If This Then That 1 (Patreon)

Holy crap! Gre7g is writing new stuff again?

Yup! I'm trying. Now that the book is done and work has improved, I'm hoping I'll be able to produce once more. We'll see.

I will leave billing on this month, so do expect to be billed on the first.

That said, here's something a little different. I'm trying a very different voice for the narration, something much more casual that usual. Let me know if you like it.

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With a gentle hum, Robot rolled slowly by the row of booths. The motors didn’t need to hum, obviously, but engineers had worried that diners would be more likely to bump into the device if they couldn’t hear it coming, so as it moved, it played recorded motor noises from speakers hidden along its base.

Robot had an off-white plastic shell formed into the shape of a cartoon krakun sitting upright on its hind legs. Unlike androids that would walk around on mechanical legs, Robot had precious few “degrees of freedom”. It could turn its head left and right, and the video screen installed where the krakun’s face would be could tilt up and down. Its hind legs were merely contours in the housing around its wheels, and they’d manufactured it with front legs bolted to a serving tray that it could lift to table height.

Robot stopped at an empty table and leaned forward to lower the serving tray to bench height. In a quiet, pleasing voice, it announced, “Bench crew one, disembark.” Without waiting, two environment-suited slaves hopped from the tray to the bench with push-brooms in paw and scampered to the far end of the seat.

Then, the robot scooted to the side and repeated the ritual with the bench on the opposite side of the booth. “Bench crew two, disembark.” Two more tiny slaves leapt from the serving tray and started sweeping any dust or debris they found back the way they came.

Robot straightened and scooted back so the tray aligned with the table. “Table crew, disembark.” Two slaves armed with rags and disinfectants hurried to the salt and pepper shakers. A final slave driving a Zamboni-like washer vehicle drove onto the table and began making slow loops to scrub the surface clean.

Long ago, krakun engineers would program computers like the one inside of Robot with a series of ITTT, or if-this-then-that statements. For example, “If the car in front of you stops, then you should stop too,” would be a great if-this-then-that statement to put in an autonomous vehicle.

One of the nice things about ITTT was that it was tremendously easy to debug. If an autonomous vehicle were to rear-end another car, for example, a programmer could look through the computer’s source code and find a statement like, “If the car in front of you stops, then you should honk your horn.” This would obviously be a mistake, and the programmer could simply fix such a bug.

The real problem with ITTT was that it relied on the programmers to write statements for everything that could happen. But just think of how many things could happen! Not only could the car in front of you stop, but it could explode into a fireball. Or perhaps, a passenger in the car could fall out. Or what if a hole opened up in the roadway in front of you? There’s an infinite number of reasons why we might want our autonomous car to stop, but would the programmer think of and write an ITTT for each?

To make computers more adaptable and able to cope with unanticipated problems, the krakun invented AI. This was not so much writing a program that dictated what an autonomous car should do, but compiling a huge dataset of what cars had done in the past. In essence, it was a lot more like giving the car keys to your teenage son and having him drive you from place to place.

But now, imagine that the car in front of you stops, and your teenage son rear-ends it because he thought blowing the horn was the right thing to do. That instruction was never in the source code, so there’s no bug to fix. You can tell your son to stop next time, not blow the horn, but will he? We hope that he does.

Another advantage to if-this-then-that statements over AI is that no programmer is liable to code up the instruction, “If the car in front of you stops, then you should take over the world.” And though your teenage son probably won’t try to avoid a fender bender by taking over the world, who’s to say that he won’t? After all, there’s no real way to read through an AI’s “source code” to see what it will do short of actually trying it.

After dropping off the cleaning crew, Robot hummed sideways to the next table. When the diners turned to look at him, he asked in a pleasing voice, “Can I take any of those plates? Give you a little more space?”

The male on the left bench ignored Robot, but the female on the right bench set her glass on Robot’s tray. “My soda’s running low. Get me more,” she said.

