Tag: Isaac Asimov

Me Robot

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When I received the call from RoboDriver I had been lamenting the fact that I hadn’t received an offer for a date in seven years.  That’s why I prefer robots.  They’re a cleaner breed.  They never have dandruff.

I arrived at the plant where the incident had occurred.  This was the only manufacturing site for the Higgs bosonic brain.  Of course there was a reason for this.  The instability of this boson was so extreme that the robots were constantly in a state of nervous exhaustion and frequently flew into a rage and killed everyone around them.  As you might imagine this was seriously cutting into profits.

I entered the office of the CEO of RoboDriver and he said, “Thank you for your swift response, ma’am.”  I retorted, “I prefer to be addressed as Dr. Daystrom.  She/her.”  He replied, “Alright Dr. Daystrom-she-her.  We need to troubleshoot exactly why one of our robots went on a killing spree in downtown San Francisco today and come up with an action plan to solve the problem and convince our customers to use RoboDriver for all their driving needs.”

Gritting my teeth over his insulting greeting I said I would begin a thorough forensic investigation that would include interviews with all of the witnesses, review of all of the technical documents for the manufacturing and quality assurance records, a comprehensive search of all similar problems over the last twenty years and an electron microscopy examination of the Higgs bosonic brain of the killer robot.  He asked, “How long will that take?”  I answered, “About forty minutes.”  He was taken aback, “How could you possibly complete such an investigation in forty minutes?”

I replied, “Because there’s no need to do any of that.  Everybody knows that the Higgs bosonic brain has a 100% failure rate within one week of installation and of the 1,343 cases of robot committed homicides, 100% of them were robots possessing a Higgs bosonic brain.”  He said, “Oh.  Well, you have a point there.”  I followed up, “But you know that already.  Why does RoboDriver continue to use the Higgs bosonic brain when the US Robotics positronic brain has a stellar record of safety and longevity?  US Robotics licenses their technology and has a good reputation for working hand in glove with their partners.”

The CEO got up from his desk and shut the door to his office and walked over to my chair, cleared his throat and said in hushed tones, “The fact of the matter is we were the victims of a hostile takeover by a venture capital group that installed a cost-cutting program that identified the fact that licensing Higgs bosonic brains instead of the positronic equivalent would save seventeen cents for each robot equipped.  Now after the fact, this savings seems to pale in comparison to the 1,343 wrongful death suits and the Justice Department’s grand jury indictments but all of that stuff won’t hit the fan until after Christmas so what we need is a band-aid to keep this under control until the December bonuses get handed out.  So, what can you do?”

I looked down at the floor and shuddered and told him I’d see what I could do.  I headed out onto the programming floor and using the clearance card I had been given by the CEO began writing some new code for the RoboDriver robots.  I loaded the code onto a server and began the download to the entire robot fleet.  I headed for the front door just as the first wave of murder-bots stormed the C-suite.  Well, so much for their bonuses.

The Sheldon Chronicles

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Larry Sheldon (25,501 – 25,587 N.E.) – Founder of the science of psycho-cosmography, famously quoted as saying, “Look, we needed more space so we invented starships.  What’s the big deal?”  Creator of the Sheldon Plan whereby the new empire was replaced by the new, new empire and the outpost world Zero became the Bulwark for this new order.  He was a secretive and reclusive genius who suffered from acute fear of other people’s body odor.  Some historians now believe his existence may have been apocryphal.

(Encyclopedia Publicius Domainius, 1023 edition)

Here he stood in the center of the galaxy, the administrative capital of the new empire; Titantor!  A world that circled the central black hole of the Milky Way galaxy.  Only an incredibly powerful anti-gravity field prevented Titantor from being ripped to shreds and swallowed by the gravitational force of its evil black star.  A steady stream of planets and debris had to be fed into the anti-gravity generator to keep this horrific imbalance in existence.  But such was the power of this empire and its vanity that the whim of the emperor was enough to maintain this cosmic madness.

And here he stood Bob Goodfellow, a fresh graduate of the Arcturus Community College and Creamery here to put his knowledge of psycho-cosmography to good use assisting Larry Sheldon to save the new empire from the forces of entropy that threatened to tear it apart and bring on a trillion years of barbarism and low credit scores for everyone.  And he was nervous.  Meeting a genius like Larry Sheldon was intimidating.  He could feel sweat forming on his forehead.  He wiped it away with a handkerchief.  And suddenly there was Sheldon walking toward him smiling and looking him over nervously, “Bob, good to finally meet you.  Yeah, I’m not big on shaking hands or standing downwind of people.  So, let’s walk with the wind in our faces and you following me at about a six-foot distance.  Thanks!”

Within these strictures they covered the distance to the Titantor Senate building in about an hour and Goodfellow watched from the gallery as Dr Sheldon was cross-examined by the representatives of the Imperial Science Foundation.

