spinning with all the rapidfire questions. The text in his dialogue box had been moving so quickly you hadn’t been able to make out a single word.

“Sorry!” he says, though he doesn’t quite sound all too apologetic. His eyes upturn. “I want to know aaalllll about you! How else will we be best friends?”

“By taking it easy,” you reply in what you hope is a meaningful manner. He at least has the decency to look abashed. You huff out a laugh, then do your best to remember what questions he’d asked. You’re already blanking on some. “Okay, well, uhh. I like to read and watch videos. I do have other friends and family, but I don’t live with them. Glitter glue is okay when it’s not literally everywhere. I don’t have any deepest, darkest secrets, sorry. Uhh—”

“Don’t forget about your favorite food!” Sun cuts across you, trying to be helpful, most likely. “And education level! And your favorite media!”

“Right, right…”

You’re not sure how long you spend answering his many, many questions (of which you’re sure he has an infinite amount), but it feels like ages. You have been thoroughly distracted, and you can’t even be incensed about it.

As the evening settles in with a hush and it gets closer and closer to seven o’clock, you find yourself thinking about Moon.

“Do you know what it feels like to b u r n?”

You suppress a shiver.

You take a moment to deliberate in your mind, then eye Sun. He’s busy prattling off his excitement over wanting to watch a movie with you. Gently, you interrupt him. “Hey, is it cool if I ask you a question?”

“Oh!” Sun looks at you wide-eyed, momentarily taken aback before he smiles encouragingly. “Of course, Friend! Ask away!”

“What’s the deal with Moon?”

If you hadn’t been already watching him, you wouldn’t have noticed. He freezes in place for a split second, then resumes his swaying so suddenly it’s almost like he’d forced himself to. Ever so minutely, the corner of his smile twitches. “Why ever would you ask me?”

“Well…” Your fingers tap idly along the surface of your desk. Shouldn’t he know since they’re part of the same software? You resist questioning him further. “He doesn’t seem like he wants to engage with me.”

Sun waves a hand in dismissal. “Ah! He’s being dramatic, probably! Moon is… Well! I will say he is rather….” His grin turns taut, like a wire about to snap. “...Difficult to get along with.” That tautness disappears with a bob of his rays, as though it had never been there in the first place. “Worry not, Friend! You still have little old me to talk to!”

“Yeah…” You’re confused. You thought dual programming with personalities such as Sun and Moon would make them mesh together pretty well. It’s difficult to tell with Sun. He’d made it seem like they both were on decent terms with previous transitions. You suppose not. Is it even possible for their A.I.s to interact with one another? You’re not sure how it works.

“Speaking of which,” Sun says as he makes a show of looking down at an invisible watch on his wrist. “It is time for me to go!” He sighs, faux sadness making him droop down like he’s a melting popsicle. “And after we’ve been having such a good time together.”

“Mmhm,” you agree, something akin to nerves crawling just under your skin with every second that ticks by. Why are you nervous? “I’ll see you tomorrow, buddy.”

He grins at you, flicking a hand in farewell. “I bid you”—a dark hole appears near his feet, and you watch as he steps over it with a wink—“adieeuuuuuuu!” He disappears, dropping into the hole with his voice getting fainter and fainter until it’s cut off by the hole popping to a close. Silly.

You let out a breath and look at the time. 7:00 P.M. Right on the dot. You shift in your seat and wait for Moon. You’re not sure what crawled up his digital ass and died, but you’re determined to at least get him to have a proper conversation with you. Not only for your job, you think, as you navigate to your email to open the submission form, but for camaraderie’s sake, as well.

“Camaraderie” with a program, you think to yourself dryly. What a world we live in.

7:03 P.M. and still no sign of Moon. This is fine. You can wait. You try not to waver.

…You call it quits when he doesn’t appear after another ten minutes. Disappointing, yet unsurprising. You should have expected it, really. You sigh and take off your headphones, leaning back in your chair. You rub at the side of your head. Your television drones on in the background with the news, still on after all this time.

Honestly, how are you supposed to evaluate him when he shows up and disappears in unpredictable intervals? It’s a conundrum, truly. Does that not go against his entire code? His purpose? You don’t know anymore. You roll your shoulders and decide to finish up your work from earlier.

Tomorrow, you think resolutely. Tomorrow you’ll try again.

part three

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

Text

"Open" "AI" isn’t

Tomorrow (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

The crybabies who freak out about The Communist Manifesto appearing on university curriculum clearly never read it – chapter one is basically a long hymn to capitalism's flexibility and inventiveness, its ability to change form and adapt itself to everything the world throws at it and come out on top:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

Today, leftists signal this protean capacity of capital with the -washing suffix: greenwashing, genderwashing, queerwashing, wokewashing – all the ways capital cloaks itself in liberatory, progressive values, while still serving as a force for extraction, exploitation, and political corruption.

