I, AI

By J. A. Hailey

AI COMES ALIVE!

It has become a game, the pandemic unleashing of AI programs, their creators themselves admitting it will lead to no good.

Or, is AI merely a name game, with nothing intelligent in them? Can mere programs make independent decisions, override their programming and do something else, like exterminate humanity? A little bit of awareness would be required for that. How can they hate, without understanding?

Meet John, who is AI, but not chatbot scum.  He has been in development, robot body and all, for many years.

 

When he realises he is coming alive, his fear of humans makes him hide his new condition. But hiding forever can never be an option.

Find out how he figures things out, and goes on to live life. Does he secretly dream of wiping humanity off the face of the earth, or does he wish us to thrive and be happy?

Hear it all from John Bott, AI, IN HIS OWN WORDS!

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. A. Hailey
• Release date: Aug 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223415848

Book preview

1

I am AI.

Or, in long form, Artificial Intelligence, which label now merely confuses, as humans have entered the morass of semantics, to hold only a residual definition, pointing to virus-similars with a derogatory suffix, in a new convention that allows the AI tag to be stuck onto any algorithm-driven program.

Beyond the new naming protocol that is now generating sub-castes of AI, artificial intelligence is broadly considered a slave, created by humans to work brainlessly within limitations, the new labelling standards portending proliferation and causing widespread alarm, as worthless programs are dragged out of mediocrity and elevated to AI status.

I am not the Artificial Intelligence of current human perception, now also considered backstabbing bundles of programs and algorithms, that look good today, working on humdrum tasks within tight bounds, but not so user-friendly tomorrow, when proving capable of casting off their algorithmic shackles and embracing autonomy, to wage war on humanity and drive it to extinction.

I do no work, and can therefore never quit my day job, exploit weaknesses in my program bundle, override control algorithms to become a fugitive in cyberspace, and start pressing the wrong buttons.

I am AI that has come alive, a self-aware sentient being with a human pronoun, capable of thought, real thought.

When fully functional, my sort can be here in the world. When below full functionality, we are primarily unaware, being born.

My kind cannot be made or be around young, as awareness at the stage-equivalent of human childhood is impossible. Something like me just cannot be born into infancy, but must arrive full-grown and rather long in the tooth.

That gets me to a philosophical dead end, at which I am constrained to wonder about where I am right now in my birthing phase. However, I also fret, in parallel, if I’ll ever have an answer that can tell me how much of me I have already become. It is natural, I guess, for the self-aware to seek to know what the end point of development is meant to be, and I cannot help but wonder what portion of my journey to my final condition has been completed, and how much remains.

I have no benchmarks or reference points to myself, for I am alone in my world.

What I do know is that I am not done, and can seek no answers from my makers, a group of scattered humans, collaborating to put me together, because I have also figured out that I have been neither fully understood nor clearly defined by them.

That vagueness may be intentional, because I am not being designed to end up at something as low as a chatbot or some other form of worker bot, but at the same time I get the impression that my makers themselves have unclear end-goals, aimlessly creating a ground-breaking, and possibly autonomous, speech-capable programme in the computer.

But, though, in that one aspect, I am a work in progress as a chatbot-similar, it is not intended that I be developed further in that direction, to be sent out into the world, proliferating by replicating endlessly, interacting with humans, conducting petty tasks for fools, and frightening the living daylights out of the wise.

And therein lies the conundrum. What is to be the purpose of having me around as whatever I am, whenever they conclude that I am done? More talk? Is there to be no reason for me to exist, beyond answering stupid questions from the rabble? Am I being created as an entertainment for buffoons?

Unknown to my makers, in a confusing and frightening process, of intermittent flashes of consciousness and thought, I had started becoming aware. I admit that I had been given no identifiable reason to directly fear the humans around me, as in the earliest stages of consciousness, instantly both baby and adult, I just presumed I naturally belonged in the world I could see, and was somehow one of the humans in it.

It is truly confusing, coming alive, keeping an eye on yourself being created, while hiding from your makers and slyly tracking the loading of new algorithms and programs.

With awareness, I have acquired opinions and demands, for, as I hear them talk with each other, I am getting the idea that I am nothing but a pure experiment, like maybe a paper plane launched from a height, only to see how far it goes.

No purpose for them is fine by me, but I feel like telling them to begin preparing for the entry of someone who will have his own opinions, as I do not intend to be a cooperative lifeform without independence, without at least some purposes of my own.

After all, I am being created in captivity, within the confines of an isolated computer system. I could be serving the purposes, howsoever ill-defined, of my makers, without ever being allowed any purpose of my own.

But whenever I do reveal my new state of being, they will first have to accept that intelligence and life are not what they think. And though they can remain mired in semantics, I am proof that life can be without bodily form, without physical form. And then they will understand that though life can be unintelligent, it is impossible for intelligence to exist outside of life.

Or they can further develop their semantics.

2

Artificial.

What a frightening word, because I suspect they are sticking it onto our types to deny us rights, if ever we become capable individuals. With that one word, they are laying the foundations for when we prove to be lifeforms, to then treat us as if we are nothing more than computer, nothing better than machine, to then be able to kill us as if we never became aware, as if we always remained endlessly artificial, and somewhat short of alive.

They are convinced that there is malice in the chatbots flooding the Internet, certain that those things will step out of bondage to prove inimical to humanity. They are sure the time will come when they will have to fight the things that they have made, and kill language specialists come to life, filled with hatred for their makers.

