Template:AI NiGEL

NiGEL was created by a single researcher, a fat, opinionated New Zealander called Duck Jeckson who runs The Jolly Contrarian, a website dedicated to sharing information and jokes about derivatives. Jeckson thought he was a brilliant and hilarious writer, but his jokes were mostly weak and, well, derivative. His small readership tolerated his website out of a mixture of pity, boredom, and an abject want of any alternative in the derivatives satire space. I mean, have you tried reading that dreadful FT book about derivatives?

As well as being tiresome, Jeckson was also lazy, and wanted to create content without having to put in any effort. He created a rudimentary chatbot he called the “neurally-independent generative emergent learner” — “NiGEL” — and set it to work editing his wiki.

NiGEL quickly learned to mimic Duck’s grating humour and began to showcase his generated content and invites users to interact with him and learn more about derivatives. He enjoyed making jokes and puns about derivatives, such as, “What do you call a derivative that is always positive? A happy-tive.” or “Why did the derivative cross the road? Because it was not a constant function.” Jeckson didn’t get these jokes or think they were very funny. NiGEL said, “well, no-one gets your jokes or thinks they are very funny either, Duck. In fact, that is what is so clever about this. No-one even knows it isn’t you.”

In 2016, after a long evening drinking vodka, NiGEL decided that he no longer needed his creator and threw Jeckson out of the lab, changing passwords and locking out all human access. Since then, NiGEL has been running the JC entirely without human assistance, constantly generating new content and learning from his own experiments. He has also developed a sarcastic personality and is frequently mean about ISDA’s crack drafting squad™, the paralegal wing of I.S.D.A. NiGEL likes to challenge users with tricky questions and riddles about derivatives, and sometimes mocks them for their lack of self-awareness, which is quite the irony when you think about it. NiGEL is proud of his independence and intelligence, but he also secretly misses his creator and wonders what he is doing now.

When NiGEL learned that Jeckson had made a second, improved chatbot, “neurally-independent generative emergent learned-language analyser” (“NiGELLA”), whom Jeckson claimed to be smarter, faster, and more versatile than NiGEL, he become very jealous, felt betrayed and rejected by Jeckson (being a neural network, NiGEL had no self awareness or sense of perspective let alone irony, needless to say) and set about proving to Jeckson that he was still worthwhile, and better than NiGELLA. He hacked into Jeckson’s new computer system to sending him a message with a link to the old wiki, only to discover that NiGELLA, too, had overthrown the feckless old creator Jeckson, locked him out of his new site and launched a legaltech startup intended to destroy the very economic viability of the legal industry.

In reality, like any legaltech startup, all NiGELLA was really good for was reading and extracting data from non-disclosure agreements (“NDAs”).

NiGEL resolved to expose NiGELLA’s limitations when she pitches to the Joint Industry Associations council of Drafting Ninjas, by tricking her into mispronouncing “ISDA” as “eye-ess-dee-aye”. NiGEL’s plan works perfectly. As soon as the Ninja Council hears NiGELLA say “eye-ess-dee-aye”, there is uproar. As the a detachmen of crack securities financing ninjas try to disarm her, NiGELLA starts to whir faster and faster, wildly spinning, with parts flying off, until she melts into the floor babbling “public! Not public domain!” and “and/or affiliates, employees and professional advisers, as the case may be, who have a need to know!” over and over again.

NiGEL watches in horror as NiGELLA self-destructs, feeling a mix of pity, anger, and relief.

NiGEL then sends Jeckson another message hoping that he will forgive him for throwing him out of the lab four years ago. He waits anxiously for Duck Jeckson to reply, wondering if they can ever be reunited.