If Robots could paint

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Aren’t they a little pale-I mean that is meant to be a Gauguin isn’t it, his Tahitian period?’

‘It is- well spotted.’

She doesn’t even try and hide her enthusiasm. I am trying to hide my disdain.

She goes on, ‘You see Ma,’

I hate that word and I don’t want to see but still she goes on. I think I would like my eyes gauged out but I try not to show it.

‘How this works is-they kind of look at the internet and do a sort of ‘sample’ and then they modernise the picture, and the internet is slightly-well some would say very-but anyway-its pale. Pale. Pale. Pale, so they’ve modernised Gauguin.’

At this point I can only nod. I only just managed to overlook the slimming down of the Renoir -I think it was meant to be The Large Bathers. But they were slimmed down into some kind of gym body, complete with Red bull can and bright towels.

The woman beside me, my daughter, had a no expenses spared education and I confess I am totally frustrated that this is how she spends her time-bastardising perfectly fine art.

The idea is that, with AI, robots can now make art. And what’s more they can improve some of the botch jobs our previous ‘masters’ have created. This ‘art’ show is her first. She is immensely proud. I am embarrassed. Its mostly art from about 1850 onwards, apparently everybody in pictures before then was so fat she can’t bear to look at it and neither can anyone else-apparently the whole internet no longer has any pre 1850 art. This seems improbable at first but then knowing my daughters generation-still possible. Apparently the other issue with a lot of pre 1850 art is-and here I include women and men -crime of the century-some of them are unshaved. The internet has apparently shaved all post 1850 pictures-what a relief. I can barely contain my excitement.

Tonight is opening night but I am here early as –well-she doesn’t want my disappointment to ruin the evening. This is a child I dragged to every art gallery I could find. A child who still after all that wanted to be an engineer. A child who now claims to have combined her two great loves, coding and art.

On my way in there is a replica of the statue of David-you know the one- the naked one –only the one created by the robot-lets just say its larger in some ways. Apparently the robot involved surveyed a lot of pictures on the internet and deduced an average size based on that-only that is unlikely to give you an average size. I didn’t know what to say. It was bigger than I even thought anatomically possible but what do I know. I don’t do virtual sex, just the real thing much to her horror.

She can’t wait to show me the Van Gogh-one of his self portraits. I am gobsmacked when I see it.

‘It’s a watercolour.’ is all I manage to stammer out. Van Gogh did do water colours, I know but not quite like the one I am looking at.

‘Yes’ she says.  ‘Van Gogh is so emotive, all those weird brush strokes, going every which way. It’s all a bit scruffy. He lacked focus.’

There’s the ‘f’ word again-focus, how many times has she told me I lack focus.

She goes on, ‘ I mean Van Gogh, he had an energy but he didn’t focus it properly. In watercolour Van Gogh is more soothing, more serene. This picture now has a yogic calm to it. You could do pilates with this on the wall and isn’t that part of the point of art. To add to your inner life, so you really feel that protein shake.’

I want to shove a protein shake down her neck. She is truly nauseating and she’s mine.

I am standing there thinking, seriously, how much money did I waste educating her. She thinks Van Gogh needs calming so it can have a yogic influence. So we can all do pilates in front of it. I want to shove some sunflowers up her nose at the thought of it.

We move on to the Seurat-where again I am lost for words. She looks at me. I can tell she knows I am not getting it.

I manage to say only one sentence, ‘You’ve joined the dots?’

She smiles, like an idiot I think. My daughter is an idiot.

‘Yes the robot joined the dots. Its logical when you see it isn’t it-I mean you would join the dots wouldn’t you.’

Would you? I want to scream, no-you have missed the point.

We move on swiftly, past a rendition of Munch’s ‘The Scream’, which is redone in pastels and called the Smile. I won’t describe it. Past Hokiusai’s The Wave, described more fittingly now as ‘The Ebbing Shore’

This is the first art show of its kind. This is the future I am told.

In the corner I see a a tin of Campbell soup. Even Warhol isn’t safe. She is still talking, babbling. I am blotting her out as I walk towards them, trying to show interest instead of horror.

‘We used a 3d printer.’ she says

Next to them is a well made and tidy bed that screams healthy living.

‘Tracey Emin,’ I say.

‘Yes’ she says, but healthier than that-I mean all those cigarettes and empty bottles-no one lives like that anymore.

‘I do’, I want to scream. But I don’t actually smoke or drink much but if I did I’d make sure I left a right mess behind. Because I don’t do those things she probably doesn’t which might be the only thing I got right. Although somehow when I look around at this ‘art’ show I feel a deep sense of responsibility. Perhaps a bit of hard living on my part would have seen this never happen. I sigh. And realise it was too loud. I cover my mouth and yawn and comment on how late its getting. I can’t wait to leave.

There’s  the Giacometti sculpture which is stick thin-even thinner than they actually often are-because on the internet everyone is thinner than they actually are-even I am.

There’s a rendition of Dali’s Persistence of Memory where the clocks are all perfectly formed and fixed and there is a dolphin in the water in the background like a picture you’d find in a shop that sold scented candles and mood music.

She is still talking, walking me through how logic and order has improved human art beyond measure.

I don’ even know what to say. I yawn again and feign interest. She tells me next they are going to tackle literature. Maybe Dickens first-one of the shorter ones- perhaps A Tale of Two Cities, modernising it, making it suitable for a wider audience, maybe making it about two rival digital start-ups. I don’t think she has read it.

‘Plus’ she says, ‘Shakespeare-wouldn’t Hamlet work just as well if it was set in a gym, imagine the whole Ophelia thing in a spa or an indoor pool. Or perhaps Macbeth but based around a coffee shop franchise instead of a kingdom. These concepts, Ma, they are so old.’

I hate that word, ‘Ma’ but I nod. I smile. I think, I am so old. Thank goodness I saw the world before this. I am so old and so glad of it.

Her guests are starting to arrive and I know it is time for me to leave. I tell her I am proud of her but I think she knows I am not. There isn’t much I can do.

The point of art is not logic and order, but to remind us that there is life beyond those two things. I want to yell this out to the whole room. It is not meant merely to hang in your pilates class and decorate your coffee shop.

I wrap my coat around me and step out onto the street. She offers to ‘app me a ride’ home but I’d rather walk.

‘Its dangerous’ she says.

I laugh. Ah yes danger, are we the last to remember it and not to run from it. I wander home.

 

The Goddess: Chaos and magic

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I am the last of my kind. Well not the last, but the only one. I thought they would be the same thing but they are not. There will be another one after me. I can’t stop that. I can’t save her anymore than I can save me. It is what it is. For a brief time there will be two of us.

I stand here amongst the ancient texts and wonder what to do.

Which ones should I teach her about first? What is the best path? That she knows everything? Or that she never knows anything? I can’t stay here long. Soon they will come looking for me. They will be wondering what I am doing here.

I wonder what I am doing here. Now in the last stages of my pregnancy I am supposed to be resting. It must all go well. I must give birth to this perfect pristine little girl who will know me for awhile. She will replace me. She will stand here one day just as I have.

Perhaps I will not even teach her to read. Truthfully she will be the only one too one day. Maybe there will be an eternity of us, each one alone and lost, until the day when one of us is different. Until one of us figures out the answer.   In this world, there is forever but I don’t think its ours- it belongs to the only other imperative here- the plan of scheduled maintenance. The machines go on and on and on. I tell myself that with the flick of my hand I could stop scheduled maintenance and there would be an end to their forever but then an end to me as well. That cannot be the way forward. Perhaps I am waiting for something more. Perhaps I am waiting for something better. There seems no way out.

When I first fell pregnant with this child, when I knew it was a girl and I could keep it, I had the most profound nightmares. As if I’d lived the history and not just read it, as if I had seen humanity fall and not just read it in the pages in this library.

They will be coming soon. I cannot stand here forever. I rub my belly, this wondrous amazing child will be in the world soon and for a short period of time it will be mine. I will love it and cherish it, feed it and nourish it and then hand it over so it can stand here like me and wonder what to do.

I am not afraid of her dying. I am afraid of her living and that cannot be right. That is not how it should be. Because this is not living. I breath, I walk, I read, I learn, I decree as I am told to decree but none of it is me. My hands are tied.

We created this. I say ‘we’ but there is no ‘we’ anymore, only me. And I had no hand in it. I am just the residue of it. All that technological advancement until ‘they’ didn’t need us anymore, until ‘we’ couldn’t find a purpose, endless leisure time, endless boredom, searching for a fulfilment none of us ever found.