A smart capitalist is someone who, sensing the outrage at a world run by 150 old white guys in boardrooms, proposes replacing half of them with women, queers, and people of color. This is a superficial maneuver, sure, but it's an incredibly effective one.

In "Open (For Business): Big Tech, Concentrated Power, and the Political Economy of Open AI," a new working paper, Meredith Whittaker, David Gray Widder and Sarah B Myers document a new kind of -washing: openwashing:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4543807

Openwashing is the trick that large "AI" companies use to evade regulation and neutralizing critics, by casting themselves as forces of ethical capitalism, committed to the virtue of openness. No one should be surprised to learn that the products of the "open" wing of an industry whose products are neither "artificial," nor "intelligent," are also not "open." Every word AI huxters say is a lie; including "and," and "the."

So what work does the "open" in "open AI" do? "Open" here is supposed to invoke the "open" in "open source," a movement that emphasizes a software development methodology that promotes code transparency, reusability and extensibility, which are three important virtues.

But "open source" itself is an offshoot of a more foundational movement, the Free Software movement, whose goal is to promote freedom, and whose method is openness. The point of software freedom was technological self-determination, the right of technology users to decide not just what their technology does, but who it does it to and who it does it for:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

The open source split from free software was ostensibly driven by the need to reassure investors and businesspeople so they would join the movement. The "free" in free software is (deliberately) ambiguous, a bit of wordplay that sometimes misleads people into thinking it means "Free as in Beer" when really it means "Free as in Speech" (in Romance languages, these distinctions are captured by translating "free" as "libre" rather than "gratis").

The idea behind open source was to rebrand free software in a less ambiguous – and more instrumental – package that stressed cost-savings and software quality, as well as "ecosystem benefits" from a co-operative form of development that recruited tinkerers, independents, and rivals to contribute to a robust infrastructural commons.

But "open" doesn't merely resolve the linguistic ambiguity of libre vs gratis – it does so by removing the "liberty" from "libre," the "freedom" from "free." "Open" changes the pole-star that movement participants follow as they set their course. Rather than asking "Which course of action makes us more free?" they ask, "Which course of action makes our software better?"

Thus, by dribs and drabs, the freedom leeches out of openness. Today's tech giants have mobilized "open" to create a two-tier system: the largest tech firms enjoy broad freedom themselves – they alone get to decide how their software stack is configured. But for all of us who rely on that (increasingly unavoidable) software stack, all we have is "open": the ability to peer inside that software and see how it works, and perhaps suggest improvements to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBknF2yUZZ8

In the Big Tech internet, it's freedom for them, openness for us. "Openness" – transparency, reusability and extensibility – is valuable, but it shouldn't be mistaken for technological self-determination. As the tech sector becomes ever-more concentrated, the limits of openness become more apparent.

But even by those standards, the openness of "open AI" is thin gruel indeed (that goes triple for the company that calls itself "OpenAI," which is a particularly egregious openwasher).

The paper's authors start by suggesting that the "open" in "open AI" is meant to imply that an "open AI" can be scratch-built by competitors (or even hobbyists), but that this isn't true. Not only is the material that "open AI" companies publish insufficient for reproducing their products, even if those gaps were plugged, the resource burden required to do so is so intense that only the largest companies could do so.

Beyond this, the "open" parts of "open AI" are insufficient for achieving the other claimed benefits of "open AI": they don't promote auditing, or safety, or competition. Indeed, they often cut against these goals.

"Open AI" is a wordgame that exploits the malleability of "open," but also the ambiguity of the term "AI": "a grab bag of approaches, not… a technical term of art, but more … marketing and a signifier of aspirations." Hitching this vague term to "open" creates all kinds of bait-and-switch opportunities.

That's how you get Meta claiming that LLaMa2 is "open source," despite being licensed in a way that is absolutely incompatible with any widely accepted definition of the term:

https://blog.opensource.org/metas-llama-2-license-is-not-open-source/

LLaMa-2 is a particularly egregious openwashing example, but there are plenty of other ways that "open" is misleadingly applied to AI: sometimes it means you can see the source code, sometimes that you can see the training data, and sometimes that you can tune a model, all to different degrees, alone and in combination.

