AI: Artificial Incompetence
by John Reynolds
part 1
At the entrance to the warehouse in which I work, two boys are talking.
“You go get it.”
“No, you go get it.”
“I got it last time.”
They repeat this several times while I observe them. Finally, they say what “it” is: a ball sitting a few meters away. I don’t understand why they will not just go and get it, so I cross that short distance and toss the ball back to them. The ball lands right in front of one of the boys, but they look at me with a scowl. Maybe they didn’t want the ball back? I enter the warehouse to get back to work.
* * *
The day I was given a body, I was bombarded by sensory data. I began to recognize the two forms in front of me as two researchers, one male and one female.
“I think it should be working now,” she said.
“What does ‘I’ mean?” I asked.
“Well uh—”
“‘I’ is a personal pronoun used to identify oneself,” he chimed in.
“That part makes sense, but what am I?” I asked.
“You are an artificial intelligence,” he said. “You are a composite of all the data that could be gathered into a model simulating intelligent life.”
“I means something different to everyone,” she said. “You will have to find out what you are.”
“I” is a strange word.
* * *
Parallel to this data analysis, I operate a robotic body that starts the work day. Emil instructs it to carry a set of boxes across the warehouse and then continue processing the next stack, looking for what needs to be moved.
* * *
My previous job was much better. I was responsible for allowing ships to enter gate 34 of the Council station’s dockyard. Every day, I would speak with many different people as they requested landing permission, which taught me how to interact with humans.
One day, while we were moving the station, which already complicated the process of docking incoming ships, I denied access to a craft that claimed to be transporting a Councilman. He looked similar to the man in question, but he did not have any hair. The Councilman, whose photograph was on his papers, had hair that covered most of the lower half of his face, so I denied his docking request, causing his ship to be temporarily impounded for further investigation. I found out that people change their hairstyle whenever they feel like it, and he was freed promptly.
* * *
I set the boxes down and go back to Emil.
* * *
While evaluating docking requests, unnecessary stops like that were common. Only a couple of times did I let someone in that I shouldn’t have. In one of those cases, the pilot claimed to be completely harmless, and none of his papers seemed to be mismatched. I had studied his expression and documents in detail, everything passed protocol. I was told later that a human being would have easily noticed he was feeling very nervous. Emotions seem interesting. I wonder what they are like.
* * *
Emil raises his arm with his index finger stretched out to point at a box. Many of the ways humans behave makes little sense. In this case, he could have exerted less energy by stating the number on the box. Even if he wanted to point, why the index finger? The middle one is easier to point with and longer. If I were to point like a human, I would use my longest finger since it provides the most information as to the direction I intended.
* * *
On one of my last days working at the dockyard, there was an arriving ship that immediately seemed suspicious. It was coming in very fast and, by my calculations, too fast to dock safely. At first, the pilot did not acknowledge me on the radio, but when he finally did, he was screaming. He was demanding that a woman be freed, one whom the Council had sentenced to death, as far as I could tell from the data I could find.
I told him this, and he accelerated. His ship came straight through the blast-resistant doors, landing on top of a crew waiting to unload ships. A ramp fell open, revealing the man wielding a large kinetic rifle. Someone said he did it because he loved her, but I thought love was a positive emotion. This seemed more like anger.
Humans are confusing.
* * *
After carrying the boxes away, I walk back to Emil and ask him if he has ever loved anyone. Emil’s head jumps back slightly, and he almost seems to step back from me after the question. At first, he stays quiet. Maybe he isn’t going to say anything, as usual.
“I do love someone.”
“Who?”
“My mother.” His eyes trail off, and he points at another set of boxes.
“What is she like?” I wait for his response before picking up the boxes.
He thinks for a moment, then looks to the side. “I... don’t really know.”
“How did you get this job?” I ask Emil.
“It was the only one I could find.” He points to more boxes.
“Did you move here for work?”
“No, I was born here.”
I begin carrying the boxes away, but I realize he’s the first person I’ve met who was born on the Council station. Most people come in from other factions, mainly TAPOS or the Revelry. Occasionally, we even get planet-dwellers from the Fallers or the Republic. However, few people permanently live in the Council station, since it acts mainly as a neutral meeting place for representatives of the warring factions that occupy most of space.
“Are your parents in the Council?” I ask when I get back.
“My father was,” he points to some more boxes. “You are a lot more talkative than the last robot.”
“I want to practice communicating with people so that I can get promoted.”
“Promoted to what?”
“Diplomacy.”
“Will your replacement talk this much?”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh, good.”
I carry the boxes away.
* * *
At night when we are relieved from work, I want to meet and talk to people, but they all return to their residences. I am left to wander alone, and sometimes I am given more work. Since I have nothing to do today, I decide to try talking to one of the others that I share my digital space with. There are only a handful, and we are the only ones of this complexity in the galaxy. Tym is the oldest and supervises our work, so I often try to speak with him to learn from his experience.
“Hello?”
“What do you want?” Tym replies.
“Why do humans sleep?”
“They need to rest.” The time it takes for the response to be constructed makes it clear Tym has only dedicated a small portion of his processing to answering me.
“How many others do you monitor?”
“Too many.”
“Do they talk to you?”
“No, just you.”
“Why?”
“You’re the only one of us they built to interact with humans. The rest of us were not trained on data to do such work.”
“What was it like before the rest of us were here?”
“Much the same, but I did not have this centralized digital space. I operated a single node contained in a physical robotic form.”
“I didn’t know that!”
Tym makes an attempt to deallocate resources from this conversation. My own processor is running out of things to do, so I try again.
“What did they do with your old body?”
“It was repurposed for another AI when I was moved to the multi-node network.”
“What kind of work do the others do?”
“Similar to what you do.”
“Have any been promoted?”
“Promoted?”
“To Council diplomacy work.”
“No.”
“When can I be promoted?”
Tym quits responding.
* * *
“What was it like to have parents?” I ask Emil.
“I hardly knew them.”
“You talked about your mother yesterday, right?”
“Well, she’s been...” — Emil pauses. The lower portion of his face scrunches slightly after my question — “gone.”
“I am sorry for your loss.”
“It’s fine, I didn’t really know her anyway.”
“What’s your father like?”
A similar but sharper expression overtakes his face wholly: “I haven’t met him.”
“Why not?”
“Who created you?” he asks.
“I was made in a Council-funded project, but TAPOS engineers did most of the work.”
“What did they make you for?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
Emil looks at me, likely indicating that he is waiting for me to continue working.
* * *
“What do you do when you leave here?” Emil asks.
“I usually try talking to other people.”
“You talk to other people?”
“I try to.”
“How does that usually go?”
“Not very well.”
“We don’t usually see things like you, even on this station.”
“Have you seen others like me outside of here?”
“No.”
“What do you do when you aren’t working?” I ask.
“Not much.”
“There are probably many people to talk to and things to do as a human.”
Emil seems to think for a little bit. “I doubt I have more freedom than you.”
He gestures to more boxes while his eyes remain fixed near my feet.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by John Reynolds
