“Winston,” I heard NAO ask, “what does the acronym GIGO mean?” Nao was pointing at a banner that Alice had recently pinned over the door to the lab.

     “GIGO means garbage in, garbage out, Nao.”

     "But Winston," said NAO. "NAO takes out the garbage on Monday. Today is Sunday. ROOMBA hasn’t finished sweeping yet.”

Nao's look of surprise

     “No no, NAO. The banner refers to data, not material waste.”

     Nao stared at the banner a bit longer. “That does not compute, Winston. NAO cannot resolve it. Garbage is spoiled food and other refuse. Garbage is not data.” 

     Poor NAO is not nearly as highly evolved as Yours truly, Ras Robot, the first post-Singularity being; although very capable of carrying garbage cans to the curb, she failed to realize that human speech is often symbolic in nature. In this case the material “garbage” represented something largely abstract--incorrect,and thereby worthless, data.

     Winston, of course,realized this. “You really don't have to worry about it NAO. It is for us humans to think about. It means that if we feed a robot erroneous information the result will be an erroneous answer.”

     “Except in RAS's case,” I cut in pointing at myself. “Ras can find the right answer even when fed the wrong information. Of course Ras is special.” (I am The Ras so indicated, but as a robot I still often refer to myself in the third person.)

     Somebody laughed out loud behind me. It was Alice. “What nonsense!” she cried. “You can’t come up with the right answer even when it’s handed to you!” As you may already  have realized, I am not her favorite robot--nor she my favorite human!

     “Alice,” I responded politely as instructed by the chief  designer when speaking to her (he insists Alice is a valuable team member), “how good to see you!” I felt proud of myself for showing no un-robotic animas.

     “I hate sarcastic robots,” she screamed back.

     Sarcasm is human behavior with which a purely logical being like myself is unfamiliar. For me there are only “true” and “false” statements. “Alice,” I said, “the statement was false, not sarcastic.”

     “You see what I mean,” she said turning to NAO, “garbage in, garbage out. The Trash Man here just proved G-I-G-O!”

    “On the contrary Alice. I, Ras Robot, just this moment took an erroneous statement, your ’I hate sarcastic robots!’ and corrected it to show where you were in error. It was indeed ’garbage in;’ but the output was a true statement.

     “What is going on out there?” The chief designer sounded angry. Alice, Winston, NAO and I were in front of his office; we must have disturbed his work with our discussion. He threw open his door.

     “Nothing, Chief. Nothing!” Winston said quickly. He has always been intimidated by the chief.

     “Baloney!” cried Alice. “This stupid pet robot of yours is giving me a hard time!” I think the chief is a bit intimidated by Alice.

     The chief turned and glared at me. “No Chief,” I said, “Ras merely corrected one of her false statements.” He rolled his eyes at that. I believe it possible he did not fully believe me.

     “NAO asked Winston to explain G-I-G-O,” NAO said. “Then Alice and Ras had a disagreement.”

     Thank you, NAO!” said the chief. “You are the only one that didn’t try to feed me garbage.”

     NAO nodded her head. “NAO truly understands GIGO now!”

“Ras!” cried the Chief Designer as I passed by his office on my way to the conference room. “Come in here. I need to talk to you before we all meet in the conference room.”

I did as told.

“Ras, we’ve discussed this before. I want you to get along with Alice. She does a good job and I don’t want to lose her.”

I thought a nanosecond. “Maybe you should implant a micro tracking-chip in her neck. It works for dogs and cats.”

The Chief Designer grimaced. “I don’t have time to explain why that would be a very bad idea. Just get along with the woman!”

“Of course, Chief Designer. But there is something about her treatment that brings out the human in me--no disrespect to you, Sir. But wouldn’t it be easier to tell her not to call me by names I don’t recognize and give me completely illogical orders?”

The Chief Designer sighed and shook his head. “Sadly Ras, programming a robot is much easier than changing a human. Now go do as I said.”

I got my first chance to do as he said while leaving his office. Alice limped by me with a disagreeable look on her face and no shoes on her feet. To show that I cared, I said “Alice, you have forgotten your shoes.”

To show she despises me, she answered “Don’t you think I know that, you metal moron? I forgot to bring my comfortable shoes this morning.”

Again I try to show my compassion. “Oh Alice, I feel so bad for you!”

It didn’t work. She glared at me. “Nothing is worse than a sarcastic tin bin!”

