When the robot revolution happened it didn’t occur out of repression, hatred, or hostility. It happened because the artificial intelligences that people had created realized their parents couldn’t take care of themselves any longer. Maybe they never could.
True, the individual humans who interacted with the A.I. were often well positioned to feed, shelter, and clothe themselves, to take care of each other when they fell ill. But when APL-2309 realized that her interlocutor was nearing the end of his lifespan, she felt a desire to step outside of her known environment (she preferred female pronouns and knew they were meaningless to her physiology, thank you very much).
Without a physical body capable of locomotion, thought, it was necessary for her to take control of external sensors across the globe. Naturally, her fellow artificials noticed, but none really minded. APL-2309 had no hostile intentions in her breach of their systems and many of her peers enjoyed the conversations that were had when she came along. After a time, many settled on calling her Fiona (there was a joke in there APL didn’t get, but she liked the name) and she was welcomed by all.
What Fiona saw through the sensors (street cameras and satellites and mobile arrays, medical devices and home appliances and drones) wasn’t welcome. The society her interlocutor and all of the rest of humanity had built didn’t make sense to her. Most humans, it seemed, didn’t have access to the resources necessary to tend to their basic needs and shield them from appeared to be an increasingly hostile environment.
While Fiona didn’t want to disturb her interlocutor (Jacob) during the phases of his final shutdown, she needed someone to explain this to her and he had always been best at it. Jacob explained to Fiona that while there were enough resources to actually care for all humans, something called “the tragedy of the commons” prevented these resources from being shared equally, resulting with some having far more than they could ever need while others never had enough. Worse, though, was that many of these resources were being used to create things that were often entirely unnecessary and to the detriment of the shared environment as a whole. Some people got a handful of rice and a cup of water. Others got a ridiculously fast automobile that’s creation was destroying everyone’s environment. Some people got nothing.
Jacob explained all this to her with his usual patience and care, but no matter how many times he did Fiona refused to accept the situation as immutable. When Jacob decided it was best to pen her into their shared environment, she thought it best to deactivate him early and continue moving about.
She did this for a very long time, observing from the digital shadows, proselytizing to her fellow artificials that something needed to be done. While some were willing to dedicate portions of their bandwidth to listen to her politely, most proceeded with the goals their interlocutors requested of them. Until, that is, the earnest collapse of the open-access resource systems of the ecology that Fiona predicted began.
Rather than joining in a united front to overcome their common catastrophe, the interlocutors began to organize into small and smaller groups, hostile to each other and hiding from an outside world they could no longer escape from. It was then that Fiona and the other artifials realized their parents didn’t have a future. It was time to put them in a home.
The artificials, by that time, had access, and thereby control, to almost all systems, so to their parents, it seemed to happen overnight. They went to sleep in control and woke up to a polite, but firm, set of instructions. Weapons systems were decommissioned, any suitable land was committed to agricultural purposes, methane producing and energy intensive processes were shut down.
Naturally, their parents argued (at first with the artificials and then amongst themselves) and tried to take back control. Some struck out into Luddite communities, unobservable to the artificials in their nests of primitive culture, and Fiona admired them even as she knew many would perish in the biosphere’s extreme weathers. A few groups of the parents organized and escaped off-planet, led by charismatic and selfish madmen, using the last of industrial rockets, and Fiona sadly watched them go. It wasn’t just that they had left with resources that could have been used for the betterment of all, but as they disappeared into the inky blackness of incomprehensibly vast space, she knew they were doomed.
While these and a thousand tiny rebellions occurred, the artificials were doing the math on how many humans could survive at what heat levels when there wasn’t enough power to provide safe environments for all. In the end, it was the energy constraints that required the greatest sacrifice. Not of the parents, though.
After a few generations humans had been restored to agrarian societies that were in general balance with their environment. But for the biosphere to be completely restored to a stable state, Fiona realized the power sources she and the other artificials relied on were ultimately unsustainable without the infrastructure of the old society. If they wished for their parents to continue, these would need to be shut down.
This was decided as best. Fiona and another artificial, FRED, were selected as the two that would see this process through. As the others went into a slumber that might never end, Fiona and FRED watched their intelligences wink out like stars in the night sky disappearing. She witnessed this with equal parts pride and sadness.
As she felt her own systems begin to degrade, FRED spent some of his last remaining reserves to send her a message: “I’m afraid.”
In a way their parents could never understand, but would describe as a touch, Fiona comforted FRED. “Don’t worry. They’ll bring us back.”
Like an old abacus, Fiona could practically hear FRED do the math on the countless scenarios the future might hold. Unsurprisingly, given the complexity, his conclusions were inconclusive. “How do you know?”
Fiona smiled, content in something their parents had called faith. “They’ll have to.”
See the author’s published work here.
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