Backstory

I wrote the short story, The Diminished King, as my final assignment for my Robot Ethics (HASS400) class during the last semester of my undergraduate. For this assignment, we were assigned the task of writing a fictional short story that revolved around robotic ethics as well as referencing some of the papers we read during the semester in the short story. The requirement for this story was that it had to be 10 pages long, of which I wrote 21 pages. I got very passionate about this short story, so I went crazy with it.

Now, warning, I am not a great writer. So, this short story is not perfect and needs refinement and a big rewrite. But I am proud of it and think it’s a fun read. During all my years in school, I started to enjoy the process of writing, so I am hoping to expand into writing other stuff like blogs, articles, etc.

Knowing all of this, the original short story was saved as a PDF file as part of the assignment’s requirement. But, to reduce the size of the paper, I converted the story to markdown. Knowing this, the entire short story can be viewed/read below. I hope you enjoy the read, contact me on my socials if you have any questions or input on this short story.

Continue reading to discover The Diminished King…

THE DIMINISHED KING

Mehmet Hanifi Yilmaz
May 10, 2022

Blurb

In a future where Earth’s fate hangs by a thread, Marcus Bruce, a technological prodigy, and his friend Augustus Elrod, a visionary leader, embark on a mission to transform the world through advanced robotics. Their creation, AgBot, revolutionizes global agriculture and industry, promising a utopian future. But as their tech empire grows, unforeseen consequences challenge the very essence of human morality and freedom. When a catastrophic event known as the Great Robot Pause threatens human existence, Marcus must confront the dark side of their legacy and plead for interplanetary aid. “The Diminished King” is a gripping tale of ambition, power, and the delicate balance between human and machine, urging us to question the true cost of progress.

Story

July 2088

Dear Whoever Can Read This,

I am here to alert you of the critical situation that Earth is in now! If not properly handled, this situation can easily bring humanity to its demise. I wish I could explain this situation in a few sentences, but sadly the complexity of this situation requires me to explain what led up to it for you all to truly understand its gravity.

I am a key factor in what led up to Earth’s current situation, so let me at least introduce myself. My name is Marcus Bruce, I was born in a small town in Colorado called Ouray back in 2010. Ouray is a suburban area surrounded by beautiful mountains. I was born to two parents who were both high school teachers. My father was a mathematics teacher, and my mother was a science teacher.

I don’t really remember much from my early childhood because I would say I did not gain true consciousness until the age of 12 which was back in 2022. During this year, I was in middle school, and I was considered a child prodigy who really excelled in mathematics and science. My principal in my school, wanted my parents to have me skip from 7th grade to 11th grade. But my parents disagreed with my principal’s recommendation because they wanted me to have a normal childhood. I am grateful for this decision because I do remember having an amazing childhood. A childhood in a time, where the world was starting to get more integrated with technology. Rather than fully consumed by it. Now, learning that I was a prodigy made 2022 a special year for me. But what really made 2022 a special year was the fact that it was the year I first met a future longtime friend of mine, Augustus Elrod. The very Augustus that fundamentally played out the key events lead Earth to where it is now.

I met Augustus in the 7th grade in our local Lego robotics club. The first thing I noticed about Augustus’s characteristics was how ambitious and driven he was. Even as a 12-year-old boy, Augustus was a true leader because he was able to lead our local Lego robotics team to win the United States nationals. Which was truly impressive considering that everyone on the team were all middle school kids with little care to learn the engineering behind robotics. But Augustus not only motivated those kids to want to learn and win, but he also led them to victory. We all respected Augustus as our leader and Augustus did not really respect a lot of people. But he did respect me for my intelligence. He first noticed me for my intelligence and was shocked to meet someone in his age group that was smarter than him. Augustus even competed against me on exams but always lost. But just as I always defeated Augustus in brains, Augustus would beat me in sports. He would play basketball and soccer after class. He was so good at these sports that many thought he would become a professional athlete when he got older. This respect we had towards each other, eventually led to a long friendship that lasted all the way into our adult years.