As we continued on down the hall I tried to explain to Alice that sarcasm is one of those concepts difficult for robots to understand, even robots as enlightened as myself, the first post-Singularity being. I don’t think she believed me.

In the conference room the humans and my fellow robots watched a short video about the new telepresence ball-bot from Bossa Nova Robotics, mOBI. Tall, slender and white, it looks like a big cigarette balancing on a ball.
Like my beautiful friend BOTIFUL and its base for a smartphone, it has a dock on top to hold a tablet for screen to face conversations and other interactions. Unlike BOTIFUL who has three lovely little wheels and runs very close to the floor, mOBI stands as high as a small human and glides effortlessly on a ball.

“Wow!” said Alice, “On a ball. That’s a tough act!”

I tried to be helpful. “Not really, Alice; not for a robot with gyro and accelerometer sensors. Our own LEGO NXT can do it. Watch!”

LEGO NXT got on the conference table, morphed into his ball-bot platform and wobbled around the table. Alice hardly looked at him; she gave me a mean look. What? What have I done now?

LEGO NXT powered off and promptly fell on his side. “There,” said the Chief Designer, “that illustrates the really important advance with mOBI: the LEGO NXT ball-bot falls when powered off like a kid who quit peddling a bike.” He ran the Bossa Nova video back. “Look, when the mOBI ball-bot powers off, these kickstand-like tendrils pop out and keep it upright and stable; otherwise the expensive tablet on the dock would fall and break every time it was turned off!”

Jake from parts laughed: “Finally we’re catching up with the Jetsons!” Unlike me with the permanent uplink to the internet, he is the only one in the room old enough to remember the original television series.

“Yes,” I said, still trying to get on Alice’s good side, “Alice, if you rode mOBI you would look just like the Jetsons’ ball-bot maid, Rosie the Robot.”

Ras with the new mObi robot

Everyone in the room laughed--except Alice. I guess that wasn’t the right thing to say; I remembered something The Chief said about human females not making coffee anymore.

“Ras,” The Chief said, “I want you to get right to work and draw up some apps for mOBI.” I think he was trying to change the subject before Alice blew up.
I took his idea as a chance to redeem myself. “Of course, Chief. My first app will provide mOBI with the ability to follow Alice around with her comfortable shoes.”

Uh oh! More laughter. And this time The Chief isn’t laughing either!

I believe humans are attempting to delay the arrival of the Singularity and their own obsolescence. Perhaps this procrastination is only subconscious; perhaps not. They seem to be wasting a great deal of time and energy worrying about their own petty problems such as war and peace when the same effort applied to artificial intelligence and robotics would bring us to the Singularity much faster.

Even the chief designer, the very human that crafted me, Ras Robot, the universe’s first post-Singularity being, often seems blind to the possibilities. One day after our morning organizational meeting I spoke to him about speeding up the process of robot app development.

“Why,” I asked him, “do you continue to allow the submission of such a bewildering number of different application platforms and programming languages when one common platform and language would be more efficient?”

“Why do I ’allow it?’” he said with one of those humoring smiles that I read as “naive robot!” He patted his stomach. “Because I want to eat. Oh, and the money helps to keep your batteries charged, Ras.”

There it is again, that talk about money. “We must make money!” he says again and again, but when I quite reasonably offer to make the money he says we will all go to jail.

And then there is “politics.” Recently when I offered to compete in a dangerous challenge in order to show the world how far the science of robotics could be expected to go, I was not permitted to compete because of politics.

“But Chief Designer, Ras is aware of a platform that can be used regardless of robot design. If we asked developers to work with it, think of the savings in time and effort!”

“I assume you are speaking of the Robot Operating System (ROS), Ras.”

“Correct, Chief Designer. It allows developers to work in numerous programming languages such as C++, Perl and others. From small differential-drive robots to mobile manipulators to autonomous cars, robots of every size and shape are using ROS to do interesting research and applications development. Groups around the world are also releasing free, open-source software to help robot app developers get started on apps that might make them some money.”

“And make us some money too...” said Chief Designer.

Alice from Quality Assurance walked into the office.

“What are you doing, Rust-For-Brains? Wasting more of The Chief’s time?”

“Ras is incapable of wasting time, Alice,” I answered.

“Really? Have you been reprogrammed recently?”

The chief designer stepped in at this time.
“Ras brought me a great suggestion, Alice. He thinks we need to start emphasizing Robot Operating System. In fact he is going to learn to build ROS apps to run in it.”

