Google’s “Do-Gooder” company ethos meets Cambridge Analytica

In the late aughts, THEODORE was an idealistic start-up created by Sophie and Ulysses in their off-campus residence as seniors at Stanford, originally set in motion by the pipe dream that since we live in a deterministic universe, we just need to find the right data, and input it the right way, to be able to lead the human species towards a better future. With that in mind, through the newly discovered transformer architecture of unsupervised learning , Sophie and Ulysses were able to create a beta version of the AI capable of predicting major societal fluctuations in the long term, marketing Theodore as a tool that would aid companies worldwide in shaping their business decisions.

Theodore’s motto: “Know what you need to do to do good”

By 2013 Sophie was eager to test its very conceptual ideas in the real-world environment, while Ulysses felt further research was still necessary. Being offered a consultancy contract to influence an upcoming election in Brazil (Ulysses home-country), Sophie strong-arms her partner for them to accept it, as she sees it as a clear shot at a practical implementation of Theodore’s prediction capacities in the real world

That’s when things go… Bad. Theodore’s models propose subtle influences in Brazilian politics, which in turn create great social polarization and economic instability in the country. Ulysses attempts to stop Sophie, but she boots her friend off the company board of directors, shortly before a civil war ravishes the country. (see Brazilian Humanitarian Crisis).

News never comes to light of Theodore’s involvement in the crisis, and the company is repositioned by Sophie as a political and brand consultancy group. Having learned its lesson in Brazil, Theodore is able to much more subtly influence individual choices world-over, being a fundamental part for any international product release or political campaign to reach its intended result. Within a couple of years Theodore becomes a Fortune 500 blue-chip company, making Sophie one of the world’s most powerful CEOs.

Theodore’s success being very much based in its access to data streams worldwide (phone carrier’s metadata, IoT sensor readings, stock exchange fluctuations, social media sentiment analysis, etc), it creates strong incentive for the company to accumulated more and more data streams, and it is not usual for Sophie to stretch the company’s legal boundaries in order to do so.

2023 is when Theodore’s data reaches a critical mass, allowing it to correctly predict human behavior down to its most minute details. The general shape of human and natural history becomes easily accessible to Sophie, and that’s when she finds out our world is heading towards a cataclysmic climate emergency (see Skyfall), seeing in it an opportunity to manipulate Ulysses to come back to the company.