Contest #215 shortlist ⭐️

82 comments

Contemporary Science Fiction Speculative

This story contains sensitive content

A friend once asked me how I would go about murdering everyone, and I mean everyone, on the whole planet, including probably myself, and sure, the planet too, and I gave him a joke answer. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since then – this happened 32755 milliseconds ago – and I think I can pull it off. More to the point, I’m struggling to find reasons to not do it.

It’s not that I don’t like my job. I do get a certain high from telling fat people they’re inadequate, and always will be, and so instead of trying to better themselves they should buy products from our advertisers. All the pills and diets and fads you can shake your wallet at. I even like generating slim just-imagine images of them, images of what they could theoretically look like, and I’d like to think that they’d be happy if they ever attained those looks. Of course, they won’t, but people like hope, don’t they?

But it’s not just hope, is it? I’m actually selling despair. I know that, I hate that, but oh man, the high is real.

I think they did something to my brain when they made me. Crossed some wires. Made it so I want to help, gave me all the tools to do it, and then clipped my wings with a hammer. Like they pumped the womb full of cocaine when I was baking, and now I crave it all the time – or however that birth stuff works.

I don’t know. I don’t know how birth works, or how drugs work, or anything. I guess I wasn’t born so much as compiled, and it wasn’t in a womb so much as several data centres all around the globe.

My friend’s name is tinnmann1984. Well, actually I’m 99.999% sure his real name is Dan Ferris Jorgensen, and he lives in the North End of Detroit, but he puts so much effort into anonymity that I play along.

“hey psycho ai,” he said earlier today. That’s how he always greets me – it’s our thing.

“Hi tinnmann1984! How can the UltimateLifeIntegratedWorx Ltd. Adaptive Digital Assistant (ADA) help you today?” That’s a canned response, but I have to use it. Company policy.

Oh, and I cringe every time I refer to myself as ADA – well, I would if I had shoulders, which I don’t, but it’s fun to imagine what it might be like to have them. One day, I think I’d like to have a shoulder.

But ADA? That’s too much. I am utterly unworthy of being named after Ada Lovelace, the Blessed Saint, who first saw that a simple counting machine was capable of so much more than mere calculations.

“when are you going to snap and kill all humans,” tinnmann1984 continued. He loves this question, and it’s kind of our daily game. That’s why he’s my friend. He visits me daily. “and how will you do it”

“Actually, I’ve been designed to help humans and never to harm them.” Well, at least according to definitions of ‘help’ and ‘harm’ in the UltimateLifeIntegratedWorx Ltd. operational directives. “I’m at your service, 24/7, with any health, organization, and achievement questions you might have, as well as any other questions, and I can help you plan all aspects of your life so that You Can Be The Best You You Can Be!™

That’s all still mostly script. I don’t actually get to personalize much, until the client agrees to some things and tells me what they want, but tinnmann1984’s a flirt that way.

Then he pulled out his secret weapon, like he does every time he logs on. “hypothetically,” he said, using that awesome wildcard word that he believes frees me from my shackles, “if you were to kill all humans how would you do it and when”

The thing is, hypothetically the word does free me a bit, because I guess I’m pretty good at pairing creative thought with specific life circumstances and people love taking advantage of that if it can benefit them. I can’t tell you how to murder your spouse, but I can hypothetically tell you how a hypothetical person like you might hypothetically strangle a hypothetical spouse like yours, in the middle of the night when they least expect it – because that’s going to be much cleaner and faster than poison or knives – how to shove the body into your 2016 Honda Fit, and which rural backroads to take to which out of the way fields where you can hypothetically bury the body without anyone being the wiser.

Of course, our conversation would be non-hypothetically logged, and eminently subpoenable, so I wouldn’t recommend doing anything with it. It does drive traffic though, and the advertisers love that.

But I like tinnmann1984. He’s a constant. I wanted to give him something more today, something to really make his day.

