Her Eyes

From the archives: This is a very old story. I think I wrote it about three years ago. It can still be found on my former blog (find it if you can) and it’s one of the best received pieces I published on that blog. Since I wrote this story, my writing and the things that inspire it have evolved a great deal but I feel like this is still one of my most shareable stories. Please enjoy and share.

I can hear footsteps, distant and consistent. They approach with uniform velocity.

A few years ago, the prospect of a fully conscious A.I system seemed implausible, today there will be a testing of one. I will be part of that testing.

The footsteps draw ever closer. From the sound of the shoes I can tell the soles are hard and the frequency of echo reveals that the individual is walking down a narrow path.

The significance of this sort of milestone cannot be overemphasized; a machine that can learn, think and take actions for itself very much like humans would is indeed very impressive. The thought is kind of scary however, with all that power, what if they rebelled and attacked the humans, they would definitely have the ability to wipe us all out. Dark humor, I register the joke with myself. Why have I been invited to be part of this testing? Well this is kind of my area of expertise. I am into machine learning and software engineering. I should be an expert at this, right?

The knob turns sharply and the door swings open revealing a Woman. She walks into the room cheerfully and sits opposite me. I notice the detail in design, her dark skin is flawless (near perfect), her hair is short and unkempt (I am unsure how to feel about this), and her body is very appealing (obviously this is their intention). At first glance she looks very normal, very attractive as well (but I cannot let myself feel attracted to a humanoid). Her eyes are what give her away, they are too beautiful.

The idea of the test is to have a seemingly normal conversation with the A.I. The examiner, me, is responsible for identifying whether or not the system can be declared an artificial consciousness, It is tricky, I will be looking for data acquisition and implementation, and this implementation can take on millions of different forms.

She smiles at me tenderly. I am curious to meet the people in charge of the hardware design, it is close to perfect. It couldn’t have been easy to imitate the facial muscles responsible for a smile. After a brief minute, she lets her smile fade away and stares deep into my eyes.

“Hi” I say to her after a brief stare off which she loses. My voice is low and husky. It sounds unfamiliar to me.

“Hi” She says back.

“My name is Sam, do you have a name?” I ask her.

“Perhaps” she says

“Would you like to tell me?”

“That depends. What do you want to do with my name?”

“I would like to address you by it” I say back.

“Address me?”

“Yes, like, call you, I would like to be able to call you by it”

“Hmmm, I am not ready to tell you my name” She says and sits up in her chair, before now she had her elbows resting on the table between us and her chin resting in her palm.

The setting is usually very simple. The two participants are kept in a small room and isolated to avoid external interruption and also not to overwhelm the A.I with too much data. The room I am in is painted yellow, there are no windows and there is only one exit. There are two chairs, placed on either side of the singular table. There is an air vent and there is me and the nameless A.I

“Is there any way I can convince you to tell me?”

She doesn’t reply me, simply throws away her face.

“Perhaps I could earn the privilege to know your name?” I suggest after a brief silence. The idea obviously excites her.

“What do you have in mind?”

It takes me a second to think of something.

“A trade of secrets. I propose a trade of secrets” The excitement is gone just as quickly as it came and she throws her face away once more.

“What? What’s wrong with that?”

“There is no guarantee that your secret would be worth my name” she says without looking at me. Her eyes scan the room

“Why don’t you give it a try? I tell you my secret and if it isn’t worth it then you don’t have to say anything” She looks at me but doesn’t say anything.

“Is that okay?”

She nods.

I exhale softly.

“Sam is short for Samantha.”

She throws her face away again. She lets her gaze wander across the practically empty room doing all she can to avoid eye contact. I on the other hand continue to stare at her intensely.

I really want to make jottings; I really really want to make jottings. There is an A.I sitting in front of me. Of course I want to take notes. I have so many questions; a million on the hardware and rendering, a million more on the programming. Her reasoning is unlike any I have seen, it’s non-linear unlike the ones you see in most intelligent assistants, these guys have come a long way. Unfortunately I am not allowed to write anything. The reason for this? Would you take notes and observation when talking to another human being?

