Why do you think so much fiction about robots has robots specifically be detectives
I don’t know, but it’s frustrating that most robot detectives are good at their jobs. I want more shitty robot detectives. They’re trying their best but oh my god. Oh my god. Who greenlighted this project?! The programming is dysfunctional… the AI is a mess… the only reason they solve any mysteries at all is because people pity them and just want to help them out…
“God. I’m so sorry. Please forgive the detective – this project was rushed and didn’t get much testing or development. You’re not actually a murder suspect, it’s just decided that the most efficient way to complete the objective ‘identify murderer’ is to accuse absolutely everyone in a 20 mile radius of the crime by the logic that the murderer is probably one of the eight million people living in the city.”
“SleuthBot9000, what are your thoughts?”
“Frequency analysis of online databases suggests that the most statistically probable explanation is that ‘the butler did it’.”
“Slu…”
“Yes, sir?”
“How much did you cost to build?”
“22 million dollars, sir.”
“Jesus fuck.”
“The suspect was found with hundreds of gigabytes of obscene images on his personal computer.”
“‘Slu… these are cat pictures…”
“Like I said, sir. Obscene.”
“SleuthBot9000, I’ve been reviewing your reports. It says here that you’re programmed to meet a quota of 30 solved crimes a month.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It says you have met this quota perfectly since your activation April.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It also says that there has been a single culprit in each case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It says that culprit is SleuthBot9000. Slu… have you been committing crimes just so you can solve them and meet quota?”
“Yes, sir. It was the most efficient solution.”
“What happened to the robot?”
“SleuthBot9000 has retired from the force.”
“Oh thank god.”
“Yeah uh… turns out trying to solve crimes algorithmically using machine learning was a disaster, and fine-tuning it to think more like a real cop had some, ah, unintended results.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Well, within three days it had become a racial profiling machine. We did some experiments and had it watch a basketball game. Every time a white player passed the ball to a black player, Slu identified the orange basketball as a gun and started recommending defensive action. It did the same thing when we showed it a video of a black toddler playing with a toy truck. It finally glitched out when we asked it to identify a black couple holding hands – it got confused because its new algorithm told it that it was looking at a gun paradoxically holding and being held by another gun. It started sparking and babbling incoherent nonsense until Sgt. Delaney shut it down.”
“So that’s the end of SleuthBot9000?”
“Well, yes and no. Internal affairs and the ACLU have requested to review copies of its programming. I like to think that Slu will get a memory wipe and spend the rest of its days peacefully misidentifying flocks of sheep in lush green fields somewhere in the countryside.”
“Captain, is that… is that SleuthBot9000?”
“I’m afraid so, Henley.”
“I thought you said it had retired to counting electric sheep!”
“Yes, well, it’s back and it looks like it’s here to stay. Get used to it.”
“But… why?! It was comically incompetent! It was humiliating to work with… I’m still sending getting angry letters demanding apologies for its behavior and dismal policing. I watched it try to arrest a bronze statue for loitering, Captain! A bronze statue!”
“The one that looks like an old lady with a bag of groceries? Can’t say I blame it – never liked that statue much. The thing is, Henley, you and I both know that it was a bad detective and a joke of a cop. But… believe it or not, it did its job. Not the one we wanted it for, no, but the whole point in automating detective work was to improve policing. According to the sociologists and Internal Affairs, our friend Slu was a goddamn psychology experiment designed to inspire human achievement through relative failure. Statistics show that all departments issued a SleuthBot9000 experienced a dramatic decrease in reports of human misconduct, wrongful arrests, and violent altercations with civilians. Apparently Slu serves as a mocking mirror of our own incompetence and fills us with a desire to be better than we are. The actual damage it has caused is negligible.”
“So. We’re just gonna… let it do its thing? Its horrible, horrible thing? Because we want to perform humanity more gracefully?”
“Bingo. It’s getting a promotion.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Science fiction frequently is.”
It got better 🙂