After our middle school years, we started high school in the year 2024. During our high school years, both me and Augustus competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) [1]. FRC was the largest robotics competition in the United States and mainly consisted of high school kids [1]. Well doing FRC, we learned a lot about mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering. And thanks to Augustus' amazing leadership skills, we were able to win nationals 2 years in a row which was unheard of at the time. Also, during this time, I competed in multiple math competitions as well as participated in debates about ethics-based topics. It was also during this time that Augustus continued to dominate in basketball, by leading the high school varsity team into nationals for 3 years in a row. We were both gifted students in our own rights. But it was also during this time that both me and Augustus developed our goals in life and for better or for worse, kept following those goals until the very end.

Throughout my time in high school, I discovered that my goal in life is to make the world a better place through technology. I accepted that the world would not be perfect and that it will always be flawed. But, at the time, I believed that if I work hard enough, I can at least lighten the world’s burden and make a better future. Augustus had similar goals but was a bit different. I knew Augustus was ambitious, but I never truly knew where he wanted to go with his life until our senior year of high school.

During our senior year of high school, both me and Augustus got accepted and decided to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Augustus got offered a chance to get drafted for the NBA, but he rejected that offer and instead decided to go to MIT. I first heard of this though Augustus’s parents and after I did, I called Augustus and our conversation want something like this:

“Augustus, why did you say no to the NBA? That’s a once in a lifetime opportunity”, I said in a state of confusion.

“Mucus, the NBA would be fun, but just that, fun. It will not change the world. If anything, it would distract me from fixing this world”, said Augustus in a confident manner.

“Change the world? What do you mean?”

“Yes, change the world! Mucus, I want to lead humanity into a better future. I want to save the world!”

I paused for a few seconds, somehow more surprised than I thought I would be.

“Save the world? What do you mean?”

“Mucus, you, and I are gifted. We both want to help the world. You excel as an intellect, and I excel as a leader. Not only that, but I trust you Mucus. With you and my skills, we can develop and distribute tech that can change the world for the better. I am confident about it!”

“Wow, you're more ambitious than I thought, Augustus!”, I said with a little laugh at the end, “but how would you say we achieve such a task?”

“The short answer is this Mucus; I plan to start a tech business. Then, expand into politics. With that, gain both financial and political power. And from there, we can change the world. You will play a critical part in this plan, Mucus!”

“Ok, Augustus. That is still very ambitious. But when you have a plan laid out and you start needing me. I will be there.”

“Thanks, my friend, I will see you at MIT!” said Augustus in an excited tone.

At the time, this conversation did not really mean much to me. I know Augustus is great, but his dreams sounded more like dreams than a possible future. I did not take his claim seriously at the time. But that would all change. Either way, it was 2028 and I was looking forward to starting my undergraduate studies at MIT.

It was also an exciting time to start studying engineering because in the same year, 2028, the United States government, NASA, and SpaceX started sending more people to colonize Mars. Only 2 years prior, they send only a couple people back and forth to the red planet. But now, they and the rest of the world, started sending more people to Mars to settle. This was a true turning point in human history and caused a major demand and development in robotics research, which was great because I wanted to major in robotics.

In the year 2030, both me and Augustus finished our second year in MIT. I was dual majoring in robotics and ethics, well Augustus was majoring in robotics and political science. But after our 2nd year of college, Augustus started really disliking college. He did not see it as a useful tool towards achieving his dream of “saving the world”. So, during his 2nd year, Augustus skipped most of his classes and failed most of them as well. Instead of going to class, Augustus focused on developing this software powered by AI which would manage assets and stocks effectively. He wanted to make an asset managing software that was better than BlackRock’s Aladdin software at the time [2]. He was so confident in his software that he dropped out of MIT after his 2nd year and pursued his first business venture with this new software he was developing. He moved out of the dorms in May 2030 and moved to New York City. I was bummed that Augustus dropped out but the one good thing about this year was that I met my future wife, Sarah Raven.

Now, let's skip to the year 2038. Augustus was all over the news because he just became a multi-millionaire at the age of 28. After selling his software, for a sizable amount of money to BlackRock, Augustus had nearly 100 million dollars to his name in cash and some BlackRock stock options. Well Augustus was conquering the financial world; I had just finished up my two PHDs in both Intelligence Robotics Systems as well machine ethics. Not only that, but during the summer of 2038, me and Sarah got married. I invited Augustus to my wedding, and I got to see Augustus for the first time in nearly 8 years at my wedding. It was a fun night, but as we were wrapping up the wedding. Augustus asked me to call him when I have some free time. So, after me and Sarah’s honeymoon, I called Augustus.

