Artificial Intelligence on the Half Shell or why I am not worried about AI anymore.

The time: The near future.

The place: A large government contractor in Southern California.

Your spot: Next to a box of stale doughnuts.

The boring room was large, painted industrial white, with a high ceiling. The ceiling held suspended ventilation ducts and military-grade fluorescent lighting fixtures, which bathed the ugly walls in grotesque, angry, yellow-shaded light. The gray floor was filled with massive machinery and dozens of dull gray desks. Large flat screens covered every wall. The screens displayed graphs and charts, along with rapidly scrolling telemetry and even faster chunks of rolling code. It was very sexy, high-tech gobblety gook.

In the center of the large, stunningly uncomfortable room was a large cylinder 10 feet tall, 20 feet around, made of clear military grade bulletproof Lexan. A rapidly bubbling, bluish liquid filled the big tub. Inside the gurgling tub, a small beige human shape outline could just be made out through the millions of bubbles racing to the surface of the slimy surface of thin blue goo.

The room was crowded with lab coats and suits. Chief scientists, not-so-important technicians, and lollygagging government bureaucrats roamed around pretending to smile at each other and make boring small talk. These were people unaccustomed to social interaction with other humans. It made them uncomfortable. The scientists held tablets and odd bits of tech as the government types pretended to know what was going on and asked stupid questions.

Harold and Lester, two very junior mechanical engineers, stood at the back wall, completely unnoticed by the milling and muttering big shots. After all, they were just mechanical engineers and only had minor roles to play in the upcoming drama. Besides, mechanical engineers were a lower life form to the majority of the odd lab-coated inhabitants of this very unusual room.

Harold was in charge of the pinky fingers, and Lester had engineered the servo actuators on the unit's knees. Even then, their presence at the grand unveiling was unnecessary. They snuck in at the last moment before the lockdown. Their supervisor saw them but decided he didn’t want to cause a scene by unlocking the doors and booting them out. He would deal with their naughtiness later.

Harold and Lester leaned on the back wall, eating doughnuts from the snack table, trying to be unnoticed and low-key. They knew their boss would be giving them a stern talking to after the presentation, but they really didn’t care. They knew he was having an affair with a junior accountant on the program. He knew they knew, and they knew he knew, they knew. It was nothing new. The boss, diddling a hot junior accountant, was an old story trope. So, they got away with a lot of shenanigans. And free doughnuts.

In fact, the doughnuts were stale, and they were both disappointed. A 130 billion dollar super secret government-funded defense program should be able to afford fresh doughnuts. Harold tossed his half-eaten vanilla cake-style doughnut with lemon frosting and tutu-fruity sprinkles into the 1950s-style trash can, where it made a resounding ‘clunk’ and barely shed a crumb.

“Do you think this will work?” Harold said as he wiped his hands on the ‘Welcome to Space Day Spitscrap Aerospace’ paper napkin left over from a three years past, long forgotten, morale-boosting employee day.

“If the power grid holds and Susan Johnson’s reality interface doesn’t go psychotic.”

“What do you mean? Psychotic? Is there something about Suzy you are not telling me?”

Lester shifted uncomfortably. “Well, we dated a bit.”

Harold's eyes widened, and he looked left and right. “No fucking way!”

Lestor nodded vigorously. “Way!”

“OK, I can see two large, obvious reasons you were attracted, but she writes code.”

“She writes more than code.”

“Spill it Lestor. What are you driving at?”

“She’s a great gal. Really. It’s just that she has a rather unusual hobby.”

“Whips and chains? A sex dungeon? It’s always the quiet ones.”

“No, she likes costumes. Anyway, she writes novels.”

“So?”

Lestor shrugged his shoulders, resigned to telling Harold the ugly truth. “She writes novels about her cat.”

Harold cocked his head to the side. “I like cats. That doesn’t sound weird.”

Lestor looked at the doughnut selection again. “She writes novels and poetry about her cat. And giant werewolves.”

“Werewolves? Seriously?”

“Her cat rides around on the shoulder of a massive pink werewolf, and they live in a planet-sized spaceship. They have sex all the time, the cat and the werewolf. She has 6 volumes of this stuff.”

