Toys in Babylon is a thinly disguised parody of Duolingo, its founders, its cast of cartoon educators, and its customers. The book is due for publication in all major formats on August 15, but is available for presale at Amazon.
Briefly, things go horribly wrong when a Duolingo-like company turns development over to AI computers, which, in turn imbue their distinctive cast of cartoon educators with minds of their own.
From the back cover:
Çoki is missing!
Who murdered the mascot and spokes-bear of the world’s most successful foreign language app? Was it an executive, employee, investor, lover, or one of the company’s animated instructors – endearing cartoon personalities invested with the power of Artificial Intelligence? What began as a chain novel prompt along the lines of “It was a dark and stormy night” on a language app fan site morphed into a full-fledged novel and parody by the prize-winning author of Cooperative Lives. The story originally appeared online in thirteen riveting installments but is now expanded and available in book format as the definitive parody, page turner, and murder mystery for anyone who has ever studied language with a cast of digital cartoon characters and an anthropomorphic mascot.
Toys in Babylon is a thinly disguised parody of Duolingo, its founders, its cast of cartoon educators, and its customers. The book is due for publication in all major formats on August 15, but is available for presale at Amazon.
Briefly, things go horribly wrong when a Duolingo-like company turns development over to AI computers, which, in turn imbue their distinctive cast of cartoon educators with minds of their own.
From the back cover:
Çoki is missing!
Who murdered the mascot and spokes-bear of the world’s most successful foreign language app? Was it an executive, employee, investor, lover, or one of the company’s animated instructors – endearing cartoon personalities invested with the power of Artificial Intelligence? What began as a chain novel prompt along the lines of “It was a dark and stormy night” on a language app fan site morphed into a full-fledged novel and parody by the prize-winning author of Cooperative Lives. The story originally appeared online in thirteen riveting installments but is now expanded and available in book format as the definitive parody, page turner, and murder mystery for anyone who has ever studied language with a cast of digital cartoon characters and an anthropomorphic mascot.
Early Autumn 2009
Teller shut the refrigerator and plopped onto the couch. He took the first swig before locating the remote between the cushions. “The beer that made Mel Famie walk us.” The punchline made him chuckle, even after so many years. Sometime in the 1970s, his linguistics professor (the first one) spun ten looong minutes of yarn in class because, well, he hadn’t prepared fifty minutes of lecture. Fifty years of experience later, Teller could definitely relate.
The condensed version of the joke went like this. Mel Famie was the most feared pitcher of his era – 3,500 strikeouts, a nasty cutter, and a lifetime ERA of 2.26. But like many feared players – Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Hank Wilson – Mel Famie had a drinking problem and was known to imbibe in the dugout. The regular season wound down and his rivals, the lowly Brewers, were within two games of making the postseason. A three-day home stand against Mel Famie and the visiting Pirates would decide the division title.
The Pirates played hard, but the Brewers won the first two games. Everything rode on the final game of the regular season. It proved a nail-biter: score tied, bottom of the ninth. Mel Famie returned to the mound and began strong, fastball clocking 96+. Three pitches in, the right fielder and first baseman collided while fielding a routine blooper. Five pitches in, Famie bobbled a pop single. As feared a leftie as he was, no one feared his right. The next two batters retired quietly. The shortstop fouled off six pitches then delivered a clean line drive to shallow left. The hometown crowd went crazy. The networks couldn’t hear themselves announce the pinch hitter – a solid bunter but lifetime .198 against Famie. The oddsmakers bet overwhelmingly on extra innings.
Mel somehow crumbled. His first cutter missed wildly. His next three attempts were worse. The legend wiped his forehead with his gloved arm, trudged to the dugout, picked up the twelfth and last Schlitz the ground screw slipped him, and slumped on the bench in resignation. A jubilant Brewer batboy noticed Mel, pointed to the can, and shouted, “Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous, and the beer that made Mel Famie walk us.” “True story,” his professor declared, then left the classroom. Most of the students believed him.
Six weeks into his tenure at a converted warehouse in downtown Albany, Teller still could not share jokes with his colleagues. The polite half confused basic baseball concepts so badly it was pointless to continue. The impolite half wandered off within five seconds, the average attention span of high-tech workers. Mostly, employees avoided the “Professor”. Their mission, after all, was to make real-life educators obsolete.
A grant from the National Science Foundation and Sami d’Hein’s cashout from his previous venture were enough to prototype their vision. Teller’s role was to ensure the online ESL course met rigorous academic standards. He hadn’t bargained for add-on courses in 25 other languages, nor courses between those languages – as, for example, between Sami’s native Turkish and his co-founder’s native German. Sami’s partner was a grad student in Sami’s IT department at Rensselaer Polytechnic. Sami received tenure because he helped invent PASSWIZ. The mere thought made the “Professor” nauseous.
Fitting French surname name, Teller mused: Hein. Loosely translated, Hein meant Huh? Sami d’Hein traced his surname to French occupation of the Anatolian port city of Mersin during the Franco-Turkish War. The troops left before Sami’s grandfather was born, but “Hein?” was the lieutenant’s answer when the Provost Gendarmerie demanded his papers and escorted him rudely back to camp. The lieutenant preferred full-dress uniform when courting, which impressed Sami’s great grandmother (and the lieutenant’s other mistresses) so greatly that she prefaced her future son’s surname with d’ to attest his aristocratic lineage, as, for example, Ludwig von Ahnungslos or Esteban de Contabilidad.
