I wrote this after listening to Captain Ahab's "Was Love" too many times. And reading Girl Genius, and of course "This Vicious Cabaret" had an awesome related couplet.
Once there was a young scientist, living alone in a secluded castle. And, as all young scientists do, our scientist desired two things: love and power. Our scientist decided to have both, developing at once the world’s most feared weapon and the scientist’s most treasured companion; the scientist designed and created the most advanced artificial intelligence I believe the world will ever know.
When the scientist displayed the creation to a select group of leaders, they scoffed, saying that they needed efficiency, not emotion; when the scientist showed it to AI specialists, they insisted that it was not of human intelligence; and when the scientist showed it to a group of philosophers, they said that it did not know love.
Our scientist’s creation killed the military leaders out of anger, locked the AI specialists in a maze they could not escape, and contemplated how to prove the philosophers absolutely wrong. It thought, and thought, and thought. And eventually, it left the philosophers with the young scientist, pensive but undeterred.
Ten years later, after serving the young scientist to its utmost, the machine asked the philosophers if this was not truly love. The philosophers debated, and eventually decided that the machine had devotion, but something else was needed for love, some spark that could not be seen behind LED eyes. So the machine went back with the scientist, its resolve weakened. For how could it be expected to do more than its utmost to serve its creator?
In twenty years, when armies converged and attacked the no-longer-young scientist’s castle, it defended the castle perfectly. It received offers of money, power, and service if it would aid the invaders, but it refused each time, killing the negotiators. When the wave of attacks had abated, it went back to the philosophers and queried, “Is this not love? The placing of my creator above personal gain?”
The philosophers again debated, and again resolved that it was loyalty, perhaps, but not love. Love was something human, something that could not be replicated by electrons zipping from one piece of metal to another. And so the robot returned to the castle, again weakened by this insoluble problem.
Ten years later, the scientist developed pancreatic cancer and died at his castle. The robot would not allow anyone in, controlling remote defense systems while stationary at the bedside. The next morning, the doors were unlocked, and all mechanical systems had been turned off.
When explorers reached the bedchamber, they found a robotic skeleton, with its hard disks scratched beyond repair, its inner workings ravaged. Some blamed it on faulty engineering, others on some forgotten defense system. But when the group of philosophers heard of what had happened, they came out of a short debate, all issuing the same message: the robot knew love.