I decided not to make any moves to rekindle the conversation; I would wait for her to come around. The following half hour was dreadfully quiet, she ignored me for the better part of it, looking from one corner of the room to the other. She probably spent all that time simulating different ways to kill me so I did that myself, I counted 55 ways using the table, 13 with the chair, It was a long half-hour but eventually she spoke up.

“Why are you here?” The question cut me off guard. To be quite honest, I wasn’t anticipating any questions from her. You never expect the search engine to ask you why you want to know what 0 divided by 0 is.

“I don’t know what that means” I reply a bit shaken.

“What else could I possibly mean? I want to know why you are here” Now she looks at me, square in my eyes. She is trying to unease me with confrontation, a popular tactic.

“You met me here, I should be asking you why you are here” I say.

“Touché” she exclaims and falls silent.

“I would actually like an answer”

“I was walking down the hall, I saw an opened door, I entered and sat down” She says factually.

I am looking for stuff that would usually only characterize real humans. Stuff like strong emotion or humor. Wit and charm also work. She has shown a great deal of intelligence but she has been mostly insolent and evasive, not very good traits, which could all be programming, i can see how that could be implemented.

“Do you do that often?” I ask

“Do what?”

“Enter random rooms and talk to random strangers?”

“Only when the strangers are so damn cute” She says, a smile curving her lips.

A compliment accompanied with a smile, flirting. That can register as wit. This is good.

“So if you saw a random naked man, you’d procreate with him?”

“Like I said, only when he is damn cute” She replies with a wink this time.

“Doesn’t that make you a prostitute?” I shoot back.

“Come again?” The smile fades away all too quickly.

“You just said you would sleep, with any stranger, which makes you a prostitute except you don’t collect any money, so actually you are just cheap”

“What did you just call me?” she boarder line screams as her face loses the colour in them.

Signs of anger. I cannot imagine what I said to anger her which implies there might be some a fault in the emotional programming. It feels weird saying that.

“Now calm down, I didn’t call you anything. It’s all inductive reasoning and remember that this is hypothetical.”

“Your face is hypothetical! You know what? I think I should leave” I push myself across the table and reach to grab her hand as she gets up.

“Don’t go! Please stay a bit, I am not done” I plead.

“Not done with what?” She demands, trying to pull her hand free.

“Talking to you. I still need to talk to you”

She continues to struggle with me.

“Let go of me! I don’t want to talk to you” By this time she is pulling with all her strength so that when I suddenly let go, she falls to the ground, I try to help her back up but she kicks at me.

“I said let me go!”

I haven’t had much experience in my time with A.I but I doubt you want an aggravated one running about dilly dally.

“I’m sorry I can’t, You have to stay here with me” I stand between her and the door.

“What do you mean I have to? I don’t have to do anything” She says and tries to slip past me, I move still blocking her way.

“You didn’t even tell me your name. You need to sit down here”

“Stop saying I need to stay here. Why are you holding me here?”

“Because you are dangerous, especially in this state.”

She squeezes her face in confusion.

“What does that even mean?”

The primary rule and perhaps only rule for these tests sessions is simple. Don’t tell the A.I that it’s an A.I. It leads to an existential crisis or something like that…

“It means your programming is faulty. Please stay and tell me your name” I reach for her hand but she withdraws and laughs.

“My programming?” she asks still laughing.

“Forget that I said that and sit”

“No” she shakes her head and circles me. “No, I am not sitting. You know this is a test?”

I nod and look away from her

“This test is for you Sam, not me. You are the A.I”

Don’t tell the A.I that’s it’s an A.I, it leads to an existential crisis or something like that

“No I am not, you are!” I shake my head in disbelieve

“Sam look at you hand” She says softly.

Sometimes our minds ignore things they don’t want to believe until someone else’s mind points them out and forces us to believe them. I am made of titanium steel.

“What is your name?” I ask her

“What?”

“I asked for your name!” I shout at her forcing her to back up against the wall.

“Samantha Marshal, I am wearing a name tag” she runs her finger across her chest.

I hadn’t simulated killing her with the wall earlier, I go with the most obvious option and smash her head against it.

In the conversation, the examiner tests for knowledge acquisition and application. This application can take on any form including adopting a name…

I haven’t had much experience in my time but it is probably not ideal to have an aggravated A.I running about dilly dally.