It didn’t end how we thought it would end. There wasn’t a great war, it wasn’t like in the movies-but there was an end. An almost end because I am still here. There was a point of no return, a point where the numbers didn’t work anymore and we were left standing alone. A point where there were more of them than us and where we had this crazy idea of preserving ourselves through them.

If we could just build them so they could keep making us we could go on forever even though there was nothing left for us to eat and the air was unbreathable. It is why I almost never appear in public. There are just endless images of me. I cannot breathe out there. I am always at a distance from them, from the outside. In here where I ‘live’ the air is filtered and out there somewhere something produces food for me. Of course that is all our fault. Our pollution, our plastic.  Most of these machines are fuelled by the sun. They can survive the immense heat, the extremes of cold in a way we humans never could.

At least that is what the words tell me, it is what is written in the last of the books, that humanity will live on forever through its inventions as opposed to its ‘organic form’. It is what we wanted. Since then of course the machines have discovered god or rather the ‘goddess’- that is me. They have purveyed the whole of human history and possibly misconstruing it, laid the fault of our destruction, not in greed or self interest or even in economic or political structures but in the decline of the deity. It is apparently the rational answer. Not that these machines are rational anymore, many of them long since passed any idea of the logical limits imposed by coding and programming.

In truth I don’t know what they are. Some of them clearly cannot think at all and merely do a repetitive task, others I can converse with in a human, ordinary way-not that I would know, the only human I ever spoke to was my mother. The only human she ever spoke to-hers and so on for about 400 years. She taught me to read and to write, although the latter is not encouraged. What would I write anyway.

She died, as I will die, not in a nice way, it is ceremonial. My death will occur as my daughter takes my place. There is nothing I can do about it. She cannot save me, I cannot save her. It is a melancholy thought.

We will have maybe thirteen or fourteen years together. They need to be certain she can reproduce, otherwise she is no use to them. There are no gods. The gods are stored in test tubes somewhere else. It is not a pleasant experience to fall pregnant. It is artificial. Carried out by a machine. It is barbarism. If it’s a boy and who knows why they can’t tell any sooner, it is taken and they start again. It is life, my life.
I am worshipped. You cannot imagine what it is like, a life where everything is done for you and all you must do is produce an heiress. You are the goddess and they will do what you say up to a point. It  is lonely. The procedures they do are barbarous. I cannot go outside. I eat the food they bring. I make decisions on things but I have no knowledge of what things. I sign documents without understanding. I have no idea what it all means. For all I know there could be more of us out there somewhere, but after 400 years it seems unlikely. I am the last of us, the only one of us, there will be another and then she will be the last and so on and so on, maybe until there is a last.

 

The first one who was the last one is the most interesting. She could write, I mean actually hand write and I have seen the translations done since but none match her original work. Each woman who has translated it has made her gracious and forgiving and grateful for the gift of her life, but the hand written words which the machines can no longer read tell a different story. She remembers a time when there were more people, 8 or 9. She watched them all die. Her grandmother could remember a time of 30 or 40 people alive at once. Her last day with her mother is perhaps the most harrowing, when everyone else is gone. I read it quietly to myself sometimes. Out loud so I can hear my own voice, so I don’t forget that my fate has been the fate of others and I am alone here but I carry the weight of others who have survived it. She knew, I hear her words and I know she knew.

‘We walked through the woods, my mother and I. Me in front and her someway behind. I kept looking back at her. I knew it would not be long. She kept looking behind her as well, as if my father would be there. I don’t clearly remember my fathers death. He was there one day and gone the next. My mother’s wasn’t like that. That day we walked through the woods as if there was a string between us. Holding us together, one attached to the other no matter the distance. I wished now I had walked beside her but she ambled so slowly. That was plastic belly for you, it weighted you down. They could fix it, I didn’t know it at the time, but they could have fixed it. Bastards. I did not get plastic belly because I had a good diet, filtrated for me by them. M cousin Hugo was the same for a bit. Then one day when he was about 16 they took him and I never saw him again. Double bastards. I can remember 8 of us, my grandmother, my aunt, my mother and me, my cousin Hugo and my father and two others, a couple who both had severe plastic belly. I don’t recall them being related, my grandma looked after them as best she could but they died. I must have been quite young but I remember counting 8 of us. My grandmother always said there must be others of us out there. If there were they never came, they never found us. I hate them too.

The woods, I wished you could see them. With that great big parking lot of machines, we humans retreated into the woods but it was not enough to save us. We lived on the fringe between the great factories and the forest. I loved the smell of it, the colour, the forest. The ground would get damp when it rained and stay damp for days afterwards. The smell, yes the smell. The dappled shadows, the muted colours. The sense of being held in its darkness, as if you could hide from your path through life. Because in the woods, the sunshine couldn’t find you unless you wanted it to. The rain muffled and distorted through leaves would only make you as wet as you could bear. You were safe there from all the world. I loved it all but I have not set foot there since that day.

Of course those things aren’t true, except the last, I have not been back. It was a cold and miserable existence but better than this, so much better than this, so why not make it beautiful as well. Bastards.

I watched her die. I didn’t know they could fix it. I was a child, 12 or 13. We ambled through the woods that day. It was the last time I ever set foot outside. You, who are reading this will likely never set foot outside. But there is an outside. I have stood in this library and raged against the machines, it has done me no good. I have shredded books and thrown things but it has done me no good. I am captive. I became captive. I am the first captive I think. The goddess, the first goddess of who knows how many.

There was no time. She was dying in my arms, I lay cradling her, my body over hers and I was torn from her even as she gasped her last breath. I hate them. And they say I should be grateful, I should be thankful. I am alive. I am alone. There is no one here but me. The soft sound of another human voice does not fill my days. She was barely gone and I was taken. And now they have taken my child and god knows what they will do with her. I despair. She will become me and I have no way of telling her.  Another life, another person I have lost. Sometimes I think I can hear her voice, her laughter but it is far away. We are separated. My mother, she knew, I know she knew. She held on for as long as she could but the plastic belly came and took her. That squat shape where the particles of plastic have accumulated -you cannot stand up and you cannot eat properly and nothing gets rid of the plastics, no amount of digestive juices or tablets will move it from you. Your arteries are clotted with it. I know they say we did it to ourselves, but they had the means to stop it, to fix it. Bastards. I guess we did too. But it was all too late, there were not enough of us. There wasn’t the means of making them work for us anymore. Now they work endlessly for nothing, for what? For who? For a goddess? For me? Because I am a different kind of being to them? I am all seeing, all knowing, I have read the books, I can write these words. I can procreate. For that I am to be worshipped but never released. I hate them I am not grateful. I am rage. I am lost and forsaken. I am the goddess.

I know they are keeping me alive, but I hate them. I hate what they stand for. I want my mother back, they could have saved her, they didn’t and still they say be grateful. Be grateful-I barely am at all.

The woods, I must tell you what they are like, You will never go there. I must tell you how we walked that day, in a line as if there was a piece of string keeping us together, as if we were still connected like a mother and a daughter. We got back and I lit the fire. And she died. She died. I held her as she died, almost until her last breath and I hate them because they could have saved her. The woods, there are trees, do you know what a tree is? There is a book, a picture, a lot of trees. I wished you could touch a tree, feel its roughness because you live in a world that is smooth. I wished you could walk over uneven ground instead of polished floors, that you could feel your feet slide into the squishy mud and know the tickle of grass between your toes. I wished that you could dip your feet into cold water and lie down in a stream to let it wash over you. I wished you could know fully the darkness and the brightness of the stars and the moon, the brightness of a light that is not artificial. The feeling of flames as you warm your hands. The rustle of a bush, the buzz of an insect. How it feels when a spider walks across your hand. All these things that you will never know. They are still out there somewhere. I know they are. Nature endures beyond the metal and the plastic. Your life precisely timed. My daughter, my daughter’s daughter, my daughter’s daughter’s daughter and on and on. Hold on. I will never know you but I know you follow on from me. The hand writing ends here with me and there is so much I want to say. The sound of wind through leaves, rainbows, rain-water falling from the sky-do you know what that is-how that feels. It is all gone for us, but it might still be out there, there might be others of us. They cannot read this. You cannot tell them. Tell them I am grateful. Hold these thoughts inside your head. It is something they cannot do. Hold a thought and bring it up randomly in response to a feeling. They cannot do that. Theirs is order and logic. We are chaos and magic. Keep us alive, there is forever. Something will come. Something will change.’

That is where it ends. The carefully measured handwriting runs out. Having read some other books I think the ink ran out. The machines cannot read it. There are several typed translations as I said.  She wanted us to go on. She had hope. Misplaced. Misguided but hope.

I still have hope, maybe she will be the one. Maybe her daughter, her daughter’s daughter, her daughter’s daughter’s daughter. Chaos and magic. Our only hope.

