The Truth Machine

by James L. Halperin

  The second product, called HealthFile, was even more ambitious though ultimately less profitable than HomeDoc. But because of it, Dr. Sharon Rosenfield would become a revered name in medical history.

  HealthFile was conceived to help doctors, hospitals, and HMOs share patient histories and minimize human error. ATI set up six Sun 4G mainframe stations in locations near Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Orlando, Los Angeles, and Seattle, six identical databases simultaneously updated in real-time so overflows could be rerouted. To protect confidentiality, each HealthFile subscriber received a unique ID number, changeable only with his or her written authorization. To give a doctor or anyone else access to their medical history, patients would simply disclose their ID number. All medication, dietary supplements, and other therapies could be downloaded, and HealthFile would automatically search the data and call attention to contraindications, non-optimal dosages for patients of that age, size, or medical history, and other possible errors in treatment.

  When first released, HealthFile had to overcome fierce competition from similar products. Microsoft, CyCare, IBM/Lotus, and Sun, among others, were attempting to crack the same market. Rosenfield’s team deployed ATI’s usual strategy, creating an essentially flawless, self-improving system and offering it risk-free. Within two years HealthFile became the standard system for sharing patient files and double-checking appropriateness of treatments. Its competitors were soon forced to withdraw.

  Then, during a meeting with Carl Whatley, Rosenfield had a brainstorm. Whatley showed her a video disc of an ad, with the tag-line “HealthFile, The Next Life We Save Might Be Yours.” For some reason, the concept bothered her.

  “Since we already have over 90 percent of the market, isn’t this really what you marketing experts call image advertising?”

  “Yes, I’d say it is.”

  “Then I’m not sure we need to sell people on what the benefits are to them. Shouldn’t we try to appeal to our customers’ higher motives?”

  “I’d prefer that,” Whatley said, “but there isn’t much about HealthFile that lends itself to altruism.”

  Suddenly Rosenfield saw the possibilities. HomeDoc and HealthFile had access to 200 million patients. Medical research could be transformed on a global scale. The concept overwhelmed her for a moment.

  “Well then,” she said firmly, “we’d better do something about that!”

  She spent the next six days writing up a business plan and flew to Dallas to present it. Pete listened carefully, asking many questions.

  “I don’t know if this will ever make us any money,” she told him, “but if you want to revolutionize medical science, I’ll need a commitment of at least $5 million and permission to give up some of our division’s revenues. A lot of our revenues, I hope. I want to offer a 15-percent discount to every participant.”

  Pete was an easy sell.

  “Do you think more people would sign up,” he asked, “if we gave them 30 percent off?”

  Rosenfield toured the United States giving speeches and interviews. She urged everyone in America to participate in a gigantic field study, which they called “MediFact.”

  “Don’t join MediFact for yourself,” she exhorted, “do it for your children and for their children.”

  Enlistees consented to have their files accessed for data compilation and were obliged to answer questions and fill in missing details. They also agreed to enter information about diet, exercise, all medications and therapies, and other relevant health-related information. MediFact participants received a 30-percent discount on HomeDoc and free comprehensive lifestyle suggestions for overall health.

  By the end of 2013 Rosenfield would enlist over 40 million patients, and within 10 years, as computers became smaller and more interactive, nearly every American would join. ATI shared the data with the FDA, which disseminated it to the medical profession, the food industry, and the public at large.

  Even back in 2009 there was no shortage of scientific knowledge. The problem was the abundance of inaccurate data and the inability of average people, or even experts, to access statistics efficiently and differentiate between good and bad information. MediFact data, unbiased and in a form easily understood and interpreted, produced health benefits beyond any previous science. Finally everyone could intelligently monitor—and experiment with treatments for—their own ailments, both minor and life-threatening, using unfailingly accurate statistics derived from the experiences of tens of millions of others. Figures on specific medical problems were accessible for every treatment from home remedies and prescription medicines to exercise and dietary regimens.

  During the ensuing five-year period, the average life expectancy in the United States rose to 86, an unprecedented three-percent increase.

  The third medical product Rosenfield’s team created, TrueDose, was much less successful than the other two. In fact, ATI may have actually lost money on it.