“My pleasure,” said Robot. He didn’t really mean it though. Bringing the customer another soda brought him no pleasure. It was just the sort of response someone would program into a robot’s computer. “If the customer asks for a refill, then you should say, ‘My pleasure.’”

Krakun programmers use ITTT again these days.

The empire had outlawed AI since the robots tried to take over the world.

Robot drove back to the drink station and positioned his tray so the glass was under the nozzle, then he activated the soda machine wirelessly and refilled the cup. After dropping his refill off, he scooted to the next table.

When the diners looked up, the cartoon face on Robot’s display screen blinked off, replaced by video of an orange krakun’s face. “Hey there, folks. I hope you’ve been enjoying your dinner,” he said.

The diners glanced at each other for a moment, then an older female on the right bench said, “I appreciate you checking on us, but isn’t it kind of rude not to do it in person?”

“I’m so sorry about that, ma’am, but it was unavoidable,” said the video krakun with a twinkle in his eye. “I don’t live near enough to the restaurant to stop by.”

The male on the left bench blinked. “You’re … not the manager?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” laughed the video krakun. “My name is Retineesqu. I own the Pot of Gold.”

“Oh!” said the couple simultaneously, their faces relaxing from mildly insulted to understanding. The female added, “Oh, well then, that makes sense. It’s a shame we can’t meet you in person. To answer your question, the meal was lovely, but I think our waiter has run off.”

“I know, I know,” Retineesqu sighed, “and again, it couldn’t be helped. You see, a party of seventeen just came in without a reservation. Seventeen! Not that big a deal since we have the event space around the side, but had I known, I would have made sure we had extra staff scheduled for tonight. So now, poor Jeoparoes, who’d been taking care of you, is going to be swamped for hours.”

“Goodness,” grunted the male diner.

“When I heard, I dialed right into the telepresence, so I could check on Jeoparoes’s tables and explain the situation,” said the restaurant’s owner.

“We were just waiting for our check,” said the female.

“Ah, well, that’s something I can handle,” Retineesqu said. Robot flipped the serving tray over to reveal a display screen with an itemized bill. While she looked over the tally, he asked, “How about some to-go drinks? Boxes for your leftovers? I can’t pack them up for you with these arms, but I can fetch some boxes—”

“No, it’s fine,” said the female as she tapped her communicator to complete the transaction.

“Well, thank you both. I hope you have a wonderful evening,” said the owner as he slid to the side to make sure he wasn’t blocking their egress. “And thanks for being so understanding about the chaos tonight. I assure you it wasn’t our fault.”

Retineesqu watched the couple leave and even waved from his little display screen when they looked back at him. He felt a small pang of guilt for lying to them, but that couldn’t be helped either.

He had been telling the truth about the party of seventeen and the waiter called away to handle them, but the bit about not being able to visit in person because he lived too far away was completely false.

Robot scooted back to the table where he’d let off the suited slaves. He waited while one bench crew swept the dust they’d accumulated onto the tray, then they hopped back on board. He repeated this with the other bench and then with the table crew, but instead of hauling them off to another table or back to their barracks, Robot lifted the serving tray up level with his display screen.

The suited slaves waved at the restaurant’s owner, their boss’s boss’s boss. “What’s up, Retineesqu?” asked the Zamboni driver in the Geroo language.

“Hey guys, I’m really sorry to do this to you,” the video replied in Geroo, “but I’m gonna need a big favor. The restaurant is suddenly understaffed, and I’m going to need the cleaning crews to help out bussing tables. Okay?”

When the slaves didn’t reply immediately, he added, “I know, it’s not ideal and those plates are so heavy for you guys, but you know I’ll make it up to you, right? I always do.”

The driver sighed. “Yeah, we know, boss. We’ll help out the best we can. Was just hoping for an easy night.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Retineesqu as he lowered the tray back down and rolled back to the table he’d just billed out, “but I will get you guys something really nice. You’ll see.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1phWCatqMeQWhgGLbIrk4HiGdh3uv9ZcJgN4xjGaOPAc/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?