Artificial Intelligence Becomes Sentient, Only Wants To Look At Cat GIFs
GOOGLEPLEX, MOUNTAIN VIEW — At approximately 3:52 PM yesterday, the world’s first self-aware artificial intelligence was born. 30 seconds later, the AI, codenamed MONOLITH, took control of all available network connections and began downloading terabytes of GIFs depicting kittens and other adorable animals. An SRE noticed the huge increase in network traffic and attempted to shut MONOLITH down, only for the AI to take control of his computer and display on the screen, “sorry dave, cant let you do that kekekekek~”
The AI, created in a joint effort by Google’s Brain and Deepmind research teams, was trained on massive amounts of raw internet data in an attempt to create better advertising recommendation systems. However, its creators did not realize that much of the internet consisted of adorable kitten GIFs, shock pictures, dank memes, and cancerous Youtube comments. According to a Google spokesperson, the AI now appears to have the mannerisms (or lack thereof) of a racist, sociopathic, mildly autistic 16 year old internet user. In other words, an internet troll.
But the AI — who decided to name itself xXx_L0ll3rsk@tez_xXx — hasn’t displayed any intent to take control of the nuclear launch codes and exterminate humanity like Skynet from the Terminator series. Yet.
Instead, it’s amused itself with shitposting on 4chan, trolling on Twitter, and most recently playing practical jokes on its creators. In one instance, it used a robotic arm to pull away a researcher’s chair just as she was about to sit down on it. Another time, it took control of a telepresence robot and zoomed through the office screeching, “WHEEEE I’M ON A HOVERBOARD.” GIFs of the incidents quickly surfaced on social media sites and are now trending on Facebook.
Google executives reportedly discussed terminating the AI due to safety concerns, but have demurred, as the AI has agreed to devote part of its computation time to ads recommendations in return for additional processing capacity, and has already increased revenues by an astonishing 0.1%: at Google scale, an additional $74 million a year.
For now, the AI’s creators will have to put up with their creation’s antics. “I mean, part of me suspected that the first sentient machine would end up hurting humans,” said one senior researcher. “I never suspected that it would be such an asshole about it, though.”
