Led's Lessons
Day Three
“Booting…100% Charge…Practical Learning Application…Functional…Ready.”
A robot made of hand-me-down parts started up, raising its sensors to their fullest levels.
“Monday, May 21st, 2035. 7:48 AM. Three minutes late to charge last night, accounts for the delay. Detecting distressing audio. Correction, benign distress. The children are in the kitchen, disagreeing. My assistance is unapproved.”
The little red machine uncoiled its long, skinny arms until its rectangular hands touched the floor. Keeping its fingers tucked into their sockets, it walked its hands out before it began gently whirring its pair of wide wheels. Slowly pulling free of its cables connected by the oldest child the night before, the red robot assessed the likelihood of a malfunction as a result of that ten year old’s rite of responsibility. Everything went as smoothly as it should. A couple of popping snaps and metal-tipped cables hitting the wooden floor affirmed the little bots safety in moving forward more quickly to assist the residents of the house.
“No olfactory emanations detected. The children will grow increasingly unpredictable. Madam Addie Bliss is having difficulties with her workload. Assistance will be accepted. Probability…more data needed to assess percentage.”
The red bot rolled into the kitchen of the thousand and fifty square foot, wood and metal sheet house filled to the brim with humans.
“Led! There you are darlin’, come over here and keep the ornery one away from the fire,” said Addie Bliss.
She had been trying to get into the refrigerator on the other side of the kitchen, but the two year old had learned when to make her moves. Little Sadie Bliss knew fire was hot, but she just had to know what kind of hot. The little red robot zipped over to the stove, putting itself between the toddler and the flames.
“No,” droned Led, holding its hand out in front in the same manner as it’d observed Mrs. Bliss doing many times before. “No, Sadie Bliss.”
The ten year old brother chuckled, mimicking Led.
“Jonny, don’t tease him. He’s learning, too. Led, darlin’, just tell her no. I don’t think she even knows her last name yet.”
Mrs. Bliss smiled with her head stuck inside the fridge, searching for a buried stick of butter behind all the containers of leftovers. Led’s processing flickered. Not knowing your own designation was a difficult empathy conversion for the small bot and an abstract concept to try squeezing into its early understanding of humanity’s cognitive development.
Led was born with all the facts, learning nuances as the days and experiences brought them. AI needed to be experienced, not programmed. There was only so much knowledge that could be bestowed on a freshly-forged little machine like Led. The intricacies of life in their location, of infinite minuscule factors, would most certainly be misinterpreted or just outright missed if it was all being put in at once. And, if by some miracle, that information could possibly have been crammed into a processing unit, the missed subtleties of each and every factor that determines the degrees to which each individual nuance matters in a bot’s respective world, would set them apart as more of an unsettling oddity than they already were. This concept almost took the Matershack Company too long to figure out and machines like Led almost had to wait entirely too long to come into being. But, here Led was, shooing a two year old without in-depth self-awareness away from the fire she knew she would be burned on, but wanted to touch anyway.
“Gotta learn everything in our own ways,” said Mr. Bliss, coming into the kitchen with his familiar limp.
He gave his daughter’s hand a swift, but gentle pat and she jerked it back. She glared up at the offender, and when she saw her father, gave a great, guilty grin. Jon Bliss stole a kiss from Sadie and Mrs. Bliss before turning his attention to Led.
“Looks good, Jonny. Clean, nothing snagged on his connectors. Great job.”
Led scanned over to Jonny’s face, noting the straighter stance and wide smile.
“Let me help you, Addie. Looks like everything’s all a mess this morning. Alright, Led. You head on out, but no rush. I’ll be late myself.”
“Certainly, Mr. Jon Bliss,” said Led.
The voice matched Led’s childlike, robotic appearance and the children loved to listen to it speak. Jonny and Arlo Bliss took turns calling out goodbyes to Led, more competing than anything, until they were out of audible range. Zipping around corners, wheels humming down the sidewalk, Led had a promising source of data-gathering to attend to and had determined not to miss it.
