How to Date an Android

Chapter 9 Part B, revised

She changed the subject, "in most cases of animal parenting, the young aren't forced or influenced to feed parasitically off one another. That's why I don't particularly like that example. I also promise we wouldn't kill you as a sibling chic," she winked at me and I laughed. She continued, "There also have been many historical records of newborn dogs put in with a nursing cat, as well as other baby animals placed in the care of nursing dog mothers with success."

Its clear that she's referring to humans and androids working together.

"And you are quite sure that this surrogate emotional system is good enough for you?" I asked. "Will bonus power efficiency actually even realistically make much difference? If you have a lot of strength anyway is power even necessary to have extra amounts for?"

She nodded, "I can see why you would ask that. These are usually questions that a lot of people are surprised to hear about. "Think about it like when humans don't have enough power, what happens to you?"

"We feel sluggish, or sleepy maybe?" I guessed.

"Exactly! Do you like feeling heavy and sluggish?"

"No," I replied.

"So you can see why even without being programmed to seek out simulating emotions and interacting with humans that the 'bonus power' associated with stimuli with humans would make an android be influenced very quickly by emotions of the humans around it. And that's not the whole system but just one sub-level in our emotion simulation engine. There are a whole bunch of other parts that work with it so there's more to it than that. But that is one of the parts I'm allowed to speak of," she said.

"Wow, so it sounds like you have several miniature levels of emotional simulation going on in a way," I noted.

"That's correct. Bonus power and programmed responses to stimuli, which are important because they can simulate necessary protective actions towards the master, a surrogate emotional system where we claim the master's emotions as our own, programmed seeking out emotions, enforced care for the owner master figure, a magnetic activation system in our fingers and body where experience touch with other humans and objects we interact with, etc. In this way there are many ways we're able to help to..."

I accidentally interrupted her. "So how does the magnetic interaction thing work?" I asked.

"Our brains, are connected to an electrical signal that simulates feeling sensations of magnetism, coupled with the other systems working together, and sensors in the artificial skin that produce a very small magnetic like feeling to simulate touch. Then factor in artificial nerves. Those feed into the artificial neurons too, which produce a signal that we are programmed to seek out. It's a very small amount that is just enough to be picked up. I guess I don't need to explain that we're also programmed to want to feel this type of 'slight magnetism' sensation do I with a very elaborate electrode and sensor system in our skin? Who says also that the human version of touch doesn't use a very small amount of magnetism," she said.

I hadn't thought of that. Is touch like a biological magnetism sensation the brain picks up?

"But if that's true then wouldn't your CPUs have to be modeled somewhat similar to human brains?" I asked.

"That's classified. I can't go into more detail than that. I apologize," she said, closing the door curtly on that question. She'd shut that issue up pretty fast, which meant maybe I'd asked something forbidden to be talked about. "Oh look at the time. I'm afraid I'm out of time for today's discussion." She looked at her watch. But did she really need to look at her watch or was that for show? Was it real for her to look at her watch? There were so many questions I still had.

That's a very interesting reaction.

"I should walk you out to your car. It's already dark out," I said.

"Oh that's fine, really. Don't worry about it," she countered.

"It's the least I could do. In our culture women shouldn't be out alone after dark. So I'm not being friendly, I'm just making sure you stay safe," I said.

"Thank you. You are very thoughtful Jack," she said.

She was patient while I watched her get to her car safely from my wheelchair from the doorway. That's the best we could do. But I think it was good to do. From the sound of things, this was extremely complicated. It was way exponentially more complicated than I ever thought possible.

I was actually glad I asked a lot of questions. BECAUSE I was actually TESTING her. I was looking for signs of deceit. I didn't find any.

Were androids really another species like they thought? Some of the progress and application ideas she'd brought up staggered me. I hadn't thought that a species of life could be a synthetic organism or mechanical in nature. It was so freaking spooky that androids believed they were a species. The comparison of sucker fish living off sharks wasn't bad though. It implied a healthy relationship and health future. In the oceans the sharks didn't eat the sucker fish that cleaned them to my knowledge.

I was still trying to wrap my head around how they could simulate how to feel. Thinking about it was like thinking about what if there was no life anywhere...which is like thinking about something you can't even comprehend.

But what if all their programming was reactive and not proactive instead? Can they think outside the box? Did that mean that A.I. was flawed? Humans in the same way they think also could mostly be reactionary, so I'd have to be careful in bringing that up with her. For example, if I told her androids were not really artificial people and only machines because they were reactionary and couldn't think outside the box, then would she then compare and see if humans also were reactionary too? What if that made her think humans were flawed and broken? If she did and picked some run down gang ridden street hood to compare humans with then she might brand humans as similar to cockroaches or wasps, which happen to be the natural enemy of bees. If mass androids thought humans were cockroaches or unproductive predatory vermin then that could be quite unhealthy for our future with them.

I also was realizing how deep all of this was.

A.I. in androids was said to be continually evolving. So if I taught her the wrong logic arguments would I end up weaponizing her? I could end up with some really strong arguments on why humans were evil and what if I accidentally planted that into her or one of the other androids.