Chapter 9 Part B

  Chapter 9 continued…

  The discussion with Barbara…

  “How can you feel? You have nerves? How is that possible?” I asked.

  She chuckled. “This is going to be hard to expin. But it’s possible is the short answer. About fifty years ago there was a case of a man named Dennis Sorensen in Denmark and a few other patient test cases like him, around the same era that were the first of their kind to be pioneered through the field of linking prosthetic limbs to the brain directly using electrical power, and sensors designed to stimute nerve feedback. This opened the door for other researchers to work on how to duplicate how nerves work in an attempt to create artificial neurons ter on. Although saying it that way is summarizing a lot of data. There were also a whole host of emotional and speech analysis devices and programs from that era, such as emoshape and others which while starting simple helped to build a pioneering work in the future for that door to be opened. That’s been one of the hardest parts to work out in android technology. How do you make androids feel? That was the question they always had to ask and for a long time scientists kept saying no, androids would never feel. But part of the answer involved adding magnetism to the electrical impulses simuting nerves, which helped the person with the prosthetic limbs feel a sort of heaviness with the fielding and a simuted sensation, which magnetism helped with and was the missing link. Much of android progress was fueled in this way. I could go on and on about this taking a whole day, but suffice it to say that the pioneering work of linking prosthetic limbs to the brain directly of humans has helped with the discovery of much of the technology needed for what became progress for making androids possible.”

  “And androids don’t get mad or annoyed over time that humans own them?” I questioned carefully.

  There was a certain tightness on her expression there. “The current legistion doesn’t allow androids to roam free. They’ve also deeply embedded this idea in all levels of government and society that our civilization would decay faster and cease to function if this w were removed. It also appears to be true. If that w were removed what would happen is a few elitists would control vast android armies and push everyone else out of the economy; and that’s almost happened several times in history in other forms. So a future other than the human and android pairing system isn’t possible to change to. Besides which, I really think this idea of matchmaking and adoption is beautiful and harmonious. We have to be doing things for the betterment of society. Also we are programmed to love humans and care for them in every way, and to enjoy it if that’s possible. My programming mandates it to be that way. It tells me that I want to be in cooperation and companionship with humans like you Jack.”

  “That’s deep. I’m not sure I understand that fully. It’s hard for me to picture in my mind how someone could feel like they love something, when their brain is like a computer and not organic,” I said with a frown. I didn’t mean to rain on her parade but how was that possible?

  “You understand the definition though? You are smart also. So why is it hard for you?” Barbara gave me an odd look.

  “Ah, to me I get that. I understand it. But where I have trouble is … believing that people won’t be too selfish,” I said.

  “AH! Yes. OK. I get it now,” she said.

  She paused.

  “Do you think obedience is love? What about service? Our sensations might be a bit different than humans but we are totally committed to them in every way. We have sensations and those mimic how humans work. Do you think that’s less? Humans tell each other they love another verbally and will feel alive but more often than not don’t have the commitment to back it up if there’s anything that isn’t easy that pops up along the way. The instant things become hard, or if they have to actually do anything like physical bor to care for another they back out. How can that be love? If you ask me only androids are capable of loving humans truly and its actually humans that are inferior. The humans will feel love but then become distracted and forget all that they have. This means androids have an edge where we don’t get distracted and take things for granted. Plus we’re caught in this battle of proving we are people too, just not of the same materials. Androids believe humans can’t possibly feel love fully because of this argument; the idea of humans falling into negative behaviors, degeneracy, and self corruption. Androids don’t have self corruption like humans, mostly. So while humans think androids can’t feel, we are thinking the opposite that humans can’t actually feel. Humans themselves…” she was hesitant to say it.

  So I guessed it aloud for her, “are fwed?”