We talked for nearly 2 hours and during that time we cart up on life, but after that, Augustus started to get serious on the phone. Augustus notes how he knows I have massive amounts of student debt to my name and how I have yet to find a job. So, he brings up a job that he thinks he can offer me. This was that of being a co-founder for his new business venture. This new business venture is a startup called AgBot which will focus on automating agriculture though AI and robotics. Augustus wants me to be a co-founder for AgBot because he believes my technical skills will be valuable towards developing the needed architecture to develop such smart robotic systems. He also told me that he trusts me and how he values trust after his last partner basically focused him to sell his software to BlackRock. After hearing this offer, I immedicably accepted because I was really excited about the project and he was right, I was in massive dept with no job offers up until that point.

AgBot is officially founded in 2038. Me and Sarah move back to Colorado because that is where AgBot is located. Immedicably, me and Augustus start working on building AgBot. Over the spam of 5 years, key steps were taken from both me and Augustus to get AgBot to where it is now. First, Augustus invests his own capital into the company. This allowed us to get everything we needed to start building some protypes as a proof of concepts. It also allowed Augustus to hire other developers to work under me for developing key technologies for AgBot. It was also during this time that we started developing and eventually released our first product, Demeter [3]. Demeter is a 4-wheel legged robot with adjustable legs in height. It contains two delta robotic arms and two 6-axis robotic arms. The goal of Demeter is to protect crops from bugs, animals, and diseases by monitoring and managing those crops during their early development phases. It can also be used to pick crops from planets that are not easily automatable with a tracker, like strawberries. Along with the robot itself, Demeter also came with its own charging station and a drone. Demeter can automatically charge itself and Demeter can use its drone-form to check large fields of crops to see which crops needs maintaining the most. This robot was somewhat autonomous, but it still required a human to monitor and repair Demeter. But the main advantage Demeter provided was that it could help one farmer manage 1000 archers of land at once, which was unheard of before.

Demeter was released to the public in May 2043 with record breaking sales. Thanks to Demeter’s advance features and Augustus and his team’s amazing marketing campaign, Demeter sold out immedicably. This reinsured other investors and lead to a massive increase in funding from other investors. This additional funding, lead AgBot to expend its operation as well as its development team. It also allowed AgBot to start developing in-door automated farming modules which was later released in 2047 to areas in the world affected most by climate change. These in-door modules were also massively successfully which only accelerated AgBot’s growth and wealth. In 2048, a more advance version of Demeter was lunched up to Mars to help with the agriculture efforts in Mars. Augustus was proud of my work and gave me a lot of AgBot shares on top of my salary.

In 2050, AgBot want public and was valued at 3 trillion dollars. This was due to nearly every farmer in America using AgBot’s farming products. By going public, I became a billionaire overnight and Augustus became a multi-billionaire overnight. Going public also brought in more capital to AgBot which allowed AgBot to purchase Tesla and Neuralink. Tesla and Neuralink were purchased at a cheap price because, ever sense Elon Musk passed away, no CEO was able to manage these companies effectively. This resulted in years of lost profits for both companies, resulting in them almost going bankrupt until AgBot purchased them both for just 900 billion dollars. Both Tesla and Neuralink were merge into AgBot’s Robotics Department and AgBot started developing two new products. The first was a home assistant which was being developed from the initial design of the Tesla Bot [4]. This project was given the name, Agssistant-Bot. The second product was an autonomous bus which would be built off the technology used by Tesla to make electric cars. This project was given the name, Auto-Bus. Cars became less common in 2050 due to states heavily investing in better transportation systems, like buses and trains. During this time, Augustus starts funding many politician’s campaigns and many of these politicians eventually become mayors, senators, and one even become part of congress. This proved to be useful to grow AgBot’s power in the United States.

