Page 22 of The Proving Ground

McEvoy clicked on the mailing-list link in the header and it displayed the email addresses of the sender and the recipients. It had been sent [email protected] a list of more than a dozen people, all of whose emails ended in tidalwaiv.com. It was an internal message. Midway down the list, an email address had been blacked out by the redaction program.

“So we have these forty-six group emails regarding Project Clair and in all of them one email address is redacted,” McEvoy said.

“Any way of knowing if it’s the same email redacted each time?” I asked.

“Well, it always falls between these two emails, Isaacs and Muniz. So it is likely the same person, but there’s no way of knowing that for sure with the information we have here.”

“So it couldn’t have been Rikki Patel?”

“I don’t think so, because he was a coder, not a stakeholder, as far as I can determine, and these people are all upper management, and because this email list was generated in alphabetical order by last name. You see the names?”

I leaned down closer to the screen to read the names of the email recipients: Alpert, Bastin, Bernardo, Davidson, Harlan, Isaacs—the list was indeed in alphabetical order.

“Got it,” I said. “This is good. We need to find out who that is and why they were redacted.”

“I think I might know,” McEvoy said.

“Then tell me. Make my day.”

“Well, if you start with the idea that they’re trying to hide the identity of this person from you, then you have to assume the person has information or knowledge detrimental to the company’s cause, right? To me, that adds up to this person being separated from the company at some point after these emails. They left or were forced out. Maybe even fired.”

“That makes sense, but how the hell do we find out who it is? Patel could probably have told us, but he’s gone.”

“Right, so what I did was go to TheUncannyValley to look—”

“Wait. What’s the uncanny valley?”

“Well, in the digital world, theuncanny valleyrefers to the psychological leap humans must make in accepting robots and digital imaging as real—you know, like with a game or a chatbot. Robots and digital images that look almost but not quite human make people very uncomfortable, and if they’re uncomfortable, they don’t believe. That’s the uncanny valley. But what I’m talking about here is a socialplatform a lot like LinkedIn that is called TheUncannyValley—all one word. It’s for people who work in AI and in coding for digital games and so on. It’s essentially a social and business network with a résumé databank.”

“Got it. So you went to TheUncannyValley, and then what?”

“I did a basic search for former employees of Tidalwaiv. There were a couple dozen, including Rikki Patel, but only one whose last name falls between Isaacs and Muniz: Naomi Kitchens. Her résumé says she worked for Tidalwaiv for about two years beginning in late 2021. The public rollout of the Clair AI companion came at the end of ’22. And, get this, her résumé says she’s an ethicist.”

“An ethicist?”

“All these AI companies have them now. A lot of the time, it’s simply for window dressing, CYA stuff, but sometimes not. Technically, they’re supposed to monitor ethical standards and guardrails in the development of their AI programs and products.”

I felt a jolt of electricity go down my spine. I clapped McEvoy on the shoulder.

“Goddamn, McEvoy,” I said. “One day on the job and you find this? Did you search through the rest of the discovery for this Naomi Kitchens?”

“I did,” McEvoy said. “There’s nothing.”

“Twelve terabytes of documents and not one mention of Naomi Kitchens, the supposed ethicist on this project?”

“None.”

“They’ve completely scrubbed her from the discovery?”

“Looks that way. In documents dated after she left the company, you have a different person listed as the project ethicist—Francis Ross.”

“So they got rid of Kitchens for some reason, scrubbed her from all records, and then brought in Ross.”

“Looks like it. I guess you’ll be able to rake the Masons over the coals in court for this, right?”

“I could, but I probably won’t.”

“Why not? I thought you—”