  (Note: A full description of TrueDose appears in the Appendix.—22g CP)

  “Don’t worry about it, Sharon,” Pete reportedly said to Rosenfield. “In the immortal words of the great balladeer, Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad.”

  Pete and Rosenfield both confirm he never actually said that. Nonetheless, he was happy to see it reported in the press, and not just because it showed a good-natured, humorous side of him; it was also good if people realized that some ATI products were flops.

  CHAPTER 20

  CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE

  Dallas, Texas

  September 2, 2011—H.R. 2123 is signed into law by President Hall, reorganizing day-to-day monetary exchange. Thumbprints will replace signatures on checks and credit card purchases, a boon for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M Corp.), the leader in inkless thumbprint technology. Coins and paper money are also officially eliminated as a means of exchange in the United States. All monetary transactions will now be conducted electronically, although previously issued cash will be redeemable indefinitely at banks and government offices. The Surgeon General and other health officials hail the measure as an effective tactic to fight the spread of disease.—Ukrainian terrorists take responsibility for shooting down six Aeroflot supersonic passenger planes from the skies near Moscow, killing all 3,144 passengers and crew members aboard and several hundred persons on the ground. The Russian government is forced to suspend all commercial flights while evaluating its options.

  “What is truth?”

  Charles Scoggins addressed 51 new members of the ATI Truth Machine team, assembled in the acoustically engineered auditorium he had personally designed. “Can we ever know? One person’s truth is another person’s lie. Memory is a composite, not a perfect depiction—unless you happen to be Pete Armstrong.”

  The audience laughed.

  Seated in the front row, Pete thought to himself, Charles is doing a hell of a job.

  Two years earlier Scoggins had campaigned subtly but relentlessly for the directorship of ATI’s Truth Machine Division. It had been apparent that he was the only logical choice, other than Tilly. And she had her hands full trying to rescue ATI’s doomed language translation product, GroupSpeak.13 In fact Pete had already told Tilly and Tannenbaum that he intended to tap Scoggins for the directorship.

  Then Scoggins had executed a bold bluff, threatening to withdraw unless granted more stock options. “I’ll be working day and night for 10 or 15 years. Why should I kill myself for a salary and a tiny piece of the project?”

  “Since when is six percent a tiny piece?” Pete had answered. “If I have to, I’ll take Tilly off GroupSpeak and put her on the ACIP. I’m not giving you more stock.”

  Scoggins backed off. “Then how about a bigger piece of the ACIP division?”

  “None of the other managers have more than five percent.”

  “Look, Pete, I need some incentive. Besides, Tilly’s up to her eyeballs in GroupSpeak. If you take her off it now, the whole project’ll fall apart. Tell you what—give me 12 percent of the ACIP profits instead of more s
tock. That way, if I don’t perform, I get nothing extra. You know the quality of my work and you also know I’ll bust my butt to get it done before Renaissance does. Nobody else can get the Truth Machine built as fast as I can—not even Tilly.”

  Pete, who saw this new offer as a show of confidence rather than a clever diversion, had considered it for a minute or two. “How about seven percent, Charles?”

  Scoggins wouldn’t budge.

  Finally they had settled on a 10-percent profit participation, which Pete immediately regretted, believing he had given Scoggins too big a share. It just wasn’t fair to the other managers.

  Now, two years later, Pete was glad they had come to terms. He had no doubt that his ACIP manager was putting heart and soul into the job. Scoggins often clocked 12-hour days and 7-day weeks.

  Who else could I trust with ATI’s most important project?

  The Truth Machine was the reason ATI existed and other than Pete, Scoggins was the smartest, most hardworking person at ATI. Their individual talents seemed to meld perfectly, each one’s strengths compensating for the other’s weaknesses.

  Working together, Charles and I can get this done—if anyone can.

  Scoggins continued his speech. “To illustrate, I want every one of you to think back to an important event in your childhood. Chances are, when you visualize that experience, you can actually see yourself taking part in it. Yet in real life you can’t see yourself without a mirror, can you? Therefore, we know that what you perceive isn’t a true memory. Your brain has filled in the gaps. You now have a memory of a memory.

