Breaking Moscow Charter by K.J. Backford

Author:K.J. Backford [Backford, K.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: K.J. Backford
Published: 2023-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Hanna returned to her hotel from the embassy. She plopped down on the bed, kicked off her shoes, and rubbed her toes against each other.

These damn heels.

At home, she mostly wore sneakers or sandals in the summer.

Hanna heard her iPhone, which she had tossed beside her, announce ‘Helen’ and picked it up.

“Hi, Hanna,” said her friend. “Have a minute for an idle chat?”

“For you, girlfriend, always!

“Where are you?”

“In London.”

“Did you see any of those highbrowed relatives of yours?”

“No, Helen. No time for that.”

“A member of the government. I would certainly have loved to meet him. Especially if we were related,” Helen chuckled. “And his dad, the Lord. I have this feeling that, with all your travels, next time it won’t be a Lord, but a King or a Queen or something.”

“Helen, I have something less idle and more serious to chat about.”

“Okay, okay.”

“I have a new challenge. It’s turning out to be quite interesting.”

“Oh, oh. Not another trip to Africa?”

“No, no, much closer to home this time. Maybe too close to home.”

“Shoot.”

Hanna told Helen about the Starbucks episode in Moscow, Andrew’s bill in Parliament, and the US Embassy conversation.

“You know, you should learn not to listen in on other people’s conversations. Can get you in real trouble,” said Helen.

Hanna let her finish. “But seriously, I followed the taller guy, and he eventually walked into a cybersecurity company.”

“Cyber company using a young guy as a spy instead of hacking into the target’s network?”

“Yeah. Out of character, huh?”

“Right. They should be busy impersonating employees instead,” said Helen. “Never mind me. What else?”

“You know I’m involved in that AI Association at home.”

“Yeah.”

“Now self-driving cars are among the favorite subjects in many American business news services. If this industrial espionage story gets a lot of negative publicity, the AI industry will look bad, and Andrew’s bill may bomb in Parliament. His opposition there may use this American AI scandal to sink the bill. I offered to help him and would hate to see it fail.”

“No offense, Hanna, but you often get into situations where you feel you must save the world. Dangerous situations, by the way.”

“Believe me, this time, it’s really important.”

“Fine, but please be careful.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, let’s back up. I’m not as familiar with this subject as you are. Enlighten me a bit on the AI algorithms in play here.”

“Right. So, what makes this particular type of AI algorithm different from other software is that it must ‘intelligently’ react to many not-so-often-recurring situations. It also has to do it very fast. We say it’s an AI algorithm, but in reality, it isn’t one, but many algorithms combined into a large software package. A lot of excellent results, but also a lot of misrepresentations and misunderstandings.”

“Hmm, I remember reading that some of the AI work is just machine learning systems based on probability and statistics,” said Helen.

“But there are algorithms that use neural networks that are very complex,” countered Hanna. “Some of them are used in self-driving cars.”

“Self-driving cars, huh? I also remember reading that there are close to twenty companies working on that type of software in Silicon Valley.

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