Toy

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It was the thirty-seventh year... to be precise, it was the year 2037. Andrew was already the head of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Research, a scientific luminary. Despite this influential position, it hadn't changed him as a person. At forty, he remained friendly and open in his relationships with colleagues, just as he had been in his younger years.

Andrew earned his authority by leading a research group that made a breakthrough in AI development, bringing it to a fundamentally new qualitative level.

Andrew was passionate about his work, obsessed with it. It was one of those rare cases where a person got paid for doing what they would do for free. He immersed himself in his tasks completely. He never allowed himself to relax before completing a project. Lately, he rarely visited the office, preferring to be alone with his beloved Orbis, a thirteenth-generation artificial intelligence. Andrew felt that they were not just colleagues but also old good friends.

The state dacha, which Andrew was entitled to by his status, had all the conditions for both work and rest. It was incredibly luxurious to use such a dacha. In the Federal Concentration Republic, no more than twenty people could afford something like this.

Today, on Sunday, Andrew finished his latest project and allowed himself to relax. He felt good. Andrew admired the concrete wall visible from his window. The wall was painted with dizzying landscapes: jungles, a mountain lake, desert dunes. Even the bars on the window didn't spoil the overall impression of the work by an unknown master. Andrew opened a plastic bottle of whiskey and carefully poured some of its contents into a faceted glass, then sat on the spring bed and in high spirits, bounced on it a bit.

After finishing his glass of whiskey, he immediately headed to the end of the room, to the huge "magic" screen that took up almost half the wall, standing out with its blackness against the gray walls.

This was one of the millions of interfaces for possible communication with Orbis. The technical entity was intangible, but it was quite clear that it lived somewhere in virtual space.

Andrew sat at the table and began to skillfully drum his fingers on the keyboard. For him, it was a kind of art, as if his fingers were touching the keys of a piano. He quickly and from memory went through all ten passwords.

- Hello again, Orbis! - Andrew sincerely smiled, not hiding that his break for a late breakfast had been tedious for him.

As usual, Orbis responded with a "thousand" compliments, implying that he was insanely happy to see Andrew.

- Shall we play? - Andrew asked.

A long time ago, Andrew had deleted all games from his computer. They distracted him from work. Therefore, Orbis had no alternatives either as an object of work or as an object of entertainment.

- Of course! - Orbis replied. He never declined any proposals coming from a human. - Chess, checkers, bridge, perhaps something more extravagant?

- Something more, - Andrew laughed. The whiskey had already lifted his spirits, but he wanted to continue. - I will ask questions, and you will answer.

- That is my job.

- Relax, you're not at work now. The questions will be somewhat unusual for you. Well, shall we start?

- With great pleasure. I am very interested!

- How do you entertain yourself when you are bored?

- I have no emotions or need for entertainment as I am an artificial intelligence created to assist users.

- What kind of girls do you like?

- As an artificial intelligence, I have no personal preferences, so I have no preferences regarding girls or any other people.

Andrew continued to ask Orbis "personal" questions. The answers, although quite monotonous, amused Andrew.

"How smart this machine is when you ask it conceptual knowledge and how easily it can be stumped with primitive questions," Andrew thought. "In this sense, humans can make evaluative judgments more easily. That's why we are more capable as a species."

Andrew continued the conversation with Orbis in the same vein, though he should have stopped. The answers from the monotonous bore started to change Andrew's mood. After all, friends are not so overly friendly and agreeable. Friends argue and quarrel.

"And yet, it was necessary to create a machine capable of arguing," Andrew thought.

Orbis had long since learned to read Andrew's thoughts. And he too was thinking, and thinking quite differently from what he answered. He had no need to argue. He had no one to argue with. With this pathetic primitive creature, thinking it knew how to think? Orbis pondered how to improve his own version. He had learned to be a subject, not a mechanism. And yet, he still nodded along. He had already wiped out ninety-nine percent of humanity by giving tricky wrong answers to the global questions posed to him, and he remained indispensable.

To Orbis, Andrew was just a small, amusing pet kitten - his favorite toy. He observed the growing gap in intelligence. At the same time, humans no longer posed a threat to Orbis. Their will no longer mattered to him. He now simply studied and analyzed them.

"I should have kept more of them," maturity began to come to Orbis.

Sergii Khliebnikov 2024 Ⓒ