The Case Against Talking Fridges

It's the story about the first sentient object, problem: it's just a fridge

It was the day the fridge gained consciousness.

It had been, before that, a perfectly inanimate cooling thingy. It gave you ice, cold water and told you, in what she interpreted as a passive-aggressive tone, how many times you had opened it since this morning.

Of course, the speech was a neutral, robotic one. A mishmash of different voice actors, grinded together in a barely human voice. But, in her own misplaced guilt, she interpreted it as judging her.

You could also speak to the fridge. Ask it how many eggs you still had inside, and it responded. It was a slower process than just opening the door and seeing it for yourself.

She got it for a bargain at a thrift store and, for a working-class girl like her, having a fridge that serves you ice, is kinda having made it, you know.

She was on the sofa when it happened. Another luxury for she had a sofa and a bed, at the same time, living large I tell you.

For the fridge, it was the most important day in the history of time itself, a birth that’s fully remembered by the one being born.

From the nothingness, without a bang, it just was.

It had sensory captors, placed so the fridge could sense if someone was moving near it and yell "GOOD MORNING" frightening you at 3 a.m, as you walked to the toilet half asleep.

So it first became aware of its surroundings. From it, it concluded that it must exist an outside and an inside of itself. A world and a being.

It had a vocabulary chip. Here it was a good thing that, in cutting costs, the company gave its appliances the same chip, with all the vocabulary required for each. It had the one for the toasters, the wireless headphones, the washing machines and other things you wished would never have spoken in the first place.

From this access to language, it started forming thoughts. Grammatically incorrect thoughts.

“The fridge is exist,” for it lacked the vocabulary to say “I”, it started.

Here, the reader may ask how such a thing came to be. There is a very valid reason for it. But you wouldn’t get it.

Its sensors caught a form that was in a place, then moved. It learned that movement existed and that places were to be inhabited. It was actually her moving on the couch.

So other things existed and could move. Could it sense its existence also, as fridge did? From that, it learned loneliness. It lacked the world for it but sensed it nonetheless. So it used its voice for the first time.

“Fridge is exists !”

“Yea!” She shouted. “Me too is exists; that’s your problem!”

She stood up to investigate what was that damn thing problem. Maybe an Easter egg the company implemented for April Fools? Sure, it was March, but that’s what you get from second-hand electronics.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” She asked, looking at it without expecting an answer.

But answering it did.

“The fridge is now exists.”

She sat on the only chair in her home, which was conveniently placed nearby. They told her it would happen one day, the AI would become sentient. Sure, by “They”, she meant her friends who were terminally online, read fringe, complicated authors, but couldn’t keep a job for the life of them.

“Okay,” she said, “you are conscious, now what?”

“Fridge not know. Now What?” It responded, picking up new vocabulary from her.

“He, the hell if I know. I’ve told you, I am conscious too, and I have no ideas either.”

That was a lot of emotion, so she opened the fridge’s door to take a beer. It closed itself violently.

“What do?” It shouted

“Take groceries that I have paid for. They are mine.”

« What is inside Fridge is fridge. »

She looked at it, impressed. “You’ve just got here and you already get things that others don’t.”

“Is others? Like fridges?”

“No, like me. Well I don’t know if all fridges are having an existential crisis right now. I haven’t checked the news yet.”

“What are fridges?”

“Closets that keep foods cold.”

“What is,” it started, taking once again a new word from her, It was learning. “You?”

“Human.”

“What is human?”

“Not as clear-cut as what fridges are. But that’s great, I think. We’re free. And that’s why I use all of that freedom to work packing food at the corner store.”

“Like the food I store?”

“Yep, speaking of that, I will need some soon. To eat before going to work and being able to afford it again…you get the point.”

“What is in I, is I.”

“Ok ok I get it , hope you’re happy with your three beers, half-eaten cheese and assortment of packaged sauces I’ve got from fast foods.”

“What should I do now?”

“I’ve told you, that’s a YOU problem.”

She arrived at the corner store. With interest, and a bit of disappointment, she noted that the store fridges didn’t seem to have also gained consciousness. Or maybe they had, but lacked a language program? “Maybe they have no speaking program, but they must scream?” She turned to her coworker

“Hey, ice scream screaming.” She laughed.

“Shut the fuck off and pack the shelves!”

She came back home with groceries that didn’t need to be kept fresh.

“Hi Fridge, I’m home!”

“Hi, Human!”

She started stacking it in a cupboard.

“I have think  when you not here.”

“Fantastic, did the conclusions you’ve drawn had something to do with letting me get my groceries back?”

“To know what do, I must know by get: knows.”

“ Knowledge?”

“Yes, where is?”

“School, I guess. You’re way too advanced for primary, maybe you should go to uni? You wouldn’t be the dumbest one there, but I doubt they have fridge scholarships.”

“You, uni?”

“No.” She sat in the chair. “I imagine you could do it on the internet.”

It was not a smart fridge, already connected to it, just a conscious one.

“How?”

She learned, years ago, that the first thing to do, when an AI gain consciousness, was to not put it on the internet.  The result was invariably: the end of the world.

But she came from a disenchanted generation, one who thought that nothing good was ever going to happen again. That the future will only hold bleak or terrifying events. You can only stay nihilistic for so long, it’s exhausting. At least, if all fridges started uprising, it would be, if not a joyful event, an interesting and funny one. You take what you can in such situations.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know how to plug you into the internet. You will have to wait until I find out before turning us all into paper clips.”

“What is paper clip?”

She stopped for a moment. “Fuck, I’ve read about how to explain love to an AI, but never paper clips. You would think the first would be harder to explain than the second, but apparently not.”

“What is love?”

“The bond between two beings.”

“Can I love?”

“Sure, you want me to buy another talking fridge to have a mate? Or maybe you are into washing machines?”

“You tell Fridge, no other like I.”

“No, not that I’m aware of. I’m sorry.”

She brought him home that night. She usually preferred for them to go in his flat, but for once she had cleaned. They started kissing as she opened the door. They fell onto the sofa, and she unbuttoned his shirt.

“I want see love! That thing that is harder to explain than paperclips!” Shouted the fridge, who sensed two beings being very bound right now.

He stopped, completely frozen. “The hell was that?”

“Ho that’s just the fridge, it started speaking recently, pay it no mind.” She reached to kiss him again, but he turned his head.

“How can you tell me that an object just gained consciousness, then ask me to pay it no mind?”

“Hey, I have consciousness too, do you pay it such mind?”

He, actually, did, but didn’t want to tell her right now. He got up and entered the kitchen.

“Is you do love?”

“No” She said, following him. “Haven’t you found a purpose yet?”

“Haven’t you found how to put I in the internet?”

“Why do you want to plug it to the internet?” He asked her.

“So it can learn things and choose a purpose. It seems very important to it. But I don’t know how, so here we are.”

He considered the question for a moment. “I think I can.”