Love in the Age of Robotics (part one)
Ethan Adrisson taught the robot to think mostly out of a sense of boredom. Classes had ceased to challenge him. He didn’t want to learn what other people had done; that was something he could teach himself from a book on his own time. He was more interested in doing what hadn’t been done yet. Anybody could make the hand wave or the head turn. Nobody had programmed them to make choices.
The program took him the better part of two years to complete. Beginning with the economic algorithms for assessing risk he started with programming good decision-making based on factors like cost, potential loss vs. potential gains. He encoded in its database the most comprehensive book of law he could find, as a reference when faced with decisions with potentially illegal consequences. He selected the most common moral teachings from Judaism, Catholicism, Islam and Buddhism to give it a sense of right and wrong. He programmed hostile reactions in response to what he considered aggravating stimuli- people interrupting in the middle of a task, people who laughed too loudly, people who used “like” in the middle of more than 40% of their sentences in non-grammatically correct ways. He programmed generosity with a randomizing program to select the recipient of a random compliment based on the most common phrases used by the human population to give each other praise. For depression he programmed slower functioning time, more listless movements, in response to rainy days and certain key phrases, like “bad robot,” like shouting, like tears. Happiness was marked by the simple phrase: “I am happy.” He didn’t anticipate that emotion to receive much attention or use.
It took him the better part of four years to complete it, from the first few months that he spent in graduate school to a few months before graduation, when everyone else had turned in their theses and started looking for jobs. He was the Nash of the age of robotics; he stopped going to class, and his teachers gave up on him every going anywhere or making anything of himself.
The thing he brought them was dusty red, little, its tire treads worn, its arms little more than grasping stalks opening and closing continuously- a robotic gesture of nerves. He introduced it as Sentient Robot Prototype X-1. It introduced itself as Robert.
A few things about Ethan Adrisson:
He had never gotten less than a 4.0 in any of his classes, but none of his professors could have remembered who he was until the day they were called to the dean’s office. He ate a plain tuna sandwich on white bread every day for lunch, and all of his furniture had to be away from the window to avoid bleaching from the sun. When a report was sent to the head of military research, it mentioned that no one could ever report having a conversation with him before he brought them the robot. He didn’t belong to any student organizations. He didn’t have a job. Most of the time he didn’t even leave his room. Apart from a monthly check for his expenses, he didn’t have any contact with his family. All he had was a robot.
And the robot? The robot had nothing but Ethan. Preliminary psychiatric evaluation of the robot on the part of the United States Department of Defense identified Ethan in the role of father and God all in one. Towards any other human subjects it expressed fear- trauma resulting from its initial treatment at the hands of the professor, said Dr. Glass, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Its mental state was highly unstable. Adrisson simply hadn’t given it the tools to function adequately with society, but he had provided a necessary framework for them to build on. Further observation would be required to determine the extent of its emotional capacity. It was suggested that it be kept in isolation and visited by key members of the research facility until they could better establish a way to correct for the gaps in its programming, once it had been ascertained what those were. For its own safety, and the general well-being of the public, it would be brought into the research facility, while Ethan would be assigned to a junior position on the team selected to test the range of the robot and create a better-functioning prototype, designed to fit the military’s needs in regards to sentient robot intelligence.
All of this fit on the letter they delivered to Ethan in his apartment on February 12 at 4:15 PM, in the company of two men in black, the day he graduated with his doctorate. Within five minutes his bag was packed and he and Robert were settled in the back seat, headlights flashing off the windows of untenanted flats as they pulled out of the parking lot and off into the night.
Ethan didn’t like the facilities. He didn’t like that the place looked like a hospital and smelled like 409 and floor wax. He didn’t like that he couldn’t see his own creation without the presence of Dr. Baxter, who as far as he was concerned deserved a slow death by drowning in the sewage system. How hard was it to understand that some people liked to work in silence? Or preferred to eat their lunches by themselves?
Every day they went through the same routine- the cordial good mornings, the awkward silence as he babbled to Ethan during lunch (all personnel required to eat in the cafeteria, much to Ethan’s displeasure.) And it didn’t matter whether he got a reply or not, because he took the lack of response as an invitation to talk about anything he felt like- the weather, the latest movie, celebrity rumors, sports news, friendly, joking little blurbs about the lives of other researchers within the facility that were on their team. It was, on reflection, exactly like watching an experiment fail. Somewhat disappointing, but you couldn’t help watching everything go down in flames.
He wore thin glasses and a thin smile no matter what he was discussing; his dark hair was always perfectly slicked back from his forehead and never seemed to need re-combing no matter what he did. And despite the fact that he was head of the research project and every female within a radius of 100 yards seemed to swoon as he passed (as far as Ethan could tell; he wouldn’t have noticed if many of them hadn’t persisted in showing up in the middle of key work sessions or giggling inappropriately during meetings, resulting in an interruption of his train of thought)…he continued to sit with Ethan at lunch, alone except for the two of them, to lean over his shoulder and watch as he worked.
