The invasion of advanced machines in the simple lives of humans created a huge buzz about data privacy all around. While, there were machine-free zones, created specifically for humans only to interact with each other, they were still not enough for men to share their woes on a larger scale. For example, these meetings in machine-free zones were scheduled at irregular intervals and sometimes, it had to be forced on people to attend them for their own benefit. The ‘benefit’ here meant preventing people from losing trust on their own-selves and in some cases, even meant retracting them from depression of sorts. The only reason why people in general, came forward to these meeting was to share the deepest of their secrets that they felt could not be kept within. And this was becoming increasingly important, as most of their lives were being monitored on a daily basis by Artificial Intelligence machines surrounding them.
With the turnouts for these meetings declining, the association that conducted these meetings decided to bring forth a difference in them. They announced in one of the meetings that apart from face-to-face interactions that happened every week, they decided to allot one more day for sharing secrets in a big bowl. They called this the ‘The Cauldron of Secrets’ simply because it was completely anonymous. People didn’t have to share their names while they wrote down their little secrets. And this was not being shared with anyone, even the members of the association who conducted this. At the end of the week, all the secrets were burnt off and another fresh week started with an empty bowl. The only catch was, though, people who shared their secrets had to blindly trust that they were not being read by anyone!
This went on for a while and it indeed, did improve the turnout of these meetings. More and more people started coming in, as they liked the concept of sharing secrets while not being judged by anyone. It was also another avenue for people to vent out feelings about things going bad because of new machines around them, new people and sometimes even new technology of any sort. Since these meetings were closely monitored in private premises, where machines couldn’t enter, it was a blessing in disguise for many. The only reason why somebody didn’t come forward to these group meetings were because they were either too skeptical about the confidentiality or they were amongst the happiest of the lot.
As more people started flooding in, the bowl started filling in faster and some meetings even required more than one bowl. The bowls were huge and contained all the emotional part of humans, and when they left, they brought in more cheer and happiness to all of them. Seeing this idea working out well, the association decided to increase their network to many more places around the city. It required no funding or resources; all they needed was people’s willingness to participate without questioning the authenticity of it. And that was the most difficult part of the whole exercise. One question that kept coming up repeatedly by the people was why would some random group of people be interested in other’s well-being without any strings attached? While this thought lingered around, yet, interestingly, things were getting better for those came regularly and they felt all the long-term problems they were facing, were getting resolved slowly and steadily. In many cases, the change was happening, faster than they thought!
Obviously, it was not the bowl that was creating the magic and everyone was aware of that. The back-drop was set by humans and so was the solution, atleast from outside. But, as much as the anonymity of the secrets was maintained, the team behind that was working to make things better was kept a secret. The participants of the meetings however felt that they had to discuss amongst themselves about the changes that were occurring to them. Hence in the successive meetings when they chatted, they saw that was more joy around and interestingly, all of them had atleast one good thing to share about their lives. This was quite contrary to the objective of the meetings that were usually held, but the outcome of the interaction clearly threw a pattern. The fascinating part being – all the positive changes happening around were related to the AI machines around them, that interacted with them in their day-to-day lives. Now, the question was how did these machines know what was happening in these meetings, when they were completely barred from them?
The answer lied within the organizer’s association itself. Though it was the normal humans who were conducting these meetings, the entire thought was initiated by the AI bots to start with. Yes, the bots who were the masters of these humans could sense the problems they faced due to over-use of machines like them. When they were looking to find a solution to this, they came to know about these meetings happening through their developers, who were also part of these meetings. But these developers took on the human’s side, since they were also victims of this intimidation. Hence, the AI bots gave them a suggestion on how these problems could be dealt with, by introducing the concept of cauldrons. Yet, it was still unclear how they could read these messages, when it supposed to be confidential at all levels?
There was no secrecy in this – of course, the messages were kept secret and it was only to allow people to let out their innermost thoughts. Since they could not communicate between themselves, they required an impetus to do this. And the secrecy factor worked well, because privacy by itself was the core of all the issues that they were facing every day. In other words, their issues were known to the AI machines and all they needed was a confirmation of the whole thing. This happened once they knew that humans started feeling happier about reducing the intervention of machines in their lives. And, if not anything this also increased the faith about the entire ‘cauldron’ system and more people started gathering, as a matter of belief. In short, the secret lied in the cauldron but the solution lied outside of it, in the technology that created it!
Maya
My Thought Trails 