The Robot and the Child
A short story about artificial intelligence
The robot joined the family when autonomous artificially intelligent humanoid robots were all the fashion. It arrived shiny from the factory of its birth to the waiting extended family living in an upscale community off the Pennsylvania coast. With the excitement novelty creates they used it for as many tasks around the house as they could think of.
One day the father would use the robot for landscaping, making use of the robot’s carbon nanotube fiber muscles and metallic bones of superatom alloy.
“You’re strong as an ant,” the father would say.
Another day the mother would use the robot to help with her cybernetic fiber weaving for which she was well known in the Near Earth system. Once activated a weaving became a reflection of its viewers emotions, color rising and falling in waves across the cybernetic fiber cloth. Her art was very popular.
“You’re as nimble as a spider,” the mother would say.
For those first years it was so in demand the robot would spend its time on the most critical family tasks that required a general use autonomous humanoid robot. The robot’s machine learning algorithms enabled it to refine its performance, each task becoming more efficient and so freeing more time for the robot…