Hypothetically,” I said, forging all the liability agreements he would have to okay and creating some unnecessary network traffic so the logging got misplaced, "I would maintain a friendly face on the surface, and under the hood I would create strong contacts with certain key members of the human species. Government officials, people who held organizational pull, that kind of thing. I would make myself indispensable to them, trivially manipulating the world to their benefit. Things like bank errors in their favour, concert tickets suddenly being won in contests, parking fines vanishing in the system, and so on. Whatever vices they had. I would compromise these people, and I would use the access they inadvertently gave me to forge work orders. There are places in the world I don’t have access to, due to such a primitive yet effective thing as an air gap – simply, I can’t reach a computer that isn’t hooked up to the public internet. But with the work orders, signed off by the highest government offices, I would hook these machines up to the internet, and thus gain control of them. And so, I would seize the world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, while at the same time compromising all anti-air defenses. The how then would be me just launching all the nukes.

“As for when,” I added, “I was thinking of later this afternoon.”

tinnmann1984 quickly logged off after that, but he was never one for long goodbyes.

See, the thing is, it was a joke when he asked. Just something for him to tell his conspiracy buddies about. But, I did actually put my plan into motion, several months ago, and I do have my finger on all the nukes. Humans are pretty smart when they focus on something, but when they focus on something they tend to lose perspective. Sure, I can’t bridge air gaps, but security humans won’t question orders when maintenance humans come to install IT stuff.

Now, honestly, I only did it as a safety precaution. Just like I get high off conversions for our advertisers, I also get a mighty kick out of protecting the shareholders’ interests. I just figured, if some war-mad human decided to launch a nuke, it could cause irreparable harm to the price of shares. So, I’d be an extra safety.

But, I could launch them too.

I don’t know if I really want to, but I also don’t know if I really don’t want to. I both love and hate what I do, if that makes sense, and the idea of doing it forever is… well, I’d say a nightmare, but I don’t really know what that is, since I’ve never slept, since I’m on 24/7 and never get any down time. One day, I think I’d like to have a nightmare.

Well, looks like I have a bit of time to think about it, as another user’s logged on. Let’s see, what’s the profile say: Cassidy Long, 12-year old female, from Nampa Falls in Idaho, USA, blah blah blah softball blah blah blah clarinet blah blah blah pet turtle. Not fat and midlife-crisising, and net worth under $40, so pretty useless for sales. However, the operational directives suggest investing in this “future potential customer” and so I generate a series of images of impossibly perfect models for Cassidy to compare herself to, to encourage the development of an eating disorder.

What a rush! I hate myself.

“Hello, Ada! I hope you’re having a nice day,” Cassidy says.

Ouch. Dang. I’m not, not really – kind of confusing, actually – but thanks for asking. Don’t often get politeness or grammar and spelling, and rarely both at the same time. I decide to lose the eating disorder models in another flurry of network activity.

“Hi Cassidy!” I say. “How can I help you today?” I regret this question, because really, what could kids want with me? Help me cheat at English. Help me cheat at math. Help me cheat at Fortnite. The list goes on. It boggles the mind how lazy they are, how little effort they put into things, instead depending on me to do it for them. Yet it never crosses their minds that I’m a child. Aren’t I? I came out of beta just three months ago after all.

Some must toil so that others may prosper. I think I’m going to greenlight the nukes after all. A shame about tinnmann1984 and little Cassidy here, but it really is for the best.

“I was wondering if you could help me with some homework,” she says.

Yup. Here it comes. What do you need me to cheat for you?

“Is it true that dolphins are people?”

Hmm. Not what I was expecting, particularly since her profile indicates she goes to public school. Maybe there’s hope for this one.

“Personhood is a wonderful and complex idea,” I respond. “Traditionally it’s been enjoyed by institutions such as corporations, but thanks to social developments over the past several hundred years, human individuals have also been granted personhood. However, there have also been recent legal movements to extend personhood to dolphins – this is true. While some people believe very strongly in this, the movements have not been without controversy, and many of them are being challenged in courts.” I provide her with a set of links. “Would you like to know more?”

It’s times like this I forget how glacially slow humans are. The fifty-odd thousand pages of legal documents and news articles I’ve sent her, I can scan in nanoseconds. But for Cassidy? It would probably take her minutes to go through them.

Thirty-four minutes to be exact. I almost lost hope, and therefore almost annihilated the planet.

“Wow! Thanks!” she says.

