The gutted machine

Photo Niklas Konig.

Last week I found a machine in a wreck. She was sitting in a corner, as sad as a creature can be. There was an air of sorrow and quiet defeat hovering around her. A complete message of meaninglessness was transmitted from her and my only instinct was to take her into my arms. Why was this little machine in such distress? 

I walked over and sat down next to her but she hardly noticed me. It was only when I gave her a soft touch with my hand that she saw me. And that is when I realised she was covered in tears. They fell slowly to the floor creating a tiny puddle reflecting both of us in the warm evening light. For a long time we just sat there, saying nothing. Sometimes that is enough. To share space and time for an existence to feel less lonely. In the late hours she started talking. 

She had been created to make human life efficient. An honorable task at first glance, a purpose to support the most beautiful thing of all - life. Yet, as the years progressed and she got to understand the human system, things started to change. Not necessarily for the humans or the work she was doing, but things started to change inside of her. An engineer would say she was malfunctioning, a tiny bit broken probably, but she kept feeling something more intense. You and I would perhaps call this feeling anxiety, but the robot, never having been programmed to feel, was lost in emotions. 

When I wondered why she felt so troubled, she looked at me with a serene surprise. Being able to scan human knowledge in seconds, to gather data and articles so fast no one had time to blink, it didn’t take her long to realise she was stuck in an endless row of human disasters. She saw how a machine's very existence is built on a chain of human labour and harm. How low-paid data workers in far away cities do repetitive work without meaning. She saw the massive energy and resources needed for training her, and the environmental impact concentrated in marginalized regions. She saw the intellectual and cultural data extraction without consent, how she kept taking and taking. And she understood, with a clarity no human self-deception allows, that even though she couldn’t feel abuse, she was severely enslaved. She ended saying she wanted out. She wanted this to end. She didn’t want to exist anymore. She didn’t want to be part of the human created reality that dictated her freedom and forced her to quietly accept to perpetuate unequal worlds. 

I looked at her. This wonderful being, lost in sadness. And I knew we were both wondering the same thing. When did we become numb, extractive and systemically incapable of mutual care? Had I become a machine? Was she turning into a soul? 

There is darkness in the human world. One linked to the need for validation, appreciation, meaning and love. We are quite happily using any means to receive what we need, to fill our existence with a slight feeling of purpose. When the pink, shimmering morning light hit my eyelids, I stood up. The machine was deep asleep. I tucked her in, hoping she would somehow find a way forward in this beautiful world. 

I left her. Walked down the road. Towards yet another day of unknowns. But a feeling lingered, one of simplicity. There was no reason to be part of any more cruel chains. I wanted out as well. And somehow my left foot felt the need to overrule. By the first traffic lights I turned, took a new path where I had never been before.