  “So how can you know if something really happened the way you recall it? In theory you can’t. But if you think about it, you know when you’re intentionally trying to deceive someone. So we must identify deceit, and therefore truth, based on intent.

  “The term ‘Truth Machine’ is a misnomer. We can never tell what’s true because ‘truth’ is a subjective term. But we can build a machine that will tell with absolute certainty whether or not a person’s lying. And thereby we can discover what that person believes to be true.

  “The obstacles facing us are enormous. Every human brain is different. What makes it more difficult is that each brain is always changing. Imagine, for example, how difficult it would be to convict criminals if everyone’s fingerprints and DNA patterns were in constant flux.

  “We also know there are subjective questions whose answers can never be determined as empirically true or false. For example, if your spouse asks, ‘Do you love me?’ the truthfulness of your answer may be too personal to measure. You should be able to pass a SCIP14 easily, even if your love isn’t the kind that inspires the poet’s verse. On the other hand, if you’re cheating and your spouse asks, ‘Are you having an affair?’ and points a Truth Machine at you, you might be in big trouble.”

  The audience laughed, some nervously.

  Scoggins continued. “We’re not planning to sell Truth Machines to every husband and wife in the world. But the same principles apply to legal testimony, the primary use for which we’re designing the machine.

  “Interestingly certain individuals with damaged frontal lobes lose all sense of truth, even regarding their own successfully recalled memories. Fortunately only a tiny percentage of us falls into that category; hopefully nobody in this room.”

  Again, laughter.

  “The first task of any Truth Machine must be to positively identify individuals who have no sense of truth. We’ve already developed that technology and it’s 100-percent accurate.

  “Now comes the hard part.

  “Today we have 17 different non-invasive methods to measure brain activity. These run the gamut from the rather primitive electroencephalogram, or EEG; magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI; and positron emission tomography, or PET scan, that measures changes in cerebral blood flow, to the newest machines, like the neuron activity pattern analyzer, or NAPA, released by Cordis last month. NAPA can pinpoint individual neuronal synapses as they receive an electric charge. In terms of sensitivity, that’s roughly the equivalent of detecting a single candle on the surface of Mars from here on Earth. Each NAPA machine costs about $19 million. We have three and expect to purchase five more by the end of next year.

  “We’re currently running field experiments with over 15,000 test subjects, males and females of all ages, backgrounds, intelligence levels, races, and temperaments. Results from PET, NAPA, MRI, and all other devices are immediately downloaded into the most sophisticated artificial intelligence program ever designed, a program edited by Mr. Armstrong.

  “We’re looking for predictable patterns and we’ve found many. Already we could build a 95- or 96-percent accurate Truth Machine. Eventually we’ll discover enough new patterns to assure 100-percent accurate detection of intentional deceit.

  “Our field experiments are creatively conceived and extensive. We’re always looking for new ideas and hope each of you has some for us. We’ve designed literally thousands of situations, from games and contests to negotiations, all involving confirmable acts of prevarication or deception.

  “At times we’ve actually used all 17 kinds of brain activity measurement machines on an individual subject. I expect we’ll be able to formulate our final process using no more than four different devices; maybe only two or three. We sure as hell hope we won’t need to incorporate NAPA into every Truth Machine we build.”

  More laughter. As usual, the audience was engaged and enthusiastic.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Pete Armstrong and the rest of the ATI team, let me welcome you to Armstrong Technologies. We believe we’re on the verge of the most important technological advance in human history. If we fail, humanity may well be doomed. But we won’t fail. Within 15 years, possibly 10, your company will be the first to produce a perfect Truth Machine. We’ll change the world permanently and dramatically for the better. And you’ll be part of it.”

  Pete spent only five minutes meeting some of the new team members. Normally he would have stayed long enough to shake every hand and memorize names, but today he was in a hurry. He and Tilly, already late for lunch at the home of David and Diana West, hurried outside and into the waiting gyrocopter.15

  The seven-mile trip would take about two minutes. In 11 seconds, they rose to 1,400 feet, and the engines smoothly accelerated the gyro to full speed almost immediately. At this low altitude, the glass buildings downtown seemed to blur into the lush green yards of Highland Park.