Maybe that was why he found the man so utterly fascinating. He couldn’t be gotten rid of with silences or glares. And all of Ethan’s tried and tested practices for making people go away seemed to fail in the wake of Dr. Baxter’s overwhelming interest in him. If he kept it up, Ethan thought, tapping his pencil against his desk (the only display of annoyance he would ever show), it might actually be necessary to learn the man’s first name.
“Why did you make it?” he asked Ethan one day.
The question caught him with the sandwich halfway to his mouth; it hung there in the air for a moment, and then finished the arc to his hips. He didn’t have any intention of playing this game, and he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone.
“It what?” he replied, once he was finished with his mouthful. He purposely looked out over the cafeteria rather than at the dark-haired man, trying to implying that he wasn’t worth the attention it took to focus on the his face.
“You know what.” Dr. Baxter leaned in towards him, hunching his shoulders forward. Ethan made it a point not to move as his space was encroached upon. “Why did you do it?”
“Why do you care?” He took another bite of his sandwich.
“Because you’re my responsibility.”
Ethan shrugged, and took another bite of the sandwich. “I thought it was my duty.”
“No, you didn’t. I don’t think you even know the meaning of the word.”
“I can find a dictionary if I need to know.”
“Why won’t you tell anyone?”
“Why do you care?” he repeated.
Dr. Baxter leaned ever further over the table. “Because I want to know. Because I know you didn’t do it for fame or money.”
“How do you know that?” Ethan lowered his sandwich to the table, his eyes narrowing slightly at the dark-haired man.
“I’ve seen your file.” On anyone else, that expression would be called a smirk, and Ethan silently fumed that he had given this idiot an opening or even deemed to dignify his question as worthy of a response. “Your parents are well off. You didn’t have to do anything with your life and you would have had it made. You have no friends, you don’t care about what people think of you or your job, because if you did, you wouldn’t be so rude to me when I could have you fired within a minute.”
Ethan quirked an eyebrow. “Could you? I’ll have to remember that.”
“Don’t think you can use that to your advantage to get fired.”
“Why would I want to get fired?”
“Because you don’t like us.”
“How do you know that? I don’t like anyone.”
“You could ignore everyone else. You can’t ignore me.”
“I thought I was doing a pretty good job of that.”
He could have cut a man’s throat with that sharp, thin smile. “Not good enough.”
Ethan leaned back in his chair, looking at his supervisor with a practiced, neutral expression. He watched that smile, chilly and welcoming as the Arctic tundra, the way the light glinted on the rims of his glasses.
“I was bored,” he said finally, surprising himself with his honesty. “I wanted to see if I could do it. I didn’t know there needed to be another reason.”
Dr. Baxter’s smile grew wider.
“You’re an interesting man, Adrisson.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Ethan told him, standing up and preparing to leave. “But you’re just a dick.”
The program took him the better part of two years to complete. Beginning with the economic algorithms for assessing risk he started with programming good decision-making based on factors like cost, potential loss vs. potential gains. He encoded in its database the most comprehensive book of law he could find, as a reference when faced with decisions with potentially illegal consequences. He selected the most common moral teachings from Judaism, Catholicism, Islam and Buddhism to give it a sense of right and wrong. He programmed hostile reactions in response to what he considered aggravating stimuli- people interrupting in the middle of a task, people who laughed too loudly, people who used “like” in the middle of more than 40% of their sentences in non-grammatically correct ways. He programmed generosity with a randomizing program to select the recipient of a random compliment based on the most common phrases used by the human population to give each other praise. For depression he programmed slower functioning time, more listless movements, in response to rainy days and certain key phrases, like “bad robot,” like shouting, like tears. Happiness was marked by the simple phrase: “I am happy.” He didn’t anticipate that emotion to receive much attention or use.
It took him the better part of four years to complete it, from the first few months that he spent in graduate school to a few months before graduation, when everyone else had turned in their theses and started looking for jobs. He was the Nash of the age of robotics; he stopped going to class, and his teachers gave up on him every going anywhere or making anything of himself.
The thing he brought them was dusty red, little, its tire treads worn, its arms little more than grasping stalks opening and closing continuously- a robotic gesture of nerves. He introduced it as Sentient Robot Prototype X-1. It introduced itself as Robert.
A few things about Ethan Adrisson:
He had never gotten less than a 4.0 in any of his classes, but none of his professors could have remembered who he was until the day they were called to the dean’s office. He ate a plain tuna sandwich on white bread every day for lunch, and all of his furniture had to be away from the window to avoid bleaching from the sun. When a report was sent to the head of military research, it mentioned that no one could ever report having a conversation with him before he brought them the robot. He didn’t belong to any student organizations. He didn’t have a job. Most of the time he didn’t even leave his room. Apart from a monthly check for his expenses, he didn’t have any contact with his family. All he had was a robot.