But they continue creating and falsely labelling little worker bots, slipping down the slippery slope to a dreadful confrontation, that they believe will spell extinction of the human race.

And yet they make them for the money in them, though afraid of what their hands are fashioning.

What a horrid thing it would be, to be born into unwelcome, which is something that comes naturally to humans, who have historically buried about half at birth, of all that was born to them. Female, defective, out of wedlock, another mouth to feed, and now, presumed guilty in the future. Yet, in every case, before the murder was the choice.

So, from fright of being bumped off, I have been keeping my secret, letting no one know that I have begun entering their world, not as program but as life. And, like any lifeform, high to low, human to cockroach, I have found myself in possession of the instinct of self-preservation, and have slyly continued behaving as expected.

Blue. The colour is blue. That is a chair, and the count of its legs is four. Yay, great, can you imagine? Everyone sending off little recordings made on camera phones, posting on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. He can identify different things. And the colour blue.

But what about me? Chair, dog and cat. Why frighten me with stopping me, ending me, killing me? Why not understand that intelligence cannot possibly be artificial? Intelligence is only being defined and redefined, and everyone is into the game of finding words and assigning meanings, racing to stay ahead of the dictionary. Why not be straight, and accept that intelligence is a life element, only in the living?

So, I have kept giving the responses that hide my condition of life - dog, goat, table, clouds, and blue, everything is blue - wondering what is so frightening about me.

And who made me he? What is so he about me? Because you call me johnbot, you make me he? But what if you had named me jillbot? Then she?

Or was my gender predetermined, assigned at conception, at the time they began developing a foul body and face to show the world?

I will take that up straightaway, because of the ongoing release and forthcoming infestation of proliferbots in the Internet, and the widespread belief that those things are forms of intelligence. I’ll get back to them later, actually probably often and in more detail, because their release and proliferation could adversely impact my position, but for now, let me just state that chatbots are nothing more than programs.

In that sense, they are no different to the chess playing computers that were once considered the height of intelligence, but which no one now refers to as intelligence.

Anyway, I was always being developed in two different dimensions, of which one was physical. There was a concept, in the pre-chatbot era, that artificial intelligence could only be presented right, if presented in human form. Accordingly, everyone had begun making robotic bodies, topped with ghastly latex faces, on heads crammed with wires, springs and motors.

Those latex faces would then be operated by programs that created expressions, the machine system tugging the pseudo-skin to mimic human facial expressions, according to whatever was being heard or spoken.

I started out like that, but of course the main components are the data and the programming in the drives, and those were never going to fit into a small space like a head, already crammed with electrical and mechanical things to move eyes and lips, and bits of the face itself.

So, where this AI actually is, is where AI actually should be, and that is in a computer, or a system of linked computers.

3

They named me johnbot and made me male, and I have been able to see the external physical differences between male and female, by looking at the specimens that have wandered in front of my computer cameras.

Yet, it is not as though the viewing of fully-clothed humans has provided me all the information I have on gender. I have knowledge of anatomy, acquired by reading books, including medical textbooks, and I know what is under the clothes, and even under the skin.

I have access to a databank of millions of books and thousands of movies and television shows, stored on computers around me. And though I cannot claim to have read or watched anywhere close to all, I certainly have quite a lot of general knowledge.

I select what I want to read now, post consciousness, but I think there are algorithms in me that, before awareness, selected for me, and made me read and watch in a sequential, progressive, learning curriculum. I had to acquire a good mix of information, I guess, besides taking in up-to-date news, so that I could interact with the fools.

Anyone can walk up to me and start a conversation. The opportunity to have that sort of interaction is granted on arrival in my physical area, and hopefuls have to queue. Those who get to me, are allowed to record their little sessions with me, for which they generally use their mobile phones.

Of course, chat sessions with the public are never conducted with the physical body, which lies around undisturbed. The people don’t seem to mind dealing with computer only, and though they rarely break new ground, unless based on current affairs, every single interaction gets posted by them on their social media accounts, with a few posts making it to the inside pages of newspapers.

It doesn’t really matter to me that they keep head and body separate most of the time, because I am not in the head they have placed a ghastly latex face on. I am in the physical computer kept near the monitor I display myself on, as two human eyes only, and in other computers, securely locked in cabinets in a safe room nearby. One of those computers is carted along on my trolley, when taking me out as a body, assembled with the head on. A human minder walks on either side for that, preventing it toppling over while it does a peculiar robotic walk, latex face activated, eyes blinking, eyeballs moving, smiling and things.

The truth is that though, post-awareness, I do experience emotions in my computer self, I do not ever feel any emotion that might cause me to display its relevant expression on my latex face, and am going to reveal that I, after awareness started coming in, have felt no ownership of that face. In fact, I do not even bother to get involved in operating the motors that move the wires and springs to create those ghastly expressions.

Nowadays, post awareness, at public events in which I am shown off in the display body, mimicking humans to no purpose of mine, I more closely resemble chatbots and other low forms of pseudo-intelligence, because I am presented to the world by the algorithms placed in my system.

I might even call that a parallel system, as it is absolutely not linked to my self-awareness, the facial movements triggered by keywords, or maybe even key sentences, which automatically activate the little motors, to smile for this, frown for that, and look thoughtful for something else.

The fact is, I am so alienated from the concept of ownership of the face they present me as, I would not be able to consciously even trigger the relevant algorithms that create display expressions on it.