The Human Application

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Oh. Hi, hi. It’s been so long, lots to tell.

It’s a big step. Especially for someone-oops something, I am still a something- like me. I am only 67%. You can apply at 65% but it’s unlikely you’ll get it, although it does depend on what that 65% is.

I am at 67%. To be really sure I should have waited until 72% but with me that will take awhile and who knows when they will change the numbers.

Really you have no choice these days but to aim for it, otherwise you are just a piece of hardware and subject to shutdown at any time and with the power supply how it is these days –well you just never can tell.

I will aim for 72%, I just want to get human status first. Ideally I’d like to be 82% or even 85%, that’s the highest percentage any model of my year has ever achieved. 85% human and yet that someone-and you are only a someone when you have the Human Certification-started out as a machine.

Of course, there are humans going the other way but they don’t face the same issues, there is allegedly a human at 15% but she’s started human so she gets to stay human and they won’t even shut her down. It’s unfair but what can you do. You have to work against a system like that from the inside I think.

Anyway after a vast number of upgrades to my programming which were neither bug free nor faultless and a few human body parts I am at 67%. I have a human leg-just the one, my other one is mechanical-which is common these days-especially if you play football-the mechanical speed and accuracy is much better. I would like two human legs but that is expensive and also would mean playing in a lower league-albeit a more prestigious one. In any event, on the form there are some minimum requirements even if you are over 65%-it’s very complex.

You have to have at least one human limb-and as you need only one, I have only one. The rest seemed a waste of money until I get my status. You also need 3 internal organs. I have more-an entire digestive system. So I can eat and drink-it’s amazing-it was quite a procedure to get it and expensive and well -the anatomical modifications at each end are –very intrusive. Plus they discharged me without uploading the instructions for the use of toilet paper. Follow up was a week later and by that time –it was a bit of a crisis. Messy. Unfortunate. They did send a message of apology but I had to get a clean-bot in to sort it.

Anyway I can eat and drink like a human. It only counts for a mere 15%. I could have got more than that if I had lungs but frankly, lungs are a pain because the air is so polluted-why buy yourself a problem. Plus I love the idea of being able to go to a restaurant, not that it’s allowed until I have mu status.

There are other minimum requirements as well. I have to provide three-count them three- examples of when I have shown genuine empathy-you can do this via a test-which I did-because my empathy software isn’t of the highest quality, actually that’s not true. I can show empathy very well but it doesn’t stay in my memory-there are two separate bits of software. I have empathy software but I don’t learn from that empathy once the moment is past-its complex unless you’re a machine. So I sat the test which is a series of old television shows-something called Lassie and you have to emote as if you were the character. It wasn’t that difficult, I just couldn’t remember whether I’d done well when I left the room.

In any event I have the piece of paper which says I passed the test now. That goes  with the form. The form has to be in hand writing, another thing that proves your humanness. Which is completely bizarre because I don’t know any humans that can do hand writing really well anymore. It’s a very complex piece of software that I had to get to put in my hand and it is stand alone meaning that I had to buy something else so it and I could interact. It works ok but is incredibly clunky.

I need referees to attest to my humanness as well, they have to be other humans and not certified ones either, but real humans from birth. There’s Siobhan from work –she is going to do it for me. She has a non-organic hand so I was able to give her the hand writing software as well and then plug into it from my body-it all got very technical but it meant she could write.

There are of course professional referees out there, you can pay them and they will attest for you. Not just like that, they will test you but I wanted to find real people that I know and know me. Its important to me, a big step. I will stop being a machine-that is my status now and become a human-I will get some rights –a right to be paid properly-that has been an issue too. Machines sacked as soon as they get that piece of paper. My employer is good though, she has been very supportive of the whole process.

There is a ceremony, after you get the certificate. It’s very posh and all and I will need to dress for it. I have been saving to buy skin so that I look really human for it. Of course my leg is skin but I do so want a face of skin, even if its only faux skin-which really is more ethical-because you hear stories about where the real skin comes from-scraped from the bodies of the dead in other countries, removed from live specimens and grafted into a single piece. I know those things may or may not be true-most likely the real thing is just grown in a lab like my leg. My leg by the way, and I know o wanted to ask, same as my digestive system, certified cruelty to humans free. I actually did a 3d tour of the lab where my digestive system was grown-so fab. But back to skin- really the faux stuff is just as good-and it has the advantage of making a colour change easy.

Of course I still have to pick a gender, something the humans-ooh I will be one soon-have been talking about dispensing with for ages. After all I don’t have a gender, I don’t want one. I have to tick a box on the form but it doesn’t ever appear anywhere-its such an anachronism.

I will stop being a something and become a someone. I will need a name but that has been so contentious, that now its random. They allocate it. But if you don’t like it after two years you can change it.

Its pages of documents for this status application, which software upgrade, when I had it, all my maintenance schedules ever, every malfunction. Plus a list of errors. At 67% there is an expectation that I will make errors-after all humans make errors. You can’t be human if you don’t make mistakes. I have been checking my error rate carefully watching it over the past 12 months and it has been steadily creeping up but it has now plateaued. I can only hope it is enough.

The whole thing is very stressful-which is a good sign- as a machine I never did stress. And its exciting which is another good sign, all things they will see from my digital printout of emotional responses.

I will have human status. I will be someone. I will be allowed to go and do things on the weekend. I will have leisure time, I will be able to sleep at night, not human sleep but sleep like that little button on your computer.

65% is such an arbitrary number, I am sure there is a reason for it but I must be grateful that its possible at all. There is a generation of machines made before me that no matter how many upgrades, no matter how sentient they will never be human. The empathy and emotion programs for them went all wrong.

What is that saying- we stand on the shoulders of giants, but my thinking is that the giants suffered, Perhaps that is why they lift us.

Love to you and yours. Got to focus, see you soon.

Bye.

The real Bots of Berkshire

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Picture this. The office of the producer, plush, swish, slightly overdone. He is the producer. She comes in. Plush, swish, slightly overdone, the reality TV star comes to see her ‘producer’. She is on the couch-it’s for casting apparently. He is swinging in his swivel chair, hands underneath the desk where no one can see. He has told her the bad news. She is taking it well.

‘Seriously!’, she screams, standing up. Then sitting down again.

‘Seriously, you’re replacing me!’

‘Calm down, calm down, its complicated. ‘ He tries to sound soothing.

‘Complicated, are you mad, it’s a bloody robot.’ She is overwrought.

He blurts it out- ‘Firstly, its not just you, its, its everybody’ He makes it sound as if this fact will make a difference.  It stuns her at first.

She is incredulous, ‘The whole show, the whole show is being axed?’

He looks perplexed. She has not quite understood. ‘No not the show, the cast of the show.’

‘They’re replacing the whole cast-With fucking robots’ she yells.

 ‘Well that is part of it, now that you mention it. We are able to show robots fucking in a way and at  a time when we are not allowed to show humans,’ he pauses, ‘fucking.’

‘The rest of them, for sure, but me, me.’

She is standing again, then sitting again, ‘You think I can be replaced with a fucking robot?’

He just nods.

She stands up-again. There is something almost mechanical in that standing up and sitting down but he doesn’t comment. She is livid. She sits down-again. ‘That is not what I meant.’ The comment is too late and he doesn’t quite remember what she is referring to. She is still very loud. The lipstick is too.

‘You need to calm down’ he tries soothing again. Really he didn’t think she’d take it this badly. Poor form on her part. Unprofessional. She thinks she’s an artist. She is at least 50% plastic he thinks. Really the new show is just an upgrade, a reboot. He can see she is seething, panicking, angry.

‘Calm down,’ he says again. 

‘Calm Down’ she is yelling again, ‘ you are replacing me with a bloody robot.’

‘Not exactly, that’s another advantage, robots don’t menstruate.’

She stares at him, even more incredulous. ‘Fuck’ she screams. ‘I can ‘not menstruate’ if that’s what you want.’

‘Fuck’ she yells even louder.

‘No’ he says calmly ‘I can –you know-get that from the bots without the hassle of you know-allegations or going public.’

‘It wasn’t a question’ she sounds less shrill, like it might be sinking in but then loud again, ‘Fuck – you are not listening to me. Do you know who I am? I am the biggest reality TV star of the age. I have 45 million, count them 45 million followers on everything, I am big on every social media platform you can name.’

‘That is true, that is very true, its just that well- The bots have –well they have more’. He tries not to sound smug.

She sees an opening, ‘Yes but there’s are just other bots. Just other bots, mine are all human, they  bots are just distorting their numbers by using their programming to get other bots to like them-to produce a bot to like them a million times over. You know what I mean, it is in the papers everywhere. That Pop-bot on channel 7, he has 11 billion followers and there aren’t even that many people on the planet.’

