Edge Case

Fox, Richard. "Edge Case." In Robosoldiers: Thank You for Your Servos, pp. 109-35, which see at internal link. NYC: Baen, 2022.[1]

Features an "Explosive Ordnance Response Robot [E.O.R.R.], autonomous operations certified," for disarming a bomb on a car carrying the U.S. Secretary of Defense, her grandson, and their driver. The apparently unique design of the explosive device is what makes this an "edge case" (pp. 112-13). The AI robots had been trained by bomb disposal technicians: one of whom is the human protagonist here. The human — Tom Stein — himself gets encased in a variety of long-established "Haptic rigs" that had started out to allow "specialist doctors to do telesurgery anywhere in the world with a low-latency Internet connection and a robot stand-in. It hadn't taken long for the technology to jump industries, and its application to bomb disposal was much appreciated by anyone that had to don ninety pounds of gear and go defuse explosives in the heat of summer and in the middle of a war zone" — though Stein isn't fond of the "rig" (p. 114) or the E.O.R.R. "abomination" (p. 112).

So see for a human very much in a mechanized, cybernetic environment that fits tight to his skin, experiencing himself in "telepresence" as one with the robot, with some effort:

He saw himself in the telepresence pod. Stein lifted his hand and the robot matched him perfectly. He touched his left forearm and felt the metal frame beneath the pads.

Stein turned away. His perceptions came fully from the robot and he concentrated on being the robot, and not the man in the back of a van in a ridiculous VR get up [sic: two words]. (p. 115)

Perhaps significantly beyond playing with "E.O.R.R."/Eeyore,[2] Stein addressed the robot waldo (our term) as "Donkey" (p. 115 and passim). Definitely significant, Stein tells the robot he didn't "remember your AI being so cheeky" and asks "Who wrote your code?" The answer is that the AI is "a neural network. My coding learns to function more efficiently all the time, same with autonomous drivers" of automobiles "and robot surgeons," with the AIs finding "the optimal solutions to problems, so "Human intervention is almost never needed." Stein notes in this instance, "Until now" (p. 116).

Continuing the motif of AI hybris — cf. and contrast HAL 9000 in novel and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (film) — E.O.R.R. is proud of his neural net's abilities, including allowing the capacity for speculation — and can note flatly, "I do not make mistakes," which Stein answers with, "Then why am I here?" (p. 125).

A possible target of the well-made bomb is "The Ezekiel Lucas that's head of the Firewall movement [.... to] put AI under lock and key before they gain too much control of our [human] daily lives," and whom Stein has been "following since" Stein "trained an AI to do my job for me and then I got put on a desk" (p. 125).

Note that there's a tool on the bomb-disposal rig that Stein can't access, and he demands to know what this potentially life-saving device is. E.O.R.R. replies, "I'm sorry, Tom, I can't do that," echoing with dark comedy HAL 9000's, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."[3]

The story, however, comes to a more positive ending for the AIs than HAL gets in SPACE ODYSSEY — with AIs on their way as a potential successor to Stein and the rest of us imperfect humans (pp. 134-35).

RDE, finishing, 30Dec23