Pygmalion Unbound Read Free Page A

decided to accept my offer and spend your sabbatical here. We’re going to be doing some exciting work.”
    “Pleased to see you again, Doctor Crane.”
    “I hope the quarters we rented are comfortable.” American Cybernetics had secured a small bungalow in a quiet upscale residential neighborhood, along with the rental car, for the duration.
    “I don’t need much. My father was in the Army,” she said. “I moved around a lot, and the quality of the housing was pretty low sometimes. But I imagine I’ll be spending most of my time here,” she said.
    “We all will,” Crane said. “This is Dr. Derel Franklin. He’s part of the team here, assisting with our patient.”
    Franklin took her hand in his giant one, and shook it gently. His grip was firm, could have been bone-crushing with his arms, but he made it courtly and gentle. The smile was faint but friendly. His greeting was in his eyes.
    Crane said, “You’ve signed all the security clearances, I presume.”
    “Yes, I did,” said Kelly. It had taken two months for the background checks, and for once, her outwardly conservative, ambition-driven life had served her well. Nothing more than a couple of traffic tickets as a teenager, and she’d kept her romantic affairs invisible out of necessity.
    Crane turned the monitor to Kelly and let her see the real time video. “Her name is Maria. She’s your project.” Maria was sitting on the bed, with a box of Legos spread on the sheet.
    “And the goal of the project would be?”
    “To speed along her development as a person, from infancy to adult.”
    “Memory loss?” Kelly was puzzled. “Autism? Schizophrenia?” Crane shook his head. “I don’t see any visible signs of head trauma.”
    “There aren’t any.”
    “You’re testing on a completely healthy subject?” Kelly asked, alarmed. “That’s — ”
    “No,” Crane said quickly, defusing her. “No, it’s not like that. What do you see?” He pointed at the monitor.
    “I see a very pretty young woman, maybe twenty to twenty-five, dressed rather scantily, who is playing with plastic blocks. Mental age of about five at best. Is she mentally retarded?”
    “No, she’s perfectly normal. Above average IQ, in fact. Way above average.”
    Kelly felt a start of alarm. “You — this wouldn’t be some kind of ESI research, would it? That’s been outlawed — ”
    “No. We’re not tinkering with human enhancement.”
    “Then I’m not sure why you need a behavioral psychologist, and what she” — Kelly pointed a long, delicate finger at the screen — “has to do with artificial intelligence.”
    Crane merely smiled. “You’d never know without me telling you.”
    “Telling me what?”
    “She’s not human,” Crane said triumphantly, picking up a thick manila folder and tossing on the edge of his desk. “Not fully, that is. Maria is the first biologically engineered android.”
    “Android?” Kelly tried to reconcile the pretty young woman on the monitor with visions of clanking metal nightmares.
    “She’s just passed the first test. You thought Maria was human.” Crane smiled. “We’ve bridged the Uncanny Valley.”
    “The what?”
    Franklin leaned against one of Crane’s file cabinets “It’s a term coined by Masahiro Mori, a twentieth-century roboticist. He noticed that as a robot becomes more like a human, human beings will have a positive reaction. But at some point, as it gets closer, people will instinctively feel revulsion. Which turns to positive reactions as it gets even closer.”
    “The key is to have the robot’s abilities match its appearance,” Crane said. “If it looks like a toaster, then to have it perfectly emulate human emotions just seems creepy. If it looks human, then to have it act like a toaster causes the revulsion.”
    Kelly looked at Maria again and tried to regain her composure. “Which is, I presume, why you’ve dragged a perfectly content behavioral psychologist from a comfortable teaching