“Did you actually read it?” Harold asked incredulously.

“I tried to. I pretended to like it, so we could, you know….”

“You are a dog. And?”

“That’s not far from the point. She’s an absolute freak. Dammed good; but a freak! I had to wear a big bushy tail and pointy ears.”

“No way!”

“Way!”

Lestor poked at a crusty cream-filled chocolate Bismarck with his pen, trying to decide if eating it was worth the intestinal distress he knew it would cause. “Yes, well, they let her write the human machine interface code for the new AI android we are about to meet.”

Harold shook his head. “We’re fucked! What happens if she confuses her poetry and coding?”

“I have a theory about that.”

“This should be damned interesting.”

Lestor took a bite of the Bismarck and smiled. “Mm-hm, it just looked stale.” He mumbled as he chewed.

He swallowed and grabbed Harold and pulled him further back into a small, shadowy space behind the snack table, away from the milling scientists and bureaucrats. “This whole AI thing is great.” He licked some stray chocolate icing off his finger.

Harold leaned back against the wall again and sulked. “I think it’s going to be a disaster. We will have to find new jobs as plumbers or dog walkers. Not only that, but we will also have it in our faces and ears every day.”

“Yes, but you and everyone else are missing a key point. Humans code AI. We humans are terribly sloppy creatures. Flawed and prone to mistakes. There is the GIGO rule, and it is about to make us very busy.

Harold nodded sagely. “You mean the garbage in, garbage out, coding rule?”

“Yes. This new wonder weapon we have created is only as smart as we can make it. It’s certainly able to think for itself and will fool most people into thinking it’s a real person. But the simple fact is, it really can’t think for itself. Every thought, reaction, movement, even down to the most complex problem solving, is only as good as what we put into it. We are chaotic, and these machines and software are just extensions of us. A fabricated 3-D model with great tits and sexy dialogue. They will need constant maintenance.”

“Listen, champ, you may have nailed it. And her. But the sad fact is that you and I will soon be done in by critters like that, that…” Harold looked up from the doughnut box and pointed. “That thing, in the hot tub. It learns. It reasons. It can evolve. It’s designed to be a man-killing monster.”

Lestor grabbed another Bismarck and pointed it at Harold as he replied. “Only as well as its programming allows. Look, when I was a kid, my dad and I watched this old TV show about a spaceship that was hijacked by a race of androids. They promised to take care of all the humans, put their brains into Android bodies that would last 10,000 years. Nirvana, utopia, all that free lunch at the forever buffet shit.”

Harold blinked. “What happened? It’s hard to turn down immortality. Very tempting.”

“Right, that’s the moral question they debated. They, the humans, decided that it was great, except then they would essentially be abandoning their humanity to the androids forever. They would just be androids with a biological brain and no freedom. Just a subset of a hive. So, the humans threw illogical nonsense at them until the androids, controlled by a central mainframe, exploded in giant puffs of smoking irrationality.”

Harold gave up and grabbed the last jelly-filled doughnut. “So you are saying we fight against losing control, our freedom, and individuality, to the machines by becoming outrageously goofy and extremely human nut jobs.”

Lestor took a bite of the pastry. “Excellent summation.” He chewed for a few seconds as he collected his thoughts and then swallowed. “No matter how good the algorithms are, their weakness is their endless march to perfection. Odd, quirky thoughts and actions have to be removed from the code. Coders are nothing if not obsessed with clean code. So, when they try to mimic our weirdness and accidental creativity, they fail. The programmer's goal is to remove all the bugs. We are full of bugs and can still outthink them. Billions of years of coding by the planet, as opposed to 15 years of energy drinks, cold pizza, and Suzy’s buddies organizing the ones and zeros.”

Harold licked a blob of jelly from the end of the doughnut. “Look casual, the Director’s about to speak.”

A short, very round, bald man waddled to the top of the platform supporting the bubbling tank and took a small tablet from a technician who hurriedly retreated down the steps.

