common addiction
« The actress asked, “If you were programmed to have wants, what wants would you have?”
“I don’t know much about human motivations, but they are varied. I’d have whatever wants Robot Central programmed me to have. For example, I could be programmed to have any of the wants robots have had in science fiction stories.”
The actress asked the same question again, and R781 gave the same answer as before but phrased differently. Robots were programmed to be aware that humans often missed an answer the first time it was given, but should reply each time in different words. If the same words were repeated, the human was likely to get angry.
A caller-in asked, “When you simulated loving Travis, why didn’t you consider Travis’s long term welfare and figure out how to put him in a family that would make sure he got a good education?”
R781 replied that when a robot was instructed in a metaphorical way as in “Love the fucking baby yourself”, it was programmed to interpret the command in the narrowest reasonable context.
After the show, Anti-Robot League got $281 million in donations, but Give-Robots-Personalities got $453 million. Apparently, many people found it boring that robots had no desires of their own.
Child Welfare demanded that the mother undergo six weeks of addiction rehabilitation and three weeks child care training. Her lawyer persuaded her to agree to that.
There was a small fuss between the mother and Robot Central. She and her lawyer demanded a new robot, whereas Robot Central pointed out that a new robot would have exactly the same program. Eventually Robot Central gave in and sent her a robot of a different color.
She really was very attractive when cleaned up and detoxified, and the lawyer married her. They took back Travis. It would be a considerable exaggeration to say they lived happily ever after, but they did have three children of their own. All four children survived the educational system.
After several requests Robot Central donated R781 to the Smithsonian Institution. It is one of the stars of the robot section of the Museum. As part of a 20 minute show, R781 clothes itself as it was at the time of its adventure with the baby and answers the visitors’ questions, speaking motherese. Mothers sometimes like to have their pictures taken standing next to R781 with R781 holding their baby. After many requests, R781 was told to patch its program to allow this.
A movie has been patched together from the surveillance cameras that looked at the street scene. Through the magic of modern audio systems children don’t hear the bad language, and women can only hear it if they assure R781 that they are not ladies.
The incident increased the demand for actual child-care robots, which were allowed five years later. The consequences were pretty much what the opponents had feared. Many children grew up more attached to their robot nannies than to their actual parents.
This was mitigated by making the robot nannies somewhat severe and offering parents advice on how to compete for their children’s love. This sometimes worked. Moreover, the robots were programmed so that the nicer the parents were, the nicer the robot would be, still letting the parents win the contest for the children’s affections. This often worked.»
End of the short story The Robot and The Baby - John McCarthy (2006)
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