***** Vol.4 Chap.10 Electrifying presentation *****
On the next day, Doctor Wu was much refreshed. He ordered room service and had a simple breakfast. When it was time for his plenary session, he went straight to the auditorium. There were already many people inside. Strolling towards the front while scanning for a familiar face, he was sad to find none. Disappointed, he went to the speakers’ table and sat down.
The session chair was a young fellow. As soon as Doctor Wu sat down, he came over and introduced himself.
“Doctor Wu? My name is Joe Tapabanama.”
“Nice to meet you, Dr. Tapabanama.”
“You are probably wondering where is Dr. Abrahamson. He could not come because of a family emergency at the last minute. He asked me to proctor this session for him.”
“I see. I am sorry to hear that. Please send my greetings to Dr. Abrahamson for me.”
“I will. Er…Do you have a little writeup about yourself so that I can introduce you?”
“Not really. But I can say a few words about my background before my talk, if you like.”
“That would be splendid. Thank you.”
Joe walked back to his seat.
Just then, JB came to the front and seated herself on the other chair at the speaker’s table. Doctor Wu glanced over at JB and saw a young woman dressed in a tailored business suit. She seemed well mannered and self-assured. Her hair was combed perfectly and her red tie was perfectly coordinated with her suit. She exudes an air of superiority around her.
Joe went over and asked JB for an introduction. To his delight, she fished out a page full of writing and told Joe he could just read that to the audience as an introduction.
It was time for the session to begin. Joe stood and tapped on the microphone. The room felt silent. As before, the room was packed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Joe started with a somewhat trembling voice.
“Welcome to this plenary session. I know you all were expecting Dr. Abrahamson to be the chair of this session. Er…Unfortunately, there was a family emergency and he could not break free. Hmm…So, he asked me to chair this session for him.”
There were a few disgruntle noise heard around the audience. A few people at the back left.
“I am pleased to let you know that we have two outstanding speakers this morning.” He cleared his throat. “We will begin with Doctor Wu.”
Joe turned to Doctor Wu who stood up and walked to the microphone. With great difficulty, he had the mic adjusted to his height.
More grumbling noise was heard in the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, fellow researchers. My name is Doctor Wu. Dr. Tap..aban.. ama…to introduce myself.”
He stumbled on the name, causing a few sneers from the audience. “Sorry,” he whispered to Joe.
In halting English, Doctor Wu continued. “I am the Dean of the Medical College in Xilon. But today, what I want to report was the research of a country doctor practicing acupuncture in a tiny village. She managed a small clinic with her husband tending to the needs of the poor villagers there.”
He detected a few more snickers from the audience. A few more people left at the back.
“I am pleased that Dr. Abrahamson had invited her to speak to you about some of her experience with acupuncture. Since she could not be here in person, she asked me to present some of her results.”
A steady stream of people left the room.
Doctor Wu essentially gave the same presentation as May-Ling did earlier. He recounted how she had accidentally come across the meridians for the yin and yang forces. She discovered that with the yang meridian, activating the pressure points caused a patient to become docile. Opposite effects were observed with the yin meridian.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Doctor Wu looked over at Joe, who was tapping his watch.
“So, in summary, I like to share our limited success in treating violent patients using acupuncture. While the treatment was only temporary, I feel we can experiment more to explore the full potential of this kind of treatment. Thank you for your attention.”
There was the usual customary clapping of hands, but he detected no enthusiasm. The clapping was rather perfunctory. He sauntered back to his seat.
Joe stood up and walked over to the microphone. He pulled out the introduction sheet from JB.
“Our next speaker is Dr. JB Smith. She graduated with honors from a very prestigious school, an Ivy League University in the East Coast. Having completed her undergraduate studies only in three years with a summa cum Laude, she went straight to her doctoral program and finished in only four years from a top-ten university in cyber intelligence (AI). Currently, she is a member of the Faculty of Computer Science with Carniegie University and is being considered for a prestigious Chair Professorship there…”
Doctor Wu noticed that those attendees who left the room earlier were filing back into the auditorium.
“Dr. Smith was an ardent researcher, a prolific writer, and a respected faculty member. During the last year alone, she had a research budget of over a million dollars and had published over thirty journal and conference papers. We are very pleased to have her among us this morning and she will share with us her vision on the application of AI.”
As soon as Joe finished the last words of her introduction, or rather his reading of the introduction prepared by her, the entire audience stood up as if on cue and clapped. JB was grinning from ear to ear to see such a reception for her yet-to-be-given presentation. Basking in such enthusiastic reception and loving every moment, she stood up and walked with dignity to the podium.
Pausing for quite a while to wait for the clapping to subside, she finally raised her hand and thanked the audience.
“Thank you, thank you.” She nodded at the audience.
“I am truly thrilled to be speaking here this morning to such a distinguished audience. This is truly a great honor to me.”
More claps came.
More attendees returned and entered the room.
“This morning, I like to give you many examples of how AI had been such a useful tool in facilitating many genome decoding breakthroughs in recent years. But what I like the most is to share my vision with you about how AI can lead us through many unchartered areas in the coming future.”
She had to paused for the applause to subside.
Starting from her own research, JB recounted how she was given the DNA genome data from people with violent tendencies, the genome from the siblings of these subjects, and the genome from their respective parents.
She emphasized the fact that many geneticists could not crack the human genome despite years of research. Then she highlighted how using AI, the search for relevant information, became much easier and much faster.
She showed how she set the computer to first search for a relevant DNA sequence in the genome. Once the relevant sequence was useful, then she applied well-known classification techniques that had been enhanced by her skillful programming. In the end, she could separate the DNA samples corresponding to the respective groups: group with violent tendencies and group with docile behavior.
The audience was spellbound.
Seeing that she had a captive audience, she then strongly emphasized that her technique was fool-proof in predicting not only if the person would be docile or violent, but the technique was so accurate that it could even predict the degree of violence a person would be.
Of course, she did not divulge or show the audience the actual data from the PPTSB organization. But she was bold to share the results from the PPTSB dataset, without giving the details of course.
With a little extrapolation and a little bending of the truth, she boldly claimed that she could with perfect certainty predict the degree of violence for anyone just by looking at the given DNA sequence.
JB was a good talker and could promise a lot, say a lot, without revealing a lot. But the audience gobbled up her speech. There were frequent claps during the speech, so that she had to pause often till the claps subsided. It seemed the more the audience clapped, the more she ate up the adulation and the bolder she became.
She was flying high.
“Now, to conclude, I want to share my vision with you.”
Silence fell on the audience. Everyone was on pins and needles, waiting for her summary.
With head held high and a raised voice, she shouted as a visionary making a declaration.
“I can see the days where we can predict with certainty the degree of violent tendencies in a fetus before the baby is born.
I can see the days where we can repair the DNA sequence when the prediction is not favorable.
I can see the days where persons with violent behavior will be eradicated.
I can see the days where other evil natures will also be eradicated.
I can see the days where all humans on this earth will dwell together in harmony…”
She was really going now and so was the crowd.
Without prompting, the entire crowd stood up and started chanting, “We can see the days! We can see the days!”
Unsure what to do, Joe also stood up and joined the crowd clapping his hands. Doctor Wu sat quietly in his chair with a smile on his face.
The chanting went for quite a while until Joe finally tapped loudly on the microphone to disperse the audience because the next session was about to start.
Outside the auditorium, there was an enormous crowd surrounding JB. She was clearly basking in all the attention.
“Impressive speech, Dr. Smith.”
“We are inspired by your vision.”
“We look forward to the accomplishment of your vision.”
“Way to go, Dr. Smith.”
…