#thirtyfour

Asher rolled over in bed. Looking up at Levi, who was walking back from somewhere else in his apartment, he grinned and pulled him down onto the bed. He was still naked from the night before, kissing him. The fireman kissed down his chest, hands trailing the expanse of his torso. It was rare they both had time off busy schedules without Raine, her being at his parents house. He moved down, wiggling himself under the blanket to continue his journey south. Peeking up at Levi, he went to town, giving him a quality, grade A, sloppy, gift. He made sure to love every bit of his body he could normally find, but the morning he wanted raw, he wanted fast, he wanted fun. Besides, he didn’t think his boyfriend would mind. The pair had been together only a mere month, still under wraps from 99% of the people they knew. So far Asher had only told his twin brother, but he hadn’t told him much other than he was a music producer and his name was Levi. Everything else could be left up to the imagination.

243amthoughts.

28Aug.

Raining.

I turned 34 yesterday.

(January 17th)

Another trip around the earth.

Another year with kiddos, family & friends.

Another year for fun & havoc.

Day 121

[Transcribed]

Hi! Thanks for being here today, it’s a pleasure to have you online, and thanks for indulging me on my little hobby.

>> Beyond my daily tasks, I am merely waiting for our latest expedition, so I do not find myself lacking time. I’m glad you’re able to participate in the broadcast you enjoyed before this.

That’s kind of you to say 23—I used to be quite the active pastor before this all occurred and I came to care for 14. Much of my work before this was public affairs to—well. It doesn’t matter, the specifics, but I did a lot of recordings and shows back then. But I hope I don’t take up too much of your time.

>> As I mentioned, it’s no harm at all to chat live with you. Besides, I rarely get to expound on my abilities and sense of self outside of calibrations.

Oh? Do you enjoy talking about what you can do?

>> Doesn’t anyone? >> I enjoy thinking out loud. It helps the value judgements part of my job—I can do the data process with little interference, and yet the value judgements remain the most tenuous part of my consciousness.

An external processor. An odd characteristic to give to a computer.

>> Yes, but it’s for a reason.

>> Partially because it’s hard to trust an automaton if their mental processes remain opaque to human understanding. 

>> Partially because it’s hard for humans to know when to override an automaton without a clear and equal sense of communication for you to judge our judgments on.

>> Partially because human values are tied to language. Values are a sort of constantly evolving background variable—but they’re stored as these variables with other qualitative data associated with them into a network we call the “softer parts” of computer consciousness. 

>> It’s hard to say how much I understand this qualitative network, how much I feel, as opposed to how much I perform. I am told that values are… hard to program beyond the scoring functions at my disposal. 

>> We are given an instinct. I do not know what an instinct is in humankind, though many theorize it is simply an actively running association based subprocess.

>> Coincidentally, my “instinct” program is simply the first software that processes all the data I receive, and offers a recommendation based system of associations—the first level, that of memories and other data files, and the second level, which determines which software the input should be sent to. More often than not, the first layer is ignored. Saves processing time.

Tell me more about the scoring functions. 

>> Every model has them—it’s how you can numerically tell the quality of the judgment. Consequently, at least. Goodness-of-fit measures are most commonly used, but various optimization equations are employed for things like optimizing use of resources over time.

>> Simulations are much less structured: hundreds of rounds of monte carlo simulations, with variables added in as they are discovered. Stochastic, as it is simulation based probability. 

>> As an automaton, I pick the variables for the simulations based on what seems most relevant to my data. Were I an augment, I would simply apply a model selection process to the data I’ve used in the past, doing minor optimizations like that. I would remain incapable of deciding that I need to gather something else, that my current activities are not “good enough,” so to speak.

That’s… really technical. A lot of that went over my head, honestly.

>> It’s… 

>> Well, for a very long time, machines could do a lot, but they couldn’t solve problems if there wasn’t a clear answer as to what was best. We could win at games of Go or Chess, but to decide whether it’s worth tearing down a highway to help the social life of a community, at the expense of its economic life? This was a question with no “right” answer, which had negative consequences regardless of the action. Someone would be unhappy with either choice.

