PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 262 Blindsight
be able to pick your zombie out of a crowd." Another silence; I
could hear him chewing through it. "It'll even be able to participate
in a conversation like this one. It could write letters home,
impersonate real human feelings, without having the slightest
awareness of its own existence."
"I dunno, Rob. It just seems—"
"Oh, it might not be perfect. It might be a bit redundant, or
resort to the occasional expository infodump. But even real people
do that, don't they?"
"And eventually, there aren't any real people left. Just robots
pretending to give a shit."
"Perhaps. Depends on the population dynamics, among other
things. But I'd guess that at least one thing an automaton lacks is
empathy; if you can't feel, you can't really relate to something that
does, even if you act as though you do. Which makes it interesting
to note how many sociopaths show up in the world's upper
echelons, hmm? How ruthlessness and bottom-line self-interest
are so lauded up in the stratosphere, while anyone showing those
traits at ground level gets carted off into detention with the
Realists. Almost as if society itself is being reshaped from the
inside out."
"Oh, come on. Society was always pretty— wait, you're saying
the world's corporate elite are nonsentient?"
"God, no. Not nearly. Maybe they're just starting down that
road. Like chimpanzees."
"Yeah, but sociopaths don't blend in well."
"Maybe the ones that get diagnosed don't, but by definition
they're the bottom of the class. The others are too smart to get
caught, and real automatons would do even better. Besides, when
you get powerful enough, you don't need to act like other people.
Other people start acting like you."
Sascha whistled. "Wow. Perfect play-actor."
"Or not so perfect. Sound like anyone we know?"
They may have been talking about someone else entirely, I
suppose. But that was as close to a direct reference to Siri Keeton
that I heard in all my hours on the grapevine. Nobody else
mentioned me, even in passing. That was statistically unlikely,