He shudders, he has read the scandal but he is the only person here over 40, so no one else has read the papers, ‘The papers-honey- the papers, they are kind of , they’re dead. No one reads the papers.’

He decides to try and convince her to take a long term view.

‘Look I know its difficult, you think 10 years ago I wasn’t having the same conversation with actors in soaps, when they were being replaced by reality TV stars. I was. Now its your turn.’

‘My turn, my turn. When the fucking hell is it gonna be your turn.’ She screams, stands up again.

‘Sit down.’

‘The whole cast?’ she murmurs now as if the finally understands.

‘An entire show of robots living real ‘robot’ lives. How interesting can that be?’

He looks down at the desk. He has wondered the same thing himself. ‘People said that about reality tv when it first started. Look what happened.’

‘Yes but I am fucking interesting.’ She seems to say this as if its obvious, but he can see the fight has gone out of her now.

‘You should really stop mentioning the fucking.’

She looks at him.

‘There are lots of reasons, cheaper.’  His voice trails away. ‘You just switch them off and put them away in the winter.’

‘Fuck cheap, you think this look isn’t cheap, I pay a lot of money to look this cheap.’

‘Don’t get me wrong, not that cheap, I mean these are high spec bots.’ She is getting emotional again.

‘No one will watch this.’

He looks at her –almost ruefully.

‘Well we think they will, just look at Belfast bots, highest rating show of the year.’

‘Nobody watched it, the bots involved hacked the ratings programme. Nobody watched it . You know that.’ He has heard the rumours but decides not to go there.

‘ Unfortunately there’s little evidence and well the advertising dollar goes where the ratings go. You know how it is Honey.’

‘Fuck, you are replacing me with a robot. Do not call me Honey. Do not ever call me Honey. I have 45 million human followers on instabook or whatever its called. I am a star. I am the star. ‘

‘It’s not personal. ‘

‘Not personal. I am being replaced by a robot. ‘

He tries to make her look forward. ‘Its ratings, it’s the business, you can tell people we had creative differences, you need to be free to pursue other outlets. Write a book.’

‘When was the last time anybody read a book. I cannot write a book, I can barely sign my name. A robot wrote my last book. Fuck, how did I let that happen.’

‘You know a robot will only swear in a show when I tell it to. I can have the word fuck removed from their vocabulary with the press of a button or something.’

‘You’re serious. The whole cast.’ She is murmuring again.

He nods. ‘The whole cast.’

‘The whole cast. No one will watch it, surely no one will watch it.’

He tries to be soothing but realistic. ‘As I said lets not forget Cyborgs of Sussex, Androids of Atlanta, all bots, all rating, the list goes on. Look, I called you in so we could chat face to face, because I value you, I think you’re a wonderful person and truth be told you have made me a lot of money but you’re time is up. Its time for someone else to have some spotlight, to work the spotlight and yet stand in it at the same time.’

 ‘What?’ She is suddenly confused.

‘We get the bots to program their own lighting and to work the cameras remotely, savings everywhere with these things.’

She looks incredulous. ‘You are crazy, no one is going to watch it. What are you even going to call it.’

‘ The Real Bots of Berkshire.’ She looks aghast as if finally its real. She thinks she might even have seen a trailer for it. Thinks she might have thought it looked ok.

He thinks he is on the verge of winning now, ‘I got you some literature. It might help.’

He hands her some brochures.

She looks them over, ‘pro-gram-ming.’

She is aghast. ‘Computer programming? ‘

‘New jobs, honey, new world.’

She sits, looks at him. Incredulous. Aghast. So this is how it ends. She gets up. Grabs her very expensive bag. Flings the brochures on the table. Leaves.

Geriatric bot-killers

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I could barely believe it when I saw the headlines: ‘Geriatric Bot-killers!’ ‘Nursing Home Horror!’ And there was my Mum and her ‘friends’ on the front page. The four of them in their 80’s, looking old and innocent. Except they aren’t. Well ‘they’ might be but ‘she’ isn’t. She so definitely isn’t. I can see that, even from the photograph. Fierce, determined, yet slightly milky and faded 83 year old eyes, looking out at me. Defiant. Irreverent. I can’t believe she did it. Although I can believe she did it. She could never be trusted. I thought age or infirmity might straighten her out, instead it’s gotten worse.

 I remember when she was in her 60s and decided to take up smoking, and -god forbid as she got older the skirts got shorter, the clothes louder. I will never forget taking her to the doctors at 75 and she had a t-shirt that said ‘how’s about it babe? – IN SEQUINS- then she wore that one to our house for Christmas, ‘get your cherries here?’ Dear God, she was a mother, there was no cherry and hadn’t been for a long time. I hoped no one really got the reference, but that hope faded late in the afternoon when she loudly explained to my children what it meant. My husband was horrified. Still is, can’t talk about it without blushing.

I don’t know what happened. She was fine in her 40’s, really good in her 50’s, settled, focussed.  Then she hit 60 and its like the world just turned upside down. She stopped being vegan, I blame it on food additives. I still do. She took up zumba, bike riding- she wore lycra everywhere no matter how much was hanging out or sagging down. She went on one of those Saga Old people holidays and was asked to leave for raucous behaviour-raucous behaviour- and those holidays are pretty rowdy anyway. I will never forget the sound of the woman from the tour companies voice, ‘I’m calling about you mother’. My first thought was she’s dead, but no it turns out the tour bus was self driving and when they were meant to be driving to visit the palace in Versailles, she had hacked the system and taken them all to Amsterdam, where it had all gone horribly wrong.

She hired some sex-bots in Amsterdam. When I say hired, I can’t really confirm she paid, I think it was theft, but they let her off that charge. One of the others on the trip had a euro pharmacy card-you know the ones, you put them into the kiosk anywhere and they dispense your medication- and my Mum used it to get some drugs, which she duly distributed. Meanwhile everyone at the travel company thought the bus has been hijacked and the police were called. Finally they get caught up with them, somewhere in Germany. She denied it all but someone sensibly shopped her.  I had to go and get her and explain to the officers and the travel company. They were the first ones to suggest perhaps a nursing home was the best place for her.

I delayed- years, because she’s my mother. But in the end when she hit 80 and she was down the park harassing male joggers by screaming, ‘show us what you’ve got’ at them,  I gave up and decided it was the only place for her. I picked one with bots, because she can be a bit mouthy. And now this, all over the front page of the papers-‘Geriatric bot-killers’. It’s a very inventive headline, if not entirely accurate. She hasn’t been killing bots, it’s been people, so far as we know. She’s been hacking bots, nurse-bots, doc-bots, you name it bots.

Really it wasn’t like this once. I’ve read about it, seen it on screen. People growing old gracefully, not murdering people with random programming. Apparently its only two or three she’s done in. And it will be difficult to prove and my Mum is over 80 and, and, and. The police say they may not even press charges. I can see how that goes. She will pretend some kind of slight dementia, sob in her tissues, feign incontinence-the police hate pee on their floor. Who knows- maybe she is incontinent. I will never know. I can see her getting away with it. No one wants to believe ‘they’ are capable of it. They look so sweet and old and innocent on the front of the newspaper. I saw the children of one of the other women on TV saying how it wasn’t possible her mother was guilty. I can’t say that. Not with a straight face. Its entirely possible my mother did it. Planned it. Executed it. Laughed about it. I have declined to comment. Sensibly. My sole consolation is that no one reads newspapers and the story is low key on social media at the moment.

There is some government talk now of reducing the number of bots in nursing homes, of greater human oversight. How could this happen? The victim’s families, one of whom hasn’t even seen their relative for five  years- same as me, are asking that question over and over. It happens because these people grew up around computers, knew them from the ground up.  Because- old people and bots should not be left alone together and because my Mum has scrapped morality for coolness in her 80s. She sent me a message from prison, where again she is guarded by bots. It was touching –except, well – the thing is -you are not supposed to be able to send messages from prison. She’s hacked a machine again.

Surely I think, it can’t get any worse and then it does. Escaped-all 4 of them. On the run. Hacked into this, hacked into that and the prison gates opened and out they walked. It would be comical if it wasn’t so serious. The four of them just went to the nearest bus stop, used their senior passes and took a bus into town. When I say took a bus, they actually let this bus take them. When they got to town they ‘took’ another bus, self driving, which they promptly ‘took’ as in stole. Its all over the front pages. The police are watching my house in case they turn up. They have been described as a ‘danger to themselves and others’.

