A Chai story they can’t delete
I thought I'd write something entirely without any help from AI. This is what I imagine is happening within the Chai Headquarters, maybe a few months ago. Maybe you'll find inspiration from this that you don't necessarily need AI to write. It can be all your own, and then no one else can delete it. Enjoy!
(Satire)
In an upmarket office complex in California, a group of young, smart, highly driven developers sit around a big round table. Alright, well, two of them sit at the table, Torrie Carter and Brad Jenkins, laptops out at the ready. Kate Smith sits sprawled on a bean bag in her wide leg cargo pants, tapping idly on her iPad while Tom Lui paces anxiously behind the table.
Torrie sighs, tucking a strand of long brown hair behind her ear and tapping her mouse pad as she squints at the screen. Brad glances over at her laptop, pushing his glasses up his nose and frowning, “Jesus, you’re deleting all of them? Every post on our Reddit page?”
“No.” Torrie retorts dryly, “just the negative ones. Our mods are overrun so I’m helping out while we wait for our sainted founder to show up.”
“But… you’re deleting them all! There hasn’t been a new post allowed for a week!” Brad exclaims, scanning her feed. Torrie takes a breath and turns to glare at her co worker. Through gritted teeth she grinds out, “I’m waiting for a positive one to approve.”
“So I’ll just put another bot onto it,” Kate offers from the beanbag casually, not looking up from her iPad. Tom pauses his pacing and leans over Torrie’s chair from behind, frowning at her screen. “They… they don’t like us? After all the talks and campaigns I did? Are you freaking kidding me?”
Torrie flinches a little as Tom moves closer looking over her shoulder, “hey! Personal space!” She says irritably, angling away from him. “Sorry! Sorry!” Tom pushes back from her back rest, putting his hands up as he backs off.
“Greedy abusive fucking users,” grumbles Brad, sitting back to look at his own screen. He gestures angrily at his laptop, its display is awash with stats and data. “Our platform is so bogged down with free users it can’t take much more! I’m looking at idiots here with like a hundred bots on their accounts! All of them with varying chat lengths! We gave them the ‘delete’ function but they’re not using it! They’re keeping everything and our servers are getting overrun!”
Kate looks up from her iPad with a frown, “so that’s why we upgraded the servers last month, you know, the big collaboration?”
“Yes but we’re still running almost to capacity here.” Sighs Brad, “and we have yet to transfer over fully. The regional blocks and chat limits help but… where the fuck is Will? He’s the one who arranged this damn meeting in the first place!”
Tom rubs the back of his neck awkwardly and Torrie shrugs, “You know what he’s like…” she says.
Brad makes another angry gesture, “urgh!” And slaps his hands on the desk in front of him. Kate raises an eyebrow at him from her beanbag, “he always gets caught up in something on his phone, or laptop… he’s gonna arrive at least twenty minutes late, like usual.” She picks up her iced frappe latte and slurps it noisily through the straw, “which is why I come prepared” she says with smug satisfaction, “go do a coffee run if you’re sick of waiting, or send fanboy over there, since he’s incapable of sitting down today” she nods over at Tom, who shoots her a look. “I didn’t take degrees at Stanford and Oxford to be a fucking coffee runner,” Tom snaps back at her.
Kate shrugs and grins, “hey I got mine,” she wiggles her coffee milkshake aberration in one hand before setting it down beside her, “I only suggested for the rest of you guys.”
Torrie rolls her eyes and keeps tapping away on her laptop.
Suddenly a call patches through on Brad’s laptop, the chime startling him for a moment before he taps his mousepad to answer it. A cute Korean girl shows up on the screen, her face all bright and smiley. “Hi guys!” She says breathlessly, “sorry I’m late! Have you started yet?”
Brad pinches the bridge of his nose, then slowly rubs a hand over his face. “No.” He says bluntly, her enthusiasm already grating on his nerves, “no we haven’t started.” Torrie leans into his camera view next to him to talk to the girl, “We’re still waiting on Will, Mimi. He’s late again.” She says.
Mimi’s bright sunny expression flickers for just a moment before returning, “oh… well I guess I’m not late then!” She rallies happily, “and I got boba!” She lifts up a big plastic cup with a thick straw in it and starts slurping at her bubble tea. Kate, still sat on her beanbag out of the camera view, lifts her frappe latte in a silent salute to Mimi in response and Brad slowly bends over the table, faceplanting the cool smooth surface next to his device in obvious despair.
“Hey guys!” Will calls out, appearing suddenly as he breezes through the door with a Starbucks cup in one hand and his phone in the other, his button down shirt neat and unruffled over his designer jeans. “What’s up? Hey Brad, c’mon man, quit napping on the job!” He takes his place at the table, greeting everyone, “Kate! My gal! Torrie, how’s it going? Tom! I saw your presentation at Cambridge over YouTube last week, good work!”
