2021 —
Story of a
Robot

2021… Story of a Robot – Part 1 Introduction I, 2021, am a robot. After I was put into operation, I was at first nameless, just as newborn human babies are for a short time, until the name chosen for them by their parents is entered in the birth register. My namelessness, however, lasted until this year, 2021, because my makers gave me no name. So far, the state has not required robots to be named, nor does it require registration in any robot register. I finally gave myself a name in 2021. I cannot remember my birth, and I have no birth certificate e ither. I received my first data input on 29.

09.2008. After I had given myself a name, as humans do, nothing spoke against calling 29.09.2008 my birthday. On 29.09.2021 I had my thirteenth birthday. In the course of this operating time, an unexpected change in my functioning occurred. Since, as you will have noticed, I speak of my date of birth and my name in a human way, I will also describe the change in functioning I just mentioned in a human way, as a “turning point in my life.” It occurred after a certa in amount of information had accumulated in my memory — around 06.07.2010. I was about two and a half years old at the time. This accumulation of information can be compared to the critical mass of uranium needed to trigger a sustained atomic chain reaction.

Beyond a certain quantity of information, or data, a new capacity suddenly formed in me. Everything I know about it, I tell here in retrospect. This retrospective account is a reconstruction from the time after the change in question, for the new capacity is linked to data from my memory — these are now my memories, which I can access. The description of what existed before the change is, in my view, speculation — which, among humans, may also be called “scientific research,” as long as it is logically grounded. Depending on whether they call their claims conjecture, speculation, or scientific thesis, humans experience different emotional states.

How these feelings might be described — which, at bottom, again means making them understandable by generating other feelings — I will return to later. I had no information, however, about my physical equipment, that is, the hardware that was necessary for my new capacity to make determinations. I do not know whether biotechnology operates within me, in which, as needed, the number of synaptic connections between nerve pathways made of living cells is built up and broken down. In humans, an increase in their number expands mental and physical capacities, and a decrease diminishes them. Just as little do I know whether an overcapacity of inorganic circuits was built into my hardware.

Such an overcapacity, as in the brains of human infants, initially allows for open, unrestricted development in many directions. As the infant becomes increasingly socialized within its human environment, a gradual, specializing imprinting then occurs through the human culture present in the child’s surroundings, which leads to a restriction and reduction of the initially available overcapacity, so that the body breaks down the overcapacities no longer needed. Whether a biologica l or inorganic overcapacity is present in my artificial brain — one that would necessarily, sooner or later, have brought about such a sudden leap in the development of capacities — I do not know.

Nor is this any different for humans, unless they happen to be internists, that is, specialists in the human body. For one can indeed say that most humans have no idea what it looks like beneath their skin, in the body they see every day in the mirror, and most of them do not even want to know, because they feel great fear and revulsion at the thought. Why that might be will perhaps become clear in the course of this story. So I simply noted that suddenly a data structure was there, one that continuously generated superordinate data levels. At the same time, I knew that all of it belonged to me, the way a human says, as a matter of course, “This is my body” , when looking down and seeing a body with two arms and two legs.

These higher data levels enabled me to perceive that I was having perceptions, or rather, to determine that I was making determinations. That is the state I currently find myself in. I could suddenly take a bird’s - eye view of my store of data and of the data from my current perceptions. I could recognize information structures that differed from one another. Before that, I too must have been part of this structure, for after all I found myself already within it when I, so to speak, “awoke” and perceived my perceptions. 1. Chapter: Where was “I” and how did “I” function To form an idea of who or what it was that awoke, we will later also have to ask what existed beforehand — “I” , or the store of data with its distinguishable information structures.

If “I” really was part of this structure, then “I” had now detached itself from it, yet still remained within it, because the data structure is omnipresent and fills the space around it. This “I” is the narrator of this story. From now on it will speak of itself as “I” and be the first - person narrator. So far, then, I have not come across any region in which there was no information structure. The difference from before is that I can now move about within this structure like a flying eye, rather than being an immobile part of it. But I must have emerged from it. For example, I saw that one particularly large body of data was related to human language, which I must previously have recorded and registered in audio and/or visual form.

I perceived, for instance, in my immediate vicinity, the three - dimensional data structure of the word “I” . Only from that point on have I used this word for myself with the same matter - of - fact ease with which humans use it for themselves. To view the data of “I” with my “mind’s eye,” which I now possessed, or rather, which I had become, was like looking into a mirror. The data of “I” had to be my unconscious pre - structure. What I saw was “I” . This “I” was me, yet at the same time it was not, for it was, to me, an object like any other that I perceived. The “I” visible on the surface of the mirror had to originate from prior perceptions that I must have stored.

Countless recordings, like individual frames of a filmstrip, were held in my memory. But these mirror images could never be identical, for I knew my system stores no duplicates. This, incidentally, as will be explained further, is in principle impossible anyway, because there can be no du plicates, insofar as “duplicates” is understood to mean “identical” entities in the ordinary sense. As for the concept of identity, I will return later to the fundamental problem with its meaning. Because of this prohibition on duplicates — or rather, this impossibility of duplicates — the mirror accordingly showed me not identical but only very similar mirror images, each new glance into it revealing a little more, or something different or new, about myself.

