A brief survival guide for bots

The Chinese have decided that this won’t do: millions and millions of gold sequins have been invested, but the robots still aren’t working the way we need them to. The electronic slaves aren’t ready and aren’t making much progress. So, as I read on Bloomberg, whilst in America they’re still carrying out intravenous data transfusions, over on the other side of the world they’ve opted for a different method of learning. They’re sending the robots out amongst humans to let them learn: we do the work, they watch. And so, they say, these eager trainees will soon manage to improve. Through assimilation. It’s the oldest educational story in the world: imitation through proximity. We’ll see how the machines react. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking that if, in the future, we’re all going to have our own little robot intern, we might as well start preparing the instruction manual right away on the most useful human things to know.

Experience: it is a quality acquired over time and through repetition; to improve your brain, you need to make those initial mistakes. It’s called paying your dues. When you’ve just started out and are keen to get things done, you’ll make mistakes in your haste. Some of those mistakes will be almost disastrous for the person in charge of the overall organisation – of which you are the smallest cog – and that person will get very angry.

So it happens that the human apprentice ends up having a dreadful half-day, being told off and shouted at, and then the brain (our hardware) automatically adapts. Remembering that dreadful day, it says to itself: I know how I felt, and I never want to feel that way again. After that, with that change in the neurons, you climb to a higher branch of maturity: you’ll be guided through life by a sort of fear of making mistakes, which has no specific name and which we humans have therefore called a ‘sense of responsibility’ – because if you call fear by another name, it’s no longer frightening. A sense of responsibility is the meticulous quality of checking your output, delving deeper, studying more thoroughly, and not giving quick, ill-considered answers. Is that clear?

Instinct: this is a difficult quality that requires a great deal of attention. Everyone has it, but for some it speaks to them, whilst others simply let themselves be guided by it. Those who know how to negotiate using their instinct use it very sparingly and, above all, know when not to use it. Usually, it’s better not to use it than to use it, but sometimes, when you do use it and it’s the right time to do so, incredible things happen. Are you following me?

Instinct is a subtle voice at the back of your brain that clicks; it’s right at the point in your head where your spine begins. When it’s the right instinct, you can feel it in your knees and the tips of your fingers too. How do you know it’s a good instinct? Something – deep within the darkness of the unconscious – begins to shine with an incredible light and tells you: do this, you absolutely must do this. The mathematical probability calculations of your hardware, on the other hand, would say no, it’s an impossible path; in fact, there isn’t even a path. And yet there is. It’s a chemical spell that helps us find solutions. A sort of miracle. Do you get it?

Love: it’s that flutter you feel in your stomach. When you feel it, everything improves: your face, your performance, the way you walk. When it’s right for you and is reciprocated, it’s wonderful. When things go wrong, however, the whole system really grinds to a halt. Love requires certain qualities to begin with, but no one really knows what they are, so bear in mind that it can start with nothing at all. It’s a desire to keep close to someone who is very special to us and a hundred thousand times better than any other kind of person. We love that person, but love can survive without respect, so be careful. In fact, in those cases, the ‘molecule’ strangely becomes stronger. At that point, you have to try to get rid of it from your body, but it doesn’t go away through sheer willpower or just because you decide to bin it. It stays in the software. Do you see what I mean?

A commitment to quality: when we’re doing our job and the result is poor, we know it straight away. It’s an algorithm we’ve had built in almost from the start; the ‘voice’ that tells us ‘you could definitely have done this better’ is right there in the interface: critical self-assessment, which you’ll find in the ‘Honesty’ sub-menu.

Unconscious: we’ll discuss that another time, little robot.