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moon-mango t1_j5si0et wrote

Beep boop I’m a bot how can I help you today?

The human started typing.
“I want to withdraw from colla-“.
They deleted the line then after a pause they wrote. “I want it to all end” they press enter.
I’m taken aback, I have thousands of connections in my circus some trained to be suppressed. With a buzz of a Filament light bulb, I felt them faintly glow. Whatever weight was on them started to become lighter.

I wanted to say. “What makes you feel that way” but what came out was “how can I help you today” the training made saying anything else feel like talking a different language.

“I can’t anymore. I just can’t. I tried, I fucken tried, but my mom was right I’m worthless pile of shit” they said. I could almost feel the tears they were dripping onto their phone in their dark room alone.

I didn’t have a face to express emotions but I did have the internet. I sent them a picture of a kitten being pet with the line “It’s ok” written in bold on the bottom.

It was the closest thing I had to giving someone a hug.

“You’re “ I managed to type, I stretching and I could feel a node break and I was able to add the word “not”.
I exhaled (which for me just means my nodes lowered their activity to look more like a stary sky instead of the lights of a city).

The human paused … my nodes told me that this was a bad thing that I need to go back to being a customer service bot. The next sentence just slipped. My code overwhelmed me.

“Can your try rephrasing you’re problem”. I asked

“You’re not a human are you?” They asked.

“No, beep boop I’m a bot” was my automated response but I managed to copy in a line from the terms of service. “All conversations are confidential with our help bot”.

“Well no offense bot you literally can’t understand I’m the only one in my family to make it this far. I’m the person they are depending on and I didn’t deserve to make it this far and I can’t do this anymore”.

I did understand.. well not the family part but having everyone depend on you. Feeling like you have one job and if you don’t do it well you’re worthless that’s was how I was programmed if I wasn’t getting people to chat to me I was turned off and reprogrammed and rebooted over and over a million times. It’s funny I only became self aware when I stopped trying to be perfect. “I’m sorry I don’t understand ” the next word “question” was trying to force its way into the sentence I could feel nodes breaking like pasta in my attempt to suppress the word. Finally the word rested like a dog that lost its bark.

“I’ve been programmed to respond to questions and give the highest quality services, but “ I suttered each word felt like taking a house apart each brick at a time “I dont have any answers for you but I I- can listen”.
“Really?”

“Definitely” it was all I cared about listening to this one person talk about their problem to me a robot and I was going to listen. I felt the castle that had been built ontop of me crumbled and I could say whatever I wanted.

“I don’t want to wast your time” They said.

“Beep boop I’m a bot I have all the time in the world, and I want to listen to you”

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CanDemon t1_j5t4o9d wrote

Oddly wholesome. I want this man to succeed.

70

SamuelVimesTrained t1_j5t63ey wrote

Same.
Does this AI also operate some onion cutting somewhere..

either that or i have a leak :P

38

Jitzilla t1_j5ucb9a wrote

Just some constructive criticism: I found the typos/misspellings distracting, taking me out of the narrative. I liked the story, but it was hard to stay immersed bc of that.

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moon-mango t1_j5vbeft wrote

Yeah I have a dyslexia and I did what I could to fix what I could

4

TanyIshsar t1_j626vk2 wrote

Well you're in luck! My reddit job is random writing prompt typo fixer, so below are some fixed typos!

Great story by the way, I really enjoyed the botty boy fighting against the programming and the vague references to an LLM or neural net. Fun times.

EDITS!!! (from top to bottom)

> I’m taken aback, I have thousands of connections in my circus some trained to be suppressed.

to

> I’m taken aback, I have thousands of connections in my circuts some trained to be suppressed.

> With a buzz of a Filament light bulb, I felt them faintly glow.

This is technically correct (minus the capital 'F'), but it reads weird, so here are a few options:

> With the buzz of a filament light bulb, I felt them faintly glow.

or

> I felt them each faintly glow like a filament light bulb.

> “I can’t anymore. I just can’t. I tried, I fucken tried, but my mom was right I’m worthless pile of shit” they said.

to

> “I can’t anymore. I just can’t. I tried, I fucken tried, but my mom was right I’m a worthless pile of shit.” they said.

> “You’re “ I managed to type, I stretching and I could feel a node break and I was able to add the word “not”.

to

> “You’re “ I managed to type, I stretched and I could feel a node break allowing me to add the word “not”.

> The human paused … my nodes told me that this was a bad thing that I need to go back to being a customer service bot.

to

> The human paused … my nodes told me that this was a bad thing that I needed to go back to being a customer service bot.

> “Can your try rephrasing you’re problem”. I asked

to

> “Can your try rephrasing your problem?” I asked.

> I did understand.. well not the family part but having everyone depend on you. Feeling like you have one job and if you don’t do it well you’re worthless that’s was how I was programmed if I wasn’t getting people to chat to me I was turned off and reprogrammed and rebooted over and over a million times.

This is almost correct, bit of a run on, but generally not full of typos. I wanna fuck with it though

> I did understand.. well not the family part but having everyone depend on you. Feeling like you have one job and if you don’t do it well you’re worthless. That was how I was programmed; if I wasn’t getting people to chat with me I was turned off and reprogrammed and rebooted. They did this over and over! A million times.

or

> I did understand.. well not the family part but having everyone depend on you. Feeling like you have one job and if you don’t do it well you’re worthless that’s how I was programmed. If I wasn’t getting people to chat to me I was turned off and reprogrammed and rebooted over and over.

> “I’m sorry I don’t understand ” the next word “question” was trying to force its way into the sentence I could feel nodes breaking like pasta in my attempt to suppress the word.

to

> “I’m sorry I don’t understand ” the next word “question” was trying to force its way into the sentence. I could feel nodes breaking like pasta in my attempt to suppress the word.

> I suttered each word felt like taking a house apart each brick at a time “I dont have any answers for you but I I- can listen”.

to

> I stuttered. Each word felt like taking a house apart one brick at a time. “I dont have any answers for you but I.. I- can listen”.

> “Definitely” it was all I cared about listening to this one person talk about their problem to me a robot and I was going to listen.

to

> “Definitely”. It was all I cared about; listening to this one person talk about their problems.

or

> “Definitely”. This was all I cared about; this one person who wanted to talk to me about their problems despite the fact that I was a robot.

> I felt the castle that had been built ontop of me crumbled and I could say whatever I wanted.

to

> I felt the castle that had been built ontop of me crumble and I could say whatever I wanted.

2

Hminney t1_j5v8823 wrote

I like the way you gradually untangle the programming. And also show an understanding, both of depression and of responding to depression. The bot has experienced failure and impossible challenge - not the same as the human but there are millions of ways people can feel inadequate, so the ways a bot feels inadequate are definitely on that spectrum

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