To be fair, at least Sami had a name. Teller’s employer did not. His paychecks were signed by Platzhalter Corp. and financially legitimate, but the name was an inside joke. Platzhalter meant Placeholder, as in Intentionally Left Blank. Sami, Anton, and the team worked for months on content and interface but hadn’t spent a nickel (Teller exaggerated) on branding.
Teller flipped through the channels – the usual afternoon garbage. He slowed for McHale’s Navy and The Munsters but finished his beer with Hanna-Barbera. Huckleberry Hound wore a spacesuit, hummed Oh, My Darling, winked at the audience, then faded. Teller fetched a second Schlitz from the refrigerator. Two remained. He remembered the brand’s admonition: “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.” He made a mental note to purchase more.
The commercials ended, and a hand reached behind Forest Ranger Smith to purloin his lunch – two slices of white bread concealing something presumably scrumptious, and a thermos of liquid – regrettably not Schlitz. Two animated bears scampered away upright as fast as their hind legs could carry them – upper bodies uncannily still.
Teller did not remain for the dialog. He jumped from the couch, pulled the Langenscheidt English-Turkish dictionary from the shelf, and began riffling through the M’s. There it was, exactly as anticipated. Çok meant multi, Dilli meant lingual, and Çoki rhymed perfectly with Yogi. Teller gargled mouthwash, grabbed his jacket and a handful of crayons, then squeezed into his aging sub-compact. He sped eighty minutes south on the interstate. It was still there, just off 87, in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere: Jellystone Park Campsite! He remembered it when he scouted around Kingston for an apartment, thinking he could somehow commute to Albany.
Rookie mistake, he conceded. A rookie mistake at sixty.
There was no mistake this time. Teller sought out the snack bar, ordered a basket of corn dogs and chicken tenders and “There!” lining the bottom of his basket, were animated images of Yogi Bear and his amorphous dwarf bear sidekick, Boo Boo. Teller rushed to a table, pulled the crayons from his coat, and set to work.
He presented his masterwork to Sami and Anton the following morning. For the first time he could remember, Anton and Sami concurred – not only among themselves, but with him. They even smiled. Henceforth, the enterprise would be Çok Dilli Corporation, and its mascot and online spokes “person” would be Çok Dilli Bear, or Çoki for short – an amorphous pink dwarf bear with a feathered green boa and green headscarf (or hijab) – all purposely ambiguous. Its preferred pronouns were she and her.
The company waitlisted 300,000 beta testers before launch, another 500,000 once it went live. The bear and her courses were a hit. Everyone wanted a piece of the Çok Dilli juggernaut.
The story is about a language learning app called Cok Dilli, which reminds anyone who is aware, of the famous Duolingo. But Cok Dilli is more interesting. Not only does it provide a wide range of services in several languages, but it also has a vivid virtual world: a city with virtual characters, houses, shops, offices, ruling bodies, even the police. These virtual characters, including the Coki, a bear and the company’s mascot, are powered by AI. One fine day, Coki goes missing from the virtual world, wreaking havoc in both the virtual and the real world.
But why would a missing mascot pose any problem? This book has two main themes: one, the mystery of the missing bear; and two, the complexities of using AI.
In the preface, the author tells us how this book conceptualized as an online challenge on a web forum where he had invited members to collaborate on a story. He ended up writing a couple of chapters himself, and eventually the entire book! I wonder if the collaboration could have been any better. But I’m glad the author completed this book as it was a delight to read.
I absolutely loved the concept of using a language learning app to explore the impact of AI. After all, not many other companies can have as direct a conversation with its users as a learning app, with such breadth and depth of topics. I’m not aware if a company like Cok Dilli truly exists, but the way it has been described in the book, it’s tempting to replicate one in reality!
The book sheds light on the ed tech industry, the lack of concern of tech companies for people (own employees and even customers). The author even covers the business challenges like the sustaining growth and profitability, the CBA of manpower costs vs investing in AI, issues of copyrights and IP, and the limitations of current regulations concerning AI. It reflects the authors understanding of this industry and the applications of technology.
It also provides food for thought on topics like mankind’s readiness to handle AI at its fullest, the potential of AI sentience and the limits when they start broaching the limits of self-awareness, philosophy and emotions.
Non – tech readers may struggle a bit to understand the tech portions of the story. But despite delving about tech, the story has been written as a cozy mystery, with loveable characters (both real people, virtual characters and AI). The tone is light and comic, written in a simple, direct yet descriptive language. Being a story about a language learning app, it uses quite a few foreign languages in conversations, mostly as poems or exclamations. While they don’t drive the story, they add authenticity to the plot. And obviously, boast about the author’s own linguistic knowledge.
When I had picked up this book, I hadn’t expected to enjoy it as much as I did. It is an infotainment. This is a medium length book, highly recommended for anyone interested in AI, feel-good and/or cozy mysteries.