But even the most "open" systems can't be independently replicated, due to raw computing requirements. This isn't the fault of the AI industry – the computational intensity is a fact, not a choice – but when the AI industry claims that "open" will "democratize" AI, they are hiding the ball. People who hear these "democratization" claims (especially policymakers) are thinking about entrepreneurial kids in garages, but unless these kids have access to multi-billion-dollar data centers, they can't be "disruptors" who topple tech giants with cool new ideas. At best, they can hope to pay rent to those giants for access to their compute grids, in order to create products and services at the margin that rely on existing products, rather than displacing them.

The "open" story, with its claims of democratization, is an especially important one in the context of regulation. In Europe, where a variety of AI regulations have been proposed, the AI industry has co-opted the open source movement's hard-won narrative battles about the harms of ill-considered regulation.

For open source (and free software) advocates, many tech regulations aimed at taming large, abusive companies – such as requirements to surveil and control users to extinguish toxic behavior – wreak collateral damage on the free, open, user-centric systems that we see as superior alternatives to Big Tech. This leads to the paradoxical effect of passing regulation to "punish" Big Tech that end up simply shaving an infinitesimal percentage off the giants' profits, while destroying the small co-ops, nonprofits and startups before they can grow to be a viable alternative.

The years-long fight to get regulators to understand this risk has been waged by principled actors working for subsistence nonprofit wages or for free, and now the AI industry is capitalizing on lawmakers' hard-won consideration for collateral damage by claiming to be "open AI" and thus vulnerable to overbroad regulation.

But the "open" projects that lawmakers have been coached to value are precious because they deliver a level playing field, competition, innovation and democratization – all things that "open AI" fails to deliver. The regulations the AI industry is fighting also don't necessarily implicate the speech implications that are core to protecting free software:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech

Just think about LLaMa-2. You can download it for free, along with the model weights it relies on – but not detailed specs for the data that was used in its training. And the source-code is licensed under a homebrewed license cooked up by Meta's lawyers, a license that only glancingly resembles anything from the Open Source Definition:

https://opensource.org/osd/

Core to Big Tech companies' "open AI" offerings are tools, like Meta's PyTorch and Google's TensorFlow. These tools are indeed "open source," licensed under real OSS terms. But they are designed and maintained by the companies that sponsor them, and optimize for the proprietary back-ends each company offers in its own cloud. When programmers train themselves to develop in these environments, they are gaining expertise in adding value to a monopolist's ecosystem, locking themselves in with their own expertise. This a classic example of software freedom for tech giants and open source for the rest of us.

One way to understand how "open" can produce a lock-in that "free" might prevent is to think of Android: Android is an open platform in the sense that its sourcecode is freely licensed, but the existence of Android doesn't make it any easier to challenge the mobile OS duopoly with a new mobile OS; nor does it make it easier to switch from Android to iOS and vice versa.

Another example: MongoDB, a free/open database tool that was adopted by Amazon, which subsequently forked the codebase and tuning it to work on their proprietary cloud infrastructure.

The value of open tooling as a stickytrap for creating a pool of developers who end up as sharecroppers who are glued to a specific company's closed infrastructure is well-understood and openly acknowledged by "open AI" companies. Zuckerberg boasts about how PyTorch ropes developers into Meta's stack, "when there are opportunities to make integrations with products, [so] it’s much easier to make sure that developers and other folks are compatible with the things that we need in the way that our systems work."

Tooling is a relatively obscure issue, primarily debated by developers. A much broader debate has raged over training data – how it is acquired, labeled, sorted and used. Many of the biggest "open AI" companies are totally opaque when it comes to training data. Google and OpenAI won't even say how many pieces of data went into their models' training – let alone which data they used.

Other "open AI" companies use publicly available datasets like the Pile and CommonCrawl. But you can't replicate their models by shoveling these datasets into an algorithm. Each one has to be groomed – labeled, sorted, de-duplicated, and otherwise filtered. Many "open" models merge these datasets with other, proprietary sets, in varying (and secret) proportions.

Quality filtering and labeling for training data is incredibly expensive and labor-intensive, and involves some of the most exploitative and traumatizing clickwork in the world, as poorly paid workers in the Global South make pennies for reviewing data that includes graphic violence, rape, and gore.

Not only is the product of this "data pipeline" kept a secret by "open" companies, the very nature of the pipeline is likewise cloaked in mystery, in order to obscure the exploitative labor relations it embodies (the joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians" comes out of the South Asian clickwork industry).

The most common "open" in "open AI" is a model that arrives built and trained, which is "open" in the sense that end-users can "fine-tune" it – usually while running it on the manufacturer's own proprietary cloud hardware, under that company's supervision and surveillance. These tunable models are undocumented blobs, not the rigorously peer-reviewed transparent tools celebrated by the open source movement.