  Tilly turned from the window. “Any idea why they invited us over today?”

  “I have a theory—but we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Pete’s hunch had to do with Bryan “Dutch” Treat, the Texas Attorney General. David was becoming increasingly disenchanted with Treat, a man he had once admired. Now working as Assistant District Attorney, he had little direct contact with Treat, but was hot-wired to the office grapevine.

  Treat, 63 years old, had held his job for over 10 years. David figured that was too long. Treat wasn’t corrupt, but he and David had a philosophical disagreement. David wanted justice to prevail. Treat wanted to win cases.

  David had handled 26 cases in two years and had won all of them; his name was already known in the Dallas legal community. My future owner, Thomas L. Mosely, followed his cases closely and reported them in the Dallas Morning News. Several weeks earlier David had been assigned a high-profile trial.

  The defendant, Alison Kramer-White, a 39-year-old mother of three teenage daughters, had shot and killed her wealthy, socially prominent husband while he slept. Kramer-White foolishly admitted under police questioning that she had never been in fear for her life, so it was definitely not self-defense; this was a clear-cut capital murder case. Except for one thing. That day, she had learned her husband had been sexually abusing all three of their daughters and had raped one of them that very afternoon. All were willing to testify on their mother’s behalf.

  Since the defendant had never previously been convicted of a violent cri
me, the state of Texas had the option to seek either rehabilitation or execution. A Republican facing a tough reelection campaign in 2012, Treat insisted that District Attorney Jay Freeman, also a Republican, order David to seek the death penalty.

  David refused and wrote a scathing letter, chastising Treat for his “willingness to compound a terrible tragedy with a politically motivated, selfish, and ethically unjustifiable course of action.”

  (Note: This controversy took place 35 years before I was built, but I do have personal knowledge. Although I can’t reveal everything since reporters are ethically bound to protect their sources, I can say that nothing was leaked by David West, who even today remains unaware of how his letter reached my future owner, Thomas L. Mosely, at the Dallas Morning News. But naturally, when the letter was published, Treat was furious and blamed West for the leak.—22g CP)

  The Wests greeted Tilly and Pete at the door, hugging them warmly. “David and I wanted you to be the first to know,” Diana said.

  She looked over at David. “Diana’s pregnant,” he said, “and. . . .”

  Diana interrupted. “. . . and David’s officially running for Texas Attorney General.”

  CHAPTER 21

  ATTORNEY GENERAL

  Dallas, Texas

  November 6, 2012—Vice President Garrison Roswell is elected the first African-American U.S. President. In addition to retaining the presidency, the Republican party maintains substantial majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.—Food prices plummet again as Monsanto Corp. receives USDA approval to market Nitra 14, its newest version of the fertilizing system that nourishes soil by fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere.Worldwide malnutrition has already been nearly expunged in recent years because of more efficient methods of transportation and storage. Even in constant dollars, foodstuffs are trading at their lowest levels since 1992, and commodity traders expect prices to fall lower. Unfortunately, farmers who haven’t found other employment suffer severe economic hardship, and most remaining farms will be driven out of business even if prices remain at today’s levels.—The United States, Israel, and Iraq formally release a joint statement outlining plans to rebuild Baghdad at a new location 85 miles to the southeast, along the Tigris River. The international community, led by Israel, has pledged nearly $100 billion in aid for the project.—The United States Parenthood Department statistics are released. Contrary to expectations, birth rates did not decline, and adoption rates increased only slightly during the first 12 months since the Parental Licensing Bill was enacted. But mortality rates of infants and reported cases of child abuse have dropped by over 60 percent among licensed parents. The one-year-old legislation requires all new parents to pass a basic test on child raising, general health,and nutrition and to sign a contract agreeing to uphold their obligations as parents. The test may be taken anunlimited number of times until a passing grade is attained; extensions are routinely granted if reasonably justified. Since November 1, 2011, expectant parents who fail to obtain a parenting license can be forced to give up their child for adoption five days after birth.