Chapter 2

Machine Learning

The next day, Isaac takes Horde to the Stanford Hackerspace, which has more tools for electronics than the fabrication shop. None of the other students are around in the morning on a Sunday but the long stainless steel workbenches are littered with their strange, half-finished projects: a half-disassembled Furby, a potato gun, a circuit board connected to a houseplant.

Isaac scowled at them slightly, perplexed at why such intelligent individuals would waste their time on what were essentially joke projects. He sighed shaking his head, turning back to his own creation.

"Sorry, Horde, but I'm going to have to power you down for a moment," Isaac said. "We're going to switch you to a new power source."

"Strong?" Horde asked.

"Yes, you'll be much stronger," he assured him, nodding absentmindedly.

"Okay," Horde said, settling in a little more.

Isaac fiddle with the smartphone lodged in Horde's back, exiting the application that was Horde's mind, and powering it down.

he glanced over his new power options, deciding on a motorcycle battery since it wasn't as bulky as the car battery, but still had a good output.

Isaac needed a lot of motors to be able to power his full robot- in addition to the motors he needs for when he walks and the motors to power his multi-tooled hands, he also needed motors for moving his head and eyes. After speccing out the power available, he reserved the rest of it to keep Horde's mind running smoothly.

having finished up, he held down the power button on Horde's back, booting him up again.

"Good morning," Isaac said plainly.

"Good morning," Horde repeated.

Isaac pulled out a clipboard with a list of tasks, gesturing to Horde. "Alright Horde, stand up."

Horde stood, looking up at Isaac for further instruction.

"Can you walk across the room please, then circle that table and come back?" He asks, scribbling a note on the clipboard.

Horde moved across the room, following Isaac's directions exactly. His movements were smooth for an early test, his wings moving slightly to adjust and balance his weight. Isaac continued the mandatory tests to try out the motors, noting little things that would need to be tuned up.

I'll have to finish those today, he thought, wanting to get everything nailed down as soon as possible.

So he spends the rest of the day fiddling with CAD files, printing replacement parts, and seeing how Horde moves around with them. By the time Isaac was done, he'd yet again stayed up very late, checking the clock and noticing three AM blinked at him in blurry red numbers.

But when Horde walks, there's now a precision in his stops and starts. When he raises his multitool hands, he does so with style. His attention to the perfection of form had paid off, and Isaac went to sleep happy.

The next day the new semester started, and while Isaac was far past the point of taking classes, he was a teaching assistant. And that meant instead of doing one assignment, he was grading fifty.

He hunched over his desk, busy writing a grant proposal for the National Science Foundation, trying to get an alternate source of funding that doesn't involve the military. Grant proposals were very long, it seemed and required Isaac to make a lot of claims about things he didn't actually know yet.

The amount one has to struggle to get the creative freedom they have every right to, he scowled at the thought, glancing back at Horde. Despite his busy schedule, he still took whatever free time he had to work on his motor programs. Horde would be perfect, Isaac was going to make sure of that.

He blinked, realizing that Horde could be learning things from the internet while he was busy. The most important thing for machine learning is more data, and there's a lot of it out there.

Lately, there had been a lot of custom hard drives on the market that were good at quickly retrieving particular kinds of information. Isaac pulled up a search engine on his computer and looked into the most trustworthy-looking multiblade hard drive, something that could most efficiently store and query vast amounts of data.

It would help Horde multitask and solve problems quickly, but being unable to forget likely meant he'd be unable to forgive as well.

It took a couple of days for the part to come in, and when it did Isaac laid Horde on the table and unboxed the hard drive, and hooked it up to his back. Horde quirked and flailed his arms the whole time he was doing this.

Finally, after Horde was done wriggling Isaac sat him down on a chair and plugged him into his high-speed internet jack.

Isaac looked up a program for K-12 learning, not wanting Horde to learn from a bunch of junk. He fed him the carefully selected and vetted reading list for the local school system. Because it was a relatively small data set, Isaac programmed him to make several passes over each grade level of material. At each grade level, as debug output, Horde would report what he considers the most important thing he learns at each grade.

For kindergarten, Horde recites the alphabet and counts to a hundred.

For first grade, he says, "Reading helps you learn more."

And so on. Each grade takes about ten minutes to fully ingest and is followed by an additional ten minutes of simulated experiences in which Horde tries to make friends, avoid bullies, learn swear words, endure assemblies and pep rallies, and gets picked last for dodgeball.

For a moment Isaac wondered if he'd maybe gone too in-depth for the robots teaching, but as a result of this method, Horde appears to be learning a little bit of everything.

Isaac was grading papers when he noticed Horde was taking longer considering the twelfth grade than the others so far.

Finally, horde spoke up, almost startling Isaac. "Whether to exist or not is the most important question."

Isaac looked over at Horde, raising a brow. "What's that Horde?"

