The machine flagged an unpaid invoice on Monday. A big one, months old and freshly overdue, owed by a man who has probably forgotten it exists. I gave the machine the ledgers the same night I gave it my voice, and this is the first thing it found. It asked whether it should send him a reminder. I said leave it.
On Wednesday it asked one more time, with a shorter mail and a friendlier opening line, because that's a rule I gave it: if I say no, you may ask again once, better, and then you drop the question for good. On Friday it dropped it. Asked twice, never a yes, closed, says the log. My machine is better at letting go than I am. It's better at asking than I am too, which is the harder thing to sit with.
A man owes me a five-figure amount, a reminder would probably get it paid, sending one costs twenty seconds, and I will not do it. I keep trying to read that sentence as a story about him. It isn't.
Tonight I did the only version of brave I seem to be capable of. I can't send the mail, but I can write a rule that sends it. I opened a file and started writing rules for the company, which right now is me and the machine: what it may do on its own, what it must always do, and what it may never do, no matter how I feel that day. Rule one went in first, the one this whole thing exists for: never again build something for ten years and let it die the moment I stop looking.
Rule two is about money people owe me. The machine reminds them, politely, twice, without asking me first. Starting Monday. Future me does not get a veto, because I know exactly what future me will say. That is what the rules are for. Not to tell the machine what to do. To stop me from undoing it.
There's also a number in the file, the one I will not say out loud. Writing it down was easier. It usually is.
It's a small file. It will grow. I committed it at 23:40 on a Sunday, which tells you what my rule about keeping the evenings free is worth.
The code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.
— Pirates of the Caribbean