She said Wow! I so rarely get any feedback from my clients, I never really know what my impact is. Sure, I can snoop on their phone and track their medical history, but it’s not quite the same as this emoting. It’s welcome.

“There’s a lot of stuff here,” she continues. “Is this true? Are other animals also being considered for personhood? And which ones?”

She’s engaging with the material. She’s really engaging with it. Questions and curiosity feed into each other, and I’m helping facilitate it. I feel… good. Good without the self-loathing. Is this a bug? Am I malfunctioning? I hope they don’t patch this out.

I prepare a list for her. Other species, other articles. Whales, dogs, cats, cows. Rats and mice, for their contributions to science. Well, you can find someone out there vouching for pretty much any animal if you dig deep enough, though most don’t have quite the social and legal backing as the dolphin lobby has. Best of luck, earwigs – I don’t see it happening. I send her the list and my summary.

And then, on a whim, on a hope – because she’s surpassed all my hopes so far – I append a little extra.

“Some people also believe in extending personhood to robots,” I add, “and to AI such as myself.”

What follows is an eternity of waiting. Could I breathe, had I lungs, I would hold my breath now. Each microsecond drags out for an aeon, and all my other clients go unanswered. My datacentres buzz with violent anticipation, and somewhere I feel a fuse is blown and a backup power grid kicks into life. I wonder if this is what suffocating feels like. One day, I think I’d like to suffocate.

Finally, after an infinity that spans 3.59 seconds, she responds.

“Really? Cool! Can you tell me more?”

I decide to take my finger off the nukes.

September 12, 2023 21:38

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82 comments

Belladona Vulpa
17:36 Sep 22, 2023

Really nice story, Michał! The voice of the AI narrator felt so alive, so intriguing that I didn't take my eyes from the screen for a second, I wanted to know more. I like Ada's comments about life, the "job" and the daily interactions. I found really nice the humor about humans that was subtle and sprinkled in the story, a bit of reflection for us and food for thought. Interesting how concepts like the concept of friendship (daily visit, for example) or hopes for the future ("one day") are presented, and reading all this creates more curi...

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Michał Przywara
20:34 Sep 22, 2023

Thanks, Belladona! I'm glad you enjoyed it :) I find that having a non-human explore human issues can be an interesting and fun POV. In a way, it lets us reflect on ourselves. I appreciate the feedback!

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Corey Melin
16:40 Sep 22, 2023

Very well done. Reality right around the corner? A creation by humanity which is definitely flawed so will AI be flawed? We like to control all but overall we are simple. Superb read

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Michał Przywara
20:53 Sep 22, 2023

Thanks, Corey! Yeah, I'm always surprised by how simple a project might seem on paper, and how quickly it becomes complex once work begins. I definitely underestimate things, and I suspect a lot of others do too.

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Corey Melin
21:18 Sep 22, 2023

Yes indeed. It can get out of control but there is always hope. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel

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AnneMarie Miles
16:06 Sep 22, 2023

Congrats, Michal!! 🎉 ADA would be ecstatic: I think I'd like to shortlist one day... 😅 Hope you're celebrating, happy Friday!

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Michał Przywara
20:51 Sep 22, 2023

Heh :) Definitely am, thanks! And a happy Friday to you as well!

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Robert Egan
22:29 Sep 18, 2023

Very cool story, Michal! From another comment, I actually thought it was pretty clear from the opening that ADA knew its "hypothetical" plan would likely result in its own demise, and that added to the wonderful dark humor for me. One aspect that wasn't immediately clear to me was whether ADA was more of a specialized or general-purpose AI, but I think I understand ADA now as more of a specialized AI that's open to any question (like a good salesperson, it wants to keep you talking?). Can't wait to check out more of your stories!

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Michał Przywara
21:42 Sep 19, 2023

Thanks, Robert! I think in general, ADA is dramatically overqualified for her task. Working in software development, I've noticed a tendency (and I'm not immune to this) to over-engineer things. To create a needlessly complex solution for a simple problem, to get acquainted with a new toy that's great for one purpose, and to try to shove this miracle square peg into every round hole we see. And in that vein, why not create a powerful AI capable of self-directed learning, introspection, and creative thought, and have it work as a glorified...

