Language Mapping

**"Language Mapping"** is the eighth mini episode of the podcast. It was originally released 25 July 2016.

## Episode Description

Doctor Alana Maxwell tries to solve an irritating problem.

## Plot Summary

Marcus Cutter introduces the third of the mini episodes on character recruitments with the rough date and location of its taking place - upstate New York in 2013.

Maxwell gets out of a car and walks up a short path to a door before ringing the doorbell - and is enthusiastically greeted by Warren Kepler, who then ushers her inside. He asks how her travel was, mentioning that she especially was expected to like the self-driving car she arrived in, and Maxwell responds politely, but shortly.

Kepler offers her something to eat, which she declines, stating that he’s been looking forward to meeting with her and giving her a little information on the satellite laboratory they’re in. When Maxwell still seems uninterested, he amusedly asks whether she wants to be there, to which she says “I really, really, don’t.” She goes on to berate him for the ways Goddard Futuristics had been working to get her attention for the past six months - by repeatedly calling her, sending packages to her home, and having people arriving at her workplace - and calls it harassment, to which Kepler points out that no laws have been broken, jokingly saying that she could have brought it to an end at the beginning by coming to work for them.

After inviting her on a walk, Kepler tells Maxwell that her talents are being wasted at her current workplace - the Nash Robotics Laboratory - which Maxwell argues with, saying that he doesn’t know anything about her, which he replies to with a summary of her personal history, education, and professional life. When Kepler brings up disagreements she has had with the board for ethical A.I. development, Maxwell is unimpressed, saying she “never should have posted that stupid Medium article”. He brings up her current workplace again, pointing out that her past four research proposals have been rejected, and asking her opinion on why that is.

Maxwell says the reason for the rejections is because of disagreements on how she is willing to push for faster A.I. development, while the scientific communities are more of the opinion that it should be handled with restraint. She states their reasoning as fear, saying that “someone’s gotta be around to bully them into being brave. Somebody needs to push.”

When Kepler says again that her talents are being wasted, Maxwell begins a sarcastic reply but cuts herself off when he leads her into the central processor and control console for an A.I. named Hyperion. He invites Maxwell to pick one of Hyperion’s systems to look at, telling her to pick something *complicated,* and her answer gives the episode its title - “language mapping”. After a few moments, Kepler shuts it off, telling her that all she gets is a glimpse, asking her whether she’s willing to take the position with Goddard Futuristics.

She asks why Goddard wants her, getting a reply of “because you’re brilliant”, which she dismisses as a reason and repeats the question. Kepler answers that she has a way with A.I.’s and that he believes soon he will need someone on his team who can communicate well with things that aren’t human. He repeats his offer of a glass of whisky, which Maxwell accepts before the end of the episode.

## Trivia

There are a number of things revealed about Maxwell and her backstory throughout the mini episode.

* She grew up in a small mining town in Montana (stated in her character bio on the official website to be Philipsburg).
* She has at least one sibling, who is older than her.
* Her father was the town reverend.
* Her teachers and school realised when she was 12 that she was extremely intelligent and advanced in her abilities around math and technology.
* Graduated with her Bachelor's degree in computer science from MIT at 19.
* Attained her Doctorate from the Wittgenstein Machine Computation School at Cambridge by 24.
* Was awarded the Turing grant and had a residency at the Charles Babbage Institute by the time she was 25.

## External links

* Listen on Libsyn.
* Official script.