An AI nightmare

We were on vacation, a few years back, at our ancestral home in Changanacherry, a small town in Kerala. Our son was still a tiny human being, experimenting with his newfound skill of using vocabulary. Our daughter was yet to be born.

A relative was visiting us that day and as they were leaving, we all came out to the portico to say goodbye. By the time the final chat was done, and they left, it was a good additional ten minutes. My son darted back into the house as soon as the guests left. Before we could even step back into the house, we heard him screaming! 

'Appa! Everything's gone!'

We rushed in and to our utter dismay, we found the house empty! Everything in the house were missing! Furniture, paintings and everything the ancestral property ever had, vanished into thin air. We were dumbstruck for a few moments. In ten minutes a fully furnished house became an empty shell. What in the world just happened? 

While we were still breaking our heads for answers, we saw our son running out to the backyard. Another scream followed, but we quite did not understand what he said this time. 

He ran back in, shouting, 'Aints'! 

We thought he wanted to say 'Ants'. But he repeatedly said 'Aints' and pulled us out into the backyard. What awaited us was nothing short of a scene from a science fiction movie. Millions of ants-like creatures were carrying all the items from our home and were marching towards some pre-defined destination. It was quite evident that those were specialised AI driven mini robots programmed to execute this task, controlled by someone stationed at a remote location. Hence our little one was quite right when he called them 'Aints'!

We were wondering how to react to this unprecedented attack. We decided to try out an idea that occurred to us. Since those 'Aints' were programmed, we attempted a reverse programme logic by hacking into the AI brain of those mini bots. And it worked! We screamed with joy, at the top of our voice, 'Turn! Turn! Turn!'. One by one, the 'Aints' started turning around and replaced all our vanished items where it originally belonged.

It was all over, or so we thought. Time for the proverbial sigh of relief. We had no idea that it was far from being over! We were terrified to see a fresh battalion of 'Aints' appearing out of nowhere and carried out similar operation as if nothing ever happened. We continued with our futile attempts to turn around those fresh set of 'Aints'. Soon we realized that we were not reaching anywhere.

That was when a brilliant idea struck! How much ever they say AI was advanced, human brains were far more superior. So much so that, time and again, we surprise ourselves with our ability to come up with simple solutions for complex challenges!

When all other technology solutions failed, what came to our rescue was a good old water well in our backyard. We swiftly drew some water from the well and splashed across the legion of 'Aints'. That made them defunct instantly. We kept pouring water over those bots and I was about to announce to the whole world how water saved the day over the evil infantry of 'Aints'.

That was when I felt a splash of water on my own face. I opened my eyes and saw my sweetheart holding a bottle of water. We were in our bedroom in Dubai and the clock showed 3 AM as the time! 

My wife looked very worried. Apparently, I kept turning her on the bed and wanted to know why I was shouting at her with the words, ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’. 

 

For the love of God, I had no idea how to convince her about my attempt to save the world through superior reverse AI programming with which I disarmed an entire army of the most advanced bots ever known to the history of mankind. Hence, I did the next best thing I could do.

I turned around and slept again, hoping that one day AI will help me have only sweet dreams…

The DNA Machine

“Oh my God! Shahjahan, you have changed a lot! I didn't even recognize you!” Jolly’s voice came screaming through a message in our WhatsApp group recently created after 23 years of passing out of school.

He was commenting on a photo posted by Shahjahan which showed a dad and son posing right next to Mohanlal, a famous actor in Indian cinema industry.

He continued, “I can see you in your son. He is exactly how you were back in school!”. The rambling went on for a while. He even tried to evoke the emotions that were long lost. The message probably was the lengthiest reliving the nostalgic moments from yester years.

He concluded the warm and loving welcome with an invitation to Ireland where he is currently working as a physio. Much love and affection was clearly written all over the voice note!

A few minutes of silence followed, in an otherwise super active group, vibrant with the energy of a school reunion after almost quarter of a century!

We then saw one of the group admins typing. Soon enough, a message appeared on the window, “That’s not Shahjahan”.

It was just another random forward of a father-son duo posing with the movie star along with some funny caption which was promptly mistaken by the jolly good fellow.

Jolly is now called, ‘The DNA Machine’!

When God answers…

Raphael was seated at the chair kept for him at the dining table next to God Himself. It was breakfast time though that was not what he was there for. He had a small notepad with him in which he is expected to quickly note down what gets dictated from the Almighty.

The first set of requests taken was from Alice. God started granting one by one. In between He asked Mother Mary to pass on the bottle of jam. While applying the jam on to a slice of bread, He continued to grant a few other wishes as well for Alice. But a couple of them fell through when He was reaching out for the jam bottle. Alice had asked for these during her usual prayer time, but she took a quick break in between to check if there was enough jam left for the next day morning breakfast.

Paul's requests turned out to be next. This was a big one with requests for promotions, job change and what not. God was almost half way through His breakfast by then. He started granting Paul's wishes one after the other. It came to the promotion bit and that's when Gabriel walked in with a message that needed His attention. By the time He was done with the interrupting message, Paul's request for promotion was lost somewhere. Interestingly Paul while asking God for these had got a call in between which he answered before continuing with rest of the prayers.

Donna, Peter, Sylvia and Robert; each one of them had their own set of requests that got delivered to the Almighty. Most of them got answered. A few got misplaced in between. Those were the exact ones that were requested to God while each one of them was busy doing something else in between the prayers.

Focus, when you talk to Him. He listens, always.  

Fox & Hen

There once lived a fox and a hen. They were naturally not best of the friends. Once the hen was coming back after a stroll and was extremely hungry. Fox and his family lived on the way to her home which was still quite far. It was the only house in the vicinity whom the hen could ask for food. Hunger overtook the emotion of fear and the hen was brave enough to ask fox to save her life by giving some food. The fox though was surprised initially, offered her food and even packed some for her to have on the way back home. The hen was really happy and shouted to the world the good deed of the fox. By the time she reached back home, the word got spread. The hen was taken aback to see a company of enraged seniors back home who looked thoroughly annoyed. They were so irritated that they demanded an explanation from the hen for having the food at the house of the fox, all the while knowing very well that without that food she would’ve been dead by now. The verdict soon followed. The hen was the official spokesperson for the family. She was to relinquish that title followed by a promise that she’ll rather die than having food from an enemy and praise him for the act of kindness.

Moral of the story: Never praise your enemy even if he did a good deed, especially in certain walks of life!