Tonight With Cory Estevez

CORY: Good evening, esteemed viewers! Please give a warm TONIGHT-style welcome to the genius behind WekTech and the designer of Julia, America's newest Synth...Andy Wekstein!

[Upbeat techno music]

C: Please, sit! Sit!

ANDY WEKSTEIN: Thank you, thanks for having me, Cory. [Audience applause]

C: So let's start things off with a bang. Julia. Beautiful. Smart. Competing for the heart of one lucky bachelor. Tell us, Andy. What inspired you to design Julia specifically for the show?

A: So one night, I'm scrolling on my phone and there's this clickbait to apply to be on the show. Project JULIA was already underway, but it was like, hey, what if we pivot? You know, instead of designing her for something obviously commercial, design her for love? The rest is history.

C: That's beautiful. What kind of research was involved in customizing her personality to fit Josh?

A: We have brilliant psychologists on our team. They did the heavy lifting.

C: I know you can't comment on how Julia's doing on the show, if you even know, but purely theoretically, do you think she'll make it to the end?

A: Oh, definitely.

C: So confident! I'm loving this! But let's talk Bots before I get into trouble with the network. [Audience laughter] They've been around for, what, twenty years?

A: Twenty-five.

C: Let's be honest. When Bots first hit the market, I, like many of our viewers, imagined that by now, everyone would have a Bot at home. You know, doing dishes, cooking meals, taking out the trash. I have to say, Andy, what surprises me is how not mainstream Bots, and now Synths, are.

A: I mean, they're incredibly expensive. Companies are still working out how to find enough clientele to turn a profit.

C: The perennial question. Who's willing to pay? And I'm guessing that's not your average American.

A: Not by a long shot.

C: Do you see a future where we streamline Bot or Synth production, and everyone has a Bot at home?

A: No. I think we're skipping right past that. At least at WekTech, we're not interested in creating some subservient machine class. We're interested in the creation of people.

C: Be honest, Andy. Do you have a god-complex? [Audience laughter]

A: Don't we all? From the time we're kids doing drawings of the perfect house? We're always making what we want. And I want good people in this world. Julia is now one of them. That's what excites me. Not a Bot that can get me a beer.

C: Well... I might like someone to get me a beer. [Audience laughter] Let's pivot. What's your take on your competitor, BotTech, suing Christi Klavson for filing for divorce?

A: It's no secret that I hope Christi wins.

C: Help me understand. Why is this in your best interest? Your company makes money off making Synths.

A: I can't say we've made money yet—[Audience laughter]

C: But you want to.

A: Of course, and I'm confident we will, thanks to Julia. She's proving to people what we can do.

C: But if Christi—a Synth—has the right to divorce the man who purchased her, for over three hundred million dollars if I'm remembering the figure correctly, doesn't that effectively shut down the marketplace for Synths?

A: Oh, absolutely. If she wins the right to divorce, Synths will no longer be bought and sold in this country.

C: Because they could just walk away.

A: Right.

C: Maybe I'm missing something here. If you can't buy and sell them, why make them? How would your company make money?

A: I'm glad you asked, Cory. WekTech's vision is a subscription model. Pretty different than BotTech.

C: Are we talking dating apps here, or—

A: [Laughs] Sure, I mean, there are so many applications. Dating is one. Surrogacy is another. But the one we're most excited about is a professional pool of highly specialized Synths, which I describe as if LinkedIn and a top headhunting company had a baby. These Synths would be designed to perform at the highest level in certain careers where we're seeing gaps in the labor market.

C: And you'd make your money through subscription fees?

A: That's the idea.

C: Big ones.

A: We're going to have to study the market more closely before I can talk specifics.

C: So...it's not like we're going to see a lot of Synths delivering pizza all of a sudden.

A: I mean, why not, eventually? The market will evolve, and change, and we'll see. But for now, we're talking highly compensated positions. Companies would pay a premium to have access to that labor pool.

C: Of course, going back to Christi's controversial divorce, they could quit the jobs they were made to do, right?

A: Sure. But they'll be less likely to quit if they've been designed, for example, to love coding for twelve hours a day.

C: What's the line between coding someone to enjoy working all day, and exploitation?

A: It's something we're thinking about very hard right now.

C: Lawmakers out there gonna get in a damn tizzy! [Audience laughter]

A: I'm sure they will. That's their job. [Laughs] But we have big fish to fry. We want to revolutionize the workforce.

C: I hate to bring up fairness. But let's take a scenario: a top surgeon. Let's take a Synth with all the information downloaded versus a person who's suffered through medical school and gone into a lot of debt for their education. Why should the Synth have the leg up?

A: We can't make this personal. The point is to have qualified, successful surgeons who are saving lives and not making mistakes. It's the outcome that matters. How we get there is extremely secondary.

C: My son who's in medical school might argue different.

A: [Laughs] Congrats to your son. And yeah, I can understand that. But still. This is big-picture thinking, and it's the way of the future.

C: If Christi wins this court case.

A: Of course.

C: And if she doesn't?

A: There will be another case. Maybe not this year, but the next, or in ten years, or twenty. Eventually, Synths are going to be so woven into the fabric of society, we won't even distinguish them as anything different than us.

C: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you recently got into an argument on Twitter when someone referred to Synths as AI.

A: Not my finest moment, Cory. [Audience laughter] But I stand by the point. This is beyond AI. Julia's body, you could call artificial. Even though it perfectly mimics natural processes, I'll concede that. But there is nothing artificial about her mind. Post Launch Day, no one is controlling her learning and development. Her process is as natural as yours or mine. Just like her ability to give and receive love.

C: And you think people are ready to accept that?

A: Let's sit down again in twenty years. We'll be having a very different conversation. Synths will be our wives and husbands, our mothers, our friends, our coworkers—and our pizza delivery drivers. [Audience laughter] People won't remember what it was like without them, and the idea that once upon a time they didn't have as many rights as any other person? We'll see that as barbaric.

C: [Points aggressively to audience] So get used to it, you barbarians! [Audience laughter] And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've been waiting for—the exclusive teaser for the upcoming season of... THE PROPOSAL!