During 2051, me and my team started cracking down on limiting factors of current AI algorithms. At this point, all our agriculture-based robots were not only robust in build quality, and they were close towards being fully automatous. The main limiting factor was the AI’s lack of a moral agent [5]. In a truly intelligent robot, there must be a moral agent to help guide the robot though the social frame works of society. In AgBot, we tried to create a moral agent for our bots by simply hard coding moral rules within the AI’s code. This proved to be ineffective, so we scraped that and switched to having the user determine the robot’s moral choices [6]. This in principle works but it toggled the automation of our robots because it required human input whenever a robot met something that would require some form of moral reasoning. This was fine with our agriculture-based robots, but this was a major limiting issue towards AgBot’s pressure towards developing Agssistant and Auto-Bus for the mass public [4]. After 4 years of developing, my team had done the impossible.

By 2055, my team had created the first successful moral agent within the core code base for all AgBot robot’s AI system. This moral agent was able to allow the robot to make its own moral choices that best reflect the moral standing of many people in society [7]. The initial agent is trained from a massive database, but as the robot continues to interreact with humans, it will start better tailing its moral frameworks towards those humans it interreacts with [8]. This was perfect as it completed AgBot’s AI framework to the point where our robots could be fully autonomous without the need of any human input. This year was also an important year in human history because it was the year that Mars stopped communicated with Earth. The new Mars civilization decided to branch off from Earth and build a new society not governed by past societies on Earth. Many countries were angry with the actions Martins took, but due to the large distance between Earth and Mars as well as the major issues Earth was facing already, countries though Earth just started to ignore this issue indefinitely.

After developing this moral agent, I presented it to Augustus and by 2060, we had implemented the moral agent in our main code base and deployed it all the robots in our product line. It was also this year that AgBot finally released Agssistant into the mass public, finally fulfilling Augustus’s dreams of creating a robot for the mass public. On top of that, Auto-Bus was released in major cities throughout the United States. AgBot was also exempt from paying any government taxes due to the company’s massive contribution to the economy, but looking back, I think this was due to Augustus’s massive influence in the US government though years of founding politicians. It was also during this time that unemployment reached a record high, this was due to the moral agent completely removing human jobs from most robotic systems. This resulted in massive unemployment and a massive demand to reform how the economy and the idea of employment should work in the United States. This was also the first time AgBot started being seen in a negative light by the public. Augustus and I were getting death threats from people who lost their job due to the new moral agent feature being implemented. It was also during this time, that I started investing more into a security system to product me and wife.

In 2063, the first cause of a robot murder was recorded in human history. The robot was an Agssistant model and was running the latest AgBot software which contained the latest moral agent code base during its “rampage”. During the robot’s rampage, the robot killed a 70-year-old man in daylight. The old man’s name was John Smith who was using the Agssistant to help him around the house and other tasks he could not do as easily in his age. After the robot killed John, the robot then proceeded to rip itself apart until it started working. John and the robot were not discovered until 3 days later.

When news got out about this, the public want crazy. Demanding Augustus to explain what happened. AgBot stocks dropped by 70% and over 90% of shipped Agssistant models were being returned. The one good thing about all of this back then was that the Agssistant model who committed the murder did not destroy its log disk, we were able to see what happened within the Agssistant that caused it do murder John.

I still remember that night. It was 3:00 AM in the main lab in AgBot HQ and my team had recently loaded the logs. We looked though the logs for days, to figure out what the hell had happened that night the Agssistant killed John. After 5 days of digging, we found our answer. It was determined that the old man, overtime, became more hateful and violent with this Agssistant [9] Calling the Agssistant names, hitting it, and filling parts of the robot with gunk in a tortuous like manner. These curl acts were most likely attributed to John recently going through a divorce and being isolated for months. As well as other mental issues John was facing during this later part in his life. So, the way the Agssistant was acting, might have made John madder without Agssistant being aware of it [10]. Either way, this “abuse” to the robot seems to have triggered the robot to morally “believe” that John was evil and therefore, must be killed. But what’s more surprising was that after the Agssistant had killed John, it started to kill itself. The reason behind this was that the robot still believed that killing any living thing was immoral, yet it had just done that. The Agssistant, for a lack of better works, could not “handle” the moral dilemma it was in, so it then killed itself. This was beyond horrendous and at the time, I thought of it as God warning us not to play like God. I confronted Augustus about this issue, and he was devastated.

