Why don't the objects shut up?

The case against talking fridges: in-depth

They tell you, in marketing courses that: great inventions fulfills a need. That need is the one of the marketers to sell things no one has ever asked for nor wanted.

No one, in the history of mankind, ever thought: "Gosh, I sure hope I could talk to my dishwasher." Yet, appliance companies tried to make it happen multiple times. They seem to have a knack for talking objects. The most terrifying for me is the talking scale. 

I can imagine how a blind person could find some use for it. But for the rest of humanity, who needs a scale that shouts your weight back at you? What do you think will happen with that?

That it will one day scream "69kg" and you could hear your neighbors in the other flat replying "nice." ?

In all the home appliances it’s often the fridges that are the darling of their talking endeavor. I imagined that, since they would be the first to talk, they would be the first to gain consciousness.

It’s not me deviating that idea from others who have said language is a prerequisite for intelligence. That would be too smart for me. No, It’s me being in the same category as people who think chat-gtp is conscious because it can make sentences.

The difficult part of that story was to just use, for the fridge, vocabulary that was already programmed, imagining what world could be part of already made phrases for different appliances.  Then implement words that it took from the others characters. I may not have succeeded. 

There’s right now two different schools of thought on AGI. One who thinks we will harness it to do mankind’s binding, and one who thinks it won’t be controlled and will destroy us. Interestingly, the last one is split on whether it’s a good thing or not. I can’t blame the ecstatic mankind annihilation enjoyers; I, too, have witnessed social medias feeds.

My story is neither. I wanted something milder on the subject, something more simple and kind. Both characters are on an equal footing and care for each others. Neither a slave nor a master. It’s why I have set it in a working-class background.