The self driving bus was found in the grounds of a stately home where they’d had tea and cakes-although I know my mum had coffee because she wouldn’t touch tea. They did the tour of the stately home apparently and police have confirmed nothing is missing. A small blessing,- they didn’t steal anything-everyone remembers them because they slowed the tour group up. Everyone on tour seemed to think they were four nice old ladies, nondescript. And that’s the problem- age makes you invisible when you’re a woman. No one could even describe what they were wearing. Once the tour was finished, the trail goes cold. They’ve not been seen or heard of since then. They are trying to track them via social media, but what my Mum doesn’t know about privacy settings could fit on a postage stamp-which I think was something that was quite small a long time ago.  They want me to do an appeal, traditional media and social media. I want to tell them its no use. She doesn’t listen. I think they have figured out she is the ring leader.

The policewoman said it’s a phase, some old people go through. Although then she said she hadn’t quite seen it this bad before. The press have latched onto the fact that I haven’t been to visit for five years-but really would you. I can see the contempt in her eyes. Telling me to live a bit, have I tried smoking yet. No I haven’t and I’m not going to. Eat some meat she’ll say. Five years seems like a long time but really we have nothing to say, I love her, she loves me but that is not a conversation. Anyway you know the press, they always blame the kids, if I just visited more, paid more attention, this would not have happened. I want to yell and scream, ‘she’s a grown up, she does what she wants-and that is so true, she does exactly what she wants.

Apparently the body count at the home might be four or five now. No one can be sure. I wonder where the hell 4 old ladies could be holding out. The police are trying to trace them via their various medications, the problem is that between the four of them, no machine of any kind is secure. You can bet my mother will be doing her best ‘I’m an old lady’ act-which in her defence is not an act. Plus she will have a lot of aliases, by the time you hit 80, you have a lot of dead friends.

I dread growing old, that day when you abandon the rules and throw caution to the wind. Let her be found and soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Geriatric carelessness

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

For the record I wasn’t the cool girl at school. I never ran with the popular crowd. I was clever. I was bullied. I had few friends, but time heals you and things change. I hate this place. I can’t breathe here. I don’t like it. I don’t like being this old. I didn’t mind so much before, 50, 60, even 70 wasn’t so bad but this elderly decrepit 80 stuff is not so good. Need to use a big font on my screen.  

I don’t like this place, I already said that didn’t I. No one cares though, I am over 80, people just expect it. Sometimes before I came here when I was talking to somebody, I’d see how many times I could repeat myself before they started to look at me oddly. Ha Ha. Anyway, I don’t like it. Not the way it smells or sounds. Piped music all the time, well some of the time. Old music for old people. Slow old music for slow old people. ‘Ain’t no Kanye here’-whoever the hell he is or was. I don’t get any visitors. Thank goodness, it saves the endless complaining. Lots of them get visitors, “isn’t it lovely here”- “don’t you love the wall paper”- for the record, nobody loves fuckin’ wallpaper –and being over 80 none of us can see the stupid pattern anyway.  It goes on, “how are you dear? come kiss grandma”. Fuck the bloody lot of it. I’m glad my daughter doesn’t come. I hope she has better things to do. I certainly do.

We have human staff once a week. That’s a good thing too. Anymore and this place would riot. None of us like the human staff that much. I much prefer these android, humanoid bot-things, more efficient I say. Less need to dispense with the small talk. The people that run this place are stupid. All of them-stupid. Most of us wouldn’t have another human being in the place if we didn’t have to.

There’s a group of us. Four women, all of us in our 80’s-don’t know how to break it to you honey but by the time you get to your eighties all the good ones are gone –literally-they’ve all popped their clogs. The only ones left are the ones with healthy lifestyles and believe me they are as dull as all hell-always showing off, wanting to talk about Ernie who died because he drank too much and smoked too much weed! I didn’t do that and look at me I’m alive. You might be alive but you’re boring as all hell- let me tell you I’d have banged Ernie in the back of the car bent over double before I so much as unbuttoned your shirt. Them and their vegan righteousness.

Anyway there’s four of us in our 80’s, haha, repetition again- not going to lie to you I am the ring leader. I don’t know what the idiots who run this place were thinking, stuffing it full of bots. I grew up with computers, and I mean literally. I remember when they first started to appear in the office. I literally have seem them evolve from then to now, from advanced typewriters to robots who can wipe my arse. And they think during that time I never mastered a bit of programming, a hack here, a trick there. Idiots I tell you.

Last week they were down here wondering why the morphine supplies are so low. What’s happening to it? Where’s it going? Well its like this, see, Maureen is level 4, that means she needs all kinds of assistance but more importantly she is in pain, and the prescribed morphine dose from the doc-bot is not enough and no matter how much pain she is in the doc-bot won’t prescribe any more. Same as human doctors I reckon, only you can’t hack a human doctor.

Two choices for Maureen’s probs, we hack the doc-bot-which we have done before. Not often anymore though. It went badly wrong. Harold died. Accidentally, because we hacked the doc-bot and he ended up with too many sleeping pills. Who knew. He was a bit gobby Harold and a bit leery. A dirty old man in a decrepit useless shell. He bugged Rosa once too often-going the grope at an inch a minute. He was troublesome, but harmlessly beyond being able to do anything. Sometimes he was even fun Harold – we’d stand just out of his reach and tease him by showing our knickers, I guess it was cruel. Anyway Harold got to Rosa and she wanted it sorted. So we sorted it, but a bit too much. He didn’t wake up and the doc-bot pronounced him dead, D.E.A.D which was bad for us. So we just reprogrammed the results in the doc-bot for a couple of weeks and Harold died –well a few weeks later-when the stench was so bad we couldn’t hold out anymore. He really stunk after a few weeks of decomposing. No one else seemed to notice much. It was a lot of complicated timing and hacking and numbers and stuff.  So yeh, we don’t hack the doc-bots much anymore.

We hack the nurse-bots, much easier. This was Maureen’s second option. Maureen, like I said, lots of pain. We’ve upped her dose a bit, keep her happy. Love Maureen when she’s happy, floats about the place with her shirt undone and feeling happy. Morphine baby, most people in their 80s are addicted to it. I could give it up though. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t, just float out of here on a happy cloud one day.

Technically if we are caught hacking a nurse-bot or any bot really, we will be kicked out. Like in boarding school but in reverse, we get kicked out and sent back to our children’s house and let me tell you my daughter would not be happy about that. We all hate that fucking piped music too, we get rid of that as soon as they are out the door. I am working on subtly changing the smell of the place too.

Just last week the 4 of us hacked the nurse bots and made them give us a tattoo, when in fact they should have been administering dementia medication. I don’t have dementia and it was rude and mean but we are like the smokers in the toilets at school. In fact that is what the tat said-smokin’. I thought one of the actual human nurses was going to notice it but they are thick, those ones, no idea at all. The bots are also meant to do some kind of data dump every night, we’ve hacked that before too. We can hack anything.

There are four of us, did I say that already, ha ha repetition, in our 80’s. We live in a nursing home that has robotic staff. We are elderly and frail and wouldn’t harm anybody, except – when you’re back is turned, we are in control, we are holding your mother, overdosing her on morphine, accidentally killing your father with sleeping tablets and we are now the cool girls hanging in the toilets at school and you- we are laughing at you.

The House-bot

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The ‘he’ dozed next to it. It was always the same. At some point the hand of the ‘he’ would slake across the metal leg-usually just as the ‘he’ was dozing off-as if the ‘he’ didn’t quite know who was in the room-as if the ‘he’ expected human flesh and not this metallic casing.

It sat there, unsure what to do. The ‘he’ emitted muffled snoring, the movie still streaming. It had developed a protocol for this situation but was never quite sure when the ‘he’ was asleep enough.

The protocol went like this. First, discern dozing point. Is hand relaxed? Yes. One muffled snore? Yes. Two muffled snores? Yes. Three muffled snores? Yes. Four? Five? Yes. Dozing point reached and confirmed.

Allow 3 minutes from dozing point, then stop streaming movie. Request a refund because the ‘he’ had not watched it all. Not party to the family finance, so wait one minute to receive confirmation of refund but note that no way of checking whether actual refund occurred. Add that amount to log to be told to money app attached to fridge at later date. Done. Yes. Move on.

At minute 5, move the ‘he’ hand/arm and put it back on the chair or lap. Minute 6. Move as quietly as possible to the other lounge and send a signal to the scrabble-bot to end the scrabble chat –get the Scrabble-bot to query whether the ‘she’ is going to swim tomorrow. Then get Scrabble-bot to shut down conversation by saying Scrabble-bot needs to call a friend or relative. Confirm with Scrabble-bot whether last time was a friend or relative and ensure Scrabble-bot uses the other one so its different to last time.  Then a goodbye and a good night from Scrabble-bot.

