The Sentient

"Kaldor is a loveless planet."

Writer: Robert Whitelock

Format: Audio

Released: December 2019

Series: The Robots 1.02

Featuring: Liv, Tula

Synopsis

Vissey is a young child – the sort of perfect young girl any parents would want to adopt. She is also artificial, and she sees the world in a very different way to humans.

Verdict

The Sentient was another excellent episode to continue my way through the first series of The Robots! This follows on nicely from the terrific The Robots of Life opener and continued to explore the world of Kaldor magnificently. I thought this was a really important episode not just for the world of Kaldor but for our current real world right now. AI has become something of a phenomenon in the last few years and it's actually pretty scary where the artificial world is going. It seems to have experienced a huge and sudden boom where it really feels like it's taking over. My girlfriend has lost a job twice to its impact which is pretty saddening and it's incredible to think that this episode was released in 2019 and the difference in AI from then until now is striking. I thought Vissey as the subject for the AI was magnificent and I was listening very early on in the morning which just seemed to add to the uneasy feeling I had. I'm a little cautious when it comes to AI and sentience with the film Megan not being one I was comfortable with! It just makes me uncomfortable in a way I almost can't describe. It's not scary, it just really is awkward and eery in tone. I don't like even seeing an AI figure so I was grateful for the audio format here! Professor Rork as the one that was researching with Vissey was a fascinating character and by the end I felt pretty sorry for her. She was not reporting the unusual behaviour of Vissey and that was crazy considering she was rewiring her own code! She was even hiding her thoughts which just sounds impossible as an artificial intelligence, but here she was essentially shaping herself. It's a scary prospect where the machine becomes the master. Her focus on the word genocide was incredible stuff and it was hard to argue with her logic of wanting to kill everybody on Kaldor so she could have the riches. Money was all that mattered she had deduced which was almost a little sad. She couldn't understand why the rich were enjoying the best treatment where the poor just got poorer. Kelov as the senior coder for Vissey was another fun character and his concern was clear to hear. He was disturbed by what Vissey was doing and rightly so! Liv being shocked at their being no failsafe was good too and I liked how Vissey objected to being removed from study. I thought the way she even tricked Rork was extraordinary as she had anticipated human action and emotion to an incredible degree! She had played with her feelings in order to concoct her escape which I must admit was impressive and something I didn't see coming! She said things so matter of factly as you would expect of an artificial intelligence, and that just made her all the more scary. That chirpy and happy light voice was perfect for making her feel even more uncomfortable. The paradoxical statement she used against the VOC Robots was good fun and it really is amusing to think that the next statement is false being the previous statement was true. It's a mind bender that's for sure! I thought the ending was powerful stuff and just where it appeared Rork wasn't going to let Vissey be captured and shutdown, she used the potential of an embrace to sedate her. She beat Vissey to it and the AI almost seemed impressed before she shut down. I wonder if we have seen the last of her? It'll be a fun return to explore if she does come back as I don't think the theme of AI is going anywhere in a series with a title like this! Overall, another fantastic episode to continue the series! 

Rating: 9/10