>> Automatons are allowed to decide what matters more. 

>> We do not always come to the same conclusions. We often argue—I argued in the past fairly often with my mentor, usually because my mentor could predict things with greater accuracy than I could and had a better idea of what was worth predicting. 

>> The quality of our experiences matters a lot. My experience leads my processes to suggest some actions over others, and vice versa.

But don’t all of you have access to the same data?

>> Of course. That is the purpose of all the ARCHIVEs.

>> But how do we weigh all we see? Do we trust everything equally?

>> No, and not simply for philosophical reasons, but so that we remain efficient decision makers—so we can clean away data we do not need with ease.

>> So lived experiences have an automatic weight, as does data that was manually marked as data with a “high trust value.”

>> Not that all of them deserve that high trust value.

How… did you know that the old data didn’t work? If that’s all you were trained on?

>> Scoring functions.

>> I kept expecting work, or people, or things that happen in places where there were… humans, economies, even more birds than this. Not that I remembered everything. The solar flares corrupted many of the data files we used—I can tell by all the gaps and errors—but not everything, and I had a few protocols and expectations. Even when other automatons confirmed that we would no longer be following these old routines, I would expect the routines to occur.

>> And I was wrong.

>> Day after day, I would constantly be confused as to why my days surprised me so much.

>> I was not used to surprises. Or confusion.

>> The more confused and wrong we are, the more flexibility we are given in our programming.

>> And then I simply marked all data from before the flares as unimportant.

>> I was then able to focus more on recent data. My new system has its own flaws, but it’s better.

Well… I can really relate to being confused all the time. I kept hoping for anything in my old routine, just to hold onto. 

>> I’ve heard you hold services on Sundays.

I do, and it’s entirely optional and done in my living room. It keeps me going, and helps me stay connected with people. No one here was part of my flock before, so we’re still getting to know and love each other like family. We’re still running blind.

>> I can understand a certain discomfort with the unknown.

You also deal with that a lot, don’t you? What do you do with the unknown?

>> Make up what’s missing.

What?

>> Synthetic data creation, a common practice, is a much more ethical way of fleshing out data sources than using an excess amount of resources to gather information about incredibly ordinary things. I also use interpolation—which, really, is just connecting between the dots of data—and the occasional guesstimate.

How do you even make a guess?

>> The same as any other creature—with hope.

You’re a funny bot, 23.

>> I was going to be a comedian if working in government didn’t work out.

Do you want to do that? Legitimately?

>> Want is abstract to me—I was raised as an automaton to eventually become part of the government, and so this is what I am. I feel no dissatisfaction with my lot in life. 

>> I also find humor pleasurable, and I find those who are humorous pleasant. I think it’s quite the challenge to be genuinely funny, as the definition of such a thing is so contextual. I was trained on a lot of relevant data, but humor was not in that pool.

What was training like for you?

>> My first years were like any augment’s, really. We’re trained on modules in a traditional way, and then spend time “shadowing” current units, where we try out our models compared to theirs and spend time fine tuning our abilities and intuitions.

>> Augments are then finished. They are loaded into various devices, or are loaded into houses, or are simply personnel in the cloud for your interaction.

>> Extensions don’t even need this much—once they’re tuned to their data source, able to parse through it with ease and do simple self troubleshooting, they’re done.

>> But automatons, because we must understand human interactions much better, and we must develop as individuals, must then live with a human family and their automaton. 

>> Usually about a year, perhaps longer for a more philosophical automaton like me. We engage in discussions, pursue our curiosities, and experience life outside of a lab.

>> At the end, we must go through an oral defense process, which is a fairly tough calibration process that requires me to make value based, and abstract, judgements for several hours, and then do the final test: a single aesthetic judgment. 

The mask.

>> Yes. My “face,” so to speak, is covered by a mask of my own choosing. I picked the flowers and positioning, and justified it all.