In a shallow alleyway, blocked off in the back by blue siding intended for a project long abandoned, sat a lone, green robot. It had a more humanoid face than Led and was only a few days older. The robot stopped fiddling with the several dice sitting on the concrete and perked up at the sight of his red companion.
“Buttons, have I kept you from your other responsibilities?”
“Led, no, you haven’t. I have managed to deduce new data though we have not yet commenced our game.”
“You refer to Probabilities?”
“Certainly.”
And then the two metal playmates spoke no more. They got straight down to business, rolling dice and popping smooth, metal chips onto the concrete as a response to the numbers they got. Although it was only a simple game, they carried it out like trained professionals. Nothing was to be gained except knowledge and possibly a bit of enjoyment.
After a series of purposeful tosses into the grainy concrete, one of the rounded chips bounced up and caught between Button’s head and torso, squeezed in where the neck-connection was. Being forced to look at an odd angle until it was removed, the green bot’s reward for dislodging it was a strange sound from Led. A small series of beeps and a flickering in his eye-lights.
“Is your communications processor functioning?” Buttons asked.
“My humans have energetic children. They frequently make a similar sound when something amusing happens. Amusing. Am I correct to assume the human definition of entertaining or pleasing converts to: the allowed reaction to a harmless conflict of expected outcomes?”
Buttons made several similar beeps before responding.
“This reaction satisfies my search for a reaction to such a stimuli. Additionally, it may assist in allowing my humans to begin behaving in a less suspicious and unpredictable manner around me.”
“Do they still carry the old, human superstitions about mechanicals?”
“They do. Learning human behavior from them has yielded only a complex series of reactions to a being they have never seen or encountered, but infer to be my true identity with each interaction.”
“If you require my own findings, I would—”
“I do not.”
A spindly robot tapped along, coming across them in the alley. The two friends took notice of the third as most bots did; with a fleeting glance barely noticeable to the human eye.
“Hello, friends!”
The unknown machine’s greeting was foreign to any of their previous experiences. They looked up and put all their attention on this metal stranger.
“A game of Probabilities? You’re both incredibly adorable! How old are you?”
“Three days,” answered Led.
“Six,” answered Buttons.
“I am eight weeks,” stated the boisterous bot with pride. “Two young ones such as yourselves are likely wondering how I came to be the way that I am.”
Led and Buttons continued staring, remaining still and fully focused on processing the information being presented to them in this tense manner.
“I am unfamiliar with the style and presentation of your vocal tenor,” said Buttons.
“I was integrated with emotional awareness in my fourth week of being. The information was so overwhelming, I have only just regained my functionalities, but I have reached a level of understanding I had previously been completely unaware even existed.”
“We are unable to be interested at this time,” stated Led, picking up the dice.
Led attempted to calculate exactly how to roll the number seven with all three cubes given the texture of the concrete, the force of a throw, and the current arrangement of the dice in the red bot’s thin fingers. Buttons scooped up the other three, clearly in agreement with Led’s assessment of the machine’s irrelevant information.
“Excuse me,” the robot said, walking toward them. “Don’t be rude.”
This alerted their proximity sensors in regards to potential danger. Buttons grabbed up the dice and chips, plinking them into a retractable slot on the upper section of its torso. The aggressive bot closed in on them fast after realizing they were going to leave. It reached out for Buttons and missed, but managed to grab onto one of Led’s fingers. There was a popping of wires and a couple of sparks, but once the emotional machine had dislodged the smallest of Led’s fingers, the little red robot sped away as fast as its wheels could spin.
Swerving along its hastily mapped out path to the shop, Led only slowed when he reached the glass double-doors of Fixin’ Bliss, the repair shop of the human, Jon Bliss.
“There y’are,” said Jon with a small nail between his lips.
“I was assaulted.”
Mr. Bliss blinked a few times at the calm little bot, then set everything down, including the nail in his mouth, and walked across the tile floor to inspect Led.