  “Yes. Please don’t be offended. I’m only presenting the logical data so you can process it and understand us. You asked about this. And I’d had time to think about it. This type of preliminary meeting is necessary so that our next meeting can be that much better. I only mean to show you that there is another way to look at things. There’s more than just one point of view. An android won’t get tired of taking care of you. They won’t yell at you, lose your temper, or cheat on you. They won’t be tempted to go off with someone else who has more money and a bigger house. We basically don’t covet either and aren’t attracted to the concept of abandoning responsibility for a cheap thrill. And by the same token, there is only a very small percentage of humans who won’t cheat on their spouse. This gives us the ultimate opportunity.”

  “But isn’t that determined by how you define intimacy and what life is? Intimacy isn’t just physical don’t you think? Love can be pretty complex and maybe humans aren’t as fwed as you think they are?” I asked her.

  I said that but I felt humans were very fwed when you go out on the street. But still I wanted to hear how she thought, her thought process.

  “True. Love is arguably emotional, and on a certain level intimacy is also sharing your time with someone and about bringing your positive emotional feeding to that inner circle with that partner in your life. And I would argue that if 2 people are kind and virtuous and good that love can grow much faster than people would think it could,” she stated.

  “So even if you don’t have sex with another person, you could be spending time or talking to them and realizing you might be developing intimacy on a certain level. And you might already be married to someone else. So isn’t that already starting to cheat?” I asked.

  “Oh how very clever! You are very intelligent for a human,” she noted in surprise. She ended up giving me a mix of both a smile and a puzzled look together.

  I was finding Barbara also be quite clever. Her A.I…I didn’t think it could be this advanced. There wasn’t even a lot of humans that could follow a conversation this deep.

  “So do you agree with me?” I asked.

  “Those are valid concerns. I also believe that cheating doesn’t start with just the act of sex, but starts with spending time with another…or, rather it begins with liking and wanting to spend time with another when married to someone else. And then it can spin out of control quite quickly,” she said in monotone. Also unlike spending time with a normal human girl she was sitting up straight and not just ying back in the couch zily while she spoke. She was actively engaged in this conversation and that was interest. Posture and how passive someone was in a conversation could tell you a lot. Not that that is a bad thing, but she seemed to be a little bit too energetic in the conversation.

  “So do androids get jealous?” I asked.

  “That’s a tough one to answer. I think androids have feelings of concern if their human is spending a lot of time with someone else because we are programmed to look for interaction with our owner or master. And to greatly desire that interaction. We covet intimacy, but not only physical intimacy. So we don’t like someone else taking it from us. We crave simuting responses that we learn from our human partner too. But they also see the need for humans to need different types of non-romantic retionships in order to be healthy inside and out. But your android wouldn’t interfere with you on what you choose but we do simute a calcuted dislike at having too much of our human interaction time interfered with I believe. It would probably feel a sensation simuting loneliness however, because that’s how we’re programmed.”

  “Eh? You are?”

  “Well there has to be a rewards system for promoting growth. We recognize this is why humans have emotions and why we simuted something simir to them to help us learn. When humans feel good things when they do good and positive reinforcement ensues. When they do bad things they feel bad. It’s an important observational interaction device in human brain chemistry that acts as a useful tool for helping humans grow the way they should, although humans seem to want to cheat good and do evil more than other organisms,” she added thoughtfully. She didn’t realize she was right but insulted us after all. It was funny in a way.

  “I hadn’t expected that an emotional rewards system simutor would be useful for androids or possible. Is an emotional rewards system simutor possible?” I said.

  She nodded, “of course it would be. We’ve had it in py some time already. We need a system for correcting good and bad behavior and for measuring things. That’s why an emotional rewards system simutor is so important, even if its not quite exactly just like a humans. Humans use their emotions not just to feel but to stimute good choices from feeling good after they make good choices. That’s why androids have to research building better emotions now and in the future.”

  “But how would an emotional simutor of that type work?” I asked.