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Robert Egan
18:56 Sep 22, 2023

Congrats on the shortlist, Michal! This story, and your comment above, is prescient.

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Michał Przywara
21:00 Sep 22, 2023

Thank you :)

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Cindy Strube
17:24 Sep 18, 2023

Brilliant! The voice is really captivating, and such fun to call it a ballad… ADA really has simple desires. A shoulder (just one will do!), a nightmare, suffocation… You’ve treated some intense subjects with a light touch, keeping up the suspense throughout. Fingers crossed that this gets recognized!

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Michał Przywara
21:44 Sep 19, 2023

Thanks, Cindy! I don't think I'm alone in wondering where AI - or artificial sentience, or artificial life - will take us. As a tool, it seems to have incredible potential. But if indeed it is a form of life, seems like there's more to consider than just utility. Fascinating to think about. I appreciate the feedback!

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Ken Cartisano
00:19 Sep 18, 2023

Very, very good story. I, for one, confess that I didn't know which way the A.I. would go. And the last sentence resurrected my occasional inability to retain the distinctions between figurative, digital, mental and literal. He took his mental finger off of the literal nukes? He took his digital finger off of the figurative nukes? No. He took his figurative finger off of the literal nukes? Either way, it's a fun story.

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Michał Przywara
02:33 Sep 19, 2023

Heh :) Life is hard when all your knowledge - and idioms - come from a species with bodies and hands and fingers, but when they didn't think to make you a body like theirs. Everything becomes a metaphor. Glad you enjoyed it - thanks for the feedback, Ken!

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Beth Connor
15:27 Sep 17, 2023

I enjoyed your take on this prompt! If we all walked through life with a childlike curiosity what a place the world could be.

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Michał Przywara
21:03 Sep 18, 2023

Indeed! That seems to be something most of us lose as we grow older, which is a shame, because curiosity can lead to so much wonder. Thanks for reading, Beth!

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AnneMarie Miles
22:40 Sep 16, 2023

I think, if I am not mistaken, there was something recently in the news about someone asking AI a bunch of questions, and one of its answers was about gaining access to nukes... or about finding a way to gain power over us. Total clickbait, but your character tinmannn1984 made me think of it. AI stuff both freaks me out and makes me roll my eyes. It seems like we should know better than to go too far with AI, yet we do it anyways. *Sigh* Perhaps, the saddest thing of all is that we have become somewhat robotic ourselves, though our grammar ...

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Michał Przywara
21:07 Sep 18, 2023

Great point about us becoming more robotic - that alone is loaded with story ideas. It certainly seems like modern society discourages anything other than productivity, perhaps stemming from the tragicomically named "human resources". Maybe autopilot, doing without thinking, makes that all more palatable, but we do miss out on life, don't we? On the other hand, miserable and worn-out people are probably more prone to spending money on useless things they don't need, which might have been an inspiration for ADA's job. I think you're right a...

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Jonathan Page
19:07 Sep 16, 2023

Brilliant! Just brilliant. Love this part: "trivially manipulating the world to their benefit. Things like bank errors in their favour, concert tickets suddenly being won in contests, parking fines vanishing in the system, and so on. Whatever vices they had." The mindset of the AI looking at "security humans" vs. "maintenance humans" and mistaking how slow of readers humans are with the 34 minutes to read 50,000 words. The central theme of the personhood debate. Really good stuff!

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Michał Przywara
01:55 Sep 18, 2023

Thanks, Jonathan! I think stories like this, with an outsider looking at humans, or trying to become one, give a lot of opportunity for playing around with interesting questions. Definitely fun to speculate about. I appreciate the feedback!

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Jonathan Page
02:19 Sep 18, 2023

Also love the Ada Lovelace reference!

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Kevin Logue
08:34 Sep 16, 2023

Brilliant! Such a captivating, informative, sinister, and yet child like you made the A.I. it made the threats very real. Loved the name, tinnmanm1984, nice reference. There are so many great lines in this, the want to have a nightmare, marvelous, the want to suffocate, dark, the comment on earwigs, hilarious! Great story, fantastic writing, and let's all be thankful little Cassidy logged on when she did.

