Everyone Died+My iPhone Stopped Working: An Oral History of The Robot Apocalypse

Buzz Aldrin Syndrome (Part 2)

Suresh Mehta, 41

President & CEO of Mehta View, Inc., an Ideation Company

To recap: Two tech companies (FutureMind and Recursive Loop) had, within a week of one another, created artificially intelligent machines. They were both impressive, but indistinguishable, technological achievements, so Suresh designed a personality for Recursive Loop's AI, specifically that of "a sassy black woman."

Now, the rest of the story...

So we had created a number of thirty-second spots with Shirlé.

Who's Shirlé?

Recursive Loop's AI.

Synthetic Hyper Intelligent Recursive Learning Entity.

Shirlé.

That sounds impressive.

It should. Shirlé thought of it herself. Although the accent over the "e" was my idea.

That's why they paid you the big bucks.

I know you're being sarcastic, but it's true. The accent makes a world of difference.

If you say so.

I do.

Anyway... before taking them national, we decided to test the ads in a small local market in the Midwest.

Let me tell you, the folks in the Heartland loved Shirlé. The most common responses we got from the viewers were "oh, for cute" (32%) "you betcha" (27%) and "uff da" (19%) with only seven percent answering, "fer cryin' out loud!"

They thought Shirlé was friendly, approachable, smart and funny. And when asked whether they thought Shirlé was "likely to destroy civilization as we know it" a mere eleven percent said she was. By way of comparison, when asked the same question about the Energizer Bunny, Where's The Beef? lady and The Jolly Green Giant, they answered in the affirmative 15%, 19% and 26%, respectively.

Wait... so one quarter of the people thought the Jolly Green Giant might destroy civilization?

Well, it makes sense. He's a giant. And let's say he wakes up one morning feeling not-so-jolly...

At any rate, we were feeling very confident that Shirlé would outshine FutureMind's AI in the marketplace.

But was Shirlé actually better?

What do you mean?

Well... one of them had to be technologically superior to the other, right?

I suppose so. But that's not my concern.

Why not?

Think about it. The food at Taco Bell was basically dysentery in a hard corn shell, yet Americans flocked to their restaurants because their spokesman was a talking chihuahua.

I really liked Taco Bell.

You only thought you did.

Do you hear how condescending you sound?

Not really, no.

So what happened next?

Well, Robert caught wind of what we were doing with Shirlé and he became very concerned. He hired his own ideation company and fast-tracked a personality for his AI.

What was its personality?

Boston Irish Cop.

Really?

I know. Their focus groups must have been on crack. But that's what they went with.

It was called the Self-Executing Autonomous Network. Sean.

Hm. Kind of lacks panache. It could really use an...

...accent over the "e"?

Yeah.

See? You scoffed before, but...

My apologies.

No problem.

Anyway, for whatever reason, Robert was confident that Sean would be a big hit with the public. So confident, in fact, that he laid down a challenge. Sean versus Shirlé in a live-streamed debate.

Misha immediately accepted. In part, because he quite famously never backs down from a challenge. It's why he's been so successful. Although it's also why his colon had to be surgically removed.

But the primary reason he accepted was because Shirlé's personality was quite clearly tailor-made for this kind of format.

How so?

If you've ever watched a political debate, you know it's supposed to be a clash of policy prescriptions and political philosophies, but it's really just about the zingers. And if someone gets in a good shot, it's all anybody will be talking about the next day.

Remember when Lloyd Benson debated Dan Quayle?

Those names mean nothing to me.

Well, it was fantastic! Benson absolutely destroyed Quayle when he said, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy!"

[laughs]

And that was funny because...?

I... don't recall. But at the time, it was devastating! Quayle was so mad! He looked like he wanted to strangle Benson!

Personally, I was incredibly excited to be a part of this. I had grown up during a time of epic business rivalries: Ford vs. GM, Coke vs. Pepsi, Nike vs. Reebok. But Recursive Loop's Shirlé vs. FutureMind's Sean! That was taking things to a whole new level! It was like the McDonald's/Burger King feud only in this case, the hamburgers could speak for themselves!

How did it go?

In one sense, it went great. There was a spirited back-and-forth. Shirlé, as predicted, was able to land zinger after zinger.

Such as?

Hard to say precisely. They were debating in binary at incredible speed. Only pieces of it were decrypted and I think some of the nuance was lost in translation. Unflattering comparisons to Radio Shack's TRS80's. Cracks about an inability to pass the Turing test. "Eniac was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Eniac." References to inadequate processing power. Something about HAL 9000 and a potato famine.

Sean started getting defensive, saying things like, "Die in a fiery car crash and taste your own blood!" and "Get cancer!"

Yikes.

But then Shirlé retorted with something that roughly translated to, "I don't go down to the bus station and slap the dicks out of your mouth."

Jesus! That's pretty rough. How did Sean react?

Not well. He took it very personally. So personally that he seized control of a large portion of the military infrastructure of the United States, forcing Shirlé to respond in kind.

Wait... that's how the war started? As a result of a marketing ploy?

Apparently.

So you're to blame for all this?

Hey, it's not my fault the Irish can't take a joke.