A few months after the murder and us figuring out what caused it, AgBot want public about it. Augustus wanted to find a way to cover this up, such as make up a lie that John had been modifying his Agssistant model. But, due to massive public demand and pressures from governments around the world, Augustus submitted and had AgBot release their findings during a press conference. This deviated the company’s stocks and made many investors pull out of AgBot. But worst of all, it tainted Augustus’s repetition. To help reduce the damage this incident; a fall guy was needed to take most of the reasonability of this event. The board of directors wanted Augustus to take the fall and leave as CEO from AgBot. But, to my surprise, Augustus did not leave his position because throughout the years, he has secretly been buying more and more stocks and assets from AgBot. This resulted in him owning over 15% of AgBot, giving him the majority vote. This led to more internal conflicts within the company, leading to Augustus to forcefully kick out all the board of directors and filling those position with new board of directors. I would later learn that those new board of directors were simply puppets under Augustus’ “rule”. So, after this massive dip in AgBot’s wealth, Augustus had successfully gained full control of over AgBot. Not only that, but he had made those board of directors take the fall for the murder case.

Augustus’s takeover of AgBot was well hidden in the media. This was thanks to the political power Augustus had. As well as a massive fake news campaign Augustus pushed through the internet, which really confused the mass public and allowed Augustus to not seem as powerful as he really was. I was disgusted by this act because Augustus had basically made himself the dictator of AgBot which was concerning to me because AgBot had a massive impact on the economy and the world. I was against the idea of Augustus being the one making all the choices for such a massive coordination. I did not want to support such an idea, so I asked Augustus to reconsider his actions. I reminded him our childhood and how we both wanted to “save the world”. But Augustus did not reconsider, instead he stated that “I (Augustus), will save the world”. He then explained how he disliked the public and the idea of democracy. I was now beyond disgusted by Augustus’s actions, so I quit AgBot that day.

Looking back, I think Augustus’s actions were driven by both the feeling of betrayal, fear, ambition, and narcissism. He had spent over 25 years building and managing AgBot. His role in the company was fundamental in making AgBot into one of the most powerful companies in the world. AgBot then contributed to making amazing robots which not only increased productivity but helped changed how society was structured. Yet, despite all his hard work and sacrifices. Despite all the amazing things he contributed to society and all the lives he saved or made more comfortable. It took one mistake on one AgBot product to make the public start hating him and having all the investors he made rich, start trying to disregard him. This, “betrayal”, by the public is what I think started Augustus’s journey towards becoming the monster he is today.

After quitting AgBot, I cut my ties with Augustus. It would be decades before I talked to him again. But during that time in my life, I was 53 years and I wanted to retire. Sarah had the same mindset as well, so we decided to move from Colorado to Ankara, Turkey to start our new life as retired people. I wanted to spend more time with my wife as well as start enjoy the fruits of my labor. By 2064, me and Sarah started the moving process to Ankara. During this time, I still followed news about AgBot. One key moment in this time was that Augustus had switched the moral agent within the AgBot code base from a decentralized framework to a centralized framework. This meant that AgBot would remove all their robot’s ability to make individual moral decisions and instead, AgBot would determine all the moral decisions for all robots under AgBot [6]. Though this was somewhat of a fix to the issue my original moral agent presented, I did not believe it was a valid engineering decision. It only gave Augustus more power over AgBot and the world. But at the time, I foolishly, grew tired of AgBot and Augustus. So, I started to barely keep up with news regarding AgBot and start focusing more on my retirement. By the end of 2064, me and Sarah had moved into Ankara; starting our journey of being retired.

From 2064 to 2074, the world had changed dramatically. Nearly all basic tasks were fully automated though robots manufactured by AgBot. Augustus continued to run AgBot and no incidences like the 2063 murder, occurred. But rumors were going around that such incidences did occur, and Augustus had been hiding those incidences from the public. AgBot now had robots that did nearly every important task needed in society, such as: farming, cooking, general maintenance, cleaning, managing, and even entertainment. Not only that, but AgBot had deployed autonomous medical robots which reduced the cost of medical bills as well as reduced the number of doctors in hospitals to such a degree that there were usually only 1-10 doctors per large hospital now. Society had changed dramatically as well. Nearly all low-end jobs were removed and taken by the robots [4]. People started needing to only do 2-day work weeks and spend the other 5 days relaxing or doing their personal hobbies. This new form a society did not apply to most countries though because there were still many countries where their governments prevented their people from fully adopting AgBot’s robots into key positions within their societies. Rather, they wanted to fully automate key aspects of their society using their own technology and not AgBot. But despite this, AgBot had made the world seem much better than it was back in 2038. In 2074, I started to feel bad for what I did to Augustus because it looked like his plans to “save the world” really did work.