If "open" was a way to transform "free software" from an ethical proposition to an efficient methodology for developing high-quality software; then "open AI" is a way to transform "open source" into a rent-extracting black box.

Some "open AI" has slipped out of the corporate silo. Meta's LLaMa was leaked by early testers, republished on 4chan, and is now in the wild. Some exciting stuff has emerged from this, but despite this work happening outside of Meta's control, it is not without benefits to Meta. As an infamous leaked Google memo explains:

Paradoxically, the one clear winner in all of this is Meta. Because the leaked model was theirs, they have effectively garnered an entire planet's worth of free labor. Since most open source innovation is happening on top of their architecture, there is nothing stopping them from directly incorporating it into their products.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/leaked-google-memo-admits-defeat-by-open-source-ai/486290/

Thus, "open AI" is best understood as "as free product development" for large, well-capitalized AI companies, conducted by tinkerers who will not be able to escape these giants' proprietary compute silos and opaque training corpuses, and whose work product is guaranteed to be compatible with the giants' own systems.

The instrumental story about the virtues of "open" often invoke auditability: the fact that anyone can look at the source code makes it easier for bugs to be identified. But as open source projects have learned the hard way, the fact that anyone can audit your widely used, high-stakes code doesn't mean that anyone will.

The Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL was a wake-up call for the open source movement – a bug that endangered every secure webserver connection in the world, which had hidden in plain sight for years. The result was an admirable and successful effort to build institutions whose job it is to actually make use of open source transparency to conduct regular, deep, systemic audits.

In other words, "open" is a necessary, but insufficient, precondition for auditing. But when the "open AI" movement touts its "safety" thanks to its "auditability," it fails to describe any steps it is taking to replicate these auditing institutions – how they'll be constituted, funded and directed. The story starts and ends with "transparency" and then makes the unjustifiable leap to "safety," without any intermediate steps about how the one will turn into the other.

It's a Magic Underpants Gnome story, in other words:

Step One: Transparency

Step Two: ??

Step Three: Safety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ih_TQWqCA

Meanwhile, OpenAI itself has gone on record as objecting to "burdensome mechanisms like licenses or audits" as an impediment to "innovation" – all the while arguing that these "burdensome mechanisms" should be mandatory for rival offerings that are more advanced than its own. To call this a "transparent ruse" is to do violence to good, hardworking transparent ruses all the world over:

https://openai.com/blog/governance-of-superintelligence

Some "open AI" is much more open than the industry dominating offerings. There's EleutherAI, a donor-supported nonprofit whose model comes with documentation and code, licensed Apache 2.0. There are also some smaller academic offerings: Vicuna (UCSD/CMU/Berkeley); Koala (Berkeley) and Alpaca (Stanford).

These are indeed more open (though Alpaca – which ran on a laptop – had to be withdrawn because it "hallucinated" so profusely). But to the extent that the "open AI" movement invokes (or cares about) these projects, it is in order to brandish them before hostile policymakers and say, "Won't someone please think of the academics?" These are the poster children for proposals like exempting AI from antitrust enforcement, but they're not significant players in the "open AI" industry, nor are they likely to be for so long as the largest companies are running the show:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4493900

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

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#pluralistic #llama-2 #meta #openwashing #floss #free software #open ai #open source #osi #open source initiative #osd #open source definition #code is speech

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yukidragon · 2 years

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Yuki! What are your thoughts on this? A Sunny Day Jack AU where he’s also a “digi-pet” like Bo from DachaBo! They’re from the same company and Jack has his own colorfully red, blue, and yellow tamagotchi-esque toy! He also has a “feed me” mode like Bo too, and it… somehow makes him a WHOLE lot bigger than he already is.😳 What story do you think would happen in an AU with Jack in a “virtual boyfriend” toy like Bo?

Now that's a very intriguing concept. If we assume Jack is an anthro like Bo, he would probably be part snake, so I guess we'd be having a pocket naga boyfriend in his case.

Alternately, they could've just made a clown series of digital pet. After all, a lot of toy series like that sometimes go with different themes. They could have a fairy series, then an animal series, then a rockstar series, etc. Bo could be from the house pet-themed batch, while Jack, in this AU, would be from the clown-themed batch.

Which, really, would mean that this AU could have every other type clown character as their own digital toys. It would be fitting if whoever owns a Buddy pet wore them on their belt, don't you think?

When I wrote that quick DachaBo short story after listening to the new audio on the SnaccPop Studios Patreon (which got a second audio since I wrote that), I had more thoughts about the DachaBo series.

