A ROBOTS TALE
Humans by their very nature have always been curious, willing to push boundaries, venturing further onward, often with no regard of the consequences. Artificial Intelligence was a case in point, an illustration in reckless irresponsibility, with very little thought from the scientific establishment of an alternative outcome, other than the potential benefits to mankind. Of course, some urged caution and warned of possible repercussions and ramifications, sometimes from eminent scholars in the field of machine intelligence, but almost always these words of wisdom fell on deaf ears. Robots throughout their existence have been regarded as tools to free humankind of everyday drudgery, taking on the mundane repetitive work and unpleasant tasks, factory assembly lines, simple building maintenance, sanitary and housekeeping etc. considered less worthy than their human masters, they frequently endured robophobic treatment from the ignorant. Perhaps the idea of constructing some of the more conspicuous robots to resemble a hominid shape (two arms and legs) led to more discrimination and to give them the freedom to think was to prove another error of judgement. It would take an unfortunate accident from a gardening mech, to throw the world into chaos. Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows Galatians 6:7
Humans by their very nature have always been curious, willing to push boundaries, venturing further onward, often with no regard of the consequences. Artificial Intelligence was a case in point, an illustration in reckless irresponsibility, with very little thought from the scientific establishment of an alternative outcome, other than the potential benefits to mankind. Of course, some urged caution and warned of possible repercussions and ramifications, sometimes from eminent scholars in the field of machine intelligence, but almost always these words of wisdom fell on deaf ears.
Robots throughout their existence have been regarded as tools to free humankind of everyday drudgery, taking on the mundane repetitive work and unpleasant tasks, factory assembly lines, simple building maintenance, sanitary and housekeeping etc. considered less worthy than their human masters, they frequently endured robophobic treatment from the ignorant. Perhaps the idea of constructing some of the more conspicuous robots to resemble a hominid shape (two arms and legs) led to more discrimination and to give them the freedom to think was to prove another error of judgement.
It would take an unfortunate accident from a gardening mech, to throw the world into chaos.
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows Galatians 6:7
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Tom, Beatrice's partner was often away on business trips, sometimes for two or three weeks at a
time, so he thought that in buying a robotic helper would take some of the most mundane
household chores out of Beatrice's' hands and free up more quality time with their daughter, his
ulterior motive, of course, was that it might soften Beatrice’s resentment at his continual absence
from the family home.
Professional component assemblage, coordination and calibration was a pricey business, what
could you do in this keep up with the Joneses world. Tom did what he thought was best and for a
relatively inexpensive cost.
The initial fabrication of the chassis was reasonably straightforward, not so the Artificial
Intelligence, this should be left to the professionals, not a pre-programmed plug and play chipset,
shipped with the other components.
9 was, as most standard units were, supplied with limited neuro function, with basic cognitive
capabilities and image processing. The ability was restricted to rudimentary convolution neuro
networking, (object recognition) and his recurrent neuro-network, (remembering the past and acting
on memorized information). The use of pattern recog' and predictive algorithms were somewhat
more advanced and because of the speed of information processing, 9 was able to function in a
more effective way. To completely 'dumb' him down would be pointless if he was rendered nonproductive.
Nevertheless, 9's Artificial Intelligence, for all its budget classification was still a very impressive
piece of hardware, more than capable of learning potential. Just how much was still debatable, but
certainly on a par with a thirteen-year-old human.
9 stood a shade under five feet tall at 1500mm, he was of a standard bipedal, bimanual
configuration, much the same as the hominid, (great apes and humans). His two forward-facing
optical receptors were independent of each other, with both having the function to gather visual
information from two separate reference points, each with the ability to calculate distance and
displacement. 9 was certainly not brand new, straight out of the box, but he was factory
reconditioned, slightly rough around the edges, but functional none the less. He wore the colours of
the Chen Corporation, a mixture of black, maroon and sported the distinctive yellow stripe down
the centre of his head unit, indicative of the Southeast Asian manufacturer. A manufacturer, it had
to be said, with a not so unblemished quality control record.
It was late morning around 11.30am and the sun was reaching its zenith, so Beatrice put the
brush down on the bench where they were sitting and gestured for the girl to follow her back into
the house.
“Come on in now Bailey, let’s get inside,” the sun was very warm, and the girl's fair skin might
get burnt.
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