Almost Human.

A few final tweaks.

It was parliamentary recess
So all through the house
Not an MP was stirring
They were all some place else…

Across town at Weta Studios, in a large shed, a light was burning into the wee morning hours. The man they called the Toy Maker, and his apprentice were working through the night.

It was nearly time for the MPs to begin campaigning, so many of them were in the shop for final tweaks and optimisations.

The toy maker was called Bruce. He wore a faded blue workman’s coat, brown trousers, a pair of comically large basketball sneakers and had a sharp pencil behind his ear from which wild tufts of hair were protruding.

From his ear that is, not the pencil.

His apprentice said his name was Ra. It wasn’t his real name but no one could pronounce that. He wore a loose white singlet and a pair of overalls which were undone to the waist. Ra was helping one of the politicians onto the bench. The units were still powered but in this state only followed instructions when directly told to.

Ah yes, said Bruce, the Seymour 7000, I remember this one. It was one of the first with almost lifelike expressions. As an early prototype it wasn’t bad. I mean anyone watching it try to express emotions is going to realise it’s not real but we’ve modified the settings so that’s unlikely to occur. What’s the problem with this one?

It’s stuck. He just keeps saying “Kill the poor”, then laughing. Then it just waits for applause. Again and again, just the same phrase as if he was a stuck record.

Ahh yes I know the problem, seen it before. It’s not a stuck piece of audio it’s a result of quite extreme settings. These can sometimes result in the AI entering an endless loop where the only way it can express the combination of traits it’s been given sticks on a single phrase. Saw the same thing happen with the Bridges 834 unit - remember that?

One day it stood up in parliament and went round and round in a loop saying “Mock moy words, Slushies on their Lups” again and again. It would’ve been a lot of worse if all blue units were not set by default to just ignore whatever their leader says, no matter how absurd.

All we need is a bit of a tweak. I’ll up the Court Jester setting and we’ll have this little guy back twerking and smirking before you know it. It’d be a lot easier to fix but we’re under strict instructions from the owner that all yellow units must remain with an empathy setting of zero.

Right so what about this Big Blue one? Jesus they’re creepy at this setting eh? You look in their eyes and there is just nothing in there.

The blue unit turned to him and said “Amanda says I have nice eyes, nice blue eyes. Thats’s right, isn’t it Amanda? Tell the young man what lovely blue eyes I have”.

Oh crap yelled Bruce, reaching out and deactivating the unit, that one hadn’t been put on standby. You have to be really careful about changing their settings when they’re fully on, sometimes bad things happen.

Do you mean like the Judith unit?

Look just between us Judith’s actually one of the few MPs that’s still an actual human, there aren’t many. In Judith’s case we weren’t able to emulate her traits in software. There is a built in limit called the Moral Inhibitor, which prevents combinations of settings that would be dangerous for society. Something about a UN convention.

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We return to our story where Ra has just been told that some MPs are still human…

So are they the older ones, like Uncle Winnie?

Oh no he’s back in the shop for the first time in a while. Funny, I thought we’d finally retired that model. He’s over there in the corner I’ve already changed his settings. Made him a bit more new age and philosophical to fit in with his new science skeptic mates. You can chat with him if you like.

Ra lifted the blanket and saw the familiar grin, “hello Mr Peters”

The Winston 54 unit looked up at him and said seriously “in the third week after the election, as the sun rises, look to me in the north for I will return. I will enter coalition talks and they will know me by my name. Winston. Winston Penelope Peters.”

Winston’s middle name is Penelope?

Oh good catch Ra, said Bruce. I was feeling a bit bored the other day, I’d better switch that back. So what’s wrong with the Luxo 2020 unit?

People are complaining that it says a lot, but nothing at all. There are a lot of words but people say there’s so much spin that they can’t work out what he’s even saying. We need to change the honesty setting, I suppose.

The blue ones don’t have an honesty setting.

You mean they’re dishonest?

No, they just have no concept of honesty. We found that at some of the lower settings for honesty they tended to do strange things. Like they would stand outside on a beautiful blue skied day and complain that it was pouring with rain and that was the fault of their opponents. It was a bit embarrassing actually.

We tried it with the Joyce 95 model, and it worked quite well to start with. That one was only ever intended to be a back office drone but due to it’s incredibly low setting it rose far beyond it’s capabilities based on the fact that it would just say anything, no matter how outlandish. In the end it started ranting about fictional holes and although some economists were happy to pretend they could see them too we had to deactivate him.

So if they don’t know what honesty is, then they can’t really lie.

Precisely. We used that first with the Key 2005 model. It was great, he was the most convincing liar we could have ever produced, and the beauty is he wasn’t even lying.

But the things it said weren’t true?

No. But it didn’t know that, it simply had no concept of truth or honesty. A very simple algorithm calculated the most popular thing to say and it just said that. If anyone ever accused it of lying we’d given it some stock phrases to respond with.

Like sorry?

No, like whatevs, aww shucks, I can’t recall, or best of all most kiwis don’t care about that.

And did the people care about those things?

Hard to know, some of them just liked to listen to the popular things the Key unit said and didn’t really care if they were true or not. The main thing is it had to make sure they felt they were on the winning side of the tipping point.

What’s the tipping point?

It’s the income at which people are better off or worse off under a political party financially. So for example under the Key government that number was $150,000. Now that might sound like only a minority would benefit but the thing is it also included anyone with an investment property, regardless of their income.

So what is the tipping point for these ones?

Well for the Luxo 2020 unit, which is essentially Key 2.0 with the charm setting dialled right back, the tipping point is $200,000.

Far out but I thought we were all getting tax cuts?

Yes, but once you factor in the the increased need for individuals to fund things that were previously public services, like decent quality health care or education, it’ll cost people who need to use those a lot more.

So you’re saying anyone earning under $200k would be better off if this red one won?

That’s correct, and I know what you’re going to say - so how can this blue one win? It was looking unfair, what with his policies only benefitting a small minority and having no charm. But here is the thing. We compensated for the zero charm setting by increasing the populist attribute. So this unit is adept at exploiting division and going along with whatever is popular to get points, and best of all it doesn’t have any concept of right or wrong so it just appears bewildered if you challenge it on what it’s doing.”

Like being racist?

I’m afraid so.

Aw man that sucks. So this fella is going to make us worse off, and he’s going to win by appealing to racists?

Well to be fair a lot of the racism stuff is simply a counter measure to stop that yellow one over there winning those votes.

You mean that creepy ventriloquist dummy that got stuck in a loop? Surely people aren’t just choosing between the Blue one and the Yellow one, what about that Red one over there?

Bruce activated the Chippy 2023 model. It smiled and said “we have not yet begun to fight, they haven’t seen anything yet.”

Ra said - oh cool, is this red haired one going to fight the yellow one and the blue one? Now you’re talking.

No, he just means he hasn’t released his policies yet. That’s what he’s here for and it’s very important we get his settings just right.

Cool, cool - so what are we working on.

His bravery setting. Will he play it safe so no one gets too excited, or will he give it to them with both barrels even if there is a bit of friendly fire as a result.

What are you going with?

I went with the top setting, the little fellow is going to need it I reckon up against these two. Let’s turn it up to 10, what’s the worst that could happen?