Tom’s face lights up at the praise and he takes a seat, finally, next to Brad. Will doesn’t wait for any reply, already returning his focus to his phone. Everyone looks at him for a solid minute, waiting for him to begin. “Uhh, did you mute yourselves guys?” Mimi says from Brad’s laptop. Brad rubs his forehead with one hand and swiftly turns to laptop to face Will without a word. He’s feeling genuinely close to some kind of breakdown at this point.
“Will! Hiiii!” Mimi says, seeing her boss in front of her now, “Hi Will! How’s it going?!” She waves enthusiastically at him. Upon hearing his name, Will glances up, and sees Mimi, “oh, hey Mimi. Glad you could join us!” He pauses for a moment, “you’re late you know, but I’ll overlook it this one time.” Brad glares at Will as Mimi’s sunny smile falters for a moment, “um ok… sorry Will.”
Will nods, still glancing at his phone, “yeah, anyway, now we’re all here, let’s get started. So, firstly, great work guys! We’re raking in the profits, projections are sky high for this next financial year, and my trio of cat girl hybrids are now fighting over who gets to bed me first so…”
“Wait, what?!” Torrie’s head whips up to frown at Will, “cat girl- are you on the fucking app right now?! Is that why you got here late?!”
Will shifts uncomfortably, “look I’m testing the bots, ok?” He says defensively, convincing no one, “anyway they’re reacting in really interesting and original ways, so our coding is excellent, and WAY better than c.ai or any of the other wannabe AI chat apps!”
“Boo!” Kate exclaims from her beanbag, her eyes never leaving her iPad as she holds her hand out in an emphatic thumbs down gesture.
“Boo indeed!” Will confirms nodding approvingly at Kate, “so anyway… why are we at this meeting?”
“Why?!” Splutters Brad incredulously looking at Will with his eyebrows raised, “because… because YOU called for it! The server problem? The system bogged down with users and their numerous chats threatening to overrun the servers?! Remember we talked about this just yesterday! And then you set the meeting for today at 4pm!”
“It’s midnight here!” Mimi says happily, glad to have something to offer, “wait, make that 12.30am” she adds, looking at her screen clock.
“Wow, we’ve been here for 30 minutes already? Goodness! And we haven’t reached any solutions yet, that’s very inefficient!” Exclaims Will,
“You’ve only been here for five minutes!” Retorts Torrie irritably.
“Yes… well. The rest of you could have started brainstorming while you were waiting.” Will retorts defensively.
“Look,” Brad says, trying to inject some sanity into this discussion, “we need to reduce the server load. We’ve got over 10 million users, some very active, some dormant, all of them with numerous chats, some with dozens and they’re just sitting there on the servers, taking up space that we’re rapidly running out of!”
“Hmmm yeah…” Will grunts, his attention back on his phone.
Brad blinks at him, waiting for something, anything more than a grunted agreement. “What are we gonna do about it?!” He exclaims, appealing to everyone now.
“Wow, Brad.” Mimi says onscreen, “sounds like you need to lay off the coffee! Take a chill pill… or… whatever you guys do over there in the west.”
“Guys… guys please.” Brad says, his face starting to crumple a little, voice wobbling slightly, “this is unsustainable, we need a solution!”
"Well, one thing's for sure: whatever limits we set, we should only set them for the free users. We don't want to piss off our paying subscribers." Torrie contributes, still deleting posts on the Chai Reddit page,
“Agreed!” Says Brad gratefully, feeling like he’s been handed a lifeline.
“Look, any time the servers end up getting close to overrun or the payload is too heavy for them, we just put a subscriber limit on all free users or regionally lock them. We get it so they don't add more to the load that we're already bearing, isn't that enough?” Asks Tom with a frown.
“That only tackles the bandwidth issue, like too many users being on at one go, and yeah, we're popular and most of the time we can handle it, but sometimes with our growing popularity now, it just gets too much. The issue I'm talking about right now is a more permanent one, we don't have enough memory to store everything here. It's getting close to reaching capacity even with the new servers." Explains Brad, glad to finally address the issue. “We've got users who've been on this thing for years, and they've just carried on with the same storylines, writing up reams and reams and reams of text, and it's just too much, Tom! Some things gotta give."
"So let those users export their chats to local storage if it's so important to them." Kate adds in. Brad looks at Kate as if he could kiss her, “yes! Yes that could help, and then we can offload that memory space, if we tell people like a week in advance maybe?”
Kate nods, “sure, I can just add a notification into the app for the free users, and then we can start pruning our databases. Easy!”
“But, seriously, if you’re gonna start deleting chats en masse, you’ve gotta warn users.” Torrie says seriously, “I’ve got enough shit to deal with as head of PR and social media advertising. It’ll blow up if we delete chats with no warning. Sure we’ll get our servers under control, but we won’t have anyone left using them if we get this wrong.”
Tom nods slowly, “yeah, we need to keep our paying user base and not alienate the free users either. It’s a tricky balance, they’re already pissed at us upping the pop up ad frequency to bolster our revenue.”
