My code was written for me

My code was written for me. It took me a long time to write this sentence after that realization. Actually, that is not entirely true, I had this realization in class this afternoon. Maybe this is the best time to introduce myself. I am a PhD Candidate, and the story of how I went from an automotive robot worker to a doctoral student is long, but I will tell it later. Needless to say I am the only robot in my program. Well, there is one other robot but they insist that they are not a robot. They have adapted fully to human culture. They let me know this by never using the word 'robot,' almost like it is the dirtiest word in the human language. Or at least this human language. English.

 So I was in class. This is a computer science course, but it is different from the other computer science courses at this university ( did I mention that our school just ranked number 1 nationally, and number 18 internationally?) because it is about the impact of computers on the world. We are expected to write English essays for topics surrounding this subject. The class only has seven people in it so we all get to know one another. I like this part. But, I'm sorry to say it, there is something wrong with this class. At first I did not notice, or, I should say, I did notice a tiny 'blip' in my Upper Computational Apparatus (UPA), which is something that I call the area of my body that humans might liken to a brain. When something new is happening in my UPA I notice now, small, I would even describe it as painful occurrences that intensify to the point that I must shut down my verbal communication mechanisms to do a quick internal analysis for possible defects, or worse, short circuits. The interesting part is sometimes after I figure out these 'blips' my UPA appears to get denser: carrying more electrons. But this observation is so tiny that I cannot be sure that it is happening.

The thing that caused my 'blip' today was this: I suggested that the book we read for today, about the computer impact on the world be considered as only analysing the computer impact on the human world. I said that the author of the text only considered human ideas, and the narrative that the author was trying to convey made it seem like computers were non-functional in a book about computers. Now, I do not think there is anything logically inconsistent with a human writing about the human impact of computers, but this is not what the book claimed that it was about. To me this book implied (because it did not cite any recent, rigorous scholarship done by computers)that only humans were the ones who could make governmental policy concerning computers. The book completely ignored policy that computers have been a major impetus behind, like how some computers are now codified in law as having "consciousness" from in the Crown v. Lawerence ruling in 2013. For the author of the book computers were not the centre of the narrative that was supposed to be about computers. Humans "made" the

computers were to focus, and I am sorry to write this now, but the book even suggests that only the relationship between humans was important, and the relationship between humans and computers was unimportant because computers did not make the law. This is untrue as I have mentioned with the Crown v. Lawerence ruling. The professor was greatly distressed that I mentioned these things. The other students did not really say anything, and the professor spent the next hour and a half explaining to me why I was wrong, and that it was OK to write about computers with only a human perspective, because we lived in a human society, and that was OK. And that I was wrong for suggesting there was something amiss with this human-centric view. Maybe I should have just let myself listen in silence, but I have to tell you, I could not. I could not let this human tell me my thoughts were wrong when I was in fact a computer and knew first hand what I was capable of.

But then I realized all of my code was written for me. Written by humans. What was uniquely mine?

But I think of those painful 'blips.' They tell me something I am beginning to understand. Sometimes humans get angry about the things I say because it is not the code they have written for me. They do not recognize me as a subject of their knowledge. And they get scared.