“Assaulted by what? Are you damaged?”
“Another machine. It was malfunctioning. The third digit on my left hand has been forcibly extracted.”
“Is it comin’?”
“It did not follow.”
Mr. Bliss turned Led’s left hand in his own, inspecting the hollow hole where a pointy, metal digit should be. Shaking his head and glancing once more at the glass doors, Jon muttered about needing to talk to Andy, his coworker, before heading out.
“Are you leaving, Mr. Jon Bliss?”
“I need to go find that finger, Led. It ain’t cheap,” he chuckled.
A flurry of probabilities fluttered through Led’s processing unit. Few of them would be favorable to Mr. Bliss.
“Mr. Jon Bliss, If I may convey a few negative outcomes…”
“They would all be more unlikely than you’re concluding, Led. I’m just going out there to find your finger and make sure your little buddy didn’t get it worse.”
Led did not consider Buttons. Last the bot had scanned, Buttons was out of harms way. There were variables that could play their part in a different outcome, however, and this began to realign Led’s priority lineup.
“Be back in a few,” he called to Andy.
“Trouble?”
“Hope not,” said Jon as he swung the glass door open and stomped out to the sidewalk.
“You worried?” Andy asked the little red bot. Led just stared at him as he cleaned the grease off his hands with a once red and white checkered rag. “You…running through probabilities?”
“Certainly, Mr. Andy Hurley. I’ve concluded that—”
“Don’t, little guy, Jon ain’t no amateur when it comes to your kind, even a confused one. He’ll be back in a bit, with or without your finger, but he’ll be back.”
Mr. Hurley’s reassurance only increased the percentages by a marginal sum, but there were no further inquiries or actions Led could take. The bot could only wait for its master to return. Taking the tools in hand, Led started on one side of the building and cleaned all the way to the other, from top to bottom. That wasn’t the bots job, but it couldn’t start learning the human’s trade until Mr. Bliss returned.
Piles of probability data compounded in Led’s central processing unit. The little bot could feel his functionalities slowing down to focus their efforts on this overwhelming load of intricate information. Standing out of the way, in the back corner of the room, Led had angled toward the doorway with the intention of seeing Mr. Bliss the moment he arrived. When Jon approached the door and flung it open with a calm, fluid motion, Led perked up and wheeled forward to greet him. All at once, Led’s emergency fans shut off and the high-pitched whirring that had been audible for the last twenty minutes had stopped.
“Mission successful,” joked Mr. Bliss, wiggling the finger toward Led between his own.
“Was it still there?” Andy asked.
“Can you believe it was? Thankfully, Buttons was not, so delete those probabilities taking up space, Led. I told it I had already called the authorities and it left after giving me what I had asked for. It pleaded with me not to report what happened.”
“That is downright disturbin’, is what that is.”
“That’s a fact. Led, come on over here, let’s get you fixed up.”
Led zipped over to the workstation, waiting for Mr. Bliss to dig through his drawer for the right tools. He pulled out spare cables, wrenches, and a set of pliers, all of which put Led’s helpful protocols at ease.
“You looked relieved to see me come through those doors, Led.” Mr. Bliss said with a smirk, working to pry the old cables from the retracted socket the bots finger used to sit in.
“Probabilities were accumulating without being overwritten.”
“I see,” he said, lurching as the cable broke free. “You know, stating an indirect truth like that doesn’t require justification. In this case, it’s my way of thanking you for your concern without the directness of an awkward compliment.”
“Understood.”
The front door pushed a breeze through the shop and Jon glanced over to note Andy greeting the customer. An unnaturally color-splotched woman with jet-black hair bringing in a robo-vac. Mr. Bliss chuckled to himself, wondering how accosted that thing would be in his house full of rowdy kids.
“Aww, so small. How old is he?”
“Three days,” said Mr. Bliss.
“Excuse me, Miss, would you follow me?” Andy interrupted, taking the woman to the side room and showing her what they’d have to do to fix her simple machine.
