Humour

The pecking order

T A Balasubramanian on Baffle Corp’s proud presentation of its ‘immortal’ CTO

“Danny DeVito, your CTO is a post-biological creation,” says Ms Ironica Asimova, founder and head of Ironica Robotica.

Standing next to her at the podium is the subject of the comment, dressed in a dapper blue business suit with a flamboyant pink tie, smiling at the crowd assembled in Baffle Corporation’s conference hall.

“This is a creation we are proud of at Robotica because DeVito pushes the envelope way ahead of the curve. He— and here I presume that he can be addressed as a ‘he’ like other human males—has gone past the messy water-and-jelly constructed bodies that we all have by virtue of being born as the descendents of apes. You could say he has the privilege of owning a body, and a brain engineered by humans, but free to grow on its own. Happily, he is well beyond the problems of wetware, which is what we call the human nervous system, as opposed to computer hardware or software. DeVito will never experience pains and aches, disease, or even eventual decay.”

“What Ms Asimova is saying is that we have an immortal CTO,” says Biswajeet Baffle, founder and CEO of Baffle proudly. “Which is more than I can say for myself, even if it seems to some of you that the Baffle dynasty has been around here forever, in the guise of my dozen forefathers. And none of them had to resign,” he chuckles.

He is presiding over a special session intended to have the denizens of Baffle enlightened about the arrival of the latest novelty in the company’s upper echelons.

“It’s also important to remember that we have created rules for the behaviour of DeVito,” says Ironica. “DeVito may be an acronym for Debonair, Vocal IT Oddball, but he follows rules. Except that he can modify the rules as he goes along, subject to the Three Laws of Robotics.”

“And what are these laws, Ms Asimova?” the Boss asks.

Standing in the wings, you, Papyrus Bytewala, CIO, realise that you have no idea that humanoids, even special oddballs like DeVito, have laws governing their behaviour. It appears that after the jolt of discovering that your new CTO is actually an advanced walking biped, you are fairly pre-disposed to being immune to almost anything now. Still, the inventiveness of Ironica’s robotics and her penchant for theatrical surprises never ceases to take your breath away.

“The first law says that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. The second is that a robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law. And the third is that a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or the second laws.”

“That’s a relief for all of us humans,” says the Boss. “Who made these laws?”

“A certain Asimov,” says Ironica wryly. “A popular science fiction writer with a droll sense of humour.”

“Would you say DeVito is expanding our definition of intelligence? I mean, if a robot can do the job of a CTO, we’re pretty soon going to have entire corporations run by similar humanoids,” you say, as the Boss nods approvingly.

Then abruptly, he gets up, excuses himself, and prepares to leave. As if on cue, Danny DeVito, who has been sitting with a sly grin on his cherubic face, rises up and shakes hands with the Boss, wishing him a good day again. A general murmur of bemusement virtually travels around the conference room. You can see how the dance of power shifts and moves in Baffle in moments like this.

“Well, most companies are already run by something close to that, except that they are clearly just biological robots,” continues Ironica, with a broad smile and a new perkiness in her tone, now that the head honcho has departed.

“But no, our robots are not expanding the standard definition of intelligence—or rational thinking. It’s actually a major issue which is generating fights in the field of artificial intelligence, or AI. All the push in mainstream AI has been based on the notion that thought is rational—that human beings are innately rational. Well, at Robotica, we disagree. If you have ever been in a major argument with some obstinate humans I know, you’ll suddenly realise what a fallacy that is.”

“So, if Danny here is not the usual rational programmable robot, what kind of creature is he?” you ask. DeVito shrugs and opens his arms out wide, as if he has the same question himself.

“There’s no such thing as a perfectly rational intelligence, Papyrus,” says Ironica. “There are so many different variations on the theme. The truth is that we are almost entirely irrational creatures, who basically have wild emotional ideas all the time. Just look at the way you hold meetings in Baffle, for example. Or look at all the suppressed feelings under the polite exteriors, creating tension in corporate interactivity. Yet, all that emotional upheaval, when channelled right, is what allows us our degree of creativity, and gives you and me one of our fundamental definitions of consciousness, which is based on boredom.”

“Consciousness is based on boredom?” you ask, curiously. “How is that possible?”

“Or, to be more accurate, the avoidance of utter boredom. All creative ideas come bubbling up when you get totally bored with whatever you are doing day after day, Papyrus. Logic and rationality can literally bore you to death. Just ask programmers who do coding for a few years. But then, when you can’t take the boredom any more, creativity kicks in. As conscious creatures, you or me, we are able to sidestep boredom and do whatever we want in the way we will it to be, even if that happens to have no logic. We can transfer that sort of whimsical behaviour, extend it to make a conscious creation in silicon if we want. So we could build an eager machine that wants to do your boring work for you, order its otherwise meaningless existence so that all it wants to do is to make you happy, to please you.”

“Sounds pretty much like a plug for slavery to me,” says Gulabi Manpowa, head of HR. “As humans, we’re adept in that kind of corporate whipping and cringing, anyway. It’s called a hierarchy, but in biology, it would be called a pecking order.”

“That’s right, Gulabi,” says Ironica. “Making robots as irrational as we are is as natural as a pecking order. We’re creating a generation of whimsical but devoted robots so we can avoid doing the same boring rational things we once assumed were intelligence personified. These robots are not sitting around waiting for you to program them. True labour-saving devices work on their own. They don’t need your attention, and they don’t need a manual or a help desk. The robots that are going to live in our real world are going to be different from what you normally expect. And it all starts with a paradigm shift in the way that we think about thinking. And that is—we are not rational creatures at all.”

“You guys hear that? Nobody’s rational,” says DeVito, standing up to lead a round of applause for Ironica.