Now most of the world's software, and, lately, lately, its industrial design, comes from machines that are essentially ineffable, though only a handful of specialists seem to realize this, or care, the world in general blithely unaware that the programs and devices that mediate their lives have emerged from mystery.
-- Narrator (chapter 9)

Importance: Irina tries to answer Cromwell's question, whether people will ever be able to truly communicate with AI. She tries to find an explanation, but realizes that it may be beyond his capacity to understand, and even she does not fully understand how more complex AI function. Irina thinks that AI language is different from people's language, and because of automation and the ability of AI to create other AI, the distance between human language and AI has increased. In Irina and Cromwell's world, AI has advanced to the point that it is not entirely within people's grasp to understand how...