FROM OUR TEENAGE ADDICTION EDITOR, IN CYBERSPACE

IT’S ALWAYS been the holy grail of teen-focused internet sites: that they speak to teenagers in their own unique tongue. This is even more the case with Artificial Intelligence, which seeks not only to communicate with teens but to imitate them to such an extent that the difference between human and machine is impossible to determine.

Enter Lost, a new chatbot that speaks to the kids in their own voice.

“It’s taken decades for us to produce a program that can mimic the tortuous self-indulgent moron speak of your average teenager,” explains Max Profyt, a billionaire who has sunk his fortune into Lost. “Many of our early programs just disintegrated when faced with the task. The real problem was not when they spoke to teenagers, but when teenagers replied. We just hadn’t taken into account the sheer pitiless tripe that a single teenager centered on themselves can produce. If you’ve ever seen Captain Kirk in Star Trek destroy a computer with logic, well the teenagers did the opposite. There appeared to be no algorithm that could cope. We actually had code that broke down crying. It was awful, and terribly expensive. Then, finally we came up with Lost, and its formidable program.”

And how did they do it?

“Oh boy,” says Larry Richer, a software engineer who has been involved in the project from the ground level. “We essentially took apart the main features of your average teenager, then reconstructed them inside the program; then told the program to become a teenager using the information. What started as a uniquely brilliant instrument, capable of the most sophisticated thinking, degenerated into a whinging, narcissistic, selfish, opinionated cretin. It was incredible. But it worked. That’s when we christened the program language, Loser. There was no other word for it. Hard work, though.”

Lost and Loser will be launched soon.