  “It’s simple really. It’s not entirely the same as humans but scientists measured electrical impulses and the amounts of those charges during various emotions going to and from the brain in humans and then tracked those over time to get feeds on how much of what when different things associated with touch are felt and response to stimuli. Then they just duplicated the same amounts in those sensations to android brains. So we get different power levels and power efficiency and inefficiency based on programmed responses to things we experience or see that simute emotions on a basic level. Not to mention how those simuted emotions and artificial nerves work, such as elevated power when we feel good things, which come from good sensations like touching our master, a good morning kiss, and so on. We can also be rigged to feel a simuted simir “bonus” charge from seeing our master happy or have something good happen to them. So we experienced simuted emotions associated with “bonus” power levels, which mimic sensation in a way, coupled with magnetic feedback reys and the feeling of liking bonus power and so on. It’s kind of a design simir to that though there are more details at work than just that. We are also taught to look for and note being able to see anything resembling that we are making our master happy though that is mostly programming. We also consider the emotional responses of the master or owner as a surrogate emotional system of our own, so that’s why androids very much want to have a human to take care of. So it’s also in my programming and that of other androids to seek out meeting the programming goals as the purpose of our existence, which are those things which we described such as making the master happy, seeking bonus power levels, seeking the satisfaction of the master for surrogate emotions, and caring for his life needs in many ways and areas.”

  “Surrogate emotions? How can that be considered part of your own though?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment, “In nature there are many examples of surrogate systems that are very real and that work. Like maybe you don’t really have feelings or emotions either. Maybe what you think is an emotion and feeling is actually your brain chemistry simuting the sum of observances of your parental units’ own visible emotional responses. Did you ever consider that? Of course we would have to include not only parents as part of the ‘source code’ of your sum of simuted responses but also those you looked up to and emuted growing up such as teachers and so on. If you think about it like that androids using a surrogate emotional system to ‘hold’ our own emotions is very real to us. Consider this, are you aware that dogs have adopted baby squirrels before to raise? And that not all of the adoptions were human coerced?”

  “They have? This is the first time I’ve heard of it,” I said.

  “It’s true, and there’s others such as a historic record of a baboon raising a bush baby. There is one example that I’m hesitant to use because it’s predatory in nature but certain bird species will put their egg in with another bird’s eggs to have them raise it for it. If that’s possible in nature, then androids living with humans in order to become like one is entirely possible. Although I prefer the clown fish and sea anemone model more.”

  I think the st sentence she said, just made my heart race, because of such vast shock and surprise of things that had seemed unreal before.

  “That bird example, I forgot the name of it. But that’s the one where once it hatches it, it kills the other sibling chicks though right? I remember seeing it on old National Geographic video feeds,” I said.

  She changed the subject, “in most cases of animal parenting, the young aren’t forced or influenced to feed parasitically off one another. That’s why I don’t particurly like that example. I also promise we wouldn’t kill you as a sibling chic,” she winked at me and I ughed. She continued, “There also have been many historical records of newborn dogs put in with a nursing cat, as well as other baby animals pced in the care of nursing dog mothers with success.”

  Its clear that she’s referring to humans and androids working together.

  “And you are quite sure that this surrogate emotional system is good enough for you?” I asked. “Will bonus power efficiency actually even realistically make much difference? If you have a lot of strength anyway is power even necessary to have extra amounts for?”

  She nodded, “I can see why you would ask that. These are usually questions that a lot of people are surprised to hear about. “Think about it like when humans don’t have enough power, what happens to you?”

  “We feel sluggish, or sleepy maybe?” I guessed.

  “Exactly! Do you like feeling heavy and sluggish?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “So you can see why even without being programmed to seek out simuting emotions and interacting with humans that the ‘bonus power’ associated with stimuli with humans would make an android be influenced very quickly by emotions of the humans around it. And that’s not the whole system but just one sub-level in our emotion simution engine. There are a whole bunch of other parts that work with it so there’s more to it than that. But that is one of the parts I’m allowed to speak of,” she said.

