“Archie’s too good,” Katrina complained, swinging her legs under her chair. “I don’t care if we are supposed to be field-testing him, I’m totally fed up. He takes ages and ages over every move!”

 

“Well, your DAL-Q6 has only played Mini-Hexchess a few times, Katrina, and he’s still learning,” her mother replied.

 

“Rubbish,” said Katrina. “Even Jake Wilcox doesn’t take as long as this, and he’s only got a human brain. Not like Archie’s quantum thingummy.”

 

Despite her proficiency with the game Katrina was losing badly; Archie had already taken two of her pawns and a knight, and it was his turn to move.

 

With an exaggerated sigh, she rose from her chair and tiptoed to the biscuit barrel while her mother was distracted. She helped herself to a large chocolate oatmeal biscuit and had it halfway to her mouth when Ivanka caught her and put it back.

 

“What do you think you’re doing, young lady? Your dinner’s almost ready,” Ivanka said. “You don’t just help yourself; you ask. Now go sit back down and finish your game with Archie.”

 

Katrina huffed and stomped her foot but did as her mother instructed.

 

Ten minutes later, as Ivanka left the kitchen to lay the table, Katrina tried for a biscuit again. Archie looked up from the Hexchess board, turned first to observe Ivanka, and then to watch Katrina.

 

They both jumped when Ivanka yelled, “Put the biscuit back, Katrina! I wasn’t born yesterday, madam, and I won’t tell you again. Sit down and wait for your lunch!”

 

* * *

 

After she'd finished her lunch and helped with the dishes, Katrina was sent to her room to tidy up. She protested and pouted but eventually obeyed, and after a token effort putting away the larger items scattered across the floor, she made a pile of all the smaller things in a corner.

 

She then lay on her bed idly flicking through her mother’s antique hardcopy magazines.

 

Just as she’d started to get bored and fidgety, the DAL-Q6 entered her room. It paused, checked the hallway, and then walked over and stood beside the bed. As Katrina looked up, rather puzzled, it extended an arm, opened its hand, and offered a chocolate oatmeal biscuit.

 

Katrina’s eyes widened in delight. She quickly hid the biscuit, smiled, and whispered, “Thank you.”

 

The DAL-Q6 didn’t smile back — because it hadn’t yet developed the necessary motor functionality — but Katrina, nevertheless, felt that there was almost certainly something quite like a smile whizzing round in its circuits somewhere.

 

As it left, she giggled, winked, and blew it a kiss.

 

* * *

 

On the Thursday morning that week, Ivanka dropped the DAL-Q6 off at the Future Machines neuro-monitoring unit.

 

She returned the next day with Katrina to pick it up.

 

“Well, everything seems to be working fine,” the technician told Ivanka. “I don’t know why it’s not speaking. All the quantum logic gates are intact, and the adaptive learning networks check out okay.”

 

“Oh, it can talk,” Ivanka said. “It interacts and converses perfectly well with my daughter, it just doesn’t respond to me.”

 

“That’s unusual,” the technician said. “It might be due to the network optimization algorithms getting trapped in local minima.”

 

“And that means what, in plain English?” Ivanka asked.

 

“Right,” the technician said. “Well, the quantum technology we’ve used in the DAL-Q6 allows it to recognize patterns far faster and using much less data than the old neural networks did. That’s why it can learn and adapt its behaviour through its real-world experiences – in the same way that a small child does while it's growing up.”

 

Ivanka nodded. “Okay, I get that, but what have these local minima got to do with things?”

 

The technician paused to think for a moment and then continued.

 

“Well, if an AI system gets trapped in a local minimum, it means it finds a close match to a pattern but not the best match,” the technician explained. “So, it could be that the DAL-Q6 is optimizing its network connections too quickly — and using insufficient data — with the result that it stops at a close match instead of the best one. Balancing the speed and quality of learning is always tricky.”

 

“So, what’s the solution?” Ivanka asked.

 

“We’ll have to monitor it,” the technician said. “If it doesn’t improve, we may need to tweak its learning algorithms. For now, let’s leave it and see how things go when you come in next week.”

 

* * *

 

As Ivanka drove home, Katrina sat with Archie in the back. The DAL-Q6 checked that Ivanka was focused on the road ahead, then turned toward Katrina and smiled. After checking again that Ivanka wasn’t looking, it surreptitiously passed Katrina a chocolate biscuit it had taken from the technician’s desk, giggled, winked, and blew her a kiss.