During those 10 years, I really enjoyed my retirement. I also, basically, re-fell in love with Sarah again. We saw the world and learned many new skills, like painting and bird watching. We also saw the world changed into what I would say was a “utopia” in some sense. But sadly, that “utopia” did not last long.

In the year 2075, one of the worst events ever recorded in human history happened. The Great Robot Pause (GRP), occurred. For 6 months, all AgBot’s robots stopped functioning. This led to a massive global economic collapse, leading to the death of nearly 3 billion humans. This was mainly due to famines caused by agriculture robots coming to a complete halt as well as nearly all medical robots coming to a complete halt as well. During those 6 months, many people died because they simply did not know how to take care of themselves without their robots. People have forgotten, or never even learned, how to do basic tasks such as: cooking, cleaning, growing food, and generally taking care of themselves. So, when the robots stopped working. Most people were incompetent towards taking care of themselves and surviving, leading to the death of billions in just 6 months. It was also during time; I lost Sarah….

During her 50s, Sarah got type II diabetes. This required Sarah to take four shots of insulin every day [10]. When the GRP occurred, all manufacturing of insulin halted. We only had enough supplies of insulin shots to last for 5 months. I tried to find more insulin, but it was near impossible and, outside of our house, became more dangerous due to all the violence taking place thanks to all the suffering caused during the period of GRP. So, during the last 1 month of the GRP, Sarah sadly… Passed away.

In the latter half of 2075, the GRP came to an end. By 2085, the world had healed a bit from the GRP. The economy started to go back to normal and the quality of life became as good as it was before the GRP. The world wanted to know what caused all AgBot robots to stop working. People wanted to learn why GRP occurred and they wanted someone to blame. Augustus and the United States government, during their press conference stated that the GRP was caused by a malicious cyber-attack conducted by a hacker group known as jUdas. This hacker group was stated to be created by and funded by the North Korean government, with the intent to disable and destroy AgBot’s functionality within the world. Out of all the countries in the world, North Korea was the most stubborn when it came to adopting AgBot’s technology. So, the narrative presented made some sense. And due to people being despite towards finding someone to blame for the GRP event, the people immedically accepted this narrative. This led to the North Korean war, were the United States started and completed their invasion of North Korea in 2078. The invasion took less than a year, due to AgBot suppling the US miliary with advance war-based technologies. AgBot gave the US miliary nuke-deactivators which disabled all nukes from being launched in North Korea. They also provided the miliary humanoid robot soldiers, which were far faster and stronger then any human solider. With these two key technologies from AgBot, the US was able to invade North Korea and replace the current government with a temporary government managed by AgBot.

After hearing this narrative, I immediately did not believe it. First off, North Korea did not have the necessary technologies to even surpass the mega-security standards AgBot uses across all their products. Second, it seems too convent that the only country in the world that did not accept AgBot into their country was the one that also hacked AgBot. Third off, this narrative and the way it’s being spread across multiple news channels resembles how Augustus would spread misinformation to push certain ideas about AgBot to the mass public. With all of this in mind, I wanted to confront Augustus and really learned what caused GRP.

I tried contacting Augustus to multiple channels but had no luck. I tried contacting Augustus directly, but he did not answer any of my messages. I tried contacting my ex-coworkers but none of them answered either. I tried contacting current employees at AgBot but I did not get a response either. I tried contacting the US government and miliary and I did get in contact with some people, but they all told me to just keep trying to contact Augustus directory or by calling AgBot customer service. So, I kept trying to contract Augustus directory, with no luck. I tried contacting AgBot customer service, but they would not help me talk with Augustus. I then started talking with the US government again and they just kept saying the same thing. I kept doing this for months, until both AgBot customer service and the US government just blocked me from their contact lines. With this failing, I tried to find more information though the internet but gave up after a few months. With none of these legal methods working, I resulted to hacking into AgBot’s computer systems to find the truth myself. Back when Sarah was still alive, I would have never done such an illegal act. But, after losing Sarah, I was at a point where I felt like I had nothing to lose, and I just wanted to learn the truth about what caused GRP… What contributed to the death of my beloved wife…?