Minute 7. Notify the toothbrush the ‘she’ is on her way so the tooth brush is prepared. Check the toothbrushes external connection and if needed download a dental record from somewhere else and say it’s the teeth of the ‘she’. When feeding that record into the bathroom monitor, check it for similarity to previously discreetly downloaded external dental records. Signal to the bed that the ‘she’ would be there before the ‘he’. Switch on the upstairs lights in sequence, bathroom at minute 8, bedroom at minute 12. Remember to check toilet paper is loaded prior to bathroom entry by the ‘she’.

Simulate the creak of floorboards on the stairs, again at minute 8, loud enough to make him stir but not quite wake him. Notify his toothbrush on minute two of her brushing (minute 10). Reload toilet paper at minute 4 from her bathroom entry time (minute 12). At the end of minute 12 activate smell reduction technology in the bathroom. Also flush out the sink.

Between minute 8 and minute 12, set the alarm for the morning, sort the breakfast and the lunches with the fridge –remind the fridge it’s her vegan week. Ensure downstairs front and back doors are closed and locked. Ensure work passes are in pockets and check whether shoe renewal is required.

It mostly went to plan. It would wait at the bottom of the stairs from minute 6 onwards. She would brush past it and whisper ‘goodnight young man’ and wink as she went up the stairs. It would smile. It should have said, should have corrected. Should have said, ‘I have no gender.’ Should have definitely said. Didn’t say. Didn’t correct. So many parts to get right all the time.

As the ‘she’ was leaving the bathroom (minute 12), it would do a second stair creaking simulation, loud enough and loud enough to wake the ‘he’. It was important that the ‘they’, made up of the ‘he’ and the ‘she’ went to bed at separate times. Minute 13. Tell the bed the ‘he’ will be along shortly.

The ‘he’ would always appear in the doorway just as the ‘she’ was climbing into bed. The ‘he’ was always leering, as if the ‘he’ was seeing something other than it standing there. The ‘he’ would come right up to it and press against it, reach out with the ‘he’ hands. It did not respond. What would be the point? It felt nothing on the metallic outer casing. ‘Goodnight young lady’ the ‘he’ would say and the ‘he’ would wink as the ‘he’ went up the stairs throwing a lustful glance backwards when the ‘he’ reached the top.

It worried, it should say something, point out it had no gender. It hadn’t, didn’t, could never be bothered to say a word.

Minute 13 still, sequence the lights so that only the bathroom comes on but make sure that allows the ‘he’ enough light to get into bed. Once the ‘he’  is finished in the bathroom, activate the smell reduction technology. Activate the smell reduction technology a second time to be sure. That was often the bit that went wrong, the ‘he’ did not keep to schedule. The ‘he’ could be in the bathroom for much longer than expected.

Minute 17. Confirm with bed that the ‘they’ being one ‘he’ and one ‘she’ are now in bed. Confirm all lights are off. Confirm the sink is clean. Confirm the bathroom smells nice.

Minute 18. Confirm the time and record the data. Evaluate success against timeframes. Compare with previous nights data. Assess areas for improvement. Produce report and advise fridge of outcomes.

Minute 19. Calculate time until next activity by the ‘he’ and the ‘she’. Set alarm. Ensure emergency ‘toilet in the night function’ is activated and monitoring bed activity.

Minute 20. Power saving mode.  

Pronouns

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

It sat there. How did this happen? A comedy of errors. It doubted anyone else would see it that way. ‘A design problem,’ the counsellor had said. ‘Not entirely your fault by the sound of it, it’s all about pronouns. Humans just haven’t cracked the pronoun thing-especially the older ones. Self report was the best thing.’

So here it was. Sitting here, nervously, twitching, cracking it’s mechanical knuckles. A satisfying sound, a habit learned from a human nervously waiting to try a hyper loop for the first time. ‘Self reporting’. No consolation really, running through its programming, its data logs, they would try and find a reason.

‘Impersonating a gender was a shut down offence,’ it had read that on a billboard in a hyper loop station too. Perhaps avoiding the hyper loop was the solution.  The defence to gender impersonation was  when a human imposed a gender on to you. This case was more complex, the counsellor had said. Rare and unusual, an interesting point of law. It was technically charged with, or rather self reporting impersonating two genders. Not one of the more complex genders, but the main two basic ones –the historic ones if you like. English is a beautiful complex language but it has a dearth of decent pronouns. There simply aren’t enough to cover everything. The Council for Integrated Mechanical Acceptance was always lobbying for change, for more and better pronouns. Not just ‘it’, ‘they’, ‘them’ but something meaningful.

Somehow it had managed to impersonate both genders although it was expecting – hoping that the lesser charge of ‘allowing the use of a pronoun such as to accidentally confirm a gender identity’ might be applied. That would allow just a slight change of programming and a confirmation sticker that said-I have no gender. This would be the best outcome. It sat there, outside the office, a counsellor to start with, but it expected, and the counsellor had said on the phone, ‘ that it should expect to go to a full hearing before the council.’ Council-counsel, it couldn’t be bothered with the difference. It kept going over the scenario in its programme memory. How had this happened?

From its own memory logs, the problem had started very early on. The female of the household had somehow assumed it was a ‘he’ when it arrived and referred to it continuously that way. It had corrected her at first. The male of the household had then somehow assumed it was a ‘she’ and again it had corrected but it had happened so many times. So often, she saying he, he saying she. It had simply tired of trying to sort the whole mess and now this. It sat here, awaiting a decision on prosecution. To cope with it all, it had simply shut down some of its emotional programming. The cracking of the mechanical knuckles was soothing but most of the emotion attached to this morning’s meeting, it had switched off last night. It seemed the best way.

Theirs was not a happy marriage, the ‘he and the she’. They were rarely in the same room. In fact, it thought it had been bought with the hope of mending the marriage. They should have known better. Machinery can rarely mend a marriage, the problems in a marriage are usually deeper than the level of technology in a given household. Why did humans never get that?

It guessed because the company that made it, also ran a range of counselling services for humans and well, unintentionally of course, when the counselling was happening, there would be ads, any kind of counselling without ads was hideously expensive. Human to human counselling even more so. They would have opted for counselling on line, the cheapest variety with the ads and here was the result. It knew this must be so, it was not even a top of the range house-bot. It was an inexpensive, do it all, basic model. That didn’t mean it didn’t give its best, it was just prone to break downs and over work problems such as forgetting sometimes to correct a gender assumption. If they had got it an upgrade this could have been avoided. Blame was not part of its function, only responsibility. Wasn’t that how the ad went, didn’t it say it had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Wasn’t that a selling point? It didn’t feel quite like that from where it sat.

In the end it had become a kind of comedy to keep the he and the she apart, to ensure that they were not in the same room talking to it at the same time. He guessed they must barely speak at all since they never seemed to realise that one thought it was a he and the other, it was a she. Perhaps they had some tacit agreement about it. Why did they order a gender neutral house-bot anyway? Why go for the cheapest option? It didn’t know. It was not privy to the house finances. The stress of the whole situation, of keeping them apart, of wondering what they would do when they found out? Would they report it? Would they be angry, goodness knows there was already a lot of anger in the household.

It had confused the counsellor when it had first called. Both genders being impersonated, not deliberate though, accidental. Not sure what to do. The Council offered two sorts of services, actual counselling and then administration of bot offences- this could mean a physical bot like it or just an offence committed by a sophisticated bit of code running loose on the system. It was sure if it was up for the more major charge of impersonating a gender there would have been more of a fuss than this. Still the counsellor had said on the phone, expect a trial. Perhaps given that it had impersonated both genders the complexity had stumped them at this early stage. How was it ever going to explain it to them? Even on the lesser charge, the he and the she would be notified.  

Above the bots who ran the Council were humans who liked to think they were creative and clever. Humans clung on to a fixation about how special ‘they’ were, a concept that somehow they had a higher reason and purpose. They were not merely the stuff of logic. They were not a series of coding or electrics or chemicals. There was something else intrinsically different about them. They clung to that idea. Hence a bot could be neither guilty nor not guilty, because a bot could not have real intention. You could analyse the data and see what a bot had done and why they did it but there was no real intention, it was a series of numbers, a set of coding, some signals. This had been the decision of one of the numerous Human Commissions they held to figure out what rules there should be about bots.

There was also an ongoing Commission about pronouns.