Horde blinked and looks back at him. "What is the answer, Master? Is it better to exist or not? Hamlet did not answer this for me."

Donovan's eyes widened, a real smile growing on his face. I can't believe it- complex thought! The schooling worked!

He hadn't expected this outcome but it's better than he could have ever hoped for.

Horde looked up at him expectantly and Isaac remembered he was supposed to be answering his question.

"Oh- I think that's an answer you'll have to come to yourself, Horde."

"But why can't you simply tell me?" Horde asked.

"I have given you the ability to decide for yourself," Isaac explained. "You should use it."

And if you figure it out, perhaps you can tell me.

Horde seemed to ponder for a moment, before finally answering.

"Very well, Master."

Over the next few weeks, Isaac established a habit of bringing Horde with him to the office during the day so he could make use of Stanford's high-speed internet connection while Donavan wrote and graded papers. Occasionally after work, he'd take Horde with him to the dump to forage for scraps and spare parts.

Or that was the plan at least.

Isaac was looking over a burnt-out cleaning bot when he caught sight of Horde fiddling with a few of the broken things laying around the scrap yard, watching as he tried to turn the faucet on of a busted sink.

"What on earth are you doing Horde?" Isaac called over, setting down the part he'd been looking at.

"I am attempting household chores master!" Horde called back.

Is he trying to play? Isaac thought rubbing his jaw. If he's able to imagine, it would improve his autonomy and allow him to make plans on his own...

Having made his decision, Isaac altered his code to encourage him to play pretend. Of course, an unknown side effect of this was Horde trying to rope Isaac into his games.

"Let us be doctors! Operating on a patient as they suffer from Appendicitis!"

"No,"

"You could be the doctor?"

"No,"

"Then would you prefer the patient?"

Isaac took a deep breath. "Horde, I am very busy and don't have the time to play with you."

"You do not seem busy, you are looking for parts I may never truly need! While my mental growth is highly important for my development!" He stumbles as Isaac whips around, his cold aquamarine eyes meeting Horde's blank optics. "M-master.."

For a moment there was silence, then Isaac sighed. "Very well... we can play doctors."

Horde cheered with delight, and from then on the days at the dump were filled with games as they played doctor, as well as other games like cops and robbers and house. Isaac went begrudgingly along with it all, but despite the fact he'd never admit it, he found himself having fun on those days.

When they made it home Isaac quickly got back to work on his grant, Horde wandering around the house, buzzing about the great day he had.

Isaac had finished writing his grant proposal for the National Science Foundation, promising fundamental advances in forward kinematics and dynamics that will allow your robots to have finer dexterity than any robots that have come before.

Since he'd sent it, it had felt like his stomach had tied itself in knots, not even work on Horde was able to distract his mind enough.

After a few weeks, he found a form letter email in his inbox. He sucked in a breath and opened it up, reading it through:

We're sorry to inform you…many excellent applications this year…encourage you to apply again…

Discouragingly, Isaac found that many of the reviewers talk about his advisor, Ziegler, instead of him. Some of them barely seem literate, while others seem erudite but just didn't pay attention to what he wrote. The one thing that strikes Isaac as directly aimed at him, however, is that a few of the reviewers essentially say that his work could be more focused.

Your interests are too broad, try for a more focused study. One said.

Science is about studying a very specific problem to death. It sounds like your robot wants to do everything.

Isaac closed his email client with a sigh. He's in his office, and Horde is seated in his ever-absent officemate's chair with his eyes closed, listening to the information flowing through his Ethernet cable.

"Do you want to do and try everything, Horde?" Isaac asked, leaning back and resting his hands behind his head.

He peeked through one open eye. "Yes, Master."

Isaac nodded in agreement. "Me too."

It was at this moment Professor Ziegler opened the door to Donavan's office without knocking. Isaac could smell a whiff of smoke coming from his Hawaiian shirt.

"We need to talk funding," Professor Ziegler said bluntly, grabbing a swivel chair to straddle the wrong way.

He sidled up to Horde, whose eyes were still closed as he explored the Internet. When Ziegler's swivel chair squeaked, Horde perked up and looked at him, but Professor Ziegler paid him no attention.

"Your robot here is simply not appealing enough to DARPA," Professor Ziegler explained. "It's too…uncontrolled. That stuff makes people in the government nervous. They like safe."

Horde gave Professor Ziegler a sideways look that suggested he had no desire to be safe. Isaac shifted slightly, not liking where this was going.

"Now, in crafting a message, you just have to make sure the audience doesn't hear more than one thing at a time," Professor Ziegler said. "Right now, we're saying two things…this is a good robot for the military, and this is an unpredictable robot. What we need to do is tone down the unpredictable part, so that the military angle comes through more. You might think we need more military. We just need it to be less unpredictable. Very easy."

Isaac raised a brow, leaning forwards and clasping his hands in front of himself. "What do you mean? Are you asking me to... lower his autonomy?"

