From: dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Subject: Re: Shouting at robots
Reply-To: dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 93 16:50:20 GMT


  Damn those little competitions!

  While I went to get some coffee after reading the rabble and thus 
  jmc's challenge, a mini-story occured to me on the theme he gave 
  and I just had to crank it out.

  Unfortunately, there's no one around this morning to check how much
  sense the story really makes in English.  Perhaps this is fortunate, 
  for I condemn jmc to read each and every word of it!  
  
  He better, he's one of the protagonists ...  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

       STOP! STOP!
       ===========

  John McCarthy comes home dead tired after a day full of futile attempts 
to teach intuitionistic logic to the AI module back at his Stanford lab.
His cold is now worse than it was in the morning.  His headache is now a 
constant irritant. He is barely awake; the last two nights were hell.

  So instead of his usual "I'm home!" announcement, he quietly walks 
into the dining room, sits down, and grabs the morning papers he forgot 
in the hurry of making it to work on time.  Now he can read the news
he saw on TV last night.

  "Hey, you're home" Joanne notices her husband from the kitchen.  
He answers with a brief smile mixed with torment.  She asks if he 
feels any better at all.

  "No, much worse. My head is about to split." he shares his suffering.

  "I'll have the dinner in a minute," she says as she throws pizza into
the microwave, "so you can go to bed soon and relax."

   He returns to the papers.  From the bedroom come occasional echoes of 
his son playing with his new toy, the robot Aki.

   The 7 year old is _still_ fascinated with the Christmas gift, John
tells himself with satisfaction.  

  "Junior, dinner!" yells Joanne and proceeds to lay the table.
The yell sends a wave of pain through John's head, but he's hungry 
and the smell of pizza works as a sedative.

  They both wait for a while, for it is the custom in this house to
start family meals together if possible.  After their patience passes, 
Joanne yells again.

  "Junior, I said the dinner is ready!"

  "I'm coming!" Little John appears in the bedroom door, carrying his 
robot.

  "I'll be _right_ back" he announces and sprints through the hall and 
the living room into his parents bedroom.  Only a moment passes and he's
at the table, shining with excitement.

  "He's all the way back in your bathroom." he explains in a conspirational 
tone of voice.

  John nods without giving the information much thought, and starts eating
a slice.

  "A-K-I-I-I!!!!" the boy calls out at top of his lungs. These are the 
moments when children surprise their parents with the rapidity of their 
physical development.
  
  John is too paralyzed with double pain to say a word, for he bit his
tongue.  Blood in his mouth, tears in his eyes.

  "Don't scream, your farther has a headache." Joanne admonishes the boy 
in a stern but thankfully low voice.

  The boy makes a guilty face and turns his attention to the food.

  John swallows the pizza and the blood.

  They eat.

  Then, almost inaudibly, from afar, arrives the sound of the robot calling
for help.

  "Ju-ni-or, instructions please."

  John now realizes the situation.  Junior placed Aki in the remotest
room to see if the robot can find its way out.  The robot most probably 
can, for it is an impressive piece of Japanese engineering. 
(Manufactured in China, though.  This fact troubled John somewhat, 
given all the stuff one hears about forced labor camps there.)

  The robot can identify the voice of the boy, John knew, or at least 
tell apart the child from the parents; most importantly, it can tell 
the direction from which a voice comes.  If there are obstacles on the 
way, the robot will walk around for a while until it finds a free passage 
-- or until it decides to call for help ...

  "Ju-ni-or, where are you?"

  Junior is visibly tense.  He looks at his parents but can't read their
expressions clearly.  Finally, after another call from Aki, Junior decides
on a compromise.  

  "Ahhh-kiiii," he replies as quietly as he can and still have a chance 
to be heard by the robot.

  "Ahhh-kiii." A little bit louder.

  But the robot has a long way, one full of turns and twists.  Time passes 
by, punctuated only with the occasional call from the boy.

  Now even John feels the suspense.  Will the robot come?  John's head 
feels like a giant blister filled with misery, but that same curiosity that 
drives his son to test the limits of his new toy now make John root for the 
robot and even momentarily forget the pain.

  "Ahhh-kiii."

  ...

  ...


  "Ju-ni-or."

  The robot marches into the living room.

  John and Joanne exchange a smile.

  The boy, excited to a point of entrancement, jumps up on his chair 
and cries victoriously:

  "AKI! AKI!"

  Over and over, screaming, jumping up and down in a joyous celebration.
  
  Loudly.

  An angry voice freezes the mayhem to ice.  

  "STOP! STOP!"

  Face darkened with fury, the father glares at the son.  The face is 
swollen by the cold and blemished by the lack of sleep.  It looks 
terrifying to the son, who is not used to see his father lose temper.
The son turns white and stiffens with astonishment and fear.  Only his 
little heart cannot stop beating rapidly.

  "Ju-ni-or."

  Joanne gets up and lifts the robot just as it is about to touch the legs 
of the chair on which stands Junior, now rigidly.  Joanne, the robot in her
arms, walks towards the front door, opens it, and exits.  When she comes 
back she sits down and they all finish their meal in silence. 

  ---

  In the garage, the robot Aki calls out to his companion a few more 
times, until the quiet penetrates his silicon soul.  
  
  Tonight the robot will not repeat again the syllables *Ju-ni-or* 
(which the boy's father entered into memory after an entire hour 
of deciphering the manual) -- the syllables the boy thought he heard 
his friend Aki say last night while he was half-asleep (the way he 
could sometimes hear his mother's voice visit him softly and 
inexplicably).

  Tonight the boy will not ask the robot to tell him a fairy tale, 
and the robot will not challenge the boy to name _all_ the primes 
up to 20.

  Tonight the robot will not receive a command from his master,
telling him to walk straight, to turn left, to turn right, to follow.

  Not tonight will the boy emulate his father and shout "Stop! Stop!"
at his robot.

  Tomorrow.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 - David, a hungry student, alarmingly so.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm not a native speaker of English, so I'm not sure what I wrote.
Flames will be ignored unless you post them in perfect Czech.
================================ - David (the metamathician) - ===