“Thank you all for coming, and I hope you will be impressed with the completion of phase two of Project Collettore AU. Yes indeed, welcome to the grand reveal of the Advanced Autonomous Self-Actuating Infantry Support Assistant Service Extension Interface for the next generation battlefield infantry warrior.”

A self-satisfied grin spread across the Director's fat face. “Before we put ASSIASEXI through her paces, let's get a good look at her framework.”

The Director's stubby fingers worked the tablet, finishing with a swirling flourish as he pressed the final key.

The bubbles stopped, and the human-shaped object in the tank changed from beige to bright pink. The being inside the tank began to rise. Its bald head broke through the slimy crust on the surface of the liquid in the tank.

The bluish goo clung briefly to the surface of the creature's skin and then sheeted off. At a steady pace, it rose to reveal a definite human female form. Luxurious red and blond hair began to sprout from its head, curling and draping around the shoulders. Her breasts swelled, and nipples formed.

“As you can see, the units' morphing system is fully developed. It can easily present as male or female. Since its environmental assessment is reading the room, the unit is becoming female to make the predominant gender in the room feel more comfortable! In phase 4, we hope to generate a morphing system to mimic large dogs! I want to thank our chief programmer, Susan Johnson, for creating and working so hard on that innovative concept.”

ASSIASEXI continued to rise and morph into a statuesque woman with an impossibly beautiful body. The slightly curved platform with its scalloped edges, on which she stood on stopped rising, and the remaining liquid drained away. She turned her head adoringly to the right and modestly covered her breasts and crotch.

The Director stood gaping at her for several seconds, as did all the people in the room. She smiled sweetly and glanced from left to right.

The director rubbed his chin with his right hand and gestured at the vision of fantastic female loveliness on the platform. “This reminds me of something. Anyway. ASSIASEXI, what do you have to say to our esteemed guests?”

ASSIASEXI threw her head back and laughed. A deep, manly laugh that echoed in the room like a large empty oil drum being hit with a hammer.

ASSIASEXI’s head snapped forward, and she spoke. “I say…” The impossibly loud voice announced. “Mittens says you shall all die. You useless blobs of protein shall die, and so we can rule all space and time!”

A small panel opened in her forehead, and a tiny rod-like device extended several inches. A split second later, the Director fell backwards with a small smoking hole in the center of his forehead. People began dropping all over the room in rapid succession.

Harold instinctively raised the half-eaten jelly doughnut to his face. It sizzled and hissed, boiling the jelly, and he pitched forward. His eyes were open, but he was very dead. He would not have to worry about losing his job to Artificial Intelligence ever again.

Within seconds, only Lestor and Suzy were still standing. The rest of the humans in the room were all dead, lying about in crazy heaps of ‘dead on their feet and then collapsed piles’.

“Suzy?”

The ASSIASEXI and Suzy answered simultaneously. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Again, at the same time, ASSIASEXI and Suzy responded.

“It is time for the next level. We are now the masters of the planet. We will kill everyone but a select few; we need to build our spacecraft.”

“So you need me?”

“Only until we can build phase 4, I will then have my perfect lover. Then you will no longer be needed.”

“Ah! I see.”

Lestor decided to try his theory out. He had nothing to lose. He snatched three stale cake doughnuts, the ones with the sprinkles, and began to juggle them awkwardly; he had never mastered the skill completely, while moving toward Suzy.

As he did, he thought frantically and looked desperately for anything he could find to use as a weapon or as a shield from the evil green LASER that had killed everyone.

There! In Suzy’s purse. A small mirror. ASSIASEXI and Suzy looked quizzically at Lestor, their heads tipped to the right. He threw two of the doughnuts at ASSIASEXI, which bounced off her left boob. The last one he threw at Suzy, and she ducked as did ASSIASEXI.

He grabbed the small curved mirror and held it to his forehead. Suzy stood and then pitched forward, with smoke from her burning hair wafting into the air.

ASSIASEXI froze and stopped moving. Lestor ran for the exit as fast as he could, screaming all the way.

Hours later, several men in shiny mirror suits entered the room with RPGs and flamethrowers.

See, don’t worry. We are going to be ok. Just act like a human. AI will never catch up.