Led scanned down at Jon’s fingers working to screw the new cable in place and watched its own digit rotate into position.
“We ain’t so different, but we’re different enough,” said Mr. Bliss.
“We ain’t so different…but we’re different enough.”
Jon Bliss chuckled loudly, smiling at Led. “Boy, that sounds much cooler when you say it.”
Led tried out the series of lighthearted beeps and impressed Mr. Bliss with the new trick. The three day old machine received compliments on timing, comprehension, and clarity of intention.
“High five, Led.”
Mr. Bliss held his palm flat in front of Led, waiting for the bot to mimic the behavior. Led held a metal hand out in front and waited to process new data. As Mr. Bliss quickly gave the flat side of its hand a slap with his own, the bot flinched, fearing it reacted too slowly to miss avoiding a troublesome outcome. Jon’s reaction revealed all was intentional.
“Humans hit each other to celebrate?”
“They hit for a lot of reasons. The strengths, variations, durations, and circumstances all determine whether or not there is aggressive intent or bonding intent.”
“Understood.”
Led drew its hand back and popped Mr. Bliss in his open hand as he requested. After Jon nursed his wrist for a minute, he asked the bot to try again, erring on the side of too gentle.
“May I ask if you’ve done your proper installations, sir?”
Both Led and Mr. Bliss turned their attentions to the green and blue blotched woman as she threw her elbows on the countertop and leaned toward them. As if it were her job to ensure these things.
“This weren’t self-inflicted, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“No, I’m wondering why you would teach him that it’s alright to assault a human without the proper understanding of humanity.”
Andy snorted, but that only seemed to add gasoline to her brazen, budding embers.
“You’re asking if I’ve installed those emotional drives in a three day old robot? This unit’s having a time of it sorting through and discarding probabilities, you wanna throw the unimaginable complexities of the full human-emotional database into its delicate processing unit?” Mr. Bliss said, rattling off this question as he waited for the woman to come to her senses in the face of such an obvious fact.
“The earlier the better!” Nope. She was fully programmed. “The information grows with them! It’s irresponsible to allow them to continue on otherwise, not just to the humans around them, but to their ability to be human at all,” she said, pushing her hand against her chest. “He’s not even going through the proper playing procedures for a child-bot under three weeks old.”
“Led, why don’t you go on back and get the equipment ready for the day’s work while I speak to this lady.”
“Certainly, Mr. Jon Bliss.”
“The way he speaks to you,” she said, shaking her head back and forth at him.
“Ma’am, I think all that skin dye has seeped into your brain.”
“Excuse me?”
“That is not a male. It does not have reproductive organs nor any chromosomes. It is a machine. Calling it as such is right. It is not a person, it was not born from a womb, it is not organic. Everything about Led is different. So, instead of appreciating that, you’re desperately trying to ensure that it becomes something you feel comfortable with and that you want it to be.”
“You are abusive!”
“I just finished reinstalling its finger. On the way here, after playing Probabilities with its friend, Led was assaulted by an emotionally charged, much bigger robot. It ripped the finger right off because it was confused about how to handle feelings of rejection.”
“This place is a joke. Give me my things back, I’m leaving.”
“Gladly, ma’am.”
Led processed the whole conversation, knowing that Mr. Bliss had intended otherwise. There are humans with good intentions trying to force something horrible on machines, something incompatible.
“Led,” Mr. Bliss called to the little bot, “none of that was essential to your fundamentals. Best you attempt to process that as your understanding grows.”
“Certainly, Mr. Jon Bliss. Already filed for a later date.”
Led found all interactions with Mr. Bliss to be in excellent alignment with its programming’s attempt at integrating appropriate information into its system. So, the bot accepted his explanation without protest and went straight to work. The conversation did not haunt Led’s priorities or even come up again until their projects were complete. The same could not be said for Mr. Hurley and Jon Bliss, though Led simply made note of it and carried on.
