Slightly Erratic
Just like any other AI, the “Slightly Sentient” brand of AIs could also go hilariously out of hand at times. Behavioral nudges given by devices could turn into digital dictatorship, if the subjects turn out to be a real piece of work.
Let’s just say, you wake up in the morning, your eyes are the groggiest they could ever be, and you slowly drag yourself towards the washroom. You settle down on the toilet seat, and wait for your Print-a-Potty™ to print out your dose of positivity. Heck, what could go wrong with that?
Print-a-Potty™ prints out news about Kim and Kanye’s 17th child, named after the Tropic of Cancer, because guess what, they ran out of directions to name their children after. Well. technically it is a positive news, because hey, its not about violence and destruction. You reeaaallyy couldn’t care less about Kimye and their countless children. But then again, what if that is the only positive news for the day?
Picture this. Your ShowerMate™, the sentient shower regulator that starts playing music from your most despised genre after you have guzzled 10 gallons of water for your bath, starts adapting more assertive measures to coax you to stop wasting more water.
It’s a lazy Sunday morning. You just feel like washing away the workload of your entire week by standing under the hot shower for all eternity. As you feel the pressurised droplets wash away the magnitude of your stress, while ShowerMate™ plays a carefully curated playlist of smooth jazz, you see that you have used up almost 9 gallons in the process. You pay no heed. This is your day to unwind. You pass the 10 gallon mark shamelessly, as your ShowerMate™ starts playing Baby by Justin Beiber. Your ears bleed, but somehow, you bear through it. ShowerMate™ realizes that it is a cue to level up. You wouldn’t wanna continue bathing with the sound of a thousand farts blaring into your ears, would you? An accompanying smell would be a surefire way to get you to leave.
Or better yet, police sirens? Gunshots? Explosions? A recording of your annoying neighbor yelling at the top of his lungs? Your boss threatening to fire you? YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW MAKING PLANS TO COME OVER ?
You scurry out of the shower. This is not how you had pictured your Sunday morning. Maybe a good ol’ toast with milk would help you start the day better?
You put in a piece of white bread into your Toasty™, and before you know it, its charred. Toasty™ ,originally supposed to be sentient enough to help yo switch to brown bread by slightly burning your white bread, has supposedly turned into an anti-gluten freak. Brown, rye, oat, multigrain? Nah, Toasty™ burns them all. Its now hell bent on converting you into a gluten-free hippie, that lives on avocado, minus the toast.
You recall the days when you used to find your mother to be nagging. You’d any day prefer that over semi-sentient gadgets mothering you around, wouldn’t you?
(This story was written as a part of a speculative design assignment at NID Ahmedabad)