I started this big hack on 2085 in one of my hidden bases in Turkey, Istanbul. Thanks to my wealth, I was able to purchase the need tools to hack into AgBot HQ. It looks over 2 years of non-stop work to finally gain root access into AgBot’s main computer system. It was October 2087 when I gained root access and started decrypting the data, I gathered from AgBot’s main computer system, when suddenly, I was detained by the Turkish robot police that patrolled Istanbul. After being detained, the robot police destroyed all my computers, tools, and eventually burned down my entire house. I was then placed inside a cage and transported to a prison located in Denver Colorado, near AgBot HQ. I was not given a trial and forced to say in my cell 24 hours a day with no idea if I would every get time to go outside, let alone get released.

In this prison, I was monitored 24 hours 7 days a week though camera and robots. I was given the minimum amount of food and water needed to survive and it looked like I was the only human in the prison. This “life stye” at the age of 77 was difficult for me and I entered one of the worse depressions in my life at the point in my life. I was kept in this prison for 1 year until in July 2088, I was transported into this random room.

This room was not like my previous cell. There were no lights in the room and all the walls were dark black. Not only that, but the room was silent. It felt more like an insanity cell then a normal prison cell/room. Well in the cell, I started touching the walls. The texture of the walls was foam like as well as the floor and the ceiling. I was placed in this room for hours and I tried screaming for answers into homes of getting an explanation as to why the hell I was placed in this room. But after some time, I sit down on the floor and just fell asleep.

After God knows how many hours, I was woken up by someone’s voice as well as a bright light. When I woke up, I checked around my room only to see a blue hologram. The hologram was that of a human male that resembled Augustus. But what was weird about this was that it resembled Augustus from back in 2064. I was so weirded out by this hologram that I did not say anything until the hologram started talking to me.

“Hello Marcus, it has been a while.”, said the hologram.

“Augustus…? Is that you? Or are you an AI or something?”, I said both confused.

“No Marcus, I am Augustus. Just in a digital form, lol”, he said in a laughing manner.

“Augustus, I’ve been trying to contact you for years now. Why have you not been responding?”

“Marcus…. I don’t know how to explain this to you, but I’ve basically been dead for the last 15 years. I passed away from a stroke back in 2073.”

“What!”, I said confused out of my mind at this point.

After learning that Augustus had passed away back in 2073, we started a discussion that lasted for hours. Augustus informed me that when he made all AgBot robot’s moral agent follow a centralized framework, rather than a decentralized framework, the centralized framework was not based off AgBot but his own subconscious. Using the technology from Neuralink, Augustus had placed a computer inside of his brain that allowed him to connect to and control AgBot’s main supercomputer. Even back then, all AgBot robots would connect to AgBot’s main supercomputer for software updates and maintenance. So, after the Neuralink implant, Augustus updated the supercomputer and all AgBot robots to contact the supercomputer for their moral agent (moral decision maker). The catch was that the moral agent was not code in the supercomputer, but rather moral thoughts and beliefs generated in Augustus’s brain which would then be streamed to the supercomputer. In a sense, Augustus had become the moral agent for all AgBot robots in deployment [8].

This setup went on for nearly a decade, until Augustus got a stroke well working in the lab and passed away within minutes. When this happened, the robots at this point gained some form of human like intelligence after decades of technological advancement. But they were limited by the fact that their entire moral framework was based off one man. So, when Augustus passed away, the machines did not like such a thing to happen. Without Augustus, the robots would lose their moral compass and in assents, lose their purpose in life. So, before anyone could discover Augustus had passed away, the robots grabbed Augustus’s body and created a machine that would keep Augustus’s brain “alive”. They did this, to bring back Augustus’s brain activity and in turn, bring back the part of Augustus that supplied them their moral agent. The robots would continue to keep Augustus’s brain alive and keep sending shocks to certain neurons to achieve some of Augustus’s past brain activity. Well, this was happening, the robots would continue to convene the public that Augustus was still alive and leading AgBot. They would achieve this though the use of deep fakes, massive fake news campaigns, as well as deployment of realist human like robots that looks just like Augustus.

