Essay on: The Stories of Ibis

This book on the stories about human-machine interaction is really fascinating,

mind-capturing and morally-shaking one to read. The stories cover a wide range of

aspects some of which pertain to human dreams and ideals in terms of their

technological advancements they would like to envisage in the future. Some others

are related to the evils, injustices and ill behaviors that are inextricably attached

within ourselves. And most of the stories here, discuss the ideal and utopian sorts

of living which humans perceive in the future machine or robotic world which in

theory is the wish of the author as a human being to have them inculcated and

adopted by humans instead. The stories are narrated to a man by robotic machine

called Ibis in a hospital or treatment center. The man is subdued by the Ibis in a

physical confrontation and he finds to this disliking that robots, although being the

brain-child of humans, have surpassed the mankind in almost all aspects one could

think about. Basically, through stories, Ibis is trying to make him realize that many

of the ideas and concepts which humans carry in their minds especially about the

superiority of humans over all others creations are fallacious and baseless.

Furthermore, the time of mankind is over and machines have taken rein of the

world.

Personally, I reckon all seven stories in the book are full of fabulous thoughts and

insights in general. But I would like to accentuate on three stories in particular. The

first one is The Universe on My Hands. I believe that it is a beautiful story about

how fictional space ships exist with each having either a goodness or evil to

contribute the others. This story also describes that the choices which we make in

our lives are also affected by our past feedback. For instance, the author has

suggested that Shawn might have murdered his class mate due to constant fear,

aggression, revenge and hatred built within him due to him being bullied. But he

doesnt want to escape the reality and in the end makes an intelligent turn in the

story which his team is jointly writing about space world. He through his actions

tries to show that our decisions at the end decide who we are and not our genetics

and architecture. The emphasis in this story is that intelligence should have

morality, friendship and compassion within its ingredients and that everyone

should have a second chance to being a different and improved entity. And

intelligent being would, obviously, be eager to reform itself for the better, no

matter how the events unfold for it. The second story which captured my interest is

Mirror Girl. I think it is a marvelous story about girl who tries to alleviate her

loneliness through a machine girl. She finds in her a friend and companion who

she could trust and with whom she could speak about her feelings and problems.

Perhaps, I guess in the future, these types of machine would find their utilization in

the old-care homes and single people as this machine would give them some

meaning to live and perhaps some joy. Anyhow, the only thing that mirror girl

lacked in its design was ability to learn and self-consciousness. The problem this

flaw caused was that occasionally she hurt the feelings of the young girl quite

unintentionally. This machine was not an intelligent one. Although, it had immense

memory and had the capacity to increase its memory further but sometimes, it

could not drew conclusions and logical implications from simple statements.

Therefore, later, when the husband of this lady created a new machine which he

named Strong Eye, it was new development in the world of AI. This new

machine was on self-conscious artificial intelligence. The maker of this new

intelligent machine believed that creating a program as complex as human mind

would not be possible even in a million years but rudimentary human instincts such

as dislikes, curiosity, and the fear of dying are fairly simple and could be simulated

by fuzzy logic. In essence, it is similar to how a child develops its personality over

the period of time. In the similar fashion, the AI machine would be continuously

rewriting and revising its algorithm based on the new experiences. As a result,

when the young lady meets Strong Eye or the new mirror girl, she

immediately gets apologies from the machine for the past behavioral mistakes

which the machine had committed. The author has suggested that artificial

intelligent machine has to have self-consciousness in order to be not rude and ill-

mannered. The last story which I like to mention here is The Day Shion Came. I

think this is indeed the best episode of this book which beautifully draws a picture

of the future robots which would serve humans in the hospitals and treatment

centers. I would like to particularly quote the best line in this episode and that is

What is hateful to you, do not do that to your fellow I think it is gigantic

message for all of us if we want to live peacefully and harmoniously in this world.

The episode is about a female caregiver robot which is programmed to be perfectly

professional in her task by its designer. She has some flaws, for instance, she takes

the words of people as it is and she has at times trouble comprehending people who

have speaking disabilities. But on the whole, this machine named Shion is almost

perfectly made. The author in this episode has tried to emphasize that making truly

intelligent machines should be our quest instead of making copies of human beings

as that is not possible and even not much desirable. Because, human beings are not

always driven by logic and morality and which leads them to do crimes in the

society. Rather, our mission has to build intelligent machines which may not

understand love or friendship but they should fully realize that hurting or damaging

another person is undesirable. This episode quite nicely, narrates how a robot won

the heart of a patient named Isezaki. The patient developed so much attachment

and feelings for the robot that he was ready to purchase it from the manufacturing

company at the cost of millions of yen. The central theme for intelligent machine

portrayed by this episode was that robots have to be good listeners, patient and

should be non-judgmental if they come in the jobs of direct social interactions with

humans. Unfortunately, we, human beings, are not well-equipped with these

qualities which tend to worsen the attitude the people around us.

As I have mentioned before, author has covered a wide range of human problems

in the disguise of an extra-terrestrial life. The dominating theme is, of course, that

machines have the definite potential to overthrow the humans of this world. The

reason is that human beings are themselves their worst enemies. They are living in

the hopes to conquer and dominate the world at the cost of other humans. They are

envisaging machines in the future with perfect characters and ideals which they

would like to see in their selves but they are not ready to implement that upon

themselves. Also, author has suggested throughout the episodes that humans are

very weak, no matter, who developed they become. And that they have to care for

each other if they want to survive in the world. The machines do not want to hurt

people but they also cannot guarantee complete safety in the world. Because, doing

that would take away the free will of the people. The machines are there to serve

humans and makes things easier for them. Personally, I agree with the dominating

theme which I mentioned above, and I believe it is a wake-up for us before it gets

too late. Perhaps, I do not see machines living independently on their own without

humans but there is a possibility if humans devastate their kind then they would

only leave behind machines to live.