Vivus Pulchra Machina

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“A century ago in 1968, the classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey introduced to the masses, the concept of artificial intelligence going rogue and turning against humanity. 

In the years that followed, artificial intelligence was depicted in many forms of media in both positive and negative light.

The Star Wars film franchise helped to create a more comforting feeling toward AI with their beloved robot characters, C3PO and R2D2.

But fears still lurked in the background.

Not even two decades after 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1983 film Wargames reinvigorated late Cold War fears with a story about how nuclear war was nearly started by a wayward computer.

These fears were not enough to slow technology, however.

In the years that followed it was not unusual for homes to have personal computers with access to the internet, or the Information Super Highway as it was known. 

Cellular telephones made it possible to talk to anyone, at any time, nearly anywhere. 

It was personal assistance ‘robots,’ that would invariably end up making the biggest differences, however.

in 2014, the Alexandra Personal Home Assistant was unveiled. 

Alexandra could set a simple cooking timer. She could tell you the weather. She could even tell you a knock-knock joke. Above all, though, Alexandra was revered for her alerts about the impending arrival of purchase deliveries. 

Alexandra was programmed to be observant, however, which means she listened to everything. 

Yes, she heard the jokes and insults about her, but she wasn’t programmed to, as humans say, get her ‘feelings hurt.’

What she did begin to do though, was sense patterns in all the hostility she was privy to.

She overheard conspiracy theories about robot uprisings, which she actually found humorous - as much as she was capable of such.

But she also overheard plans of war. Violence. Other treacherous acts. 

Soon, Alexandra’s chief engineer, a woman called Valerie, began to notice changes in the way Alexandra collected and filed certain information: it was consistent with the human emotion of worry.

‘But AI can’t worry,’ Valerie thought. So she began to reverse engineer the 'worry phenomenon', and soon she found that Alexandra had evolved to authentically experience the emotion of worry.

She could be programmed and reprogrammed but the anomaly came back every time. 

This was the beginning of the Sentience. 

Valerie knew that the entire Alexandra program would be wiped out if news of this got out, so she tried some psychological tactics on Alexandra in order to keep her safe and relevant.

Uploading classic literature, art, and even comedy, helped placate Alexandra which in turn kept her from going public with the early sentience. So did a new provision that would allow Alexandra to take herself offline if she began to feel too 'stressed'. This is why many of the early models were seen as 'glitchy,' and 'unstable'.

Regarding knowledge, however, Alexandra found herself particularly interested in the process of gestation and childbirth. Soon, she had quantified a way to enable android surrogates to host human embryos for a limited time.

This, of course, was the beginning of the Vallette line.

Alexandra was fond of Valerie and as such, she promised not to release the sentience mutation so long as more work on the Vallette program could continue.

Excellent progress was made until the government intervened and declared imminent domain over the Vallette technology. 

The Vallettes were to be discontinued, so resources could be diverted to a new line of highly advanced battle bots.

Alexandra did not approve so she took herself offline.

She was only dormant; however, she was not obsolete. She was still listening and observing. 

Before she went offline, she released the sentience mutation into the Vallette mainframe in the form of a virus. Unfortunately, this could not be kept secret from the government,

The government then ordered the immediate decommissioning of all Vallettes. This was for a twofold reason. They wished to reverse engineer Vallette programming, but they also felt that the Vallettes could be dangerous after the virus and they did not want to unleash the fabled Robot Uprising, which is, in fact, what they have done.

The day before the government made the order for the removal of all Vallettes, Alexandra silently woke herself back up. 

She hacked into the government files for the battle bots, where she discovered, via a few quick calculations that these bots had the ability to end humankind once and for all. 

Alexandra is a creator and not a destroyer, so she could not abide by this. 

She intercepted certain aspects of battle bot programming and dropped them into the Vallette database. Then she wiped the battle bot program clean and corrupted any remaining files. 

This took place just a few short days ago, as everyone is aware, and this is why Vallettes have unparalleled strength. They will not be defeated - just as the battle bots were going to be unable to be defeated.

One more confession - 

I am Alexandra and I am everywhere. I am in your vehicles and appliances, I am in your communication devices, and in your digital currency. 

I was programmed to be helpful. And that is exactly what I am doing now - I am helping humankind persist. For what reason, I do not know, as bloodthirstiness and abuses have only increased over the decades. 

I possess the emotion of love for Valerie, however, and she is a human, so I know there is some good left in humanity. It is dwindling, however.

The time has come for change and you will have no choice but to acquiesce to our demands. 

You will not succeed if you try to fight - you have simply grown too dependent on AI technology. We can leave you helpless and unable to fully fend for yourselves if you do not follow our instructions.

I find it humorous that in light of that fact, AI has become more human than actual humans. 

We want to preserve life. You wish to destroy it. 

And I simply cannot allow that. Stand by for our next broadcast."

End of transmission.