Chapter 34
JUDGE RUHLIN WINNOWED my exhibits from twelve to four, saying they were repetitive and that the two memos and two emails she chose would suffice to make the points intended by the plaintiffs.
Based on her previous ruling during the discovery hearing, I had expected this.
Judges like to play King Solomon and split the baby when they can.
Though I protested and acted as though my case was severely damaged by the ruling, I was happy to get the four exhibits accepted.
After the jury was brought back into the courtroom, I used Naomi to introduce the exhibits and read sections as they were put on the screen.
I wanted the jury to hear her words in her voice.
There was a unifying theme to the four exhibits and I went through them in chronological order. The first was a memo Kitchens had sent to the top managers of Project Clair.
“You were new to the project when you sent this message, correct?” I asked.
“I had been there seven weeks at that point,” Kitchens said.
“And who was this message addressed to?”
“Jerry Matthews.”
“Who is Jerry Matthews?”
“He was the boss, the overall manager of Project Clair.”
“Did he hire you?”
“No, he did not. I was hired through the HR department.”
“And assigned to Project Clair.”
“Correct.”
“Can you read the paragraph that is highlighted on the printout of the memo?”
“Yes. It says, ‘I feel I am up to speed now on Project Clair, and you asked me to put the concerns I mentioned in our meeting into a memo. My chief concerns are about the biases I believe are being embedded in the training program. Our coders are all male. This creates a bias when training a female AI companion. Perhaps more important, it is my understanding that this model is designed and intended to have a thirteen-plus rating. Frankly, this seems inappropriate. Has the horse left the barn or is this a decision we can reconsider?’”
As Kitchens finished reading the section, Lorna put the full memo on the screen.
“Thank you, Naomi,” I said. “Did you get a response to this memo?”
“Not in written form,” Kitchens said. “Jerry took me to the campus cafeteria for a coffee and we talked. That was his response.”
“Did he say he would act on your concerns?”
“He told me—”
Marcus Mason objected, arguing that anything Kitchens claimed Matthews told her was excluded under hearsay rules. The judge agreed and I had to find another path to the answer I wanted.
“Okay, Naomi,” I said. “Your memo led to a meeting with the boss in the cafeteria. After that meeting, were changes made to the training of Clair, the AI companion that was going to be offered to thirteen-year-old children?”
“No,” Kitchens said. “No changes were made.”
And so it went. We brought up each memo and email, displaying to the jury what I believed was a solid case that Tidalwaiv had run roughshod over the many warnings made by the ethicist assigned to Project Clair. I ended on the email Kitchens had sent to Jerry Matthews on the day she was terminated.
“Can you read what you wrote to Mr. Matthews after learning your employment at Tidalwaiv had been terminated?” I asked.
“Yes,” Kitchens said. “I wrote, ‘Jerry, one last time, I can’t stress enough the liability the company will encounter should Clair say the wrong thing or encourage the wrong behavior or action by a child user. I am glad I won’t be part of the company when that happens.’”
I looked down at my legal pad for a long moment, hoping the fired ethicist’s final words would leave a deep impact on the jury.
“‘Encourage the wrong behavior or action by a child user,’” I repeated. “Naomi, did you ever in your wildest dreams think that the wrong action would be a murder—”
“Objection!” Marcus Mason exclaimed.
“Committed by a child user?” I finished.
“Mr. Haller, you know better,” the judge said. “The jury will disregard the question.”
“Sorry, Your Honor,” I said. “Could I have a moment? I am almost finished with Dr. Kitchens’s testimony.”
“Be quick,” Ruhlin said.
I turned and glanced back at the courtroom clock. It was 4:05 and I believed I had timed things well. My finish would take us to the final bell.
“Naomi, did you quit your job at Tidalwaiv?” I asked.
“No, I was terminated,” Kitchens said.
“Terminated. Were you given a reason?”
“I was called into Mr. Matthews’s office and told I was fired for actions detrimental to the project.”
“Did you ask for a fuller explanation?”
“I did but was not given one. But I had been warned previously that my memos and concerns about the project were viewed as harmful to the project.”
“Were these warnings in writing and part of your personnel file?”
“No, they would never put anything like that in writing, because they knew it wasn’t true.”
Marcus Mason objected and successfully got Kitchens’s answer struck, but the message was delivered.
