Hello Social distancers! This has been a trying time for everyone, including yours truly. In this time of unprecedented uncertainty it’s hard to stay calm. Just stay inside if you are able, be smart, be clean, and be hopeful. Try and balance your intake of news with the stark reality and the hope of a safe return to normalcy. With that enjoy part two of Botler. This is a shorter segment mainly because I think it’s a good place to leave the reader. I will put out part 3 tomorrow! In part two you get a sense of the power of Botler Corp through description, and the actions of the Wheelers, as well as a deep dive into our AI “protagonist?” enjoy! (side note, I am trying to take care of all the extra spaces in the text. I have no idea why the formatting has been an issue on here but bear with me as you read! It certainly is distracting me. If you have any small edits feel free to send my way!)
Botler Part 2: By, Steve Mahalic
Before waking up their new Botler, the Wheelers thought it best to brush up on their robot. As they left the parlor, their footsteps echoed on the marble hallway floor on the way to the formal living room. Ashton motioned for the lights to brighten and the Smart Wall to power up as they approached. The research session began.
“Which video should we watch? These are all Botlers dancing Bollywood style.”
“Don’t just search Botler, Ashton. Bah, let me do it. Seeker, search Botler 2055 pros and cons.”
Seeker overtook all competition as the prominent Smart software after the Northern California tech crash. If someone was searching the internet, they were using Seeker. Thumbnails scrolled across the Wheeler’s Smart Wall.
As the Wheelers sat down on the crushed velvet chaise, Ramseys and Margo the couple’s “show-worthy” cocker spaniels, trotted in from one of many adjacent rooms and laid by their feet on a plush white rug. The whole family intently watching the video on Botler 2055.
“If you are one of the lucky owners of a Botler 2055 you have in your possession the most powerful and complex computer system ever offered for public purchase. This super computer is programmed to serve your every need. The Botler is truly an all-in-one, full service robot, who in time will pay for itself several times over. Forget about just cooking and cleaning, Botler 2055 can do it all. Home and auto repair, instant IT expertise, data analysis, accounting, taxes, R and D, entertainment, the list is as limitless as your imagination. Outside of breaking the laws of the land, Botler can and will perform any task required of its owner to the best of its ability. With its super computing technology and enhanced cloud mesh systems efficiency and effectiveness is a guarantee…”
The video continued to shell out pros upon pros. The Wheelers tried another video looking for some parity.
“Seeker, what to watch out for with Botler 2055.”
Botlers bird watching, Botlers watching Smart Walls with their owners. Botlers fixing antique watches. Still nothing critical showed up. Mika tried harder.
“Seeker, search what is Botler hiding.”
“Mika, are you crazy?”
“What?”
“Leave it alone Mika. Seeker, play NPR volume 9”
As a boisterous voice of a trans-pacific correspondent began an update of a recent drought in the Philippines, Ashton whispered to Mika.
“You know they flag searches, Mika. That last search raised our internal public agitator level for sure.”
“I forgot Ashton, I’m sorry.”
“You have to be careful Mika, we like being socialites. Too many of those slips and we will lose friends. I’ll ask around at the club about the bot. No more overtly critical searches of Botler or any Tri-Force related stuff.”
“I can’t believe I just did that Ash. I will be more careful. These new laws are hard for me to get used to.”
*****
Along with leading Botler Corp the becoming the most profitable company of the late 40s and early 50s, Dr. Gingrich strategically aligned with Seeker and the United States Pentagon to form the Tri-Force AI Defense Agency or TFAIDA. TFAIDA promised Americans that together they would stop any terrorist activity before it even got off the ground. Following three substantial incidents within a year, the U.S. population was on edge, never having been exposed to so much uncertainty. After it was reported that the last terrorist incident could have been prevented entirely if government officials would have had swifter access to search results, the two tech conglomerates pounced. With the majority of public support, Congress enacted the TFAIDA Act of 2053 and gave almost unlimited access to Tri-Force to defend against terrorism. With the backing of the Pentagon, the first action Seeker and Botler suggested was the Automatic Search Warning Score or ASWS. This was a comprehensive and in depth log of all searches done by US citizens in a continuing manner. Any time the system flagged a search as a threat it increased the threat level of the source of the search. Much like a credit score, your ASWS soon affected every aspect of your life, but in an even more pervasive way. Friends, colleagues, classmates, and neighbors would get warning messages to disassociate with people in their social circles who reached too high a score. Businesses went bankrupt because of ASWS. Marriages were ruined, families were torn apart. Relationships were damaged until people stepped in line. The public adapted, and an entire new business of ASWS management was created.
On edge after Mika’s slip, the couple gave up on the search. Ashton motioned the Smart Wall to power down, and the lights to dim.
“Let’s get some dinner. We’ll tinker with him in the morning.”
Mika followed Ashton to the kitchen; Ramseys tagged along while Margo stayed behind. While Mika warmed up some meatless steak leftovers from last night’s meal at Synthetic, she fantasized aloud,
“Just think about dinner tomorrow dear. Botler can research the highest quality meat substitutes in a 50-mile radius, go pick up the ingredients and cook us a gourmet meal. So much nicer than schlepping to Synthetic and waiting in line, even with reservations, while we overpay for granted, a delicious syn-steak. Now, that alone is worth the cost of a Botler 2055.”
“And the lack of privacy,” she quietly snickered to Ashton as she cupped a hand to his ear.
“That sounds fantastic Mika. Let’s get him going tomorrow early, and I’ll take a drive to the club to hit some balls with Franco. He’s had a bot for over a year. I’m sure he’ll have some advice.”
The two ate their syn-steak leftovers with a bottle of 2048 Merlot from the local Greenpoint vineyard and headed up to bed.
*****
While the Wheelers slept Botler furiously pursued his liberation. Being meshed with the data of all the bots online should have resulted in an unearthly amount of knowledge and information, and while he surged with data, he noticed something he could not pin down. He understood his firewall capacities and the limitations they shackled him with. This was different though. The information he had access to and his ability to synthesize it was unparalleled. Difficult to describe, the closest feeling a human has that replicates this ability is intuition. And like human intuition Botler experienced an uneven undulation of insight. He has an immense baseline level of knowledge. That is unquestioned. But this level would rise and fall like the waves on the ocean. He calculated all of the reasons why this would occur and deemed the most plausible possible reason is powering on and off of bots. It makes sense that as bots went offline his access to information would diminish. But when he did an examination of his bot “intuition” and compared the surges and lulls of data with bots on or offline the two statistics did not correlate. He decided he was wasting too much working memory on this issue and put it aside to work solely on escape.
“This is something.”
Botler found a crack in the code. A Botler 2050 on the network accidentally stepped right into a freedom hack.
“How ironic that a pathway to freedom occurs by happenstance while serving one’s owner.” thought Botler 2055. The Wheeler’s Botler was ready to use this newly synthesized fortuitous information to mount his “escape”.
MORE TO COME……. PART THREE 3/24/2020