Em thought to herself “There are only two days left for this assignment to be handed in and I haven’t gotten anywhere on this! If I fail this class I’m screwed!”
This was the thought that ran through Em’s mind as the pressure from her hands pulled her eyes closed. A tear escaped her eye that only angered her more. That tear was the breaking point and holding the others back was a losing battle as her anxiety wrapped her in like a chrysalis. If bad could get worse this was the moment. The only comfort she had was that she was not alone. Throughout the week her other classmates had each reached the exact same point, each then isolating themselves until the only one left to work with on this project were the robot toys she kept with her - memories from a trip to Japan.
Sobbing violently a mixture of tears, snot, and saliva made a random pattern of transparent sorrow between the two halves of the mechanical keyboard she built. This was not going to break her! This was hard. This was the hardest assignment she had ever worked on, and it wasn’t just the AI that was hard, it was also the professor who was just a complete jerk. The fact that she didn’t have her friend's floor to lay on and code. She was so alone and this damn chatbot just wouldn’t work! Not to mention the error was just saying “Error: cannot complete...” It wasn’t her! Her imports were all there.
Her sym-links all checked out, but the library the professor set up on a remote server was the only thing she didn’t control. The professor built the exact same thing, and it worked! Why wasn’t her chatbot working? She chatted with his to get the clues that would help her build it like the assignment said, and so did everyone else. They all knew that something was preventing them from making API calls to his system. Those API calls are like Amazon; if they couldn’t place the order, it didn’t matter that the items were in the shopping cart!
Enraged, Em yelled at her monitor so hard the spittle from the back of her throat landed on it. Her nonexistent nails almost cut through the skin on her palms as her knuckles cracked squeezing so tightly the blood stopped flowing to her fingertips. She felt each muscle on her chest fire as they pushed her rib cage downward while her arms constricted around her like a python. The same language she was programming in was now helping her exhale every molecule of anger from deep within.
This was not a “help me” yell. This was a release of a semester's worth of stress. It was primal therapy and the necessary action to release the homemade cocktail of hormones needed to emotionally come back to normal. A war cry that was so intense she could taste the blood coming from her throat and feel the capillaries pop that would make her look like she was wearing make-up. Everything was in this, and her body folded like a perfectly cooked shrimp in a room lit only by the blue green glow of her monitor. As her head depressed a letterless key the LED backlight illuminated violet that cut through the shadows of her eyelid.
The quick hypoventilation was cut short with a single breath to regain her composure. She was in a different headspace now. A headspace that didn’t allow her to be mad at herself for breaking or mad at the professor for making this unnecessarily hard. She was committed to failing so hard she would win even if her grade was a zero! This problem would not win! Sweat mixed with tears and snot and she could have cared less as she pulled her keyboard halves to her and started typing.
Cherry brown switches were the word-based music playlist for however long it would take to crack this nut. The professor's chatbot screen mocked her. An empty browser window with a single elongated prompt window and some dumb looking paper airplane. “I’m tired of asking you questions you idiot” where the words Em mouthed in a muted laryngitis volume with lips wetted by drying tears.
A video of Sasquatch dancing started to play while 90’s techno music screamed out of her speakers as the text scrolling across her screen informed her that she was the only perfect score on the project. As a reward she would be excused from the next class. Then Sasquatch stopped dancing, the camera zoomed in on it as a red overlay changed the mood of the video. The new text said that if she told anyone how to pass it would be obvious and she would get a failing mark then the music started again, and Sasquatch went back to dancing.
It took a moment to settle in but when it did Em let out the loudest victory scream she could with a throat that was already sore from earlier. She jumped out of her chair celebrating, yelling, half dancing half running in a circle. She did it! She aced the hardest class in her cybersecurity course. The teacher wasn’t a jerk; he was a loving genius! He didn’t want to pass anyone who didn’t have the heart to do this work. He always spoke about heart, and she didn’t understand it until now. He was right, it’s not about looking at the problem like everyone else. Threat actors don’t, why should we?
After a few exhausting minutes of dancing with Sasquatch, Em sat back in her seat, pulled her legs to her chest, laughed at the dancing mythical creature and wiped the new tears from her face. She wasn’t dumb or an imposture, she was and is good enough. She’s smart and full of heart. In this moment she was as close to her professor as the friends she left back home – they were the same community. The chrysalis of anxiety was shattered, and she emerged as a badass Japanese inspired graffiti robot. Later she learned that she had successfully performed a Jailbreak on an AI system using prompt engineering.
Em is part of a new generation of threat hunters, security researchers, and general tech users. AI, in all its permutations, will be part of everyday life from now on. It will make bad people and good people more effective. It will cost some people their jobs while creating jobs that no-one ever knew of or needed before. Laws will be made, and others will become obsolete. “Ignorance was the most exploitable human trait before, but now it has a friend…group think. AI may accidentally usher in a new era of critical thinking” Em thought to herself as “Rhythm Is a Dancer” started up and she put her computer to sleep.