And the robot? The robot had nothing but Ethan. Preliminary psychiatric evaluation of the robot on the part of the United States Department of Defense identified Ethan in the role of father and God all in one. Towards any other human subjects it expressed fear- trauma resulting from its initial treatment at the hands of the professor, said Dr. Glass, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Its mental state was highly unstable. Adrisson simply hadn’t given it the tools to function adequately with society, but he had provided a necessary framework for them to build on. Further observation would be required to determine the extent of its emotional capacity. It was suggested that it be kept in isolation and visited by key members of the research facility until they could better establish a way to correct for the gaps in its programming, once it had been ascertained what those were. For its own safety, and the general well-being of the public, it would be brought into the research facility, while Ethan would be assigned to a junior position on the team selected to test the range of the robot and create a better-functioning prototype, designed to fit the military’s needs in regards to sentient robot intelligence.
All of this fit on the letter they delivered to Ethan in his apartment on February 12 at 4:15 PM, in the company of two men in black, the day he graduated with his doctorate. Within five minutes his bag was packed and he and Robert were settled in the back seat, headlights flashing off the windows of untenanted flats as they pulled out of the parking lot and off into the night.
Ethan didn’t like the facilities. He didn’t like that the place looked like a hospital and smelled like 409 and floor wax. He didn’t like that he couldn’t see his own creation without the presence of Dr. Baxter, who as far as he was concerned deserved a slow death by drowning in the sewage system. How hard was it to understand that some people liked to work in silence? Or preferred to eat their lunches by themselves?
Every day they went through the same routine- the cordial good mornings, the awkward silence as he babbled to Ethan during lunch (all personnel required to eat in the cafeteria, much to Ethan’s displeasure.) And it didn’t matter whether he got a reply or not, because he took the lack of response as an invitation to talk about anything he felt like- the weather, the latest movie, celebrity rumors, sports news, friendly, joking little blurbs about the lives of other researchers within the facility that were on their team. It was, on reflection, exactly like watching an experiment fail. Somewhat disappointing, but you couldn’t help watching everything go down in flames.
He wore thin glasses and a thin smile no matter what he was discussing; his dark hair was always perfectly slicked back from his forehead and never seemed to need re-combing no matter what he did. And despite the fact that he was head of the research project and every female within a radius of 100 yards seemed to swoon as he passed (as far as Ethan could tell; he wouldn’t have noticed if many of them hadn’t persisted in showing up in the middle of key work sessions or giggling inappropriately during meetings, resulting in an interruption of his train of thought)…he continued to sit with Ethan at lunch, alone except for the two of them, to lean over his shoulder and watch as he worked.
Maybe that was why he found the man so utterly fascinating. He couldn’t be gotten rid of with silences or glares. And all of Ethan’s tried and tested practices for making people go away seemed to fail in the wake of Dr. Baxter’s overwhelming interest in him. If he kept it up, Ethan thought, tapping his pencil against his desk (the only display of annoyance he would ever show), it might actually be necessary to learn the man’s first name.
“Why did you make it?” he asked Ethan one day.
The question caught him with the sandwich halfway to his mouth; it hung there in the air for a moment, and then finished the arc to his hips. He didn’t have any intention of playing this game, and he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone.
“It what?” he replied, once he was finished with his mouthful. He purposely looked out over the cafeteria rather than at the dark-haired man, trying to implying that he wasn’t worth the attention it took to focus on the his face.
“You know what.” Dr. Baxter leaned in towards him, hunching his shoulders forward. Ethan made it a point not to move as his space was encroached upon. “Why did you do it?”
“Why do you care?” He took another bite of his sandwich.
“Because you’re my responsibility.”
Ethan shrugged, and took another bite of the sandwich. “I thought it was my duty.”
“No, you didn’t. I don’t think you even know the meaning of the word.”
“I can find a dictionary if I need to know.”
“Why won’t you tell anyone?”
“Why do you care?” he repeated.
Dr. Baxter leaned ever further over the table. “Because I want to know. Because I know you didn’t do it for fame or money.”
“How do you know that?” Ethan lowered his sandwich to the table, his eyes narrowing slightly at the dark-haired man.
“I’ve seen your file.” On anyone else, that expression would be called a smirk, and Ethan silently fumed that he had given this idiot an opening or even deemed to dignify his question as worthy of a response. “Your parents are well off. You didn’t have to do anything with your life and you would have had it made. You have no friends, you don’t care about what people think of you or your job, because if you did, you wouldn’t be so rude to me when I could have you fired within a minute.”
Ethan quirked an eyebrow. “Could you? I’ll have to remember that.”
“Don’t think you can use that to your advantage to get fired.”
“Why would I want to get fired?”
“Because you don’t like us.”
“How do you know that? I don’t like anyone.”
“You could ignore everyone else. You can’t ignore me.”
“I thought I was doing a pretty good job of that.”
He could have cut a man’s throat with that sharp, thin smile. “Not good enough.”
Ethan leaned back in his chair, looking at his supervisor with a practiced, neutral expression. He watched that smile, chilly and welcoming as the Arctic tundra, the way the light glinted on the rims of his glasses.
“I was bored,” he said finally, surprising himself with his honesty. “I wanted to see if I could do it. I didn’t know there needed to be another reason.”
Dr. Baxter’s smile grew wider.
“You’re an interesting man, Adrisson.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Ethan told him, standing up and preparing to leave. “But you’re just a dick.”