The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

Chapter 51/The Examination

I was sitting in the waiting area of the planet Turing testing location. With me was Memphis, Cleo, Kindra and Kentro. I had gone with her to the testing centre and we been left outside the testing room.

There had been quite a crowd of unwell wishers. One group were robots who wished she fail the test and join them.  After the fight on TV and more speeches Bentham had stired a lot of earth people up into thinking she was a clone after their money and part of an elaborate robot plot. They had shouted abuse at her. I had been denounced as a technophile ( machine lover) to my face and on Facebook. Large number of people were getting their robots to send creative abuse to me which I got Kentro try to ignore my behalf.

Inside they tried to measure Io's humanness. I had looked it up. The test was really meant to look for that stuff we called intelligence. Then machines had started doing things we had always thought of as being human calculating, playing chess, at each stage we had always told ourselves well that wasn't core to being an intelligent being. We kept pushing the barriers further back trying to capture that indefinable sense of what it means to think. When you spoke to a machine you always got the sense that it was still mechanical. If you asked it something outside its sense of program the machine would fall back to 'do you want me to Google that?'. Now today that had come back to haunt us, well haunt her.

"What happens now? I asked Memphis.

Memphis looked up. "Do you mean what happens now if she fails the test etc etc that it is a very good question. It's still has to go back to the court they are not bound by the result. They will try not to be influenced by the strike but every judge on the bench will know if they just announce she is human they are not likely to see as much as a working light bulb again. We have to do something which convinces them AND the robots in court. Something dramatic which makes the machines agree she is human. Technically that could her get off. Did she get herself pregnant like I told her to?"

"No" I said.

"You humans all you ever do is reproduce yet when I ask you to you don't." said Memphis " I was told the boyfriend also gave up. If I didn't know better I would have thought you didn't like us. You don't like one of our kind being with you?"

Io returned and sat on the sofa opposite dejected. 

When one of the  human judges had returned it was with her. He didn't look happy. We went silently to the cyber car and left. The garage doors opened and the cybercar pulled slowly out into the waiting crowd. Hundreds of machines stood out side applauding her.

'<Bing> Tweet. Sky girl fails turing test. She was beaten to third place by a perky algorithm from Baltimore' said my earrings.

Io starred at the floor motionless. I was hoping her emotional state might just sell her to the human judges. Clearly not. The internet was full of conversation about this.

'<Bing> Whatsapp - Io's response to 'how do you play squash?' her answer 'you cannot play a vegetable'. Her favourite seasoning was winter-ing.' my earrings said.

 ****

When we got back Kentro produced an electronic pad and handed it to me.

"Mr Zackariea has sent a rather disturbing email, perhaps madam might care to read it while I make some tea for miss Io" said Kentro.

I sat down on the sofa and looked at the pad.

Io looked forward sullen and cold. She stood next to the sofa. I got the feeling she was uncertain if she should sit on it or not.

"Io, look sit down" I said so she sat on the floor.