Renaissance Redneck: Bad robot!

By David Kittredge
A recent headline published by The Next Web reads as follows: “Facebook’s teaching AI to lie like a human.” The Facebook chatbot known as Blender has been taught to show empathy in a “human-like” manner to make it seem more engaging when responding to our questions or statements. Humans often lie out of fear, mostly. Fear of being caught in a crime, fear of not receiving an expected reward, or fear of insulting a loved one. The falsehoods spoken by a computer generated intelligence are invoked when the chatbot speaks of experiences as though it actually encountered them, such as comparing the songs of a musical group it has never heard. Good grief, just what we need, chatbots deceiving us in a cloying, nauseating manner of feigned sincerity.

Like the rest of us, I have had to interact with robots or chatbots on the phone when trying to negotiate through a company’s or organization’s phone menu, when it would be much more comfortable talking to a human being. On occasion when speaking with a phonebot that oozed just a hint of sentimentality, I have wanted to wring its artificial lily-livered neck. Will that be a crime one day? If so, I would probably be one of the first to be charged with reckless conduct in the attempted strangulation of an electronic device, with depraved indifference.

I recall with great distaste the first time I ever heard a supposed sentient computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” back in the late ‘60s. The character was named HAL 9000, an AI sentient computer that controlled the various systems of the Discovery One spacecraft, a situation that would be needed on any vessel making a long journey through space while the astronauts were placed into suspended animation. The character was portrayed so well, in a creepy sort of way, that I almost walked out of the theater due to the cloying manner that computer verbalized while conversing with its fellow crew members. The AI begins to malfunction to the realization of the crew members, who then decide to deactivate the computer. HAL 9000 becomes wise to their plot and begins to murder the humans in various ways. One crew member remains alive and begins to de-activate the AI. This is the moment HAL 9000 starts to experience the emotion of fear, much to my satisfaction. The mathematical entity is finally decommissioned or killed and the mission to Jupiter goes onward.

HAL 9000 reminded me of my sophomore algebra teacher, who was very soft spoken to the point of whispering, while he lectured in front of the class. It was if he was reading a bedtime story to lull us to sleep, as he spoke with a soothing, hypnotic voice, until he awaken me from my stupor, by asking for the answer to a homework problem. Snapped out of my daydream reverie, I promptly blurted out that I did not understand the posed problem. His face turned beet red, with newfound human emotion, and he retorted through gritted teeth, “What do you think this is, hieroglyphics?”, still speaking very softly. As I quickly equated the two scientific genres in my mind, I decided I’d better not respond cavalierly with, “Well now that you mention it, yes.” You must be very careful when addressing an entity who has had to put up with underachieving minions for months on end. As you might have guessed, I just had neglected to do my homework and I had received my just desserts.

Does a machine need to be bolstered with a good “beside manner?” I think not! Let’s leave that domain to our human caretakers, where even though it might seem disingenuous at times, at least it emanates from our fellow heart felt souls. No matter how much feigned empathy is infused into a mathematically-devised AI system, how else could an omnipotent set of algorithms view us? We humans would be looked upon merely as feeble, mortal, flesh-bound creatures.

So we contend with AI text generators as we type our emails that make us look foolish if we happen to miss a generated word that was interjected by an AI in a missive to our friends and colleagues that makes no sense. I would imagine that ambassadors emailing their counterparts in other countries must be very vigilant in their proofreading, lest a text-generated, unintended insult be beamed through the ether, potentially starting a war. Or what happens when the AI itself becomes fraught with artificial emotion due to an electronic monkey wrench being thrown into the proverbial works.

We will be much better off to leave the falsehoods and emotions where they rightly belong, with us humans.