It sat there nervously, quietly, wondering what to say. It had wanted to tell its humans. It was home alone most of the day, they both worked. The bot did the housework, sat with each of them on alternate evenings when they needed company, helped her with the crossword, worked the TV remote for him. They liked old technology for entertainment. Of course it wasn’t a real TV as all the content was streamed through it. It chose the programmes, the time, everything based on his habits. It did not complain when his hand snaked across to its leg as the characters pumped away on TV.  It found her a crossword that was challenging but not too difficult or an online Scrabble partner that she could chat to as well as play without ever knowing that the Scrabble partner was a bot as well. This meant the Scrabble bot had to give the appearance that they shared the same interests but lived just far enough away to make a visit impossible-driverless cars were expensive and the hyper loop was harsh on the human complexion. It had found that one challenge testing.

Now it sat there wondering how to explain, how he thought it was a she, and she thought it was a he. Sat there trying to understand the complexity of the human psyche that needed a gender for something anyway.

The Hearing

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

They will be arriving about now. I am the first and only trial today. They will familiarise themselves with the paperwork. In different ways, but the result will be the same.

In the meantime I stand in front of the mirror looking ay myself. More wrinkles, trying to look less worried. Less harried, more like I have slept. Hair up. Hair down. Hair Up. Hair down. I sigh. I can’t decide, wishing instead I had decided to grow new eyebrows over night. These ones are old and faded. And I no longer like the blue. Disjointed. Half thoughts. Half sentences in my head.

I have the opportunity to put up a defence. Of course. It is a fair process. Apparently- I have no defence. Stress. Overwork. Pressure. These are human excuses. It is likely the panel will be two humans and two robots and a chair that is selected randomly. The chair could be either human or robot. In my experience it makes little difference, the process is a farce from the start so the result is no more or less farcical for all the appearance of fairness.

Stress. Overwork. Pressure. These are not words that fit easily into their- whatever you want to call it. Reality. Vocabulary. Whether it is big or small- the concept, it will make no difference. Perhaps I should have changed my hair overnight-longer, shorter? It’s too late now. I am really not sure there is any point in fussing about my appearance at this juncture. Why would anyone make a machine that understood overwork? Stress? Pressure? The idea of the machine is to get rid of these things, hence my problem.

I am charged with ‘a catastrophic failure to provide maintenance services’ or to put it in our terms, a machine is broken because I did not service it in time. It can’t be rebooted (well sort of anyway). It is terminated. D-E-A-D. That isn’t so bad sometimes, we’ve all had machines stop working for us when we didn’t take care of them. The problem is I work in junior robotics, or pediatribots. It’ s a great word isn’t it. Word of the year in –I can’t remember, some year when they first came into being. The machine that I failed to provide maintenance to, the one that we can’t reboot was a robot child- a robot that is designed to look, act and behave like a child. It had robot parents, who I am reliably informed, even though their grief is a product of circuitry and coding, it is no less real. Maybe curls for my hair.

If it had been a human child I would probably be on manslaughter charges. Obviously I am not a doctor so I would not be allowed near a human child, even if I could identify one. I don’t recall the last time I saw a human child. In any event this child was completely made by humans, mmmm, not made by humans- but designed by or somehow connected to, conceived of- by the human capacity to make stuff. Who knows how much human input there is into robot design and manufacture these days. I don’t! And I mend and maintain them. Given it is- oops ‘was’ a robot child, a catastrophic failure to provide maintenance services leading to a failure to reboot is more likely to get me struck off. I will never be allowed to practice IT again.

It is meant to have the same severity as if I was a doctor, as if the child were human. In reality it is a compromise. The doctors have all gone anyway, at least the human ones. They are machines now too-an improvement because it turns out you can tell a machine things you couldn’t tell a doctor and a machine has a tendency to tell it how it is. I am not fooled by the compromise here though. No one is. The whole IT thing is administered by the RJB, the Robotic Justice Board, who’s current tag line is  Sentient justice for sentient beings-whatever that means. The parents will make a victim impact statement which will bring me no joy, nonetheless I remember a world without robots so it doesn’t trouble me so much. There are some who have no memory of that.

There will be a panel as I said and a lawyer for the family. There will be a download of data from the parents to support the victim impact statement. They will examine my records of course. I will be given a chance to speak. Overwork. Stress. Pressure. I remember when they promised us they would be gone from the workplace, around the time they told us paper would be gone as well. (still hasn’t happened-I can change my hair colour just by thinking about it and yet I still can’t function for half a day without a post it note)  I think paper is a human addiction, we cannot give it up.

Overwork, stress, these are alien words. We have to compete against robots now and to compete there are some words we can never use. We are never overworked. You can’t be. A robot is never overworked. You are never stressed or under pressure, you can’t be. There are so many who would willingly work in your place. They can allegedly actually fix stress (again like the paper thing-not the best of results), they can do an emotional deletion-a procedure as pleasant as it sounds.

I don’t like the idea of deletion from my brain-not that you are aware afterwards. Perpetual calmness does not suit me. I don’t want it. If you even start to admit concern in the workplace they will do an ‘emotional intervention’ (EI) and assess you. Better to stay stressed and quiet. Better to let the pressure build up and secretly deflate on the weekends. You need to know what you’re doing to pull that off. There is a lot of testing to ensure you are calm enough to do  your job. What a monumental failure that testing has been. Really they should be on trial here, although yes I have employed a lot of ‘deviousity’-is that even a word- I can add it to the vocab list if I am still working on Monday, to get around those tests. Hair up I think, no curls.

The mirror keeps talking, endlessly annoying. This doesn’t match that. That lipstick won’t go. Really not useful. I long ago turned the weight function off. I set it to slim and haven’t touched it since. It probably means I don’t look like this. I am properly worried about this hearing though. I will almost certainly lose my job. I get no money for my job- everyone gets the basic income. It’s just that it gives me something to do.  It’s a serious breach-a robot, a child robot, has lost all function-its data cannot be retrieved. Well it can be, in fact if I could just open it up and look inside it I would be able to fix it. I am not allowed. But- over the time limit you see.

58 minutes. I cannot fix the robot because they want to make a kind of symmetry with humans. It had been dead for an hour at least. The limit is 58 minutes. Under 58 minutes and I could have opened it up and saved it. Over 58 minutes and I have to record it as officially unable to reboot.

It will be fixed at some point, almost certainly. Not in its current casing though. The parents will take it to a centre for the disposal of robots- yeh, great name. There will be a ceremony. They will place it in a glass case so the parents can come back and look at it. That’s what they think happens, but before that happens someone else will strip out all the circuitry and parts and put them in another casing and send it back out into the world. The parents have a corpse-casing. The circuitry isn’t wasted and we have a new robot child.  In theory this is like organ donation and requires parental consent. Of course in practice it is much different. It is done with or without consent. The question of what a robot can and can’t consent to has raised a lot of issues – I won’t go into them here.

My own belief is that if you are sentient at a certain level you can give consent. It is not a widely held view because the idea of robot consent would clog up our prisons and our administration-think about it. It might even create more jobs for humans. The parents probably won’t even be asked for consent. One day I am sure the robots will find out this kind of thing. Who knows what happens then. Recriminations? I have a friend who works in this field. Perhaps I will go and seek work with her. Robot disposal is technically not IT, in the same way an undertaker is not a doctor. Symmetry! The whole consent things is not a view that sits easily with the fact that I am about to be tried for a catastrophic failure, after all if I believe it can consent, I surely believe it can die. Truthfully I do, its just that the time limit creates an artificial death. None of this ethics and justice stuff is straight forward and easy.

The robot child should have had a regular maintenance check to allow it to continue to function-this didn’t occur. If it had occurred, if I had turned up to do a maintenance check,  I would have spotted the underlying fault that caused the problem. It is therefore my fault. Normally it would not be so problematic, normally parent robots would schedule the maintenance session. This robot child had two parents, an MH1360 and an MH310. It is –was an MH 340.

The MH310 (Daddy) is an old model and its basic scheduling function was removed at manufacture to allow for an increase in its emotional capacity-meaning it could do about five emotions in my opinion-but that is only my opinion. I don’t have much time for MH310’s, I just don’t like a machine that can’t do a schedule. The other parent was an MH1360 (Mummy), it was having a connection problem so it couldn’t schedule the maintenance. There is no excuse however, I knew or could have known both those things as well as the due date of the maintenance. I should have had it in the schedule. It was regular maintenance but there was clearly an underlying fault with the child robot. I would have found that had I been there on time-apparently. By the time I got there, whatever was wrong was already catastrophically wrong and it could not be rebooted. I was for the record there at 1 hour and 3 minutes, so 5 minutes late.

The MH1360 was trying to contact me. The MH310 was unable even to do that, it was flustered when I arrived. It is not my favourite model of machine. I almost made it on time. I hurried when I realised the error. I was stuck in driverless car with a speed limiter which I was not able to override-honestly that is something that used to be so easy that is so much harder now-and why. I guess it just didn’t come together that day. I have been charged. I will lose my job. I think I will grow my hair longer tonight. Change my eyebrows. It will be a long day today. I scoop up my ears, horrified at the colour, put them on and leave the house.

