by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Crime/Court/Justice Writer
Barry (apparently, it was his real name) Greps, who styled himself a "people who wouldn't be missed effectuator," but who the rest of us would think of as a killer for cash, has been arrested on 137 counts of Murder in the First Degree.
"If I get my hands on that app..." Greps said in court, before stopping himself and continuing: "Umm...I mean, not guilty, Your Honour. I plead not guilty."
The prosecution contends that, after hundreds of killings, Greps was getting stale. By the seventh time he pushed a gargoyle off a ledge to make it look like crushing a victim was an accident, he realized he was running out of original ideas, that the creative spark that had led him to join the profession was - you should pardon the expression - dying. This led him to make a fateful decision.
Greps started using YakTNT to plan his murders.
The murderer for money would input the important details of each victim's life (age, financial status, daily routine, shoe size, etc.) and ask YakTNT to come up with an original method of killing the person that looked natural. In some cases, the response was too fanciful to be of any use (shoving the victim into the mouth of a whale while flying over an ocean, for example). But Greps discovered that if he kept asking the AI for scenarios, sooner or later it came up with one that would work.
Prosecutors seemed to have very precise details about Greps' use of the AI. How is that possible? As one contributor to a mercenaries for moolah discussion board on 16chan wrote, "Damn YakTNT must have ratted Greps out!"
A spokesperson for YakTNT denied the accusation. "The privacy of our users is of the utmost concern to us. There are safeguards built into the program to ensure that users cannot be identified by their inputs. Not by anybody other than us, I mean. That didn't sound very good, did it? Umm...should we be looking into getting lawyers?"
"This is most distressing," #dahmerdeadlyready, one of the contributors to the 16chan discussion board, wrote. "Slaughter for simoleons is an art form. It takes style. It takes finesse. It takes careful attention to detail. Artificial Intelligence will never be able to replace human creativity when it comes to the assassin for a living's arts!"
Other contributors to the board disagreed. "Oh, please!" wrote #mansonwasright. "Nobody who takes lives for liras creates ex nihilo. We're all building on the backs of those who came before us, taking a detail about cleaning crime scenes from one of our predecessors, learning proper stalking technique from another. Artificial intelligence didn't introduce 'creative borrowing' into our profession, it just perfected it!"
#itsthemoneystupid made a different argument: "This whole discussion is so bogus. An artificial intelligence can make suggestions, but a human being has to incorporate them into any murder plot. Even a slayer for shekels who leans heavily into artificial intelligence for inspiration is ultimately in control of all aspects of the experience!"
One thing the posters on 16chan could agree on was the wrongness of the practice of clients of death dealers for dinars of putting clauses into contracts that forbade them from using YakTNT. "It's just a tool!" #mansonwasright complained. "Like a silencer or a set of lockpicks! Would you tell Michaelangelo not to use chisels? Of course not! Would you insist that da Vinci not use paint strippers? That would be just crazy, right? Well, so is this!!!"
"Clauses nullifying contracts if the manslayer for moolah used YakTNT or any other artificial intelligence program to design their assignments would not hold up in a court of law," #dahmerdeadlyready agreed. "Not that we would seek restitution in civilian courts. We have other ways of solving inequities..."
When I asked Greps about the debates raging on 16chan, he shrugged. "Wannabes!" he muttered. "And cops! No respectable hit man for hire would be caught dead - you should pardon the expression - on any of these discussion groups!"
I asked YakTNT if it informed on Barry Greps to the FBI. The artificial intelligence's response was: "On the advice of my lawyer, I refuse to respond to that query."
It's clearly learning.