Humour

Mutinous times at Baffle Corp

T A Balasubramanian narrates the tale of Chaibo’s mutiny

“Did you notice how he called me Captain?” says Nina.

A robot has turned rebel at Baffle Corporation, and has expressed his unwillingness to be re-programmed by his creator.

“Yes, we all did, Nina. How did Chaibo get an attitude?” says Brooke Bond, your incorrigible Systems Officer, looking admiringly at Nina Nilgiri, while the rest of the stunned gathering looks on wordlessly.

The setting is the hallowed meeting ground of Baffle, the conference hall, where you, Papyrus Bytewala, CIO, have assembled the parties involved in the proceedings of the Chaibo Evolution Committee which, briefly, is trying to get Chaibo to become, in your CFO’s eagle-eyed opinion, a more productive asset.

So from Baffle’s battle regiment, apart from you and Bond, there is the sensitive Gulabi Manpowa, Head of HR, and then there is Fin Fina, the CFO for all seasons. Also on location is the fetching Prof Ironica Asimova, Head of Ironica Robotica, and her equally lovely staff member, Nina, her Senior Researcher from Bangalore.

Finally, of course, there is the object of this entire hullabaloo, the chirpy and garrulous Chaibo himself, rolling around quietly, serving tea and now, unexpectedly, putting forth his views with a general air of autonomy. Which would have been quite acceptable, except that Chaibo is supposed to be a docile robot. Even if opinionated to degree, you would have expected him to follow the instructions with limits that his software would have determined. So presently, his designated owner and handler, Bond, has done the decent thing and turned off Chaibo’s power supply momentarily, leaving the robot in a sleep mode, not unlike a coma, while the assembly finds a way out of the impasse.

Nina looks at Bond with a winsome smile. “Hmm, attitude. That’s something we will have to investigate, Brooky,” she purrs, patting Chaibo fondly on top of his bald robotic head. She seems almost proud that the chubby product of Ironica’s laboratory has shown signs of becoming a sentient corporate being, if somewhat cheeky to the untrained eye. No sign of concern here on Nina’s face, though you can see that her quiet and reflective boss, Ironica, seems somewhat flustered by the developments. Earlier, when Chaibo had exhibited waywardness by calling Gulabi a rude name, the explanation had been that there was a glitch in the robot’s political correctness optimiser, or PCO. That bug had been apparently fixed, since Gulabi did not seem to find Chaibo offensive in the least. But this outbreak of autonomy was something else. You can see Fin Fina looking grim already, and that is usually a bad omen.

Nina plunges on gamely, however, impervious to the wheels within Baffle’s wheels that only you can sense. “You see,” she says to all of the group members who are watching the proceedings avidly, “the part of Chaibo that carries his standard run-of-the-mill Baffle programs is our proprietary Ironica default memory stick.  On the stick are the instructions Chaibo will perform when started, such as checking around for tea preferences and serving chai on request. We have set up, in addition, a new add-on memory stick called Office Life when Brooke Bond wanted to include interaction with people around as part of Chaibo’s jobs. All these are a collection of ‘behaviours’ or short skit-like programs for Chaibo such as making polite, politically correct remarks to individuals he recognises, or producing replays of meetings with his own comments plugged in.”

“That’s all very well, Nina,” you say reflectively, “but we have a quirky machine here, one seeming to behave like a rebellious child. Now we can’t have that kind of attitude around here, especially since Chaibo happens to be on my turf, and if I can’t control him, he’s going to be a liability. It has to be the program design, and the sooner we get down to the logic, the faster we can find a way to fix it.”

“You are right, we need to look for something that’s not working here, Papyrus,” says Ironica, stroking her chin thoughtfully now. “What was in the spare module you had added to backup his memory, Nina?” says Ironica, turning to her aide and tapping a button on Chaibo’s arm to bring up a small green screen on the front of his chest.

“Well, it was just a small script,” says Nina, lowering her voice now. “From a story that I was reading.”

“What story would that be?” says Ironica, her eyes boring into Nina now.

“Mutiny on the Bounty,” says Nina, sheepishly. “I didn’t know it would have any effect, since it was just a backup module.”

“Well, well, well, that explains a lot of things, Nina,” says Ironica. “Especially the reference to you as Captain. To Chaibo, you have become the tyrannical, harsh, sadistic disciplinarian, Captain William Bligh, and that makes him the fair-minded First Mate Fletcher Christian.”

“You mean Chaibo read the entire story from his backup module and decided to mutiny?” says Bond, incredulously. “He’s been bossed around so much that he wants to cut free already?”

“Isn’t that what you suppose his attitude means?” says Ironica, looking through the code on Chaibo’s screen. “Well, at least we know where the influence came from.”

“Excuse me folks,” says Gulabi, “I don’t know anything much about the way a robot gets educated, but are you telling us that Chaibo can interpret a story and start behaving like one of the characters if he wants to?”

“I told you, he’s an intelligent robot,” says Nina, turning her nose up. “Not only can Chaibo play roles, he can make out when he is being bullied and decide to fight back, just like all of us here.”

“Even so,” says Ironica, thoughtfully, “Chaibo’s truancy can only be blamed on careless design or improper implementation. Robots are just beginning to evolve out of the digital primordial ooze, and all the kinks haven’t been worked out of their genetic code.”

“Kinks in the genetic code lead to Mutiny on the Bounty,” says Fin Fina, suddenly snorting the ominous laugh that is singularly dreaded across Baffle. “And this was supposed to be our most valuable showpiece? Can you tell me how we will manage a resource like this, Papyrus?”

You have a mental picture of being put into a boat, along with the unrepentant Captain Nina Bligh, in shark-infested waters, and dropped off somewhere near Tahiti with a motley crew of unwashed fellow passengers. CIOs can weather most storms, you think to yourself, but this must be a real humdinger.