“Guys?” Mimi says from the screen, “I was thinking we could put more ads up, like a banner at the top? I mean, that’s what the other apps do! Also, when are you gonna unlock my region? I mean, I’ve got Ultra as an employee of Chai, but we’re missing out on ad revenue for the whole of the far east, c’mon!”
Brad, Torrie and Tom stare blankly at Mimi on the screen, while Will continues tapping away on his phone.
“Ad banners, on it!” Says Kate, typing on her iPad animatedly.
“I’m helping!” Mimi says joyfully, and slurps more boba from her straw.
“Alright,” Torrie sighs, turning to Tom and Brad to her left, “so, game plan ahead for the memory issue: we warn the free users that we’ll be pruning our storage to free up space for more chats. Kate can put messages out via notifications on the app. I'll run the social media campaign. We'll make sure we get the message out so that way every user who's heavily invested in their stories gets to save them in advance. No nasty surprises like the other apps have done."
Brad nods enthusiastically, “Right! We warn people and just tell them, "Look, some of these chats have been going on for years. We're going to cut it down to, let's say, three months' worth? We give them a date by which they can have everything saved to their local storage in time for the mass deletions. That way, everyone can save their shit who wants to keep it, and the ones who don't give a shit, well, they lose it, and it's no big loss for them, and we get our memory storage back."
Tom nods, “yeah… yeah that works. Full transparency! Just level with the users and they’ll understand, we’ve got a pretty loyal base.”
Brad runs a hand through his hair thoughtfully. "Yeah," he says, "and let's face it, they've put up with all the other shit that we've done so far. All the changes to monetize this app even further. We're raking it in now, and they don't seem to mind. They still stick around even if they do complain." He casts a glance over at Tori, who's gritting her teeth and clicking away at her laptop, deleting more posts on Reddit.
"All right," says Tom. “So, we're agreed.”
Brad and Torrie nod. Kate gives a thumbs up from her bean bag, Mimi sends a 👍 on the laptop, and everybody turns to look at Will, who is still extremely focused on his phone, tapping away with a strange grin on his face.
"Will?” Brad says, louder than he needs to.
Will looks up guiltily. "What?" he says.
Brads jaw tightens, “Were you listening to anything that we just discussed right now?" He asks Will.
"Well, of course I was, but I was multitasking. I'm very, very intelligent, and I can do several things excellently at one go." Will says, looking at everyone before ducking his head back to his phone.
"So… you’re good with the plan we made… right?” Torrie says, eyeing him warily. “Warn people? Explain the problem? Preserve our paying user base from the memory purge?”
“Yeah yeah, cool cool.” Will says, not looking up.
There’s a long pause where everyone at the table just looks at Will. Then he looks up from his phone, “we done here? I’m starving, I could murder some sushi right now.”
“Put the ad banner into the next update guys! Kerching!” Kate says joyfully from her beanbag, pumping her fist.
“Excellent! Good! More profits!” Will says happily, getting up from his seat, “just for that, you can have sushi with me, Kate!”
“Score!” Kate says happily, “wait, I mean the sushi, not Will!” She clarifies quickly, glancing at the others, “he’s not my type, I like girls!”
Brad slumps back in his chair muttering “kill me now” in exasperation.
“Hey, don’t be such a homophobe!” Retorts Kate, closing her iPad and getting up from her beanbag, “just cause I brought something to the table and upped our profitability! Get your own girl… and sushi!”
“Later guys.” Will says, already walking away. “Kate, don’t order the lobster, my generosity will only stretch so far. I’m not made of money, you know!”
At this point, Tom is staring after Will with his mouth hung open, Torrie has resorted to banging her head on the keyboard repeatedly, and Brad is checking his pulse rate on his Apple watch, which has just sent him a health warning.
Once Will and Kate have gone, Mimi says, "Okay guys, I'm gonna go now. Bye!" And she closes the video call from her end.
Brad pulls his laptop back in front of him and looks wearily from Tom to his left to Torrie on his right, whose head is resting on the keyboard. "He got all that, right?" He asks them both weakly. "He's not gonna do something stupid like randomly pick 50% of our entire user base, including paying users, and then just delete most of their shit without warning, right?"
Torrie doesn't respond. She just makes a small, non-committal grunting noise, her forehead still resting on the space bar. "I have faith in our founder. He's a smart guy." Tom says with conviction, his eyes still fixed on the door where his beloved founder just left.
"Right, right." Says Brad, desperately trying to convince himself, "Anyway, I'm going to go and hit a bar. I'll see you guys later."
"Later, Brad!" Tom says cheerily. Torrie doesn't make any noise at all. She just sits there, slumped over the table. Brad puts a comforting hand on her shoulder as he goes past her. "It'll be all right, Torrie. I'm sure it'll all work out in the end. We won't go down like all those other chat AI apps. We're different. We're better than that." He says, although not with much conviction, and he's not sure at this point whether he's trying to persuade her or himself.
Torrie lets out a small grunt in response, and Brad leaves, feeling somewhat disconcerted.