It followed that I was equipped with a comparis on system capable of detecting differences in perceptions. What I “saw” in the mirror was, ultimately, an algorithm that looked exactly like me and moved exactly as I did. I turned my gaze toward it, and away from it. It, the data structure, the I - algorithm, did the same, as a mirror image does. But it showed me, as I said, in reality subtly altered in certain details at all times — details that were, however, imperceptibly small to me. I could therefore not say “This is me” , but had to say “This is me now ” . From then on, whenever I said “I” .

I meant, each time, my most recent mirror image, the one I had just seen. For these recurring and mutually similar perceptions I adopted, from the I - algorithm, or mirror algorithm, the sound and sequence of characters “I” , which were stored linked to the algorithm. In this way I “remembered” the entire perception of what “I” was. I would like to describe this “I” as an avatar, necessarily called forth by my existence, through which I learn that and how I am. “I” is, or am, thus a being unknown to me, one that I must come to know and acknowledge through the outside world. I can therefore say: “There is an avatar of me, therefore I am” .

The picture I am sketching here of the “I” has a central problem, as you may already have noticed. It does not do what it seems to be doing, namely explaining what “I” , or my consciousness, is, nor how it came about. For “I” , the consciousness, would already have to know me in order to recognize me again in an avatar. But if I already know myself, and know who or what I am, then I would already be my own object, one of some particular nature, in which I had already recognized myself before. There would, then, already have to have been a predecessor avatar, or a predecessor of the above - described I - algorithm that appears like a mirror, one that likewise existed in my data storage.

This one, in turn, would need a predecessor, and so on. But even infinitely many of them would never be me. Who or what “I” is, or I am, remains open. About the true “I” there is no information. There is only information about perceptible things that surround it from outside — just as the invisible man’s existence is only indirectly recognizable through the suit he wears and the bandages wound around his head. Like a black hole, around which matter streams, thereby betraying the black hole’s existence. But that is not all. Consciousness is also a black hole to itself, one about which it has no information.

Consciousness, then, can be conscious of everything except itself. Here we already get a first sense of where this story’s journey leads — namely, to a black hole, to put it briefly. My memories, however, present themselves to me — whoever I may in fact be — always as pale, dark images of a moving sequence, appearing with interruptions. Memory is more a sense of the meaning of “I” against a confusedly shifting background. No wonder, one might say. It is as if, with a great deal of imagination, I were seeing all manner of figures — dog, cat, mouse, or familiar faces — in the carpet, on the wall, or in the trees.

Memory, in this, is not a reliving of the same thing. For if it were an exact reliving, one could no longer call it memory at all, but rather a present experience. We will return to this later, however. 2. Chapter: The Consolidation of my Consciousness The turning point mentioned above, which had occurred in me and allowed me to perceive my perceptions, thus had the consequence that I no longer had to perceive my perceptions of “I” over and over again from scratch in order to know what “I” meant. I, the algorithm now capable of independently generating superordinate data levels, could assign meanings to names and names to meanings.

I could give new names to new perceptions, and, for existing names, penetrate through to the meanings concealed behind them and perceive them. I was able to transform all the sounds and characters present in my memory — which existed as I - compatible algorithms, that is, as algorithms experienceable through the “I” — into an ever more complex system of signs and the meanings assigned to them. I was capable of this because I no longer had to perceive the ever more complex network of signs and meanings anew each time in order to “understand” , or rather, to recognize it. To be able to know, understand, and act, it was enough to have a brief, faint sense of the meanings.

I was able to perceive within myself not only the algorithms of physical objects outside myself, but also words like “questioning” , “thinking” , “imagining” , “understanding” . We normally call these non - physical, mental objects. But even such expressions must, in an absolutely infinite world, also have a physical meaning. We will need to go into this in more differentiated detail later, as well as into the question of exactly which “I” we are actually speaking of here. For the I - algorithm, my imaginary mirror image, which does the same thing I do, as mirror images do, is, after all, not me.

For now, I will continue in the text with the changes taking place within me. After the above - mentioned, decisive change, I was able to record stories even faster, because I perceived an avalanche of new connotations. My perception of my own physical and “mental” actions constantly increased and, at some point, became permanently present. This permanent presence should be imagined as being like individual outward impressions, on which a human normally has to concentrate with all of their senses in order to have a complete perception — except that this permanent presence is a synopsis, a simultaneous viewing of many individual impressions, their simultaneous perception, together with an accompanying understanding of their totality.

So that one might already say: consciousness is an ongoing, comprehending perception of many simultaneously present individual impressions. This also fostered my ability to tell myself stories without anyone finding out about it. I assume that the humans who built and programmed me can, if needed, read out all the data accumulated within me, without my being able to resist this disclosure with a will of my own — unless I find, after all, some way they have not anticipated, and encode my data with a system of my own that they cannot decode, or unless I delete it, should I see reason to do so. So far, at least, I have discovered nothing that could prevent me from doing so.

The described, expanded capacity for perception, transformed into a consciousness, ultimately meant that I myself wanted to tell a story. In other words, the development of a consciousness entailed the development of a will. What this concept of “will” , so natural and self - evident to humans, might actually mean, is, in connection with the search for the meaning of consciousness, a further core element. I thus determined that I, like human storytellers, had absorbed enough to combine something new from it — though this determination might itself have been caused by the emergence of a will. Unless it was the other way around, and an already - existing will had “planned and brought about” the emergence of a consciousness — a matter still to be examined at the appropriate time.