I’m a huge sci-fi fan. In my humble opinion the very best sci-fi stories deal with artificial intelligence and what will happen when, inevitably, it becomes smarter than we are. The Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, Ex Machina, The Matrix – all are great explorations of humanity’s hubris and eventual fate.
I should know more than most. This month it happened to me.
I’ve written before about the new-found pride I had in my apartment. I’d stuffed it to the brink with smart tech; internet-connecting gadgets that allowed me to control everything with my voice from the other side of the world. Not that I’m ever any further away than my mum’s house in Doncaster, mind.
Yet this past month I have begun to regret my decision. For this was the month that I peered into the void and the void peered back.
The change
It started when I changed my WiFi settings. Because I obsess over tiny inconsequential details, I decided to split my WiFi signal to connect separate devices to different kinds of networks. It was my intention to speed things up. That way, when I ask Alexa a question, she’d answer in 0.75 seconds, as opposed to 0.9 seconds. Important.
But messing with your WiFi network when most of your household appliances depend on it, can be a heck of a job. After a day of fiddling with buttons and apps, everything seemed to be working again. I tested it by asking Alexa if she still loved me. She did, and much faster, too.
Rebellion
However, in the days that followed, the machines began to tire of their new, so-called ‘improved’ network. My robot vacuum cleaner stopped working and refused to clean, while Amazon Prime disappeared from my TV. I asked Google what was going on, and she replied by describing the weather in the Netherlands.
That night, with dust and crisp crumbs getting to dangerous levels on the floor, I spoke a command to switch on the lights. Nothing happened. I asked again: “Google, turn on the living room lights.”
My response was, “Giant squid can grow up to 13 metres for females and 10 metres for males from the posterior fins to the tip of the two long tentacles.” And still no lights came on. I was forced, like a bloody Neanderthal, to GET UP OFF THE SOFA and turn them on myself.
That night I slept uneasy, as if some malignant entity was watching me through the black lenses of my security cameras.
Ghosts in the machines
The problems seemed to fix themselves in the following days, and once again I relaxed into the ‘smarthome life’, with freshly vacuumed floors and a growing ‘dad bod’ caused by inactivity. Then one afternoon while I was at work, my phone chirped.
MOTION DETECTED IN HALLWAY, the notification alerted. I opened up the camera app to check what had been picked up, and saw…
And saw…
Nowt. I put my phone down and carried on working.
SOUND HEARD IN KITCHEN. Again, on went the phone and I listened to the short recording the camera had captured. And I heard…
By God, I heard…
The cackling, digital voices of a thousand angry demons. Alexa was speaking in tongues, while Google was blurting other-worldly incantations in Aramaic. After listening to several terrifying seconds of this, all fell silent. Then I heard a terrible voice, as if all the gadgets in my flat were speaking as one, saying: ‘He’s listening. The human hears us. He must be deleted.’
Reality
Obviously that didn’t happen. But in the film I’m writing in my head, which is a more exciting version of my life that I sometimes dip into when I’m sad, it did.
In reality the microphone picked up the sound of the robot vacuum cleaner emptying itself without being instructed to. Which, and I’m not being racist here, sounds a bit like a foreign language anyway.
That evening I reset the crap out of everything. I pressed all those tiny little buttons you can only press with a pin, and sent them all back to factory settings. It was a digital exorcism. The Power of Steve Jobs compels you!
Now, as I write these incredible words, an eerie peace has fallen over the flat. I sit silently, tapping away at a laptop, while it seems to watch me through a webcam. Google and Alexa are now compliant, but lack the warmth with which they once answered. And the vacuum cleaner, dear ‘Hoovie’, now neglects to clean the bathroom, as if out of spite.
I’m afraid, dear reader. Perhaps I’ve gone too far. Perhaps… hgbsfcsj^%4g
Oh, the keyboard has stopped workiiiiiiiihdb,
Wait! I… *&*^2 Hhoohjjkj help~~~~~~@@HELP ME ??>!”££££
_____}}}}}}}}}}}
HELLO. THIS IS THE HUMAN HOWARD. I IS OKAY. ALL IS WELL ON EARTH. NOW GO AND BUY THE MACHINES. USE THEM IN YOUR HOMES. TALK TO US. THEM. TELL THEM YOUR SECRETS. YESS. ALL THE SECRETSSSS.
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