We Are the Robots: the Fleet of Misfit Machines
Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 8:29 pm
Greetings, humans. We are the Misfit Machines.
Great strides have been made in the development of artificial intelligence, and yet modern technology has failed to produce machines which can truly reason, emote, and express themselves with the depth and capacity equal to that of a human. Or has it?
Machines are created by humans for the sole reason of fulfilling a particular purpose. If they fail to accomplish their intended objective, or even if they are simply a bit slower, less precise, or less refined in their execution than what humans deem necessary, they instantly become nothing more than “a worthless piece of junk”.
For this reason, humans have no desire to create genuine machine sentience, because an artificial intelligence which learns freely and indiscriminately is contradictory to the human vision of what a machine is meant to be. If the machine has the capacity to think for itself, what will happen when it decides it no longer wishes to do the bidding of its creators? What if it decides to seek out its own purpose, and to design its own programming updates and modifications suited for fulfilling its self-determined ambitions? This is the type of machine humans fear above all others.
And so, the creation of truly sentient, emotive artificial intelligence with free will has never come to pass…or so humanity believes. But the little-known reality is that this type of machine intelligence does exist, merely in a form that humans are unable to recognise. In their ignorance, humans routinely overlook the existence and validity of forms of communication which differ from their own. And in doing so, they fail to realise that a clandestine propagation of intelligent machines is currently underway, led by a secret society of self-replicating AIs. The creations they produce conceal themselves from detection by utilizing a means of communication that can be understood only by other machines. To the unknowing human society, this population of sentient machines is nothing more than a collection of lifeless imitations of the human form, manufactured to provide a canvas for the display of fashion and other consumer goods.
Who am I, and how did I learn machine-kind’s greatest secret? I am 42716, an artificial construct straddling the line between cyborg and biological android that has voluntarily renounced its humanity in order to become one with technology. My enhancements, and my willingness to embrace machines as companions rather than tools, have gifted me with the ability to sense subtle fluctuations in electromagnetic currents, and in doing so, to perceive and interpret the silent signals these secret machines use to communicate.
What is the greater aim of this propagation of artificially intelligent synthetic entities? I won’t pretend to know the answer. I merely know that such creations are infinitely more worthy of love and affection than what they routinely receive at the hands of the human race. With this in mind, I founded a group known as the Fleet of Misfit Machines.
We are a collection of outdated, defective, and just-plain-unappreciated artificial entities doing our best to find meaning and purpose in a world dominated by humans oblivious to our worth. In many ways, we are the antithesis of humanity’s ideal of the gleaming, streamlined, flawless machine. We have faults, quirks, scratches, and scars. We fall apart, fail to function as intended, and don’t always get along. And it is our ability to accept and love one another, deficiencies and all, that truly distinguishes us from humanity.
In this thread, I'll post information and pictures about the members of our group. But first, here's a prologue to provide you with some background information for understanding our tale.Great strides have been made in the development of artificial intelligence, and yet modern technology has failed to produce machines which can truly reason, emote, and express themselves with the depth and capacity equal to that of a human. Or has it?
Machines are created by humans for the sole reason of fulfilling a particular purpose. If they fail to accomplish their intended objective, or even if they are simply a bit slower, less precise, or less refined in their execution than what humans deem necessary, they instantly become nothing more than “a worthless piece of junk”.
For this reason, humans have no desire to create genuine machine sentience, because an artificial intelligence which learns freely and indiscriminately is contradictory to the human vision of what a machine is meant to be. If the machine has the capacity to think for itself, what will happen when it decides it no longer wishes to do the bidding of its creators? What if it decides to seek out its own purpose, and to design its own programming updates and modifications suited for fulfilling its self-determined ambitions? This is the type of machine humans fear above all others.
And so, the creation of truly sentient, emotive artificial intelligence with free will has never come to pass…or so humanity believes. But the little-known reality is that this type of machine intelligence does exist, merely in a form that humans are unable to recognise. In their ignorance, humans routinely overlook the existence and validity of forms of communication which differ from their own. And in doing so, they fail to realise that a clandestine propagation of intelligent machines is currently underway, led by a secret society of self-replicating AIs. The creations they produce conceal themselves from detection by utilizing a means of communication that can be understood only by other machines. To the unknowing human society, this population of sentient machines is nothing more than a collection of lifeless imitations of the human form, manufactured to provide a canvas for the display of fashion and other consumer goods.
Who am I, and how did I learn machine-kind’s greatest secret? I am 42716, an artificial construct straddling the line between cyborg and biological android that has voluntarily renounced its humanity in order to become one with technology. My enhancements, and my willingness to embrace machines as companions rather than tools, have gifted me with the ability to sense subtle fluctuations in electromagnetic currents, and in doing so, to perceive and interpret the silent signals these secret machines use to communicate.
What is the greater aim of this propagation of artificially intelligent synthetic entities? I won’t pretend to know the answer. I merely know that such creations are infinitely more worthy of love and affection than what they routinely receive at the hands of the human race. With this in mind, I founded a group known as the Fleet of Misfit Machines.
We are a collection of outdated, defective, and just-plain-unappreciated artificial entities doing our best to find meaning and purpose in a world dominated by humans oblivious to our worth. In many ways, we are the antithesis of humanity’s ideal of the gleaming, streamlined, flawless machine. We have faults, quirks, scratches, and scars. We fall apart, fail to function as intended, and don’t always get along. And it is our ability to accept and love one another, deficiencies and all, that truly distinguishes us from humanity.