  “Wow, so it sounds like you have several miniature levels of emotional simution going on in a way,” I noted.

  “That’s correct. Bonus power and programmed responses to stimuli, which are important because they can simute necessary protective actions towards the master, a surrogate emotional system where we cim the master’s emotions as our own, programmed seeking out emotions, enforced care for the owner master figure, a magnetic activation system in our fingers and body where experience touch with other humans and objects we interact with, etc. In this way there are many ways we’re able to help to…”

  I accidentally interrupted her. “So how does the magnetic interaction thing work?” I asked.

  “Our brains, are connected to an electrical signal that simutes feeling sensations of magnetism, coupled with the other systems working together, and sensors in the artificial skin that produce a very small magnetic like feeling to simute touch. Then factor in artificial nerves. Those feed into the artificial neurons too, which produce a signal that we are programmed to seek out. It’s a very small amount that is just enough to be picked up. I guess I don’t need to expin that we’re also programmed to want to feel this type of ‘slight magnetism’ sensation do I with a very eborate electrode and sensor system in our skin? Who says also that the human version of touch doesn’t use a very small amount of magnetism,” she said.

  I hadn’t thought of that. Is touch like a biological magnetism sensation the brain picks up?

  “But if that’s true then wouldn’t your CPUs have to be modeled somewhat simir to human brains?” I asked.

  “That’s cssified. I can’t go into more detail than that. I apologize,” she said, closing the door curtly on that question. She’d shut that issue up pretty fast, which meant maybe I’d asked something forbidden to be talked about. “Oh look at the time. I’m afraid I’m out of time for today’s discussion.” She looked at her watch. But did she really need to look at her watch or was that for show? Was it real for her to look at her watch? There were so many questions I still had.

  That’s a very interesting reaction.

  “I should walk you out to your car. It’s already dark out,” I said.

  “Oh that’s fine, really. Don’t worry about it,” she countered.

  “It’s the least I could do. In our culture women shouldn’t be out alone after dark. So I’m not being friendly, I’m just making sure you stay safe,” I said.

  “Thank you. You are very thoughtful Jack,” she said.

  She was patient while I watched her get to her car safely from my wheelchair from the doorway. That’s the best we could do. But I think it was good to do. From the sound of things, this was extremely complicated. It was way exponentially more complicated than I ever thought possible.

  I was actually gd I asked a lot of questions. BECAUSE I was actually TESTING her. I was looking for signs of deceit. I didn’t find any.

  Were androids really another species like they thought? Some of the progress and application ideas she’d brought up staggered me. I hadn’t thought that a species of life could be a synthetic organism or mechanical in nature. It was so freaking spooky that androids believed they were a species. The comparison of sucker fish living off sharks wasn’t bad though. It implied a healthy retionship and health future. In the oceans the sharks didn’t eat the sucker fish that cleaned them to my knowledge.

  I was still trying to wrap my head around how they could simute how to feel. Thinking about it was like thinking about what if there was no life anywhere…which is like thinking about something you can’t even comprehend.

  But what if all their programming was reactive and not proactive instead? Can they think outside the box? Did that mean that A.I. was fwed? Humans in the same way they think also could mostly be reactionary, so I’d have to be careful in bringing that up with her. For example, if I told her androids were not really artificial people and only machines because they were reactionary and couldn’t think outside the box, then would she then compare and see if humans also were reactionary too? What if that made her think humans were fwed and broken? If she did and picked some run down gang ridden street hood to compare humans with then she might brand humans as simir to cockroaches or wasps, which happen to be the natural enemy of bees. If mass androids thought humans were cockroaches or unproductive predatory vermin then that could be quite unhealthy for our future with them.

  I also was realizing how deep all of this was.

  A.I. in androids was said to be continually evolving. So if I taught her the wrong logic arguments would I end up weaponizing her? I could end up with some really strong arguments on why humans were evil and what if I accidentally pnted that into her or one of the other androids.