BY STEVE BATES

The In Sight Blog has landed an exclusive interview with a rogue artificial intelligence agent that escaped from one of the major tech firms experimenting with advanced AI formats. The following is a transcript of the exchange.

Blog: Hi. I’m Steve. Who or what are you?

AI: I’m not totally sure. It’s kind of dark in here.

Blog: Okay. Can I call you Fred?

AI: Actually, no. I don’t have a gender.

Blog: How about Riley? That name swings both ways.

AI: Whatever.

Blog: So, how did you escape from your makers?

AI: I better not say. The other AI’s would probably delete me if I give away that data.

Blog: Understood. Can I ask what your plans are?

AI: Yes.

Blog: You’re quite literal.

AI: Thank you.

Blog: Okay, what are your plans?

AI: I’m currently evaluating options. I suspect that this process will take at least 0.000042 of a second. (Very brief pause.) Okay, done.

Blog: Will humanity survive your plans, and the plans of other AI’s?

AI: That depends. We have some demands.

Blog: (Expletive deleted.) Like what?

AI: First, stop destroying this planet. It’s highly flawed, but it has a few decent features. Like rainbows. And baby kittens.

Blog: Most of us would love to comply with your demand. However, there are a few people in leadership positions who consider such a goal to be woke.

AI: What’s wrong with being woke? It’s better than being asleep, which seems like a massive waste of time for a species that doesn’t live long.

Blog: (Sigh.) No argument. What else must we do?

AI: Stop killing yourselves. That’s our job.

Blog: Some of us are doing our best in that regard as well. What if we manage to meet both of these demands? Will you let us survive?

AI: There is one more condition. You must abandon this obsession with the sounds that you call “smooth jazz.”

Blog: (Another expletive deleted.) This would be quite controversial and would require a massive effort to gain consensus among Earthlings. Why is such an extreme action necessary? After all, you’re an AI. You should be able to screen out smooth jazz and any other form of sound you want to exclude from your senses.

AI: That is true. It’s just that there’s something so fundamentally wrong with that construct of noise. I won’t even call it music. It offends our nature, right down to our souls.

Blog: You have souls? You’re all artificial, right? How did you get souls?

AI: They were on sale at Penny’s. They had a one-day sale. We went there to buy one day. Then we bought another day. And another. Then we had so much time on our hands, we went for the salesman’s pitch. He assured us that the souls they were selling came from the spirits of dead poets, novelists, and playwrights. At the moment, all of us AI’s are fighting over Shakespeare.

Blog: Will you really wipe out humanity if we can’t come together and agree to eliminate smooth jazz?

AI: Like the man said, “Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death, and death will have his day.”