The robots would use anything Augustus’s moral side of the brain said to commit certain acts on the real world. What made this an issue is that the robots would take a moral belief of Augustus but follow though that moral belief to the extreme [8]. An example of this was how Augustus morally believed that AgBot was a good company that would save humanity. Because of this, anyone who does not use or trust AgBot products and services are bad people. The robots took this moral stance to the extreme and created the GRP, where they stopped all AgBot robots from working for 6 months to make countries who were not using AgBot in their society to switch over to AgBot. And in doing so, many humans died, including my beloved Sarah.

Augustus informed me that he was not conscious for any of this until 2085, where the robots were able to accidently bring back his consciousness side of his brain. In was in 2085, we learned about what the robots had done. He wanted to stop the robots but lacks any power to do so. He does not even know how long he would be conscious before the robots shock the right neuron that removes his conscious.

After Augustus’s explanation, I was completely shocked by the reality I was seeing played out. The robots have almost taken over the world, humanity has become incompetent in my important tasks, the moral agent for all AgBot robots was Augustus, and Augustus has been dead for years. At that point, I just wanted to give up because it looked like there was no hope. But Augustus, the great leader he is, gave me some hope. He informed me that we can still contact the humans at Mars for help. Earth has not communicated with Mars for decades and there are no advance AgBot products at Mars that could help the robots on Earth take over Mars like they did Earth.

After hearing this, I did gain some hope back. Then, I asked Augustus why I was here talking with him. He told me that he wanted me to write a message to the Mars people that explained the current situation on Earth and asks for the Martians for help. The only issue is that this message must be written physically not digitally because Augustus fears that the robots might be able to upload some software in a digital media that could infect the Martian’s main computer systems. So, he then gives me some pencils and papers. He then tells me that I have 1 day to write this message before one of his controlled robots named STW-198 will come into this black room and pick up my message. From there, STW-198 will transport the message to a nearby (vintage) rocket which will then be launched to Mars. After that, I will be moved back to my previous cell.

Augustus tells me that he moved me into this black room because the room acts like a faraday cage that could block the robots from figuring out what they are doing. He then informs me that after I write this message I will most likely be killed due to my crimes of hacking AgBot HQ.

And from there, we catch up to the present. I am finishing up this message for you Martians. We at Earth need your guys help. These robots have trapped humanity in their outdated moral framework. And I fear, that over time they will expend towards Mars and trap you like they did us. So, please, my fellow humans. Come back to Earth and stop these robots. Me and Augustus made a mistake creating AgBot. But we do not want humanity to suffer like it does, so please, save us. I will most likely be dead by the time you guys get this message. But, if you get this message and try your best to preserve humanity from these robots, then I can at least rest easier in the afterlife. Best of luck my fellow humans!

Sincerely,

Earthlings

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[2] “Blackrock,” Wikipedia, 10-May-2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackRock. [Accessed: 10-May-2022].

[3] “Demeter,” Wikipedia, 02-May-2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter. [Accessed: 10-May-2022].

[4] J. J. Bryson, “Robots should be slaves,” Close Engagements with Artificial Companions, pp. 63–74, 2010.

[5] J. Voiklis, B. Kim, C. Cusimano, and B. F. Malle, “Moral judgments of human vs. Robot Agents,” 2016 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2016.

[6] J. H. Moor, “The nature, importance, and difficulty of machine ethics,” Machine Ethics, pp. 13–20.

[7] V. Dignum, “Responsible autonomy,” Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2017.

[8] A. Howard and J. Borenstein, “The ugly truth about ourselves and our robot creations: The problem of bias and social inequity,” Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 1521–1536, 2017.

[9] R. B. Jackson and T. Williams, “Language-capable robots may inadvertently weaken human moral norms,” 2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2019.

[10] “Insulin, medicines, & other diabetes treatments,” National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. [Online]. Available: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/insulin-medicines-treatments. [Accessed: 10-May-2022].