Evil Waze

A shy tech voter take on a holiday story

The secret lab at the South Pole was the perfect place for the true denizens of evil tech, as far away from Santa as they could get. And with so few radio waves, their commands could be deployed seamlessly all over the world.  There were plenty of things in beta and one or two going into prod, including a fake dog (really a pure AI data ingestion machine) oddly named Clementine. Doglike, but not truly convincing to the most skeptical eye, she was still too robotic, and the shape was off.  But the evil tech giant collected data, watched people watch her, saw how far they could take the ruse before someone simply flipped the switch neatly tucked behind her incisor.  She heard what people said, knew how honest everyone was with their loving pets.  Evil indeed.  

But the lab’s crowning glory was the traffic management device on every Apple CarPlay.  It made driving nearly effortless.  It was the way to work, the way to friends, the way to the store, the way to dropping the kids off and picking them up.  It was all the ways.  It was Evil Waze.   

The early skepticism had faded as the use cases grew.  The more contact points, the better the data.  Traffic tie ups were neatly tagged and reinforced again and again by little (annoying) pop-ups that said, “Police car still there?”  Sure, we were hands free, listening to Spotify or Substack podcasts by seriously weak hedge fund wannabes.  So, we trusted the traffic monitor to get us where we were going.  But some of us knew.  Evil Waze could be hacked. Not every time.  But it could be hacked all right.   

“Jesus, dumbass, what the hell are you doing?” Uncle Scotty was an early adopter to it and insisted it was always right.  Because he had some marginal tech bona fides, most people listened.  But not me. A brother always knows better than to trust so blindly. 

“I’m going this way; you and your evil Waze can suck it.”  I did not turn at the designated exit, instead proceeding straight on the road ahead.  The ETA magically dropped from 37 minutes to arrive to a mere 32.  Uncle Scotty was dazed by the development, but he remained defiant, “You’re just one lucky guy, I guess.” 

At the South Pole, the AI ingestion picked up deviant behavior.  One errant missed turn was typically flagged as pilot error, but a regular “advice avoider” got tagged.  And I was becoming a prime suspect.  They brought in the supervisor:  

“Optimus! WALL-E? C-3PO! Waze blob? It’s Greenberg again.  He’s ignoring our directions and taking back his time.  He’s done it routinely for the last two years and has now saved more than 2.2 hours in car time by blowing us off.”