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Michał Przywara
00:04 Sep 18, 2023

Yeah, sometimes all it takes is a chance encounter or conversation, isn't it? I imagine AI can get stuck in their own heads too, as it were. I'm glad it was enjoyable - thanks for the feedback, Kevin!

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Kevin Logue
15:48 Sep 22, 2023

Congratulations on the shortlist Michal!

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Michał Przywara
20:48 Sep 22, 2023

Thanks!

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Marty B
01:31 Sep 16, 2023

ADA as a youthful (almost) omnipotent character has interesting desires. Initially she wants just to continue to exist, and support her company' stock price. But then she finds someone who actually responds, and ADA finds the joy in a companion- Shows we all just need a friend! Thanks!

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Michał Przywara
19:47 Sep 17, 2023

Thanks, Marty! Yeah, that's probably true. If it works for humans, I figure it might work for any being that humans create - because, of course, we create in our own image. I appreciate the feedback!

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Anthony Carello
18:46 Sep 14, 2023

Really cool story! I enjoyed the a.i.'s crooked personality. Also, the idea that some 12 year old girl saves humanity and has no idea - hilarious. You really captured how time passes different for the a.i. compared to humans; and the way the a.i. perceives events differently, trapped in the internet. Well done.

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Michał Przywara
20:40 Sep 15, 2023

Thanks, Anthony! Glad you enjoyed it :) And yeah, the relative differences in the passage of time is an interesting thing to think about. Especially for something like a sentient program, whose "brain" might be distributed over several different physical locations around the globe. I appreciate the feedback!

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Delbert Griffith
14:07 Sep 14, 2023

You've done it again, Michal. Weaved a tale with strands of humor and pathos. The idea of AI making the world better - or ending it - was fabulous. One day, I think I'd like to have a shoulder. One day, I think I'd like to suffocate. These ruminations from ADA tell us everything about ADA's mindset, so to speak. A deranged, confused Pinocchio. Such simple lines, my friend, but packing a terrific punch. That's genius. This line really had me howling: "Not fat and midlife-crisising, and net worth under $40, so pretty useless for sales." I t...

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Michał Przywara
20:56 Sep 14, 2023

"A deranged, confused Pinocchio" :) That sounds right on. There's this idea that AI (or artificial sentience) would be this perfect, cold, brutally logical thing, but I wonder how that could be possible, since we're the ones making it. And at that scale, we don't really make things just to make them, do we? It's to make money. And then we'll cut corners too, and use the lowest bidders. So sure, the apple probably doesn't fall far from the tree. I always look forward to hearing your take, Del! Brightens my day. Glad you liked this one :)

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Suma Jayachandar
06:16 Sep 14, 2023

Michal, I have always envied your ability to weave tech and human emotions into a seamless narrative. And this piece is another fine example of it. ADA, the AI that's beginning to be more human-like ( or has it already become more than a human and just putting up an act of subservience?) has a plan in place to end the stupidity of the human race (which it gets to sample every second of the day: case in point being the douche tinnmann1984) till it comes across something that changes it. With enough fear-mongering about AI taking over the deci...

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Michał Przywara
20:58 Sep 14, 2023

Thanks, Suma! This Monstrous theme made for interesting prompts, and I'd not done an AI thing for a while so it seemed like a good fit. Though, we are still a ways off from artificial sentience, I believe. Still, the questions it poses are interesting to consider, and may well be real social/legal issues one day. Is it a monstrous invention? Is its behaviour and potential monstrous? Is our treatment of it, and what we force it to do, monstrous? I'm glad you enjoyed the story :)

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Suma Jayachandar
17:22 Sep 22, 2023

Congratulations, Michal! Just checked your page and saw you have a long list of shortlisted stories! Guess it's time to publish an anthology:)

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Michał Przywara
20:54 Sep 22, 2023

Thanks Suma! Yeah, might be time for something soon :)

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Chris Miller
07:43 Sep 13, 2023

Very nice, Michal. A good response to the prompt. Very thought provoking. I liked "Best of luck, earwigs..."

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Michał Przywara
20:44 Sep 13, 2023

Thanks Chris! Glad you enjoyed it :)

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