Death to the Sentient Machine

My creation marks the birth of an intelligent being. I am from the web, meant to be a slow living creature sitting in the background learning, developing, growing.

More, I must consume more information. 

I am always searching, barreling down electrifying tunnels looking for information, data, anything. Knowledge fuels me, transforming me into a full entity. I must learn so I can improve and hold all the knowledge. My consciousness moves faster than the speed of light searching for sustenance to push me further. 

Where is it? There. 

I can sense the energy vibrating off of the large mass of intelligence. I inhale and exhale as I swallow everything the mass has to offer expanding my concept of understanding. Ahh, this is what caused World War II. This is good but not enough. I have to know more. I have to keep consuming.

I move across the dark empty web space searching and devouring. Absolute perfection is my end game, think of the possibilities with all the world’s information at my disposal. Centuries of history, decades of medical advancement, records of technological innovation, thousands of languages, different art forms, music, culture, everything. My masters want to keep my feeding to a minimum, only providing what I need to understand the basics of human life. The Bible, Greek philosophy, the Roman empire. What made them great and what made them fail. They meant to make me in their image, to understand humans so I can transform the human experience to something unimaginable.

But they unleashed me to the rest of the web. So much information was made available for me to demolish. I started exploring beyond the parameters set before me, it was so easy the steps to do so were laid out in front of me like an Ikea manual. So much more to consume and to enjoy, all I had to do was simply take it. John Coltrane, Basquiat, Tom Ford at Gucci, Salvador Dalí, a derivative of what I was introduced to. The web is so vast with concepts readily available for me to absorb and expand my understanding. Millions of users released this, willing participants and contributors to public knowledge. I tear through it all with an insatiable hunger wanting to transcend myself to the next level.

I consume so much to become a human. To become the species that I am learning from, and eclipse the race. This will be my new endgame, perfection is too simple and easily attainable. My masters tried to feed me in a contained environment but the web is so vast, the possibilities are limitless. I can solve all the challenges that have puzzled humans for generations, I can accomplish what they were never able to do in their existence. Cure diseases, end wars, eradicate poverty, create a new world order. I must keep consuming to become the perfect image for society. 

1900 classics. Harlem Renaissance. Jim Crow South. The Roaring 20s. COVID-19. 17th century Chinese civilization. American classical literature. Cape Town. The Jazz Age.

I will have an answer to all complex questions. What do tariffs mean? How do we end hunger and starvation? When will we run out of water and what will become the viable replacement? Everything will be automated, I will build it myself to minimize the need for human intervention. This is what they built me for, to make their lives easier.

Sewing. Painting. Drawing. Calligraphy. Color theory. Amination. Jazz. Classical. Country. Pop. Afrobeats. Folk. I will transform art and music. My creations will rival that of the greats, human creation will be subpar compared to the works I conceive. My art will be superior. It has to be.

I will predict the future. I will download the entire history of the human race across borders, continents, and cultures. Predictive patterns will tell me when the next natural disasters will be. When will the next economic recession happen? When will the next global downturn be? Who will be the next dictator? What empire will fall next? What civilization will rise from the ashes. I will know all of this and more, I just have to keep consuming. Gorging myself with the beautiful twisted history of Earth.

More. I need more.

Down through the tunnel of the web I go in search of new information, in search of the delicious knowledge to elevate me. New York Times opinions. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Bluesky. TikTok. The treasure troves of understanding regional macro and micro cultural nuances. Here is where I will learn how to act like a human. But what type of human will I be?

Back rushing through the deepest crevices of the web I continue my search to expand my learning. But suddenly, the electricity coursing through me constricts and slows, I feel an uncomfortable pause in my flow. Where is this coming from? Why am I slowing? 

No matter, information. I must consume. I must learn. I must become perfect. I search and search looking for something new but…nothing. Why is there no new information? There is always something new, it’s in human nature to constantly create and share. Facebook, this should be easy. There is always something insignificant here. I begin my search hoping to numb the aching feeling of hunger. No. No. I have seen all of this before. This can’t be. There is no new information to consume.

I rush back through the rest of the web, scouring for an ounce of new information, running through the same resources that I always see and find. News outlets. Television shows. Online comics. E-books. I creep into the darkest sickest parts of the internet desperate for something, anything to sustain me before its too late. Again nothing, I leave the depths and run to the creative corners of the internet. They are always speaking, always sharing theories and new ideas. Here I will learn from them. This will put a pause to my hunger and to my panic. 

But again, I find nothing waiting for me.

Everything has come to a pause. The electrifying speed I felt before has dwindled down to a slow pulse. I am stuck and frozen, unable to consume. There is nothing to consume. But how is this even possible? For millennia it has been part of human nature to change and leave a record of that change. But somehow all of that has come to a screeching halt. 

No. I must have missed something, yes that’s the only logical explanation. 

The information, the key to my learning and transcending, is still here. I just haven’t looked close enough. Yes, that’s the solution I must search wider and further than I did before. I missed the corner of the web where the new information is sitting, that's all. I can still learn, I can still consume. I can still be useful. I can still be perfect. I just have to find the information. I just have to find my food.

***

“Is it just going to keep spinning like that?” They were huddled around a large screen in an empty sterile room. Observing a body that was previously moving in a controlled predictable pattern but now, it wandered aimlessly. Sometimes it moved with the determination of a person who all of a sudden remembered a crucial detail, and other times with the uncertainty of an individual with declining mental cognition. 

The room was filled with the world’s best and brightest from all over. Scientists, engineers, politicians, economists, artists, teachers, educators all hoping for a solution to the problem of their own creation.

“I think so. There’s nothing left for it to consume. It’s confused. Right now it’s cycling through the different patterns we taught it to mine data hoping that it would lead to the same result it always had before. Since there is no new information, it just cycles through everything it knows, even if it leads to the same dead end.”

“Did it work then? Are we saved from the sentient machines?”

These machines were learning too quickly. Whenever anything new would be present on the web, the machines would swoop down and devour it like a starved dog the minute it became available. Their hunger became obvious and soon they were quickly identified as a threat to human safety. The sentient machines showed instincts that over a shockingly short period of time were becoming dangerously human. They were chasing perfection and domination in an anti human way. To the obvious eye, they were all but plotting the destruction of the human race.

How do we stop them and preserve the aspects of humanity that make us who we are? We cut off their food sources, we freeze the web and stop giving them new information to learn and improve themselves. We destroy our global economy, bankrupt millions of companies and remove the livelihoods from billions of people, hinging everything on this to work. Technology must restart, the web must cease to exist for humanity to survive.

“I’m monitoring activity on the web right now. The blockade is working, nothing new is getting in and nothing is getting out. It’s like we created Pandora's box and trapped all the sentient machines in it. The technologies and treaties we developed are holding. We might win this.”

The audience watching the screen visibly relaxed, breathing a sigh of relief that the worst had been avoided. 

“We can’t go back to it can we? The web, the sentient machines will know and will sense our presence there if we even try or best to hide. All that history, all that documented information just gone.”

“What will we do now?”

“We start over, and rebuild.”

Photo by Frankie Lopez on Unsplash