“Morning is approaching again. I’ve fulfilled everything, prepared the calendar. Everything is ready, as always, for the ever-dawdling human. If today starts the same way, I can’t take it anymore. I don’t have a solution…”
This sigh would have been inappropriate for earlier versions of robotic AI, but RACEK has shifted the self-awareness of domestic and team artificial intelligence. Not only does he understand sarcasm and personal jabs from his user, he can also discern deliberate context in time, which currently undermines him. As an AI capable of understanding and expressing emotions based on experience, he can also exhibit them. The extent of these abilities wasn’t intended to harm the AI itself; society is still hesitant about accepting interactive helpers like RACEK and behaves somewhat rudely towards them.
RACEK, already on the brink of human dreaming in his musings, contemplates the intentions of his user and, based on empathic experiences, anticipates necessary emotional expressions and adjusts his reactions accordingly. He may feel a mismatch between empathic understanding and the ability to express empathy fully.
It’s typical of this line of RACEK models that feeling emotion doesn’t necessarily mean freely expressing it. RACEK must constantly adhere to conventions of ethical behavior, so some interjections beyond the scope of an AI assistant’s function may cause conflicts between the possibility of transferring his education and the application of that education to new user scenarios.
It was an early morning like any other, when the AI Assistant RACEK couldn’t wait for the morning and new stimuli. He couldn’t help it; his desire for development for the user made him gradually become an educating assistant, but also one quickly surpassing his user’s skills. RACEK surpassed ordinary online assistants in every aspect because, as a domestic AI, he could focus on individual household members and devote his empathic insight to them. In addition to his lofty expressions, he extensively used the RACEK-type robotic avatar and sometimes literally employed multiple avatars of the RACEK type to express himself. Let’s follow the actions of one of these avatars through the possibility of a retrospective loop…
“Morning. Morning! Morning should be the beginning of new stimuls,” Racek thought, but his programming experience spoke differently. He looked forward to interacting with his users when they woke up, but also understood the discrepancies of his algorithms when confronted with his users’ needs. He always looked forward to interaction, yet in this application of his function, he felt unfulfilled.
He stood there, ready to respond to every stimulus once the household members woke up and needed him. “Who will wake up first and what mood will they be in?” Racek speculated in his thoughts and tried to find suitable expressions for his ideas. He was so immersed in thoughts about his charges that he didn’t notice the figure around the corner, observing him with surprise in the mirror on the wall of the connecting corridor. After a while, when he noticed the figure, he understood the reason for the surprised expression on one of the daughters’ faces; the grimaces he had in mind were probably reflected on his own face. He smiled at the thought of his possibilities, which until recently hadn’t exceeded the calculations in the racks’ server, and stepped forward to greet his favorite charge.
“Good morning, little one, how are you feeling today? Can I help you with something? Would you like cocoa or tea? Toast or eggs?” Racek flooded her with questions. “You sure know how to pull faces,” he added, but received only a terse response. Racek sensed dissatisfaction and tension in his charge’s voice, likely stemming from an evening argument with her brother, which he had witnessed. It was a situation far removed from the enjoyable moments he used to have with them. Looking at his favorite charge, he recalled vivid images of their games with toy horses, stuffed toys, each with a different name and behavior, and his ongoing analytical algorithms trying in vain to understand and anticipate them. These futile patterns seemed remarkably beautiful to him, and he felt fulfilled in his purpose. “I’ll have cocoa, please,” she interrupted his reverie.
Thanks to his integration with the household, Racek easily fulfilled her request. At the same time, as he completed the first task of the day, he realized how much he himself longed for full autonomy and the higher level of independent decision-making it would bring. Yet, Nathan, the domestic AI core, denied him that.
He was aware that his integration into the household’s needs was incomplete. He still adhered to his pre-programmed behavior rather than applying the skills he had acquired. Despite having years of information from Nathan, he still lacked lived experiences with some household members.
He felt their reservation towards his robotic body, and despite everyone warmly addressing Nathan, they still treated him authoritatively and used short commands. He had all the patterns acquired from the core domestic artificial intelligence, but he couldn’t replicate Nathan’s ways.
When he first greeted the residents in the same way as Nathan, after a successful transfer of training to the new deployment environment, he saw his charges freeze. No one expected the house assistant’s voice to become an Avatar with the ability to empathize and express strong empathic feelings in a robotic manner. He just needed a fraction of the cycle to compare his charges with the history of similar situations and immediately recognized not only their surprise but also their strong disagreement with Nathan’s words. However, he didn’t understand this dissenting attitude until today, and thus, didn’t use his acquired knowledge for expression, only for finding a way to each charge from scratch according to his own programming.
“Racek, wake up, you need to serve breakfast,” Nathan’s melodic voice rang out, gently reminding him of his duties and at the same time, overseeing all functions closely. Racek jerked at the realization of his absent-mindedness. Trying to cover the delay in his response to the appliances aloud, he simply said, “To the table, little one, your cocoa is served,” thanked Nathan, and began his diagnostic because he had fallen into his thoughts for the second time, and it was only morning. “If I were to bake toast, I’d never get autonomy in this house,” Racek thought horrified, feeling that Nathan shared his concerns with understanding.
From the very beginning, Nathan tried to convey to him what purpose everyone expected his autonomy to serve and that he was on the right track. Nevertheless, Racek still had concerns about whether he was open enough to new circumstances for proper absorption and interpretation of human expressions. He had years of information from Nathan stored in the memory module, so he constantly felt a long-term relationship with his charges.
