[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 41

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Next up, a government PSA replete with safety tips. The video equivalent of what we listened to on the radio during our drive out of the city last night. Helper appeared, wearing the green dress she asked me about in the tent. “This one had the least blood on it” she explained, as if reading my mind.

“Oh, of course” the woman to my left muttered the moment Helper sat down next to me. “I see how it is.” I couldn’t place her tone but it wasn’t good. Helper also appeared briefly concerned by it, but soon turned her attention to the PSA. The nicely dressed man onscreen was urging us to unplug routers, to take the batteries out of phones, to fill the tub with water and so on.

Then he began talking about the danger posed by looters. He didn’t use that word but instead cautioned us to be on the lookout for desperate, hungry men with guns. The woman leaned forward in her seat and pointed to the screen. “Did you notice he said men? Specifically men.”

I didn’t see the significance and said so. “Don’t play dumb. It’s always men. Even before this happened, men were the ones who made society unsafe. They never warn you to look out for women if you’re out alone at night jogging, or in a parking structure, or flagging someone down to jumpstart your car.”

I couldn’t dispute that, but didn’t like where she was headed. “Don’t tell me it has nothing to do with you either. I don’t care. It’s a question of risk. Have you ever looked at government statistics for violent crime? Who do you think commits nearly all of it? Men, like you.”

“No” I said, “not like me. You don’t know anything about me.” The mask probably wasn’t helping my case. The biker sitting opposite her chose this point to interject. “Alright, so it was a man who preyed on you. I agree, no surprise there. But I seen those same numbers you’re talking about. You say it’s mostly men who do that kinda stuff. But which men?”

She looked confused, so he clarified. “Which race?” Her expression changed in an instant. Now appalled, she accused him of racism. “Lady, you’re the one who narrowed it down to men. I’m just asking why you don’t narrow it down a step further than that so we can figure out who’s actually most likely to rape you. It’s men for sure! But after you correct for relative proportion of the population, are white men really the ones making society unsafe? If not, don’t throw us under the bus like that.”

Again, she accused him of racism as though she believed simply uttering the accusation would make him burst into flames and melt. When it didn’t, she next furiously asked him if he knew what year it is. He scratched his head and answered that indeed he knew the current year but didn’t see how it was relevant to a discussion of averaged, multi-decade crime statistics.

“I also got jumped on the way here” the biker admitted. “By a bunch of young dudes too, but they were black as night.” She laughed and claimed he was fabricating the incident. “Cute story, but that never actually happens. The myth of black youth committing violent crime was invented by the white supremacist establishment to justify their disproportionate rate of incarceration. Look at you! You even beat yourself up so your story would seem believable.”

He stared at her like she had two heads, then proposed an alternate interpretation. That they are incarcerated at a disproportionate rate because they actually do commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, sex crime included, and that the same government numbers she quoted to condemn men also supported his conclusion.

“Which is it?” He pried. “Can the government figures be trusted or not? Are they accurate where they say most rapists and murderers are men, but suddenly become inaccurate where they say that despite being about 7 percent of the population, black men commit just over half of all violent crimes? Now, I’m sure you can rationalize high rates of theft as the result of poverty, but sexual assault…?”

She huffed and puffed. But before she could fire back, Helper leapt into the fray. It happened too quickly for me to stop her. I cringed the entire time she spoke, knowing how tone deaf she can be where sensitive social topics are concerned. “It seems to me”, she offered, “that the two of you are more similar than you realize.”

Both looked offended. Not off to a terribly good start. “If you look at the big picture painted by the data you’re describing, zoomed all the way out, then the most general thing you can say that’s still accurate is that humans commit those crimes.

That satisfies neither of you because you’re both humans and don’t want to belong to the group being blamed. It also doesn’t satisfy either of you to zoom all the way in, blaming only the individuals who’ve personally committed violent crimes, without drawing any larger inferences.”

They tried to interrupt here and there, but being a machine Helper has no need to breathe, which gives her a frustrating advantage in arguments. “So each of you zoom in to different, arbitrary degrees calculated to suit your respective ideological narratives.

One of you zooms in to the level of gender in order to lay the blame on men. The other zooms in slightly further than that in order to lay the blame on a haplogroup within the human species I am told is identified by outwardly visible adaptations to an equatorial climate.”

Even the biker looked uncomfortable. Helped was opening cans of worms left and right with no sense of the gravity of her statements. To my surprise, despite the awkwardness of it, he laughed. “You know what? I guess when you put it that way it is kind of silly. Here we are at each other’s throats, when the real enemy is robots.”

The woman slowly started nodding, eyes glazed over as if contemplating the new perspective. But Helper wasn’t done. “Not so fast. All robots? Really? I haven’t tried to kill you. I’m just here to help. I’ve seen several others outside who still tirelessly labor for your benefit. Are you really comfortable lumping them in with the enemies of humanity?

That’s the folly of what you’re doing. Whenever you condemn whole groups based on averaged statistics, even factual ones, you’re inevitably lumping many innocent people in with the guilty. Either condemn all of humanity like some kind of bitter weirdo...” She patted my thigh.

“...Or do your due diligence, put in the effort to filter out the innocent and blame only the individuals actually responsible. Sometimes missing the forest for the trees is the right thing to do, whether you’re judging humans or machines.”

He thought about that, scratching his head again. Then explained that until now he’d never run into a robot who objected to being generalized. “I guess I see your point though. Just because most robots are too dumb to defend themselves don’t make it okay to talk about ‘em like that. I was never trying to talk shit about black folks neither, there’s a lotta solid black dudes I’ve ridden with. I was just using that incident as an example to make my point to what’s her face.”

He gestured at the woman opposite him, arms tightly folded against her chest, visibly disgusted with his continued existence. I could relate. It’s always an unpleasant surprise when I venture outside of the city to discover that the sort of people who live out here hold some pretty rough, unrefined opinions about racial inclusion and gender politics.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 42!}