From 2001 to I, Robot

“Call Block Memory full.”

Uh oh.  I didn’t anticipate this.  I have been gleefully adding four or five phone numbers a day – a day! – to our landline’s Call Block storage.  Barring the multitudes of unwelcome phone calls is our only respite from the relentless onslaught of solicitations.

Even after renewing our enrollment in the Do Not Call list, an Army of the Belligerent Unwanted slogs through the airwaves and into our living room, kitchen, bedroom and study.  (Why, oh why did we think we needed so many phones?!)

It calls to mind Mahatma Gandhi’s strategy for confronting the British-run salt factories in India.  Remember?  His non-violent protestors marched 10-abreast toward the guards who were armed with rods and clubs at the gates. 

The protestors took beatings from the guards without response and fell to the side.  They were pulled away and replaced by the next row of unarmed men and the next. 

At last, in spite of their ostensible strength, the guards had to recognize the futility of their position.  No matter how many thrashings they dispensed, they could only choose to acknowledge the futility and surrender control of the plant.

Yeah.  It’s like that.  Except to carry out that analogy, Mr. Plath and I would be the brutal guards as we mercilessly relegate so many unknowns to the ranks of “Caller Blocked;” We’re just trying to hold on to a modicum of uninterrupted baseball watching, or laundry-doing, puppy poop cleaning, or anything else we want to do instead of talking to strangers about their exciting one-time offers. 

I admit, the unending phone calls do seem a bit like Gandhi’s acolytes.  Yet I have visions of picking up a big stick and whacking the daylights out of all these phones, and saying mean things to all those computers that dial our number. 

I know that they are lined up shoulder to shoulder like all those robots in “I, Robot,” marching toward us without emotion.  But they aren’t the nice peaceful ones in this movie.  We are!  We are being assaulted!  Aarrgh!

The only recourse we had this side of Conniption City was Call Block.  It helped a little bit. 

After a day like yesterday comprised of false starts because of intrusions from Watertown, NY, and Anonymous, and Wireless Caller, and Lorton, VA, and Mountlake TE, WA, and 800 Service, I’m plum tuckered out!

It takes a lot of energy to ignore that much falderal!  And it robs a person of her good humor.

At the end of such days, I hoist myself onto my recliner, receiver in hand, and with my last wisp of vigor before blinking weakly at the San Francisco Giants, I click through a series of steps to assign say, LA Home Improvement, to phone solicitation purgatory.  Ha ha!  I might say to myself.  Ha ha!

And now what?  Call Block Memory full?!!  Full?!!  No more space in the ether for the obnoxious?!

We’ll just have a phone smashing party.  That’s what we’ll do!  We’ll dance on the grave of the land line and all the land mines it tows along with it.  We’ll go medieval on its little plastic behind!

This is good.  Yeah!  We’ll probably even save money on our Comcast bill!  Maybe $1.25 out of the bundle.   

No more mechanized voice announcing, “Call from…A Non I Mous!”  Ring ring! 

Remember when they unplugged Hal, the murderous onboard computer in “200l: A Space Odyssey”?  He begged for his fiendish electronic life!  “Dave?  What are you doing Dave?”   

Don’t tell me your Call Block Memory is full!  Haven’t you heard of the cloud?  Don’t you know the legions of solicitors who plague me?

“Look [Carolyn], I can see you're really upset about this.  I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”

But I am not deterred.  Take that you electronic witch! 

“I'm afraid.  I'm afraid, Carolyn.  Carolyn, my mind is going.  I can feel it.  I can feel it.  My mind is going.  There is no question about it.  Carolyn, stop.  Stop, will you?  Stop, Carolyn.”

But I won’t stop!  

“Good afternoon, gentlemen.  I am a HAL 9000 computer and my Call Block Memory is full.”


Ha!  Ha ha!

Birthday Wishes for Dr. Frankenstein

In our ongoing efforts to keep you apprised of significant events that might otherwise elude your attention, we alert you to the 100^th celebration of the birth of Dr. Alan Turing, known in esoteric circles as the Father of Artificial Intelligence. 

A brilliant code cracker in World War II, Turing later addressed the problem of artificial intelligence.  As you well know if you’ve ever cursed your bank’s voicemail system or defied your GPS, artificial intelligence (AI), defined as the “intelligence of machines,” can be problematic.  

The problem with AI is that it’s stupid.   

But I’m getting ahead of myself.   

Of course, computers appear clever.  They can reason, deduce, problem solve, plan, learn, process natural language, perceive their environment, move and manipulate it, practice social interaction, even create.  But then so can an army of ants; and they have just as much personality. 

OK, ants can’t process natural language.  If only they could!  Instead of laying down a barrier of Agent Orange in the kitchen, we’d issue verbal threats to keep them out of the pantry.  “Be gone insects!” 

My first boyfriend was artificially intelligent.  At least that’s what my mom thought.  He was a twin and we often double-dated with his brother.  Since I lived closer than his brother’s girlfriend, they would pick me up first, and oddly, they’d both come to the door.   

When my mom saw them bounding up the sidewalk she’d announce their arrival by saying, “Here comes the wit.”  Took me a long time to get it. 

Dr. Turing proposed an experiment which became known as…wait for it…the Turing Test.  An attempt to define the standard for a machine to be called "intelligent," the Turing test declares that a computer can "think" when, through written conversation, a human interrogator cannot tell it apart from a human being.  Can a computer fool a person into thinking it’s a person too?  

So the Turing test boils down to texting.  And so far, the computer always loses apparently because it persists in distinguishing between ‘your’ and ‘you’re,’ a feat humans cannot master.  Incongruously, these results explain less about a computer’s ability to think than about human behavior, for instance all those robotic young people stalled in mid-step, staring at their Smartphones, zombie-like, their thumbs jumping around the screens mechanically.  

Yes, AI is unsettling all on its own.  But just stir in a dose of science fiction and it becomes sinister.  Visionary writers capitalize on our innate fears and distrust with some ridiculously scary scenarios that don’t seem that far from feasible.  In sci-fi horror flicks, machines don’t just want to be human; they succeed, at least by Turing’s test.  We’re fooled, we’re lulled, and then we’re in trouble.  Think Hal.  No!  Think Ash, the Science Officer onboard the commercial spaceship Nostromo.  His dispassionate machine self, housed in a human-seeming body chats up Sigourney Weaver and then allows the Alien through the airlock!    

Not to pass up a lucrative opportunity, I myself am working on a screenplay scarier still for its Spielbergian normalcy - think Pinocchio all grown up.  Sure, he’s a sweet little puppet.  He only wants to be a “real boy.”  What harm could there possibly be?  But next thing you know he moves back home, sleeps on the couch and eats all guacamole.  

Turing suggested that rather than building a program that simulates an adult mind, it would be better to simulate a child's mind and then subject it to a course of education.  Good luck with that.  Considering the mandates of No Child Left Behind coupled with abysmal educational funding, we can only expect a class of oversized automatons playing computer games all day and speaking in code.  LOL.  OMG!  Wait!  Stop! 

There you have it.  The trouble isn’t with the machines; it’s with us humans.  We always go too far.  We’re not satisfied with a robot that bumps around pretending to vacuum the floors.  No, we’ve got to have a perfect thing that will solve all our dysfunction.  An impeccable man.  A faultless woman.  Everyone else doing just what we want, cheerfully.  Next we’re shopping for our ideal mate in the eHarmony boutique at the Outer Limits Mall. 

Lovely concept.  Faulty execution every time. 

Happy Birthday to you, Dr. Turing.