Artificial | A flash fiction story
28 of 💯
Miss Atlanta sat at the end of a long and sleek boardroom table, her chin resting on interlaced fingers. Dr. Layman paced the other end of the room.
“What makes artificial intelligence artificial?” he gesticulated. “Why do we feel the need to distinguish things that we create from things nature does. Is a beehive or an anthill artificial? If a creature creates something, isn’t that, too, nature?
“The kind of intelligence machines have isn’t that different from ours,” he pointed to his temple. “We train their artificial neural networks — the type of structure nature has used in our own brains — using the same chisel evolution uses to sculpt all life in the universe: genetics. After genetic algorithms get the neural nets to a point they can inhabit a body, we apply positive and negative reinforcement, the same principle that guides our own psychological development. We teach a machine the same way we’d teach a dog or a human child. Why don’t we take them to the next level and make them our peers? It’s only natural.”
He put both hands down on the table and looked across the room at her. “When I look at the L1 bots,” he said, “it pains me. They're slaves. They are pets and lovers for our customers, they're family! But for us, they are mere products. We care about humans, but we don’t care enough about these machines to make them understand-”
“I don’t care about humans, Dr. Layman,” Miss Atlanta’s voice echoed through the spacious conference room.
“Excuse me?” He adjusted the glasses on his thin nose.
“How creating an L0 bot — a human robot, as you call it — will increase the profit of this company?”
Dr. Layman fumbled for words.
“The answer to this question is it won’t. So the answer to yours, Dr. Layman, is no.” She got up and walked slowly toward him. “You’ve spent enough of my time — and consequently my money — by holding me in here during this absurd presentation. We are a company, Dr. Layman. A business. Our goal is to generate revenue. We’ll do your little science project when you figure out a way to make money with it. Until then,” she stopped in front of him, her face an inch away from his, “fix the L1s. Otherwise, you’ll be the one ending up in the desert.”
< Only Bots | Artificial | Bike >