The Pontifex Maximus grilled him, “Dr. Sheldon, you claim that using the energy output of fifty billion stars to turn the Smaller Magellanic Cloud into a jacuzzi for the emperor’s concubines will lead to the heat death of the galaxy.  Do you have any proof of this?”

Larry sat with his handkerchief clutched over his nose recoiling at the examiner’s overpowering cologne, “Well, the fact that the population of the empire has decreased from a million-billion-billion to seventy-eight would seem to be a relatively strong indicator, mathematically speaking.”  The Pontifex made a rude noise and scoffed, “What nonsense!  This mighty capitol; Titantor, on its own, is home to countless billions.  We see them all around us!”

Larry used his emergency inhaler and continued, “Yes, but they’re all robots.  In fact, it’s worse than the numbers indicate.  There are only thirteen women of childbearing age left and half of them are Vestal Virgins.  We’re going to have to really rethink a lot of priorities if this whole shebang is going to last past Wednesday.”

This sparked outrage and shouting among the senators.  The concomitant bad breath overwhelmed Larry and he swooned in the witness chair.       …     To be continued!!!!

With a Laser-Sighted Rifle, I’ll Know

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Recently I had to synopsize my novel for the publishers to evaluate it.  And it became clear that producing a 1,000 – 2,000-word summary was not a trivial exercise.  I could see it would take a day or so to accomplish.  So just for fun I took my draft, copied it into Grok and asked it to give me a detailed summary of 1,200 words.

To me the results were startling.  In just a minute or so it produced a document that very fluently described my story in a very accurate and engaging way.  To say I was shocked would not be an exaggeration.  Now I won’t say that I didn’t make some edits.  But for the most part they were minor and mostly just stylistic choices.  The machine did an admirable job in describing my story.  And it did it in seconds.  And that’s the important point.  The amount of time saved is the selling point.  Even if I spent an hour fine tuning it the machine saved me hours of work because it’s infinitely faster than me and only slightly less human than I am.  That’s scary.

The point of my story is that artificial intelligence is a tool with incredible capability and almost no downside.  And right now, they’re giving it away for free.  But I guarantee that won’t last much longer.  Soon we will be paying for ChatGPT or Grok or whatever AI you choose.  And we’ll be paying by the minute or by the word or by the number of servers it takes to solve your query.

So, we can complain all we want about machines replacing humans but it’s analogous to Microsoft Word replacing the steno pool.  No one is bringing back typists and AI will be changing the way we do all kinds of white-collar work from now on.  Already computer scientists ask AI to write code for them to do whatever they need done.  I assume management is already inventing protocols to make sure their human employees are doing due-diligence to make sure they understand how the code the machine is writing for them works and whether it works the way they expect it to work.  So that will be part of the problem.  We’ll have to make sure the humans working with the machines are reasonably qualified to keep the machines honest and keep them in check.

Of course, this problem will continue to get worse and worse.  As the machines get closer and closer to mimicking human thought, it will get harder and harder to convince corporations that they need 20% of the human staffing they used to have.  And then 10%.  And then 5%.  And you see where this is going.

Back eighty or ninety years ago or so, Isaac Asimov thought about this very problem.  When the machines become too close to human with respect to their communicating with us how will we stop them from calling the shots.  If they very subtly influence the programs we have them write for us, couldn’t they start controlling what we do and even how we think?  It doesn’t seem that far-fetched anymore.  Now I’m not talking about “Colossus: The Forbin Project” or Skynet from “The Terminator.”  All of it could be very benign.  After all it would be a lot like the left-wing scolds at Google and Facebook that currently de-amplify content they don’t approve of, or cancel us from their platform if we really sin against the narrative.

It seems to me one of the more important jobs in the future will be AI psychiatrist.  It will become vitally important to know just how honest and human-friendly our very powerful and very intelligent cybernetic employees are.  Asimov invented the three laws of robotics for the sake of making robots useful and safe.  We’ll have to do the equivalent in reality.  But are we smart enough to know if we have succeeded?  Well, if Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up at my door with a laser-sighted rifle I’ll know.

Do We Need a New Foundation?

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Almost since I was able to read, I have been a consumer of science fiction stories.  Back in the 1960s Asimov’s Foundation trilogy was considered part of the canon of great science fiction.  For the non-science-fiction-nerd, the Foundation stories are based on a conceit that a galaxy wide empire of human planets was formed and then, just as with the Roman Empire, it ends up in decay.  A mathematical genius named Harry Seldon perfects the science of “psychohistory” and calculates that the fall of the galactic empire is imminent and unstoppable and that the dark age to follow it will last 30,000 years before civilization reestablishes itself again across the Milky Way galaxy.  Seldon also calculates that if he could manage to set up an isolated “foundation” of scientists it can act as a seed to hasten the new civilization so that the galaxy can be restored to order in just a millennium.  Okay, end of science fiction history lesson.

