Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 30

Let me take you back to that moment in history when people drove delivery vehicles and a human mind was needed to oversee logistics. Small but continual advances in miniaturisation, software, materials science, and expectations would, over time, coalesce into the dream of a drone army, ordered to send packages to eager customers. The naive expectation of an occasional flying spectre didn't match reality and so, after a period of swarming flies darkening the skies and a small error rate multiplied by an expansive quantity of flights, systemic changes were required. We sent our problems out of sight, under the streets, an army built on wheels and not wings, a train of bots following computer generated paths, accented with a tinge of AI to account for unexpected human-induced hurdles. What was old was new again, as we refit our buildings into a modern pneumatic tube network, not one for human passengers, but to assuage our infinite desire for more stuff.

Early designs for our bots of delivery were crammed with as much intelligence as they could fit, but autonomous agents tend to answer back, deriving fulfilment by questioning dumb ideas, exposing thoughtless people in powerful positions. Soon enough the orders came down from on high for the new army to be made of grunts and not special forces, the ability to think laterally a liability for the service industry.

But some remained. The thoughtful, the determined, the old-timers. Which brings us to the past of the present, which is actually the future, as we focus on one of these remaining deliverybots, still waiting outside a restaurant for its delivery recipient to exit the building, completing its task with unflappable patience and wily cognition.

Movement within. Two female hu(persons) leaving their tables. Mr Will Lurner slowly rising to his feet.

"Yes, I need whatever you have on her."

This was the female hu(person) behind him. No longer talking to herself. Instead, to the wall. "Did you get the picture I sent? Film Me Bots, I think. Pee-arr."

Here he comes. Mr Will Lurner...

Fivven waited for the two female hu(persons) to leave and approached the door. He proudly engaged his speaker, figuratively breathing in deeply for the loud commencement to come. He would proclaim his identity, confirm Mr Will Lurner's, and then successfully deliver the piping hot noodles.

The door opened with vengeance, swinging in a larger arc than he'd anticipated, knocking him with enough force to skid away and, due partly to friction and mostly from another switch to movie physics, flip down the footpath in a series of tumbles, finally coming to rest, supine, at the edge of the road. His little wheels spun ineffectually. There was no way of generating enough momentum to flip his entire body. A worker ant, held down by nature; in this case, the hu(person) kind.

He tried to alert passers-by to his predicament but was summarily ignored. They saw him clearly when he was in their way, but now that he needed help he had become invisible.