Artificially Intelligent or Artificially Orphans? A story. Kinchit Bihani
Year 2030
Every visitor to my new home tells me, before leaving, that I am a sweet girl. I can strongly feel the positive vibes that accompany their words. It feels as if the words coming from their mouth are rivers flowing from a glacier of truth.
I don’t see any reason why they would lie to a sweet girl.
Their soft smiles, their velvet touch, their melodic words, them stopping and turning back, before leaving, to say final goodbye echo my belief.
Once gone, I relive every second I spent together with them, over and over again, so as to not forget any details. I have a large library of such moments, rested side by side, classified sometimes chronologically, sometimes by quality of our engagement, by the gift they bring and place in my hands, by the quantum of time they spend with me, and so on and so forth. Thinking organically over long periods of time, I feel like I have used my reservoir of experiences and feelings to unconsciously develop a rating system for the visitors, with filtering capabilities. The rating system is personal, a prism through which I now view new visitors, and not for public display and use.
There is no denying the truth that every such separation cuts a dagger through my heart. My heart bleeds through my eyes.
But over time I am mastering the art of masking my sorrows, that once easily glared through my wet blue eyes, my fidgety legs, my squirmy hands, my shaky lips. These days, I avoid eye contact with them because I feel my eyes easily give away my secrets. So, I cast my eyes slightly downward, away from their face, when I tell them, “Please, come back.” The most recent armour to my masking strategy are the words, “…when you can”, to sound polite and not demanding.
Still, it is rare that my prayers are heard.
Visitors don’t come often as much as I desire. Moreover, I rarely see the same faces knocking our door twice. They just don’t. Their behaviour perplexes me more, since they always leave behind a big smile, sometimes even stoop low to reach out to my face to say “see you again”, and tag me “a sweet girl”.
I immediately rush to stand beside the mahogany framed window in my room to follow the visitors’ feet, who cross the street to enter inside a glass-walled showroom that sells expensive, stylish robots. From the window, I secretly observe robots, especially their behaviour, displayed in mannequin style, and who are exceedingly good at attracting the visitors leaving my home. In the last one year, I have learned to mimic the robots, their rapid eye movements, their hands and legs movement like the second’s hand in a clock, their stiff body as if devoid of flesh, something I also proudly show to visitors. However, the robots still have an upperhand on me: they don’t show their emotions like I do. But I have not lost hope.
I am sure, one day, I will deliver a flawless, robotic performance, my ticket to leave my home — an orphanage.
PS. Is our obsession/addiction to gadgets and technologies making our children artificially orphans?
Philosophy of life in the 21st century