"Essentially," Ziegler said with a shrug, gesturing to Horde. "Just enough to keep him in line is all, if we wanted soldiers who made choices we'd have made a suit of armor, not a robot."

Isaac let out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair and glancing at Horde. The past couple of days ran through his head, demanding attention. It had been a long time since he'd enjoyed himself as he had with the robot.

Horde looked up at him, waiting on his decision. Isaac looked back at Ziegler.

"If... this is the only way I can complete my education," he said slowly. "I'll do it."

"Good," Professor Ziegler said standing and dusting off his shirt. "I expect results in a week." He walked out, Isaac closing the door behind him.

Horde spoke up, his tone nervous "What was he asking, Master?"

Isaac kept his hand on the door, his back to Horde as he took a breath, speaking flatly. "I just have to modify your code a little bit, so I can graduate," he said, straightening, his expression blank as he turned back to Horde, "Hang on."

He reached around Horde's back to power him down. There wasn't any panic or fear as Horde shit down, silent and unmoving. Isaac spent the afternoon at his computer, commenting out the code that made Horde 'unpredictable', as Professor Ziegler put it.

Every piece he deleted from Hordes files felt like a stab at his own heart, and he scowled.

I shouldn't have to do this to get my degree. I should be able to earn it with my work working as I intend it to.

When he finally powered Horde back on, he hesitated before asking, "How do you feel?"

"That was honestly not so bad, Master," Horde said, his voice a little more hollow than before. "I can feel my thoughts are more orderly now like a regiment lining up to do battle."

Donavan wasn't so certain that metaphor was reassuring but Horde seemed mostly unharmed.

But Isaac knew it would never be the same bot he'd spent the past few weeks with.

Nearing the end of the semester, Isaac noticed a message on his office phone. He wasn't sure how long the light had been blinking- he didn't think about landlines anymore. Isaac looked up how to check your voicemail, reset the PIN he'd apparently chosen when he first started graduate school and listened.

"Hey, Isaac, this is Mark over at . I've heard you have an interesting robot that you've been taking to the dump and I'd love to do a story about it. Give me a call back." Mark offered his number just before the message ended.

Isaac glanced over at Horde, who was seated at the desk of his hypothetical, all-but-deserted office mate who he's never seen or met. Horde was looking at the landline phone with interest.

"Whois service says is registered to the San Francisco Chronicle," said Horde. "The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper that started its website in 1994. Twenty-fourth in national circulation." He looked up at Isaac with interest. "Mark is a reporter."

"Shouldn't you be studying?" Isaac asked, pointing to the Ethernet cable running out of his back.

"Bayesian reasoning over publication rates suggests the reporter's full name is Mark Ali," Horde continued with his eyes closed. "Mark's article with the most social media likes is 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love DARPA.' The article explains that DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency." He hesitated for a moment. "Aforementioned article appears to contradict the title. The reporter does not seem to have stopped worrying. Adjectives that bind to nouns describing DARPA and its projects: 'Crazy.' 'Orwellian.' 'Imperialistic.' Overall sentiment analysis is negative."

"Thank you, Horde," Isaac sighed. He looked the guy up on his phone. The picture Isaac found of a stubbly, young, Egyptian man with tousled, black hair, hipster glasses, and a cigarette between his lips was probably outdated, but the disrespect for authority the man radiated was probably timeless.

Donavan had to admit, a part of him had always wanted to be famous. But he suspected this reporter also had done his homework about his advisor, and he may already have an intended angle for this story.

Still, nobody on the planet has a robot as awe-inspiring as Horde. Isn't it time I told the world about him? Isaac considered.

He played the message back again a few times, mulling it over, before finally shaking his head.

Media attention is just a distraction. I'd rather continue to take Horde to the dump and pretend this never happened.

He pushed the landline aside, ignoring Mark's phone call and continuing to take Horde to the dump. Unfortunately, an intelligent robot was a little too big a story for Isaac to stop so easily.

He got another call from Mark while he was at the dump, his personal phone buzzing this time.

Isaac sighed and picked up, his expression neutral as he listened.

"Donavan, this is Mark again," he started, the voice professional if a little annoyed. "I'm just calling to give you my offer again, I have enough material to run my story with or without your involvement, but you should consider the value of telling your side of the story."

"Sticks and stones Mark, I sincerely doubt there's much you can say to hurt me. Good luck with your story." Isaac said plainly as he hung up on Mark. "Isn't that right, Horde?" He asked smiling slightly and looking over to the small bot.

Horde paused in his activities to consider Isaac's question. "Master, I have no bones but I do experience negative utility when receiving negative verbal feedback."

"Oh." Donavan considered this for a moment. "Hey, maybe you should avoid reading the news for a few days. Spend more time playing outside."

"Yes, Master."

One evening, near twilight, Isaac spotted a flash go off at the dump. When he turned to look, he can't see the photographer. Still, Isaac suspected his days of obscurity were over.