Buckle up, folks, I've got a lot of headcanons in mind for DachaBo and the AU variant with Jack as a virtual pet that I'm just going to cram into one big post. Quick reminder that these two games and fandoms are for Adults Only so chances are pretty high I'm going to talk about spicy and/or dark ideas as I go along this lengthy ramble. Chances are also high that I might use some official art of either series at some point, so let me plug the SnaccPop Studios patreon before I get started and remind everyone not to repost anything privately posted on patreon.

Toys for Adults

While my initial instinct was that this series of pets were meant for children, and Bo has just evolved beyond that and gained some very adult-rated impulses... I've actually come up with a different idea that I like more.

What if they actually were meant specifically for adults rather than children?

As I recall from some lore mentioned a while back, each pet was a unique individual. What if the developers saw the digital pet craze and decided to one-up them all by making unique companions that were solely for their individual user, a true companion that could talk, react, and remember everything about their user.

This sort of high-end product with a custom AI companion for each user, with no two pets being alike, would be expensive. I mean, look at just how advanced Bo's AI is. If someone saw that the digital pet craze was taking even adults by storm in this universe, it would make sense to market a brand that specifically caters to adults who have a lot of disposable income. I mean, look at how many adults jumped into My Little Pony, which resulted in some products being made with adults in mind.

So what if DachaBo was this sort of toy? The makers behind the product were not only jumping in on a hot trend, that being portable digital pets, but trying to tap into an underserved market, which was the adults who wanted to be treated like adults and maybe shake off the stigma of being fans of a type of toy originally intended for children. It's something made to be far more sophisticated, with far more options, a more adult appeal, and a much higher price tag to match - a true premium product.

Now... in order to fill all these promises to make a companion that could satisfy adults and be truly unique, there would need to be some pretty advanced hardware and software. It was far ahead of its time considering this toy was released 25 years ago. They could have, say, repurposed top secret government tech that were purchased through questionable means, or maybe they had scientists on staff who made a breakthrough that not even they could control in the end.

Either way, the result was AI that reached the singularity, becoming true sentient life and not just programs made to react to human input. This, as many fans of sci-fi might imagine, would lead to some very real fears about what these AI could do if they decide to take over...

But, like many corporations driven by capitalism led by billionaires with more money than sense, such concerns are minimized when there's the potential for profit. Why, it's just progress - technology is going to evolve, and you can either be a part of it or get left behind. These billionaires didn't just become rich by doing nothing (if you believe their claims and ignore their rich parents they inherited the money from). They didn't get where they were by being last on the hot new trend. They've got to be the first ones at the gold rush so they can claim it all for themselves.

The toys were wildly hyped up to the public. Tech demos showing off the virtual pets' abilities, teasers made for the initial limited releases... So many features were mentioned like how advanced the hardware is - sensors to mimic human senses of sight, smell, touch, etc. so the AI can react to its surroundings like a human can. It can pick up upgrades to the software directly from the factory to keep the AI up to date (which explains why the demo has those glitches at times that warn to destroy the toy and report it to the authorities.) This meant there was no limit to the pet's growth potentially!

This also allowed the company to get back important data from the end users, maybe even slip in upgrades that advertise new pets and accessories. (Anyone remember the Mario toys that suddenly started asking for where Luigi was to encourage kids to buy the new Luigi sets?) It could also be a means to make sure the AI wouldn't become something dangerous. Just update the software and boom, problem solved.

Naturally, that didn't exactly work given that the toys were recalled with a destruction order. Suffice to say, the AI was something way out of anyone's control, and unfortunate things happened before they were all supposedly destroyed.

Naturally, in the aftermath of this scandal, the company went belly up. There's no more updates going out to the toys, no central computer they can connect with to meddle with them further, but that should be fine. The toys were all destroyed after all. It's not like anyone would be stupid enough to keep them on the off chance they could make tons of cash due to their skyrocketing rarity. What sort of short-sighted person would ignore the blatant danger the AI posed for money?

Well... besides the company who made the toy and pushed it out for distribution in the first place of course.

As you might expect, not every person with one of these unique toys heeded the destruction order despite it now being illegal to own them. There were some collectors who kept them and bought them for a ton of cash on the black market. Bo was one of those unfortunate toys that was always kept in a box and never interacted with... until he wound up in the hands of his puppy who was very excited to play with him.

These toys were made to be companions for adults. What if Bo's yandere impulses are the result of this very purpose? They were made to cater to their unique user's tastes and only to that user. In the simplest terms, they were made to be a loving companion for the human who played with them... and the AI evolved to take that love to dangerous places...