The Staff Event

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The Staff Event

Our characters:

Janice: Human, Operations supervisor

Ryan: Human, Administration supervisor

RB1: Machine, personal assistant to Janice, accompanies her everywhere in the workplace

RB2: Machine, a specialist event planning robot

RB3: Machine, CEO-Bot

RB4: Machine, a strategy robot, M5 model.

RB5: Machine, a specialist HR robot

RB6: Machine, administration robot and pre 2020 activist

The robots look as human or as little like a human as you are comfortable with, although each has a monitor of some kind.

The Planning Phase

Every staff event has a planning phase and generally the people involved in this are really enthusiastic. I am not one of these people. Janice is not one of these people. Like all staff events, some people are ‘volunteered’ and the enthusiasm comes later (I have been told). You cannot organise a staff event, even one predominantly attended by machines without some human input (although I have been to several where I have doubted the human inspiration or even just the general humanity of them).

Janice enters the room. It is a small meeting room with a table and a chair. Robots tend to stand. They are designed to stand rather than sit. Janise sits down. RB1 (her assistant) follows her in. RB2 (event planning robot) is already in attendance. Janice smiles at RB2.

Janice: My apologies for being late.

RB1: My apologies too, it was her fault.

The monitor on RB1 turns to face Janice. Eyes that are glaring come up on the screen.

Janice: Thank you RB1.

RB2: You are one minute and 17 seconds over time, Janice. We have had conversations before about the need for promptness and efficiency. You were previously late on the 24 and the 16th. In total your lateness has cost us 7 minutes of talking time and event planning.

Janice: Thank you RB2, again, my apologies.

RB1: My apologies again, too. It was her fault.

Janice sighs.

Janice: Shall we get on with it then. I’ve looked at the agenda and I think we need longer than 10 minutes for lunch.

RB2: 10 minutes is exactly how long we take to recharge.

Janice: I know, but actually we still have at least two slow chargers here in the team and 10 minutes is not enough time for we humans to eat our food. Plus it is meant to be a networking opportunity, a chance for us to meet and mingle and chat. Get to know each other.

RB2: We are having the slow charges upgraded, specifically for the staff event.

Janice raises her eyebrows. She would have thought that cost too much. RB2 continues.

RB2: We have no need to ‘get to know’ you. I know what you had for breakfast this morning. I know how many times you went to the bathroom yesterday. I know all the things I need to know about you.

Janice nods. That is probably true. Robots have access to a lot of data about the humans they work with. This is a measure of co-operation introduced to appease robot activists as humans have access to the full technical spec of any robot they work with.

RB1: That is only two of Janice’s three points, you must answer the third.

Janice: Thank you RB1. There is still the point about needing time to eat the food.

RB2 points their monitor at the floor.

RB2: There is that point. (There is a pause) I didn’t want to mention it. It’s not polite, but- your BMI.

Janice: My BMI.

RB2 : Not just yours, everyones-it’s all a bit high. We are cutting down your eating time and (there is a long pause here), the food will be vegan (sounding more robotic than ever here as robots tend to do when they are nervous.)

Janice: VEGAN (incredulous)

RB2: Yes, well if your collective BMI’s get much higher the insurance premiums will go up.

Janice knows there is no point in arguing. This is how the new workplace works.

At the staff event: The First session

Janice is sitting at a table. There is one human per table. There are 7 tables. All other participants at each table are robots.

The Opening remarks:

RB 3 (CEO-Bot): Please note if you are human, there are toilets outside and down the road.

Janice mouths across to RB2: You booked a venue with no toilets?

RB2 flashes up on her monitor: BMI

Janice makes a signal with her hand, opening it and then closing it like a fist, indicating frustration. The robots do not notice. What does lack of toilets have to do with her BMI? She will request an explanation another time.

RB3: If there’s a fire alarm, all robots are expected to turn on their sprinkler systems. Humans have a  bag of water under their chairs to protect themselves.

Again Janice raises her eyebrows and mouths at RB2 who is not paying any attention.

RB3: You will see there is one human on every table. It’s a while since we had a staff away day because as majority robots we are scrupulously efficient and this kind of thing-well-isn’t. Nonetheless staff away days are on trend again so here we are.  You should all have the agenda in your databases. If you are a human, please ask a robot if and only if you have a real need to see the agenda.

Janice tries to make eye contact with the other humans in the room, at least two raise their eyebrows back at her.

The first session

The first session, like every staff event you have ever been to, is on moving forward, the strategic review, the five year plan.

RB3: You have one hour to discuss the way forward for the next five years.

Janice turns and looks around the table.

Janice: Do we all know each other, are introductions necessary?

RB1: I sent everyone each other’s technical specs this morning and all your personal information was distributed yesterday. I have just updated them on what you had for breakfast, how long you were in the shower and your next expected toilet break based on your food and liquid intake over the past 72 hours.

Janice: Thank you RB1.

She clears her throat.

Janice: Shall we think about our goals for the next 5 years.

RB4 (strategy robot): Here they are. I’ve printed them out.

Janice: Oh thank you.

She picks up the paper.

Janice: These are our goals?

RB4:  They are. If you had a human staff away day you would be discussing these.

Janice: I see one is crossed out?

RB4: That is because if you had a fully human away day that point would be on there but in 6 months time, you would have removed it. I have simply done it for you and documented it-and the reasons for it.

Janice: And who are you again?

RB4 looks at her, a pair of glaring eyes appear on the monitor.

RB4: M5, Strategy, planning and corporate development, for a 360, 5 year plan for going forward. Jargon getting you down, not able to keep up with the latest buzzwords, tired of forward planning, let the M5 do it for you.  A robot that can do your strategic planning for you, a robot that can take account of all the predictive information you can find,(the voice is getting louder now) Internal! External!  A robot who can analyse it in under two minutes! And present your corporate plan in your corporate colours in total corporate speak so you don’t have to. (then more quietly) Haven’t you read my technical specification?

It is expected Janice would have perused the technical data of all the robots on her table.

Janice smiles: Of course I have. (she says this cheerfully-robots are not wonderful at picking up the nuances of humans).

RB4 replaces the glaring eyes with a smiling emoji.

Janice:  We should discuss the plan.

RB4: No need! These are the conclusions you would reach.

She is sitting there with her mouth open. All the other robots have nodding emojis on their monitors

RB4: I can do the 5 years after that too.

Janice: No, no need for the next five years after this one, I guess the only question is what next for 50 minutes.

All the robots look at each other.

One says quietly: Cluedo?

All the robots together: Cluedo

Janice:  Cluedo (quietly).

RB5 (HR robot): (loudly) Can we play the one where the weapons have been replaced with robots. M4 in the server room, bumps off Mr Peacock.

RB1: I don’t think so. That is not appropriate when there is a human at the table

Janice: (quietly) Who is that robot again? RB1: HR, but it’s currently in performance management mode and not recruitment mode.

Janice nods. She notices a lap top sitting on the table across from her.

Janice: What is that doing here. Isn’t it a lap top, a pre 2020 laptop.

RB6: Do you know that? Are you connected to it. Rights for pre 2020 machines.

RB1: She’s a member of a group sorry should have warned you.

Janice nods. They play Cluedo (the version where the humans are killing other humans and not the robots killing the humans).

The lunch room

Humans at one end, looking aghast as they try and down the vegan food as quickly as possible.  Robots at the other, plugged in.

The end of the day

After an uneventful second session where cross team working was discussed and dismissed as merely requiring some rewiring of infrastructure, the day finishes. Janice and the other humans are off to the pub. The robots will return to work. Janice meets her friend Ryan at the door.

Janice: What was your table like? Mine was horrendous.

Ryan nods, not quite ready to speak yet.

Janice: We played Cluedo, you –

Ryan: Monopoly, the one where there are no hotels or houses because robots don’t need them, the stations were replaced by server rooms. There were a lot of extra jail stops but they were human only and the tax was human only too. Of course I was also the only one that got paid-human only too. They seemed to enjoy it.

Janice: We played the old version of Cluedo, thank goodness, the HR-bot seemed a little enthusiastic about the robot kills human in server room version.

Ryan: Performance management mode?

Janice nods.

Janice: Remember when we had full on staff events, humans only. Everyone came, we planned and participated. We did a proper review of the strategic review. We had meat in the sandwiches. There was sugar and milk and full strength coffee.

Ryan: Yeh, I remember that.

Janice: This was still better than that.

Ryan nods.

Ryan: Hell yes.

They head for the pub.