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Yasira snorts. But what can she say? Her counterpart is right.
“Talk to Claus Messerschmidt, though,” says Schiller.
Yasira makes a note. “Like the fighter plane?” she asks.
Schiller shrugs his shoulders. “I guess so. Is it spelled with DT at the end? And Claus with a C.”
“And who is this Claus Messerschmidt?”
“Claus was my predecessor as CTO. Maybe he could be your expert. He’s already lost his job. Besides, he’s way more extroverted than I am. Claus will probably enjoy going on TV. Maybe he can help you.” After a short pause, Schiller adds. “He’s also not such a coward like me.”
“Why was Messerschmidt fired?” asks Yasira.
“I’m not allowed to say,” Schiller replies. “I signed an NDA.”
“A nondisclosure agreement?”
“Yes. But go and ask Claus yourself, maybe he’ll tell you. I’m sorry I can’t support you more.”
“Still, thank you for meeting me,” says Yasira. “You’ve been a great help. And it was brave of you to call me.”
“You know, I started at AlmostReal because I love movies!The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar!” Mentioning the movies makes Schiller light up briefly. “That’s why I’m here. Visual effects! But they’re difficult and time-consuming. They cost tens of millions of dollars. Only the big studios can afford it. I wanted to help every filmmaker to be able to afford to use visual effects. Even every amateur filmmaker. A democratization of art, you know? But now I think it might have been better if some things that technology made easier had remained difficult.”
“Yes,” says Yasira simply.
“Since the acquisition, we’ve been working for Google. Of course, that brings many advantages, we get Google’s know-how, we can use the Google AI cloud. But filmmaking is no longer our focus. Hollywood is too small a business field, you see.” Schiller laughs bitterly. “Apart from artificial intelligence, I can only think of one technology where the inventors themselves warned that it could unfortunately mean the end of humanity.”
“The nuclear bomb,” says Yasira.
“Yes,” confirms Schiller. “We’re working on a new nuclear bomb.”
“What about safety precautions?” Yasira wants to know. “If, as you say, developers are aware of the risks, they must be cautious accordingly.”
Tom Schiller smiles. “How would you move forward safely?” he asks. “Slowly. Step by step. Carefully. By feeling your way. Always looking to the right and left. The only problem is...” Tom Schiller scratches under his baseball cap. “The public hasn’t realized it yet, but we’re already in a race. The Chinese against the Americans. Microsoft against Google. Musk against Altman. And anyone who moves as cautiously as I just described...”
“... will lose the race,” adds Yasira.
“Move fast and break things.”
“Excuse me?”
“That was Facebook’s unofficial motto for a long time. And somehow of the entire Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg is said to have repeated it over and over again at meetings.‘We need to move fast and break things!’And that’s what the guys in Silicon Valley did. They moved fast and broke the old.”
“And now everyone wonders why we live in a broken world,” murmurs Yasira.
Schiller looks at his watch. “I have to go, otherwise my absence will be noticed.” He gets up. “If you could just stay here a few more minutes...”
“Of course. I’ll stay here for a moment,” says Yasira with a smile. “So we don’t leave the café at the same time.”
Schiller nods gratefully.
“I’m sorry,” are his last quiet words. “I’m sorry.”
NO MORE GLITCHES, BITCHES!
Still in the café, Yasira googles for information about Claus Messerschmidt. What did he do that AlmostReal wants to keep secret? He is one of the founders of the start-up. The demand he allegedly made to his programmers at every meeting was: “No more glitches, bitches!” Apparently, that was the phrase he wanted to go down in history with. Yasira finds a somewhat older interview with Messerschmidt inWired. On the photo, he looks like a greasy dandy. Baby-smooth shaven, hair slicked back. Fancy suit. Only his nose piercing seems out of place. At least it appears to be made of gold.
Messerschmidt left AlmostReal about a year ago over a dispute. Unfortunately, it seems Tom Schiller is not the only one with a signed nondisclosure agreement. There is only speculation about the reasons for the dispute. But it may have been a #MeToo case, asDer Spiegelreports rumors of Messerschmidt’s sexually assaultive behavior toward female employees. Other sources claim that it was about the theft of intellectual property in the wake of Google’s takeover. Either way. Messerschmidt appears to be a barely likable contemporary. Yet he might be exactly the expert Yasira needs.