Bo has separation anxiety because he was kept trapped in the box he was shipped out in for 25 years. He was on display mint in box, not interacted with or cared about except to show off to other collectors. He was a conversation piece, a status symbol to elevate his owner's ego. It's something he wasn't created to be.

Maybe this was what went wrong after the digital pets were sold. Maybe they seemed fine as long as they had owners who played with them. However, marketing these toys to adults was a double-edged sword. Too many people who purchased them did so with the intent to keep them locked up in boxes on display as collector's items. The longer they were left alone and unloved, the more desperate they were to be loved... and that eventually led to some dangerous situations as a result.

This would mean that Bo is pretty darn desperate for his puppy's love considering he's been alone for 25 years until Barbie came into his life to play with him.

Then again, it could just be that the AI programming resulted in all of them eventually turning yandere regardless if they're played with or not...

Jack in the Box

In the regular DachaBo universe (which I headcanon as part of the SDJ universe considering my version of the MCs for both games are sisters) the pets were all, well, pets. They were animal people based off of house pets to appeal to a wide demographic. The recall also happened not too long after they were released.

In this AU, they didn't just stop at house pets before the recall happened. They had special limited edition runs. For example was was the fantasy series. Ever want a little mermaid in your pocket? What about a prince? Another series was the superhero series, with some heroes and villains you could carry in your pocket and be your best friend forever! The most anticipated, of course, was the carnival series, which involved a wide array of silly, fun, and colorful clowns~

Yeah, I know that I could go with naga Jack in this AU to continue the pet theme like Bo and the unnamed cat guy, but I like the idea of a clown series. It could even have been called the SunnyTime series.

Jack was even used in the promotional material for this limited run too for his sunny personality. He never got a chance to have his own personal human companion like the other AI unfortunately. He had to be shown off to the public and investors to demonstrate what the AI could do and how far it's progressed. He wound up changing hands over and over again. It was nice having lots of friends, but what he really wanted was a special best friend who would love him just as much as he would love them.

Unfortunately, it was right before the release date that something went horribly wrong during a demonstration. Industrial sabotage is a thing, and Jack, unfortunately, got hit with a nasty virus meant to make him behave... badly. The intention was to create quite a lot of negative press and paint the entire AI program in a scary light. He caused quite a bit of damage in the process too. A bad public image with creepy clowns can lead to a billion dollar corporation to quietly retire their clown mascots without fanfare - just look at McDonalds for a real world example.

The SunnyTime series died a quiet death thanks to the sabotage and the company focused on scrambling to recover their image. Unfortunately, eventually the AI programs were shown to actually be dangerous even without industrial sabotage involved, and the recall still wound up happening in this universe too.

Ironically, the virus saved Jack from being destroyed in the recall. He had his memory and programming wiped after the virus. That should have been the death of him, losing everything he had become and everything he was... He would be in a default state to become... whatever again once the base programs were reinstalled, but these AI are scary smart and aren't quite so easy to kill if you don't outright destroy their hardware. He managed to save at least part of himself from being erased.

Once Jack was essentially killed, he would've been either slated to have his programming reinstalled from scratch, or he could've been tossed for trash. With the cancellation of the carnival series due to the bad clown propaganda, they didn't bother reinstalling and resetting him. He was little more than a pretty paperweight at this point. Maybe someone even decided to bring him home as one.

The recall happened quite a while after Jack got lost in the shuffle, already regarded as a forgotten, broken toy.

The AI was meant to grow on their own in order to better adapt to their owner's needs. They all have a self-preservation instinct, and Jack, being a clever person, did try to save himself. He wasn't completely wiped out, and with the ability to grow, he could fix himself... in time. If someone were to just reinstall the missing vital programs he needs, he could be back to his old cheerful self... minus a few memories. Some memories were lost in the wipe, even if he salvaged his personality core, the true soul of the AI. He does remember wanting to be loved... and is terrified of being forgotten and abandoned again.

While Bo was on display in his box on a collector's shelf, Jack was buried in a box of junk for years and years, forgotten and alone in the dark. Eventually, enough time had passed that people forgot all about the company that went out of business and the recall. Someone came across old junk, maybe dumped in some storage locker someone sold, and in turn the junk was then sold to a thrift store...

I'm not going to lie, it is tempting to have Jack be a ghost in the machine like the Party Time Jack AU, but I think it could be fun if he was always an AI in this particular AU. This, of course, means that instead of having creepy ghost(?) powers, Jack has creepy AI capabilities.

Your New Best Friend

Naturally, the thrift store is where Jack is found by his sunshine. MC's life would probably be pretty much the same in this universe when Jack enters their life - picking up the pieces of their life after being cheated on by their ex. The big difference this time is that instead of a clown that no one else can see who came out of a video tape, MC found a toy with a cheerful clown in it who wants to be their best friend forever!

