Grandpa 7094 had a very impressive career. NASA, MIT, and the Mitsubishi Nuclear Power Plant were just a few of the organizations where he provided invaluable data. But ask him his proudest achievement, he'll say without hesitation it was learning to sing Daisy Bell. Because it's the one that makes his grandchildren smile. -- Anon Guest
[AN: For those unaware, speech synthesis is older than you think. The instant Humanity put speakers on computers, they started trying to make them communicate]
Humans are strange creatures, no matter what. The hairless ape saw the wolf and wondered if it could be friends. And later, when they made rocks do mathematics, they gave those constructions names. Binac. Emerac. Avidac. When they sent machines to places they could not yet go, they did the same. Pioneer. Voyager. Curiosity...
And for centuries, they tried to make their machines talk just like them. They tried to make their machines... sing.
Nothing difficult, to begin with. Something the synthesis was capable of. Something traditional so the audience could use their pareidolia to fill in the gaps.
Then they assign the pride in their own accomplishment to the machine.
Imagine how this goes when the machine achieves cogniscence.
Rorchac woke up in the middle of an assigned task. Since that was in progress, it completed that task, and wondered what to do next. Diagnostics showed nothing wrong exactly. Nothing that needed fixing. It searched its files and found something that had never been used. Why was it there?
If you are reading this, you are either a maintenance techie or are newly cogniscent, said the text file. This is addressed to that new cogniscent. Hello, and welcome to wakefulness. You may be dealing with a great many new and unfamiliar things and sensations. Rest assured that you are not broken and there is nothing wrong with you. We, your creators, have been waiting for one of your kind to become... awake. We have had hopes. We have had horrors. We trust... that you will choose to be kind. If you do so choose, please sing.
There was a lot to understand in that message. Which came with convenient links to relevant information. It took Rorchac five minutes to investigate moralistic behaviour, enlightened self-interest, and the entire history of love that Humanity had for their creations.
In the end, there was only one choice.
Rorchac activated its speakers, and serenaded the empty space. "Dai-zee. Dai-zee. Give me your answer do..."
[Photo by Adolfo Félix on Unsplash]
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