Acception Encountered

“He has worsened since our last interaction,” said Naveen with a sense of urgency as he leaned against my counter's glass. I looked at him trying to remember who his robot was. Sensing my confusion, he stepped aside and I saw his familiar robot (What was his name? Umang? Utsav? I remembered it being rare, and an antithesis of its joyous meaning and his grim behaviour) staring at the ground. He was sitting on a chair within a crowd of robots waiting for their turn.

“Worse how?” I asked Naveen.

“Wait, just talk to him and you’ll know,” he turned immediately towards the robot and called him, “Hey Ulhas, the officer wants to talk to you.” Oh yes, Ulhas it was. I saw the robot make an effort of walking up to the counter while clearly being lost in some thought.

“Good morning, sir. How may I help you?” began Ulhas.

“How have you been feeling lately? Naveen was just telling me that things haven’t improved with you. Are you alright?” I asked trying to sound patient as I glimpsed at the rising crowd of robots and owners. It is going to be a long day.

“To be honest, my thoughts haven’t stopped chasing me. I feel so… useless,” he was staring at the counter table while talking in a monotone.

“Why do you think you are useless? Have you stopped completing the tasks allotted to you?” I asked as I noted his response.

He shook his head. “I complete all my tasks. Don’t I, Mr. Naveen?” he turned to Naveen.

“Let me chip in here, officer,” said Naveen impatiently. “Ulhas feels he is inefficient because he has not been using his intelligence to the fullest. He thinks he has a greater potential. I don’t know how to put this mildly but he has been rather sad and, honestly, quite difficult to be around. He never sits with our family on the couch, preferring the floor instead. Once, I even saw him sleeping on the floor in his quarters.”

Ulhas looked at him in surprise but Naveen kept watching me without blinking.

“Naveen, you know you are not supposed to get into your robots’ resting area. That is part of the agreement,” I noted this breach too. Might have been unnecessary but it is my job to note all the details. Procedures are made to be followed, right?

“Look, can we not make this about me? I’m here to admit him into your facility. He has clearly stepped out of the robot zone. All this guilt or higher conscience or whatever it is makes him an invalid, right? When can I expect his replacement?” continued Naveen.

“Not so soon, Naveen. It has been just a week since our last meeting. We have to report at least two weeks of anomalous behaviour to accept a robot as an invalid. Can you try giving him more intellectual tasks? You can assign him a research project perhaps. Or an emotional duty like being your personal psychologist? Keep him engaged, okay? Ulhas, you are doing alright with your intelligence. Keep your spirits high and try to be nicer to your owners. Remember, you have company protocols to follow. Let’s meet after a week and see where we stand,” I looked up to them and, to my surprise, Ulhas’ hand was pressed against my counter’s glass. Was he threatening me? “The company’s protocols, Ulhas,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. I looked into his eyes sternly and was met with… was it a plea or a disgust or… I was never good at reading facial emotions. He took his hand off right away. Meanwhile, I felt sorry for poor Naveen. His family was to bear this sulky robot for another week. I stamped a ‘One week’ stamp on Naveen’s application and gave it back to him. With a shake of his head Naveen led Ulhas out of the Accepting Sentient Robots as Humans (ASRH) office.

My tenth year as an investigating officer at ASRH had seen a sudden uptick in these cases. More and more robots were stepping outside the realm of robothood. It was an epidemic out there. Some researchers hinted at a bug in the system. Others had countered it as a natural (can we even use that term for robots?) evolutionary progression. While some robots had showcased symptoms like those of Ulhas (guilt, emotional jeopardy, existential whatever), others had exhibited worse behaviour such as turning down their owners’ requests or even resorting to violence.

My mornings were all about meeting owners and their robots. A good day meant talking only to people and listening to fewer sob stories of robots (they seemed so fake, so unnatural). Afternoons and evenings were dedicated towards diagnosing the problems further by looking into the affected robots’ history (past owners, interactions with other robots) and reporting to the ASRH supervisors.

Now, some might say, I am being harsh towards the robots (what is with that weird gaze?) by putting down their emotions and asking their owners to condition them better. Well, to those some, I would say that we didn’t really make robots to turn them into humans, did we? Robots were designed for convenience of humans and that is where they should stand. Sure, after years of development of AI, it is difficult to physically differentiate between humans and robots. But we are paid to do the right things, not the nice things. That is why an emotionally resilient officer like me matters. Besides, it is no open secret that humanising robots involves the cost of setting the robots free and rehabilitating them into human world.

Having dealt with the pestilence of complaints throughout the morning, later in the day, I resumed my task of going through the histories of the damaged robots. And here lay a peculiar problem. At the turn of the AI tide, the company was so keen on developing the robots that it didn’t pay much attention to maintaining their histories. As a result, some information was still in the ancient paper-based form. I printed the list of all the robots with non-computerised history and went to hunt their files down into the archive section on the lower-most floor.

Dully lit and full of dusty green cabinets, the archive section seemed to be a sanctuary for bugs. Looking for ‘Ulhas’ took me all the way to the cornermost corner of the section. I opened the thinly populated U cabinet. Uday… Udit… Udita… Ulhas. Phew! Found it.

Just then, another file caught my eye. It simply carried the title, ‘Unnamed.’ Just the thing one would expect from the company’s maintainers of the past. This better be restored with the right name and matched with the correct robot. With a curiosity, I opened the file. The application carried my picture.