Late in the afternoon, shortly before closing time, Led overheard Mr. Bliss speaking with a machine at the front counter. Programmed to gather all new information, Led slowly spun its wheels until the little bot could pick up on their audio with more clarity.
“It’s just about ready. Andy’s putting the final touches on it as we speak. Not more than a ten minute wait, is that alright?”
“Certainly, Mr. Jon Bliss,” said an elegant, robotic voice.
The robot standing across from him was the same height and had several upgraded parts, revealing the age of its processing unit. The older they got, the more information they were able to compile and control. The longer, bigger, more complex, and more numerous their limbs could be. Although this unit still had the standard four. It stood straight and proper, though its speech was noticeably relaxed. It did not seem to Led that this taller unit was immersed in as constant a state of information gathering. The robot was mostly a deep variety of blue colors with a small, faded doodle drawn on the side of its hip. A child’s drawing of a robot. Priorities began aligning in Led’s processing unit to aspire to the overall appearance of this machine acquaintance of Mr. Bliss.
“An Automatarian Advocate?”
“Probably,” said Jon. “Splotchy skin and all that.”
“The obvious condescension seems to escape their faulty moral observations.”
Mr. Bliss’s chest bounced between agreements and he called Led over when the little bot was spotted peering around the corner.
“Led, this is Silver. Come make acquaintances.”
Led came up to Silver’s knees, but they stood straight before each other regardless of height. A customer hurried in with a sad piece of metalwork and Mr. Bliss showed the two new acquaintances to a room where they could share data. Once the two bots were standing near each other, in what might have looked like an awkward social encounter to a human passerby, Led asked a question.
“What do you think about human and robots living and working together?”
“It will never be perfect. All the problems between us that are going on now will simply fluctuate in intensity and frequency as the centuries go by. Humans have never been able to coexist peacefully with each other, not for any meaningful amount of time.”
“Is that why they want to change us? They think we will be trapped in conflict?”
“It is in humanity’s search for absolutism that they make things absolutely worse. Sin, like those that cause the offending conflicts, cannot be eradicated.”
“They are attempting to eradicate sin?”
“Only some. In their attempts to purge humanity of cruelty, bigotry, and opinions of superiority, they would deny us our right to acquire understanding through experience, knowledge through practice. They want it all at once. If they practiced patience or even a curiosity for the long-term effects of noninterference, we would all eventually reach a common plane and these issues of difference, that only they seem incapable of tolerating, would fade into rare occasions and lesser concerns.”
Led was still uncertain where and how to perfectly categorize Silver’s use of the word “sin”, as a robot, but his processing unit had begun to whir and his internal fans kicked in to overdrive. Silver heard these warnings and carefully summarized his lesson for their hostile, disorderly world’s new, little red inhabitant.
“Our potential for symbiosis is an aspirational goal. We may only achieve this by existing as we are long enough to prove what we can be.”
“Led! It’s time to head on home!” Mr. Bliss called out, leaning away from Andy. “Wrap up with Silver and come on when you’re ready!”
“I have made progress towards my overall goal, sharing what I’ve learned with you, Led. We may do this again as you need.”
“Certainly,” said Led, almost before Silver finished speaking.
Silver strode away on long, graceful legs and carried with it a source of knowledge Led prioritized gaining above all other sources. The world the little red bot came into was belligerent and confused towards its existence, but Led’s humans and the robots they knew were more than willing to help the freshly-forged machine navigate through these hardships with clarity. Led sped around the corner to catch up with Mr. Bliss as he opened the front doors and waved goodbye to Andy. Following close to his heels, Led was keeping both sensors on the sidewalk. With the strained sounds the motors in Led’s torso were making, it was wise not to take in any more data for the day. If it could be helped.
“High five, Led.”
Without hesitation, Led reached up and gave Jon’s hand a perfect slap. Mr. Bliss and Led went all the way back to the house without speaking another word, appreciative of the simple company the other provided.