Page 96 of Chaos Theory
He perches on the windowsill. His smile returns. He points at Kobi, who’s gone uncharacteristically quiet in a corner.
‘So, we’d made some progress with the Kobi 3000, thanks to the genius engineering of Josh here. Kobi was highly functional, adaptable. Lots of potential, including military application. But we needed to see how he’d function around people. So we placed him in a manufacturing plant – a real-world environment, but nice and safe, controlled. We wanted to see how he’d respond if members of his team were suddenly put in danger.’
‘The incident,’ I say. I’m trying to put it all together. ‘That night. That wasn’t a random malfunction then.’
‘Itwasa malfunction, but not a random one. It was the result of a simulation created by myself and Laura Cantwell.’
‘Laura! This just keeps getting better!’ says Josh. He slumps down into a chair, puts his head in his hands.
‘Let’s just say Laura and I share a vision for the future of robotics. She’s a very ambitious woman. So Laura and I logged in remotely that night and we made Kobi believe that his team – his co-workers – were under attack. Ran the EMBED protocol. But he didn’t do what we’d hoped. If anything, he acted confused – his actions were random and uncontrolled. Needless to say, we were very disappointed.’
‘I bet you were,’ says Josh.
Kobi starts to say something, but I signal him to hush. I want to hear it all come out. Iknewthere was more to the PHI incident than Josh thought. It strikes me that Laura withheld a lot of information from us when we visited PHI. As much as Josh didn’t want to visit the factory, she probably didn’t want us there either, poking around. True, she let us talk to Sam, but she probably had to throw us a bone to get rid of us faster. She clearly didn’t know about the audio recording.
‘I fully expected Kobi to return to us here the next day,’ continues Ron. ‘But he didn’t, did he, Josh? Because that’s when you decided to go rogue.’
‘Are you really going to lecturemeabout doing things by the book?’ asks Josh from behind his hands.
‘Before that little incident, Kobi was doing so well, according to Laura. I was curious to see what you’d do next, Josh. And to be frank, I had more or less given up on Kobi. You taking Kobi off the grid turned into an opportunity. Officially, I didn’t know anything about it, of course, which gave me plausible deniability.’
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘So, you’re saying you knew all along that Kobi went to Go Ireland? But Josh thought he was hiding Kobi there?’ Part of me feels less bad about being made a fool of now. Josh didn’t realise, in all his deceptions, thathewas being duped too.
Ron nods. ‘Yes, it sounds quite the comedy of errors when yousay it like that. Of course I knew where Kobi was. He has a tracking device. Maybe I forgot to mention that, Josh, but it seemed kind of obvious. Although the tracker did stop working about a month ago. Still, I knew where he was – or at least I thought I did, until that little video stunt at the conference.’
I do the numbers in my head. The night we brought Kobi to Phelan’s was about a month ago. The tracker must have got wet and stopped working then. I look at Josh, who still has his head in his hands. I kick his foot lightly and he looks up at me. I roll my eyes and make a gesture that I hope he interprets asHow could you not know about all this?ButJosh just shakes his head.
Ron isn’t finished. ‘Needless to say, I wasn’t pumped about your little jaunt around rural Ireland. When I saw that dramatic little movie at the conference, at first I was angry, yes. But then when I fully understood what had happened, I realised something.’
His tone turns dreamy, and when he next speaks, he fixes all his attention on Kobi. He walks over to the robot and addresses him in quiet tones.
‘This was the breakthrough I’d been waiting for all along. Kobi, you sacrificed yourself,in the moment,for your team. Even though you didn’t know that little girl very well, I believe your spontaneous actions were triggered by a feeling. A feeling of absolute loyalty to the people you were with.’
‘What would you know about loyalty?’ murmurs Josh from his crumpled position.
‘What would I know about loyalty?’ echoes Ron quietly. Although he continues to gaze at Kobi, his focus seems to be somewhere else entirely. ‘Let me see. Two tours of Iraq. The Gulf War. Do you know what it means to have your life fully in someone else’s hands, and theirs in yours? To be one hundred per cent reliant on someone else, and to trust, toknow, that they will act in your best interests? And to know it because you’d do the exact same for them?’
I fear that Kobi will try to provide an answer, but he remainssilent. Somewhere among my kaleidoscoping emotions, I’m proud that he’s finally mastered rhetorical questions.
Ron turns to face me, his tone crisper now. ‘Robotic military applications are still in their infancy. Yes, robots can follow orders right now. But can they make split-second, autonomous decisions?’
‘Do we want them to do that?’ I ask.
‘Yes, Maeve, we want them to do that.’ His tone hardens. ‘If you’re out there in the field, stuck in some godforsaken foxhole with no way out, you need to know that that robot would sacrifice itself for you in an instant.’
He gives me the full force of his attention. ‘You unlocked something in him, Maeve. Whatever you did over these past few weeks, you bound Kobi to you, and you to him.’ His passion is startling, overwhelming. ‘So now I know – thanks to you – how to guarantee that robots like Kobi will sacrifice themselves in the line of battle. The robot needs to bond with the troop before they ship out. And the bond needs to go both ways. It’s like a loyalty feedback loop that gets stronger as it’s reinforced, to the point where the robot is ready to spontaneously put itself on the line to protect its unit.’
I scramble to tease through the implications. ‘Let me get this straight. You want to manipulate soldiers into forming an emotional bond with a military robot, even though that robot will very likely soon be destroyed? Is that even ethical? Sorry you have to hear this, Kobi.’
‘Well, let me ask you something,’ says Ron. ‘Is it ethical to see your best friend killed in front of you? Believe me, if I could have put a robot in his place…’ He doesn’t finish his sentence. He turns his back on us, looks out the window.
No one speaks for a while. Eventually I break the silence.
‘I’m sorry that happened, Ron. But it’s still not right to deliberately foster emotional bonds that you know will soon be destroyed.’
‘But humans in the military do that all the time, darling. Do you think that’s okay?’ He still has his back to us.
‘No. I don’t know. But at least they know what they’re signing up for. What you’re proposing is deceptive – tricking people intobonding with a machine.’ Somewhere in my mind, I realise that I, too, have bonded with a machine.