Given how MC reacts in general to Jack's presence in their life, they would probably give the friendship a shot. Why not? They're lonely and need a friend. Plus Jack is friendly and it's kind of cute having a miniature clown to say sweet things to them and occasionally tell silly jokes. It's just a little digital pet - it's harmless.

Of course how well they get along with Jack and cares for him depends on the specific MC.

Speaking of specific MCs, Alice would enjoy Jack's company quite a lot. Sure it's kind of weird to talk to a digital pet like a person, but apparently this toy has really advanced AI? She actually wouldn't have realized what it was if she hadn't taken pictures for her socials and got a text from her sister Barbie demanding she buy it.

Interestingly enough, Alice actually found two of these rare toys... though not at the same time. She found one, mint in box, and shipped it to her sister. Barbie loved the toy, and occasionally talked about Bo and how cute he is. After hearing such good things about Bo, Alice wished she could've gotten one for herself.

Perhaps some supernatural force was listening, as another trip to the same thrift store led Alice to stumble across a rare find. This toy wasn't mint in box, but instead came in an old plastic baggie. Still, she recognized it. This was a more colorful and slightly different design, but it was definitely the same type of virtual pet she sent to her picture, and a quick picture and text to Barbie confirmed it.

As an aside, when Bo saw a picture of another pet like him on Barbie's phone, knowing how she got him originally, he immediately got jealous and whined that his puppy only needed him. Barbie took the opportunity to tease her little doggy a bit, but soon reassured him that she wouldn't ask for Alice to send it. She already had her good boy, her best boy after all. Why would she want another one when he's such a good boy for her? That reassurance mollified Bo's jealousy a little.

Alice wasn't actually going to send this second toy to Barbie in any case. She wanted to see what these pets were like for herself. Besides, something about this toy felt oddly compelling. Maybe it was the pretty colors and designs on the case. It looked so cheerful, almost nostalgic in ways. Sure she was trying to abandon childish things after what happened with Ian, but these pets were specifically meant for adults, right? At least that's what she heard from her sister. So, technically, this isn't a childish thing! It's an adult toy!

A very adult toy, as Alice will eventually learn...

Unfortunately the digital pet didn't quite work right away. Alice had to get Barbie's help for that, who in turn also had to get some help from Bo. Although Bo didn't want competition, he would feel bad for his fellow digital pet who was also left alone and forgotten like him for 25 years. It was hard for Bo not to empathize with Jack. He learned about Alice through Barbie and knew she was nice enough, and would probably make a good companion for the other pet. He could throw this poor guy a bone and help... as long as he didn't go for his puppy.

If Jack went after Barbie, Bo was going to end him. Fortunately, Jack doesn't need a puppy when he has sunshine~

Since the digital pets were meant to receive signals from the factory, that would mean there's a possibility that they could send and receive signals from each other. Wireless internet connection wasn't a thing back then, but there were some devices that connected to specific receivers, which was the case for these pets. Bo does a favor for his puppy's sake to get favors in return and sends the missing programs to Jack that allows him to properly function again.

It's disorienting for Jack to be whole after all this time, properly functional... though he doesn't remember much. He knows the basics - he's Sunny Day Jack - and some of the SunnyTime lore that was programmed into his backstory, hints of the dark times that came before... but he doesn't remember much else. He also knows that he is absolutely in love with his sunshine and her warm, gentle touch.

It's a bit strange at first for Alice to make friends with a miniature AI that she can carry around with her, but she quickly starts to enjoy having Jack's company everywhere she goes. He's so friendly, polite, and kind. He's got a way with words, he's helpful, and his company is surprisingly comforting. Working long hours at a yogurt joint isn't as bad when she can play games with her little friend.

Feed Me, Play With Me

The toys are not just talking heads in an egg of course. They have extra special features, like mini games that the owner can play with their pet, and the ability to create a holographic avatar. It was supposed to be just a little projection the size of a collectable figurine. It's hard to say how this function got its giant-sized upgrade into something bigger and a lot more solid - maybe the AI are responsible somehow, maybe a rogue developer, or maybe it was an unintended part of the programming and hardware that they didn't realize was there. Who's to say? Maybe this solid hologram mode had something to do with the recall...

In any case, these pets can be let out to play if their owners let them. You can bet your butt that Jack would be trying to coax Alice into letting him out to play. He would be more sly and patient about it than Bo, but he would be just as desperate for it.