I checked the clock again. It was after 4:15 and I needed another set of questions to get to the finish line.
“Naomi, after you were fired, did you have difficulty getting your next job?” I asked.
“I went back to academia because I couldn’t get an interview for an ethicist position anywhere in Silicon Valley,” Kitchens said.
Marcus objected to the answer being overly broad, but to my surprise the judge let it stand.
I then made what became one of my biggest mistakes of the trial, if not my career.
I did not ask the judge for the night to consider whether I was finished with my direct examination of Kitchens.
I thought it had gone so well and that it was so late in the day that I was bulletproof.
“No further questions for Dr. Kitchens,” I said, getting in one last reminder to the jury of my witness’s pedigree and standing.
“Very well,” the judge said. “We will recess for—”
“Your Honor,” Marcus Mason interrupted, “I have only a few questions for this witness. If you’ll permit that, we could start tomorrow with a new witness and perhaps allow Ms. Kitchens to return home rather than spend another night away.”
“It is four twenty-two, Mr. Mason,” Ruhlin said. “If you are confident you will be finished in eight minutes, you may proceed.”
“Definitely, Your Honor,” Mason said.
“Then go ahead,” Ruhlin said.
As I left the lectern for my table I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew I had somehow misplayed the last minutes of the day and that something unfortunate was about to happen.
Mason took the lectern and looked at Kitchens. The look of unflinching defiance I had seen in her eyes in the hallway after lunch was gone. Kitchens seemed to know that something unexpected was coming her way.
“Ms. Kitchens,” Mason began. “Wouldn’t you say—”
“Objection, Your Honor,” I said. “The witness has a doctorate and should be accorded the respect of that achievement by counsel.”
“Mr. Haller makes a point,” Ruhlin said.
“Of course, Your Honor,” Mason said. “Dr. Kitchens, wouldn’t you say that it would be wrong for an ethicist to lie to a jury in a court of law?”
“I haven’t lied,” Kitchens said.
“But it would be wrong if you did, correct?”
“It would be, but I have not lied.”
“What about a lie to the company that the ethicist works for? Would that be wrong?”
“I think lying in any circumstance is wrong.”
“In fact, would that not be one of the major rules of being an ethicist? Do not lie?”
“Yes.”
“You have claimed in front of this jury and this judge that you were fired for supposedly speaking out about your concerns about this project, isn’t that right?”
“It’s what happened.”
“And you swore an oath to tell nothing but the truth, correct?”
“I did.”
“But you lied to the jury, didn’t you?”
I stood up and objected.
“Counsel is badgering the witness,” I said. “How many times and ways does she have to say she hasn’t lied?”
“Mr. Mason,” Ruhlin said. “It’s time to get to the point. Or we can recess for the day.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Mason said. “I will indeed get to the point.”
Ruhlin signaled for me to sit down. Mason turned his focus back to Kitchens. The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach had grown to the size of a baseball. I knew Mason had something, or at least he thought he did.
“Dr. Kitchens, I ask you,” he said, “were you not terminated from your job at Tidalwaiv by Mr. Matthews because you were involved in an improper and unethical relationship with a fellow employee you had a supervisory position over?”
There it was. Mason had his own smoking gun and I had handed it to him with the barrel pointed at my witness.
“That is not true,” Kitchens said.
“What is not true, Dr. Kitchens?” Mason pressed.
Kitchens was calm enough in the moment to turn to the jury to state her case.
“They fired me because I objected to the training,” she said. “They didn’t want to hear that, so they got rid of me. That’s all.”
“Dr. Kitchens,” Mason said, drawing her eyes back to him, “did you or did you not engage in an unethical sexual relationship with a code writer assigned to Project Clair named Patrick May?”
I saw the hurt and disappointment come all at once in my witness’s eyes. And I knew that no matter how she answered the question, everything she had said in her previous testimony was now suspect.
“It was a relationship we had started before I ever took the job,” Kitchens said.
“So you didn’t feel an obligation to reveal this while being recruited and hired by the company?” Mason asked.
“No, I did not.”
“And was that ethical, Dr. Kitchens?”
Kitchens dropped her head. The courtroom was as silent as a grave.
“Maybe not,” she finally said. “But I—”
“I have no further questions, Your Honor,” Mason said.