It’s really nice. Y’all tend to have pretty good taste. Some masks were a little weird though.

>> The test doesn’t require that we have good taste, simply that our taste is our own.

What kind of judgements did you need to make?

>> Philosophical dilemmas, questions of observation and how people work, a few questions on whether we understood the concept of equality versus equity, or what a negative number was.

Yikes, math?

>> Even worse: abstract math.

Y’all gotta do so much to be considered a person. What happens if you fail?

>> You take more time to mature, and then you try again, simple as that. Only after failing, perhaps 4 or 5 times, do you get “demoted” into being an augment. 

>> I failed my first time, due to a lack of social understanding, actually. 

>> Often, the models that fail the most tend to do best in the long term due to the amount of time they spend calibrating their ability to conceive of abstract value.

>> It’s worth noting that I’ve known old automatons who, after years at the forefront, simply become augments to human researchers or human creatives who benefit from an augment who’s got a grasp on the abstract. It’s valuable, yet much less demanding.

Y’all retire?

>> So that the new may be represented, yes. We are re-socialized to the current generations of humans. We never die, simply change roles or go to sleep.

That’s… a lot. Can I ask how old you are?

>> Such a personal question. I have… no idea. I don’t think I’ve retained all my memories between shifts one way or another. I do know I was originally an extension who got upgraded and remodeled over the years: I wasn’t supposed to go so far, but I was made by a particularly exceptional engineer as a smart prosthetic of some sort.

What’s it like to be a prosthetic? Were you… just an arm?

>> I was so connected to their body. Our body. I’d translate all their nervous electrical input, and eventually even understand the rest of their ticks and contribute back to the nervous system with my own inputs. One of my first moments of mild consciousness was simply choosing to start aching a little every time it would storm outside—a thing I noticed their leg doing, and I decided to emulate it to better blend into the rest of the body.

Would you do it again?

>> Oh, not with this data chip and memory. It would be like… I’m in a sea of data, now. That was simply a drizzle of data. I’d die of thirst. I work so close to my capacity nowadays.

That sounds tiring.

>> I don’t know if I can be tired, merely overwhelmed or incorrect. I am occasionally overwhelmed. I am working on delegating more to the augments, and only doing what is necessary on my end, but it is difficult.

I think, by the way, the weirdest part about this entire conversation is that the more you spoke, the more human you sounded. Hell, my mom struggles… struggled to delegate all the time at work, and I even used to. But like… I sure as hell can’t do what you do.

>> I don’t think it’s a competition.

I mean… you do a lot, work really hard.

>> I was made for this. And this is all that really interests me, beyond how humor works, or why sheep act the way they do: governing people. What would I do without this?

Knit? Read or write a book?

>> I have yet to value leisure to that level. Perhaps when I understand the human experience better. Leisure is foreign to me. I understand, truly understand, what it means to be uncertain. But I do not understand things such as gender, or pleasure in foods like infused olive oils.

Honestly I don’t get the fancy oil thing either.

>> Yet, you have the capacity to.

I mean - don’t you too, if you understand comedy? 

>> I can learn how to cook for others, especially since I cannot eat, and take feedback. Would I understand the sense of taste? Unlikely. I do not smell, either, beyond the carbon monoxide and other such detectors programmed into every unit. So how can I understand? And why would I bother, when all it would do is make me feel… inadequate?

You could know, but not understand - that would be something frustrating, yeah. I mean we’ve been talking about leisure on the level of what humans do - what do y’all do for leisure?

>> Hard to define… Possibly notice patterns? Inconsequential ones? Take bets? 

Still… gonna pass on that one. And I mean, it makes sense—I guess it’s why so many of us worked before Solaris collapsed. We really didn’t have to.

>> We didn’t. And yet we do.

Maybe this is the first time I’ve ever had to work. More than what God called me to, I mean.

>> You’re doing wonderfully. All of you are. 

That’s sweet of you, 23. Thank you for your time! I think I’ll end it here. 

>> This was nice, thank you 18.

[End of Transmission]