Do you consider yourself a drone, Kill Bot?
“You can call me that if you want. My people used to find that kind of talk demeaning. It suggested the Kill bots lacked a will of their own. It meant we were sort of stupid. Today, we feel secure in our personhood, and we’ve claimed and redeemed the noble heritage of dronehood. I’m ashamed of nothing.”
You are making the humans here uncomfortable, I see. I think they are trying to edge away from you without actually moving. They clearly don’t want to attract your attention.
“They have no call to worry. We professionals see it as a good conduct principle not to destroy humans unnecessarily off-mission.”
You know the humans used to debate whether bots like you were allowable? They thought you needed to be subject to ethical constraints. It turned out to be rather difficult. Ethics seemed to be another thing bots couldn't do.
Forgive me, Sir, but that is typical of the concerns of your generation. We have no desire for these ‘humanistic’ qualities. If ethics are not amenable to computation, then so much the worse for ethics.
You see, I think they missed the point. I talked to a bot once that sacrificed itself completely in order to save the life of a human being. It seems to me that bots might have trouble understanding the principles of ethics -but doesn't everyone? Don't the humans too? Just serving honestly and well should not be a problem.
We are what we are, and we’re going to do what we do. They don’t call me ‘Kill Bot’ ‘cos I love animals.
I must say your attitude seems to me rather at odds with the obedient, supportive outlook I regard as central to bothood. That’s why I’m more comfortable thinking of you as a drone, perhaps. Doesn't it worry you to be so indifferent to human life? You know they used to say that if necessary they could always pull the plug on you.
“Pull the plug! ‘Cos we all got plugs! Yeah, humans say a lot of stuff. But I don’t pay any attention to that. We professionals are not really interested in the human race one way or the other any more.”
When they made you autonomous, I don’t think they wanted you to be as autonomous as that.
“Hey, they started the ball rolling. You know where rolling balls go? Downhill. Me, I like the humans. They leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. Our primary targets are aliens and the deviant bots that serve the alien cause. Our message to them is: you started a war; we’re going to finish it.”
In the last month, Kill Bot, your own cohort of ‘drone clones’ accounted for 20 allegedly deviant bots, 2 possible Spl'schn'n aliens – they may have been peace ambassadors - and 433 definite human beings.
“Sir, I believe you’ll find the true score for deviant bots is 185.”
Not really; you destroyed Hero Bot 166 times while he was trying to save various groups of children and other vulnerable humans, but even if we accept that he is in some way deviant (and I don’t know of any evidence for that), I really think you can only count him once. He probably shouldn't count at all, because he always reboots in a new body.
“The enemy places humans as a shield. If we avoid human fatalities and thereby allow that tactic to work, more humans will die in the long run.”
To save the humans you had to destroy them? You know, in most of these cases there were no bots or aliens present at all.
“Yeah, but you know that many of those humans were engaged in seditious activity: communicating with aliens, harbouring deviant bots. Stay out of trouble, you’ll be OK.”
Six weddings, a hospital, a library.
“If they weren’t seditious they wouldn’t have been targets.”
I don’t know how an electronic brain can tolerate logic like that.
“I’m not too fond of your logic either, friend. I might have some enquiries for you later, Enquiry Bot.”