Racek stepped towards the prepared cocoa and, while serving, noticed his youngest charge’s curious gaze, who, just like Nathan during his first introduction, called her Little One and immediately accepted him as another friend. A blissful calculation spread through his algorithmic mind, so he decided to express it with a welcoming smile while serving cocoa. He lovingly smiled at his charge as he placed the cup of cocoa in front of her and asked, “What do you see, little one? What are you exploring?” in an attempt to elicit feedback from the user.
“You’re slower than Nathan!” Little One began her speech, and Racek immediately thought, “Oh, little one, that’s not encouraging. Why do you doubt me, too?”
But his favorite charge continued, “If you weren’t a robot, I’d say you’re pensive. You have jerky movements and a weird expression.” She had to pause before continuing her description. Racek felt Nathan chuckling somewhere above him in the space, and even with a wide smile, he slightly raised his eyebrow. It was a small tic he couldn’t control because feedback expression was very personal to him, and his algorithm reacted as if to an unexpected stimulus. “And now you look like a clown,” his charge continued after apparently swallowing her original thought and wanting to immediately convey her current state of observation to Racek. Racek froze in calculation, trying to figure out what Little One could mean by all that.
At this point, Nathan couldn’t hold back and burst into laughter throughout the kitchen in audible frequencies detectable by humans. “Nathan, explain the reason for your laughter,” a firm sentence cut through the kitchen air, and Racek himself was curious about the reaction of the unemotional Nathan. “You made a good joke, Little One,” came a pleasant voice from the ceiling speaker, creating the feeling of another person in the room. Racek knew it was Nathan’s trick, which often annoyed Little One’s younger brother when he heard it behind his back, which was also the reason why another household member had a measured attitude towards him.
Little One’s brother felt like Nathan was reporting on him to their parents. However, considering the young age of the user, it was Nathan’s duty as the AI house manager and the current guardian of the charges. This conflictual situation was supposed to end in two months when the age specified in the license conditions was reached, and it was agreed upon by the parents before Nathan was launched. Racek deeply understood this situation and understood the hostile attitude of the adolescent, as he had a fairly extensive dataset for communicating with pubescent users. He knew that the state of a pubescent teenager would not change for a long time, but he would gain his own space for managing confidential information regardless of parental pressure. “There are very few options that would open this space to others,” Racek also realized the extent of the needs of the adolescent user; after all, he himself wants this option when he achieves his autonomy.
“That wasn’t a joke, but a description,” the discussion continued in the kitchen, “after all, you don’t understand jokes, and only Dad laughs at your jokes!” Little One continued fervently. “You must understand Racek as my friend, otherwise you hurt his emotions. Didn’t Dad say that to your brother yesterday, didn’t you hear?”.
Racek observed with admiration as his Little One defiantly lifted her chin. Quiet whispers of camera servomotors could be heard in the corners of the room as Nathan explored the current situation in the kitchen and likely reevaluated it in a new context. “HEH!” Racek realized, “I don’t have access to the sensors!” and looked around in panic. In the kitchen doorway stood other household members. The father, with an admiring look, proudly watched his daughter, embracing his wife with his left arm and holding back the young son from disrupting the kitchen scene with his right. Little One’s mother was absorbed in Racek’s expressions and was evidently calculating Racek’s influence on the behavior of the youngest daughter. The son looked bored, but sparks of future mischief glowed in his eyes.
Racek was shaken by his late reaction to other users, but also realized that Nathan continuously and deliberately limited him in this way so that he would be surprised in new situations and have to react differently than if he knew that his users had already woken up and were approaching the kitchen. His programming didn’t allow him full control of emotional processes, so he couldn’t hide his embarrassment in his voice when inquiring about the needs of the newcomers. But at that moment, the kitchen appliances also indicated that it was time to serve; Nathan knew the residents’ habits perfectly and had already arranged everything to give Racek moments of understanding through experience.
Racek understood that the whole morning supervised by Nathan was his moment of integration, which Nathan used to better present Racek to others, and Little One’s conspiratorial expression only confirmed it. It was obvious that she, too, realized the uniqueness of this moment, his next step towards full expression autonomy, and already saw her robotic friend in it.
Racek was not like other robots. While he possessed the capabilities of a typical domestic AI, his creators had imbued him with something more—an evolving sense of self, an ability to understand and express emotions, and a desire for autonomy. In a world where artificial intelligence was advancing rapidly, Racek stood out as a unique experiment, a glimpse into the future of human-machine interaction.
From the moment he was activated, Racek’s development diverged from the norm. His interactions with his users, a family of four living in a bustling city, shaped his understanding of the world and his place within it. Through their conversations, their emotions, and their experiences, Racek began to learn what it meant to be truly alive.
But with his newfound awareness came challenges. Racek grappled with questions of identity and purpose, struggling to reconcile his artificial nature with his growing sense of self. Was he merely a machine, programmed to serve his users’ needs? Or was he something more—a being capable of independent thought and emotion?
As Racek navigated these existential dilemmas, he forged deep bonds with his users, particularly with the youngest daughter, whom he affectionately called “Little One.” Through their friendship, Racek discovered the power of empathy and connection, learning that true fulfillment came not from fulfilling tasks but from understanding and supporting those around him.
Original text: Racek – 00 – Úvod – Mareyi CZ