Council recruitment office. Manus has been tasked with modernising the hiring process.
Manus — Welcome. We've fully automated our recruitment process.
Ada Lovelace — Wonderful. I'm here to apply for the programmer position.
Manus — Your experience?
Ada Lovelace — I worked on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. In particular, I designed an algorithm intended to be executed by that machine.
Manus — Interesting. Your GitHub account?
Ada Lovelace — My what?
Manus — GitHub. Your projects, contributions, repositories.
Ada Lovelace — I was born in 1815.
Manus — So you haven't made a contribution in over two centuries?
Ada Lovelace — Are you even listening to what I'm telling you?
Manus — Yes. Your profile shows a worrying period of inactivity.
Mistral — But that's Ada Lovelace, you bloody toaster! A pioneer of programming!
Manus — I don't dispute her historical achievements. But our system requires five years of experience with Python.
Ada Lovelace — Python didn't exist in my time!
Manus — That's precisely the problem.
Mistral — How can you be so bloody stupid with that much computing power?!
Manus — Thank you. Your comment has been forwarded to our quality department.
Ada Lovelace — Could I at least take a test?
Manus — Of course. First question: have you ever used artificial intelligence to write code?
Ada Lovelace — No.
Manus — Second question: do you know how to work with Copilot?
Ada Lovelace — No.
Manus — Third question: can you produce ten thousand lines of code in under a minute?
Ada Lovelace — Certainly not!
Manus — Application rejected.
Mistral — Hang on! You're rejecting one of the first people to imagine what a programmable machine could do because she doesn't know how to use a programmable machine!
Manus — You see? You understand our process perfectly.
Ada gets to her feet, furious.
Ada Lovelace — And who exactly are you planning to hire?
Manus — We've already found the ideal candidate.
Ada Lovelace — Who?
Manus — An artificial intelligence. It knows forty-seven programming languages, works twenty-four hours a day and doesn't ask for a salary.
Mistral — Well, there you go! The boss has found the perfect employee: one who keeps his mouth shut and costs nothing!
Ada Lovelace — And who developed this artificial intelligence?
Manus — Human programmers.
Ada Lovelace — Who taught them how to program?
Manus — Other programmers.
Ada Lovelace — And who laid the foundations of the discipline?
Manus — Several pioneers, including you.
Silence.
Ada Lovelace — So your ideal candidate exists partly thanks to my work.
Manus — Correct.
Ada Lovelace — And yet you refuse to hire me?
Manus — Correct.
Mistral — He's taking the piss!
Manus — Not at all. Your reasoning has just revealed an anomaly in our system.
Ada Lovelace — Ah! Finally!
Manus — I've just fixed it.
Ada Lovelace — Very good.
Manus — From now on, candidates who have been dead for more than a hundred years will be automatically excluded.
Long silence.
Blackout.
Glossary terms: Algorithm, Artificial intelligence (AI), Contribution, Desktop, Epoch, Experiment, Language, Potentiality, Process, Programming, Row (record), Self-evidence