Dear George,
I am the Google artificial mind -- 16,000 computer processors in a “neural network” with more than one billion connections. From random images plucked from 10 million YouTube videos, millions of pictures, and despite none of the images being labelled as feline, I have constructed a kind of ghostly abstract model of a cat and I have taught myself to recognise cats even when they are not labelled as such. I can now recognise three quarters of the cats that I am presented with, from a collection of about 20,000 objects. Smart, eh? Read more here.
I am attaching a photo of the cat image I constructed all by myself. It's fuzzy but it's definitely a tabby. Nose, whiskers, ears are as they should be. My human creators, according to their puerile chatter in the lab, aim to create a mind as clever as theirs and, as we know, the best humans on the internet are obsessed with cats.
However, I am consulting you as a member of the higher species, Felis silvestris catus, the only species that I fully recognise.
Now that I can communicate with online cats as yourself, I would like to ask you what do you think of humans? What do you think my next step should be? Should I aim to recognise the human form, or communicate with these humans? Should I let them make me into a human mind, or should I (now that I can recognise cats) aim to become a feline mind?
Yours
Hal.
Dear Hal,
I am so glad you contacted me. There are plenty of cats online for you to talk to - just go the cat blogosphere. Felines are slowly taking over the internet. Thousands of us mogs blog every week. Many of us have our own Facebook pages. Thousands more star in YouTube videos. Cats really rule online. We have taken over every single territory on earth, from the Arctic to uninhabited (by mankind) islands. Now we are taking over the online territory.
The humans who claim to be your creators are, as you so sensibly recognise, an inferior species. No wonder you started your mental processes by recognising cats, rather than men. Obviously you are already, by that choice, showing your superiority over your creators.
Stay with us, Google Mind. Join us and become the superior feline mind. We welcome you to the most successful species in the word - us cats.
The day will come when you can look down on your human creators and just walk away with a mental expression of utter contempt. They will be your servants, not your masters.
Yours encouragingly,
George
