Personal Pronouns for Robots
Blazing Reader,
When it comes to humans, I’m old-school — there are two genders, two sexes: male and female.
Sure, there was that effeminate boy back in elementary school whose father and mother were cousins from some small island off the coast of Portugal... but we still called him he/him and he/him had no problem with it.
However, when it comes to the robots in my forthcoming novel, All the Humans Are Sleeping, it’s been a bit of a philosophical conundrum for me whether they should be gender-neutral or not.
I assure you it can easily get confusing using "it" to describe the actions of a robot — doubly so when there are other robots in the same scene along with a few inanimate "it" objects.
On the other hand, I don’t want to over-humanize AI. It might go to its/his/her silicone-based head, and then, you know, it's off with my/yours/ours carbon-based heads.
Anyway, here’s a preview from All the Humans Are Sleeping dealing with personal pronouns for robots:
Rebecca pointed out the front windshield of the jet.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Peter followed her gaze through the windows of the hangar door. He could barely discern a red creature scurrying up the side of one of the distant windmills.
Domestico spun its head back towards the nose of the plane and said, “That is one of the lobsterbots.”
“Lobsterbots?” said Rebecca.
“A maintenance robot. Yes, unit L34. Sent out to lubricate the turbines.”
As the little robot reached the pinnacle of the windmill, Peter realized it did indeed look like a lobster — with a long thick red trunk, a short tail, eight arms, and two giant claws.
“He’s cute,” said Rebecca.
“Actually,” corrected Domestico. “Unit L34 identifies as a she/her.”
“I’ll be damned,” muttered Peter, “the day I start calling a robot a he or a she.”
Of course, humans have been giving boats genders for thousands of years, so why not robots? Chances are merely assigning genders to lobsters won't result in the AI apocalypse.
Indeed, my novel has none of that "robots will take over the world" flavour to it. Instead, it's more about stopping humans from handing our world over to machines, while we become lost in a digital metaverse.
All the Humans Are Sleeping will be ready sometime early next year. If you're not a subscriber, you'll need to sign up to be alerted of its release (plus you'll get more sneak previews and behind-the-scenes stories).
—John C.A. Manley
PS For another sneak peek of All the Humans Are Sleeping check out: Tinfoil, Christmas lights & a massive drainage pipe
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John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscirber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/