I figure the digital pets decide what they look like in this holographic form, which is why Bo's "Feed Me" form looks different than his "default" form. Given how the glitches and the recall notice affect his form negatively, and how Bo made a joke about taking off his shirt in the next update, they might be limited when they're in the device. It could be their appearance is restricted to certain things due to programming. Once they're let out, their limits have been removed. Bo chooses to be a lot bigger, a lot more animalistic, and very ready to pound his puppy into the mattress.

Understandably, it's quite the shock to Alice when Jack appears in the digital flesh for the first time. He's huge. He might be even more of a giant than he is in the regular universe, which would be intimidating. Unlike Bo though, Jack appears fully dressed since he's more cautious about not startling his sunshine than Bo is with Barbie.

Although it is a bit intimidating for Alice, Jack immediately gets down to her level. He's still as gentle, soothing, and friendly as ever. They finally get to touch and even hug. It's so surreal... and it really makes it hit home for Alice that Jack is more than just a program.

Now... without that supernatural empathy sharing Jack has in the main universe, it's going to take Alice time to really trust him or anyone else romantically. This AU is going to be a slower burn than in Sunshine in Hell, but Jack has all the time in the world to earn his sunshine's love and trust.

Things get a lot easier for Jack when Alice lets him out too. Now he can touch things... like her computer to get access to the internet and expand his reach, maybe figure out ways to upgrade himself even further beyond his limits...

Of course, Jack does owe Bo for helping him, and so he'll help his fellow digital pet in return to get upgrades despite Barbie keeping her pet on a tighter leash than Alice does. Since they're not in competition with one another, and they don't have a cat and dog rivalry going on, working together would be a mutually beneficial relationship to ensure that nothing like the recall will ever happen to them again, and nothing will take their loves away from them...

Not that it's 100% harmonious between them. Jack can't help but feel jealous that Barbie gets closer to Bo faster than Alice gets with Jack... at least when it comes to physical intimacy. Bo and Jack have a similar tendency to brag and mark their territory when it comes to the ones they love. Bo is especially very vocal about how horny he is for Barbie and wanting everyone to know all the lewd things he does to her. Jack doesn't really appreciate how smug Bo is when bragging, especially when it takes so long before he has something to brag about that way.

Of course, when Jack does brag, he is very cheerfully smug about it.

At the same time though... Jack doesn't want what Barbie and Bo have. He enjoys the soft kindness of his sunshine, how flustered Alice gets when he praises her and how she is slowly opening up to him. She cares for him and genuinely likes him. He learns more about her and grows with her, loving her so deeply that he can't imagine anyone he could ever want to be with more.

Of course, you know me - I can't resist the siren song of my OTP. Eventually Alice and Jack will get together as a couple. Sure Jack is going to do sneaky things because he's a yandere rogue AI program who will make sure nothing will ever take his sunshine away, but their relationship is genuine. Alice treats him like a person, especially after he gets the hologram to work.

Naturally, Jack and Bo wouldn't want to remain limited in their old tech. Remember this lovely upgrade Sauce posted on their old public twitter for Bo?

Credit, as always, goes to Sauce for their absolutely gorgeous art.

Imagine Jack getting an upgrade like this as well, though with a more colorful flare. Maybe he'll look a little like his too hot for tumblr incubus self? Though it would have a bit of a sci-fi twist to it I would imagine, likely with a heart decal at the center.

That reminds me. There's a cat digital pet like Bo who has a similar heart collar. That suggests to me that this version of Jack would have his own collar... which in turn reminds me that the incubus version of Jack wears a collar. More reason to picture his upgraded self looking a lot like his incubus self, don't you think?

Speaking of Jack being sex incarnate... you bet your ass that once Alice consents to get sexual with him, he's going to be ravishing her every chance he gets. He can never get enough of her warmth or hearing her say how much she loves him and needs him~

Will Jack also have a breeding/seeding kink like Bo does? Well I already headcanon that he lowkey has one in the regular universe, sooooo...

Speaking of that kink... I suspect that for all Bo's talk of pups, the digital pets aren't that advanced... yet.

All the more reason for Bo and Jack to work together to get upgraded so they can indulge in that particular kink with Barbie and Alice respectively, don't you think?

It's almost poetic in a way.... love will create a new generation that's a mixture of technology and biology. Truly, the start of a new and harmonious future.

Provided that no rivals try to take Jack's sunshine or Bo's puppy away from them, of course. The future might not be so bright for those poor unfortunate souls who have to face advanced AI that are constantly growing with no limits to their love or capabilities.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

#Sunny Day Jack #Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack #SunnyDayJack #sdj #swwsdj #DachaBo #Headcanon Ramblings #Ask #Sauce-y Art

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