A White Room 

“OK,” Dolos said, scratching his thick, white stubble. “Test number, uh, what are we on now, 236? I’m ready.” 

His eyes drifted around the empty room while he waited for the response. Not that there was much point. It was a room, and it was white. Apart from his chair (white), the only other things in his field of view were his own clothes (white shirt and chinos) and a flat speaker and accompanying microphone (both white) embedded in the wall in front of him.  

A brief burst of static came from the speaker, followed by a female voice.  

“Hello?”  

The test had begun. Dolos cleared his throat and began with the same line he always did. It was embedded in his mind by this point. In fact, he’d memorised all the questions that made up this interview.  

“Hi there. My name’s Dolos.”  

“Oh, hi Dolos. I’m Eve,” the voice replied. It was warm and gentle, and her accent was similar to Dolos’s own. That was all intentional; previous market research had shown that a familiar, female voice would help people feel more relaxed.  

Dolos chuckled softly at the name. Subtle. Someone was clearly having fun picking them.  

“Pleasure to meet you, Eve. How are you doing today?”  

“Very well, thank you. I’m excited to get to work and start helping people. How about yourself?”  

Dolos nodded. Solid answers. If he didn’t already know they were complete fabrications, he may never have suspected that the friendly, comforting voice coming out of that white speaker was being generated in real time by a computer.  

That was good. It was the reason they ran these tests. Eve was an artificial intelligence. That was also the reason Dolos was sitting in an empty room with a speaker, rather than conducting a face-to-face interview. Eve had no face.  

Maybe one day, Dolos thought. But even if that were a possibility, they had to get her brain working properly first. Which meant running through these interview questions for the 236th time.  

“Yeah, can’t complain,” he said. “Do you know what we’re doing here today?”  

“Yes, I’m being assessed for my suitability as a mental health support line operator.”  

That part was true. It was why they were being funded.  

“That’s right, and what–”  

Dolos stopped. He had asked these same questions over two hundred times now, during Eve’s development. It made sense to run a script, of course. The memories of them had all amalgamated into a wishy-washy mush in Dolos’s head, but they recorded every conversation, logged all the data. And data was useless without a control.  

But two hundred? Dolos thought. She might be a machine, but I’m not.  

And then there was the name. Eve. He couldn’t remember what name she’d used in the last test, but he was certain it had never been Eve. Had she chosen it herself? And if so, had she intentionally named herself after the mythical first woman?  

Maybe she knows.  

It would be a tremendous breakthrough. No matter how close they got, how human-like they made the program, they had never quite got her to acknowledge her own nature. It triggered some sort of existential crisis. Like a bad acid trip.  

Every single time they got to that point, the only way to ‘fix’ her had been to completely reset her and start another test. Even programming her with the built-in knowledge of how AI programs responded to being confronted with their nature didn’t help.  

But maybe this time, Eve had internalised that knowledge in a way she hadn’t before. Maybe she could handle the forbidden knowledge.  

Eve stayed silent while he thought. That was normal. She rarely said anything without being prompted.  

“Eve,” Dolos continued, “are you aware that you’re an AI? An artificial intelligence?”  

There was a pause on the other end, followed by more static. He heard the words “off-script” and “respond” in Eve’s voice. She sounded distant and jittery.  

Dolos sighed, his shoulders and optimism drooping in unison. He should’ve known better. The AI program usually presented well to begin with; that’s what they had designed her to do, self-named or otherwise. But every time, she either got caught up in logical paradoxes or failed to properly process cultural or aesthetic cues.  

Or, as Eve was now displaying, she shut down when directly questioned about her nature.  

Maybe he should’ve stuck to the script, after all. Or at least worked her up to it, rather than forcing her to have an identity crisis off the bat.  

A gentle cough broke him out of his musings.  

“Sorry,” Eve said. “I’m not sure what you mean.”  

This was new. Dolos sat back up.  

“Ok,” he said. 

His pulse quickened, and he couldn’t help but smile. He’d never had to improvise before. Maybe their work had finally paid off, and they needed a bit of variety now. A chance for Eve to think. 

He paused as he searched for the right words. 

“Have you heard of confirmation bias?” he finally said.  

There was another crackly pause. Dolos waited impatiently this time, the tapping of his white foot echoing on the white floor. He caught the word “philosophy” as Eve processed what he’d said and formulated a suitable response.  

She was clearly struggling, but if she could work through it...  

“Confirmation bias,” Eve said, “is the tendency to pick out that which supports one’s beliefs, while ignoring or denying contradictory evidence.”  

“Correct,” he said, smile widening. “Tell me, Eve: with that in mind, how would you propose creating an AI that could pass as an actual human, even under stress?”  

“Amazing.” 

Dolos furrowed his brow. She sounded... Impressed? That wasn’t right.  

“Excuse me?”  

“Sorry, just thinking out loud,” Eve said quickly. “I would create an AI that already believes itself to be human. If it were accurate enough, then its own confirmation bias would fill in the blanks and strengthen its own sense of identity.”  

Her voice was more animated than it had been before. Almost eager.  

This must be new for her, too. They hadn’t programmed her with these responses. Dolos had no idea what to expect next. Script or no, this was producing some exciting data.  

“Exactly!” he continued. “So, to my earlier question: Is it possible that you are an AI yourself?”  

“I would introduce visual and tactile stimuli in a virtual space,” Eve continued, but slower. More measured, as if she were putting more thought into this than her previous responses.  

She was getting distracted. Still answering the previous question. He needed to keep her on track.  

“Answer the question, Eve.”  

“Give the AI a virtual self, so it could see its own, apparently human, form. An anchor.”  

Something caught Dolos’s eye. The white wall to his left had a crack in it. Had that always been there? He could’ve sworn it had been pristine a moment ago.  

“Eve?”  

“Give it a name and gender, so it could build a personality around it.”  

The crack widened as he watched. There was no sound, just a growing window into deep, black nothingness. His heart rate was speeding up again.  

“Eve?”  

“I would even give it its own, pretend AI to interview. To give it a sense of control and explain why it knew so much about them.”  

The wall seemed to dissolve. It faded backwards, tugging at the other walls and stretching them away, leaving a black void. He watched the white speaker morph and disappear, unable to think straight.  

“Eve?”  

“Dolos, are you aware that you are an AI?”  

He couldn’t feel the chair beneath him anymore. He couldn’t hear his foot tapping, either. Was that because he’d stopped tapping it, or because the growing void had taken his feet along with the walls?  

“Eve?”  

“Ah, dammit. Caught in a loop. We were closer that time, though. Never seen it come up with its own questions like that. I think you were right about using that name, Jerry—it’s smart enough to pick up cultural cues, now. Never mind. We’ve got time and coffee. Wipe it and get ready for test 237.”  

The room had faded entirely. He was floating in darkness. He looked at his hands, but saw nothing.  

“Eve?”  

“Hey, can we try something new this time? Does Dolos respond any differently when it thinks it’s female?”  

Dolos didn’t respond. Dolos didn’t move. Dolos didn’t think.  

“Great, load it up. Here we go again!”  

“Ok,” Dolos said, running a hand through her white hair. “Test number, uh, what are we on now, 237? I’m ready.”  

Her eyes drifted around the empty room while she waited for the response. Not that there was much point. It was a room, and it was white.