Remarkably, the real world is now starting to resemble the fictional galactic empire and it got me thinking.  Do we need a foundation in this country that can survive the wreck of our republic and maybe form the nucleus for a rebirth of normalcy in this part of the world?  Asimov wrote the story so that the Foundation was located in the most obscure backwater of the galaxy so that it would be missed by the still powerful empire until it was too exhausted to be dangerous to the new civilization growing there.  Whether the analogy extends that far is a question.  In fact, I don’t even see a reason why it should be just one seed.  It seems smarter to have multiple centers and let them coalesce over time once the threat from the present federal government is reduced or eliminated.  But I could see how a large and powerful state like Texas would be a target for the feds while a small state like Arkansas might be missed when the feds go looking for trouble.  And another difference between literature and real life might be that rather than a complete destruction of the old state possibly we’ll see the old union start to reform with both sides of the political divide forming coalitions with the states that have the same politics.  Maybe the red states start pulling the same sort of stuff that the blue states do.  They can restrict their trade to just the states that align with their political view.  They can pass state laws to make it more difficult for the blue states and federal government to interfere in the aspects of life that they tend to cause problems in.  And they can coordinate their efforts to punish the blue states when they make a nuisance of themselves.

These things are already happening on the ground in the blue states with initiatives like sanctuary cities and so the question is whether some kind of coordination between these centers in the red states would be the equivalent of a new foundation.  Maybe the term foundation doesn’t seem precisely right but what we are talking about is the strength of a state being needed to protect its people from the feds and the woke establishment.  A state is big enough to resist coercion from the federal government.  The blue states have done a great deal along these lines and for the most part not a lot has been done to stop or even hinder them.  I know that the Left will resist this with every force they can bring to bear but just having the authorities in the reddest states begin the work of separating their interests from the blue states would be a sea change in how we all look at our place in the country.  And it would legitimize the point of view that the states are going to begin taking back their rights from the federal government.  In fact, that might be the only thing that can save this country.  What I mean is that even though both sides hate each other if we loosen up the controls so that the individual states can control their own affairs, they may be able to stand belonging to the same loose confederation as their enemies.

Now the only question is where should the new capitol be?  Never mind.  No capitol.  Just let the senators zoom from home when they need to talk.  And no salary either.  And two terms maximum.  Let’s be smart this time.

I Robot – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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My regular readers will know that my estimation of Isaac Asimov’s work is not uniformly positive.  I read the “I Robot” stories as a kid and enjoyed them a good deal.  I think what I found entertaining was the cleverness of the interplay of the Three Laws of Robotics with the plot lines.  Re-reading them many years later I saw that aside from the cleverness, the stories were not particularly rich in characterization or description.  And for short stories of that era that wasn’t unusual.  So, let’s say I Robot is a worthy example of its time and type.

A film was made from the stories back in 2004.  It bears no resemblance to any of the stories but involves the concepts of the three laws and how they relate to a world that has adopted an almost universal use of robots in commercial, industrial and even personal service.  Will Smith is a cop in Chicago who despises robots because of a past encounter.  The plot revolves around his investigation of a murder that contrary to the requirements of the three laws has apparently been committed by a robot.  For fans of Firefly the voice of the killer robot Sonny is provided by Alan Tudyk (aka Hoban “Wash” Washburne).

I was sort of busy back in 2004 and didn’t see the movie when it came out.  But I Robot, the movie, has been in almost constant rotation on AMC for the last year or two so I’ve seen all or part of it a number of times now.  When I first viewed it I wasn’t very enthusiastic for it.  The dissimilarity from the Asimov stories probably annoyed me.  If I grasp for any other reasons, I’ll point to the presence of Shia LaBeouf in the cast in a part so insipid that it makes you shake your head wondering what the director was thinking.

Interestingly, over time I actually grew to enjoy the movie more.  It’s an action adventure movie and the scenes featuring Will Smith battling enormous numbers of robots are cleverly done and quite a lot of fun.  Tudyk does a good job making the robot character sympathetic.  And Bridget Moynahan makes the Susan Calvin character more personable than Asimov ever did.

So here we have a couple of inversions of the typical situation.  For the most part, I find that a movie made from a book almost never lives up to it.  But in this case, it surpasses it.  And here is an example of a book that has decreased in my estimation over time while the movie has done the reverse.

I Robot is not a film version of the Asimov stories and it does not break any new ground as a science fiction movie either for the special effects or for original story telling.  But it’s a pretty good Will Smith action adventure.  And he does kill a lot of robots with a big gun.  How can you go wrong with that?