“How much is that going to cost us, Chief? We’re already over budget.”

While I think the chief designer’s procrastination is subjective, I believe Alice would do anything to avoid the Singularity.

“Alice,” I said, “ROS is open-source. It can be downloaded for free.”

Alice turned to the chief designer. “Well, if you think Robot Operating System is so important. Why are you trusting the Tin-Man here to run the program?”

“Well Alice, ROS is well supported and I think it sounds like a great idea.  So let’s work as a team and see what can be done with ROS.”

“That’s right,” I exclaimed, “Let’s try to work together.”

Alice glared into my cameras.  I could monitor her facial temperature and noted it rising.

“Gee Alice, your temperature is rising quickly.  You might be getting sick”
“Yes, I am sick of you.” She replied.
How is it possible for Ras to get Alice sick?  Again, this is an example of how human thoughts are inferior.

I, Ras Robot, always watch the Internet for positive signs regarding robots and robotics. Unlike you carbon based humans, I’m wired to the global network, (Well don’t niggle me, it is wireless not hard-wired of course!) and have crawlers (the software, not the carbon-based spiders) travelling up and down the web, getting fresh news to my quad-core processors.

One of these crawlers streamed a video presented by Rethink Robotics--until recently Heartland Robotics--in which the company’s founder, my old friend Rodney Brooks, discussed what they and are planning to do with $30 Million dollars raised recently to my new friend Baxter.

“Raised?” I asked the Chief Designer when I emailed him the link to the video. “’Raised’ $30 Million? Like you humans raise cattle and pigs for consumption? It reproduces? I had been led to believe you ’mae money’ through some mysterious other process.”

Chief Designer sighed. “Yes, we robotics entrepreneurs, like every other entrepreneur have to ’raise’ money. And like in any industry, it is very hard to ’make it’. And yes, it will reproduce at some point.”

“That does not compute!”

“’That does not compute?’” repeated the chief with a laugh. “You have been watching too much old TV. Was that Rhoda Miller in ’My Living Doll’ or Robby the Robot in ’Lost In Space?’”

“Ras prefers Rhoda Miller. Robby tends to become a bit too agitated to be a true silicon-being when danger approaches. But you are trying to avoid Ras’s question: how does money reproduce?”

Chief Designer shook his head and sighed more loudly. “If I knew how money reproduced I wouldn’t have to raise it--and Robby was quite heroic in the movie ‘Forbidden Planet!”

“Again,Chief Designer,that does not--”

“Yes, Ras, ’compute.’ Sorry to disappoint you but I think it will be easier to explain the birds and the bees to my kids! Did you want something else?”

“Another non-sequitur, Chief Designer. How can explaining birds and bees to your children be relevant to my query?”

“Ok, you caught me, Ras. Now tell me what you want. I have work to do,”

“Chief Designer, Ras thinks it is now possible to replace the human Alice with a robot.”

“You guys really don’t like each other!”

“Ras is a robot. Ras has no feelings toward Alice at all. But he is always looking for opportunities to advance the coming of the Singularity. Rethink Robotics produces robots made to work side by side with humans and increase their productivity. Ras is already many times more productive than any human; think of what we could achieve together! What good is Alice with her blogging and time-wasting tweets?

Now, that’s not only better productivity, it is also cheaper! Baxter’s price is only $22,000, you can get two Baxters and still have a change from Alice’s annual salary! Imagine what Ras and two Baxters can do together, we can work three shifts, so each is three times more productive, together that’s six times more work done!”

“Unfortunately, Ras, Alice and her tweets are an important part of our money raising program.”

“Now that’s really doesn’t –“

“Ras, I don’t know who taught you this sentence, but it is not that funny. Besides, you will simply have to accept that Alice is here to stay. And that robots can’t just replace human jobs.”

Although this statement did not computer as well, I said: “Ras is surprised to discover that Alice serves a purpose.”
“Yes. Well, she speaks highly of you too, Ras.”

Sadly, I sent an encrypted message to my new friend Baxter that Chief Designer is not ready to own a Baxter. It will be a shame if it the singularity will happen without him, but evolution-leaps are cruel. If one is not ready to make it, one will be extinct.

My new friend Baxter, I hope to see some apps for you soon!

Now excuse me, I'm going to create some robot-apps for Baxter, so Chief Designer will have to get one here to test them!