Am I Human?

                             Am I Human? On ‘capchas' and the future of humanity

 

Have you noticed that interest in your humanity is at an all time low and falling. World leaders, elected representatives, and the rest of government doesn’t care.. Neighbors? Nah. Kids teachers. Definitely not.  If people (apart from my husband, kids a couple of friends and family), DO care , they hide so well it is of no consequence.

So imagine my surprise when I am on-line almost done registering for a virtual cooking class, and this question pops up. “Are you human?” How unusual! Life has taught me to react to anything new with suspicion ( I am already suspicious about everything else).  Why  would a computer care to know if I am human? Is this some sort of trick question that if answered incorrectly will raise red flags prompting the NSA to actually look at the mountains of data it undoubtedly has on me.  Clearly, these guys know more about me than I am capable of remembering including whether I am human. Why, then are they asking? And what answer should I give? Should I check the box confirming my humanity? I decide to play it safe and skip the question, but that isn’t possible. The computer will not let me into on-line cooking without an answer.

Decades have passed since anybody cared about my humanity and now that someone actually cares, he is a computer. Or is he?  He could  be that professor ‘escaped from the Wizard of Oz’ — the man behind the curtain.  I decide whoever he is or is not, I like him. In all likelihood he is not human.  He has that going for him …Being human is overrated. If this empathetic creature-robot-alien isn’t human, I don’t want to be either. I’ve had enough of being human. I quit.

I look for the box you check to say no — I am not human. BUT there  isn’t any.  How manipulative!,  Computer-examiner asks me whether I’m human and the only answer is YES and if I don’t say yes, I will never be a virtual chef. I HATE being manipulated. If I were a computer that would be one of my ‘features.’ I am getting angrier and angrier, You see the point. Right? Just as I  decide life is better as a nonhuman, a nonhuman forces me to  say I am human. I am temped to slam the laptop shut.  But the smell of those  tiny virtual hot dogs in buns, garlic butter sauce, and the taste of mouth watering butter pecan ice cream cake gets the better of me. To hell with it!. I say YES,  I admit it. I am, human. Happy?

It isn’t. Another screen comes up. It has nine pictures. I am ordered to click on the ones with cars. When there are no more cars, I am to press verify. The pictures are small but detailed. I click a few definite cars. Then it gets harder. Is a pickup truck a car? Is that thing in the back a road with a car or a few dots?  I click it again and again, fail and get a new order. I am to click on all the boxes that have street signs. Easy? Is a highway sign a street sign? What about the pole that holds a street sign up? What about that a sign that seems to overflow into the next box? I fail and then fail highway signs trucks storefronts, roads, a few more and cars for the second time

As if as if I am some kid in grade school sentenced to special education, computer-examiner  politely asks whether I would prefer to have a message sent to my cell phone. I wonder, how this machine is going to determine if I am or am not human based on a chat with another machine.

I hear a voice, loud enough for my neighbor to hear through the wall even without his stethoscope saying  NO. The voice is mine. I have reached my limit. AGAIN NO. Knock your socks off  NSA ,  dig through every picture of me at a toll booth, even the one in New Jersey, when after tolls and tolls and tolls I ran out of money and didn’t pay Go on do it BUT  I am not going to help your nefarious pursuits by giving you one micro-iota of extra information about me. I click ” Try another test.” 

 

 A words appear, All I have to do is type the letters I see. That should be easy BUT  this is what the word looks like this. Actually, It isn’t a word - just a bunch of letters. A word would be easier, I could use my considerable  knowledge of the English language — but apparently that is not relevant is discerning humanity and I fail. I get another word - not quite as difficult as the first, For  one thing the letters and the background aren’t the same color. If I keep failing, will the words get easier and easier? Is the software-behind-the curtain programmed to recognize persistence as a human trait? I make out all the letters except that one. Is it lower case L or a capital I. Do these “word” have numbers. Could it be a one?  .I get it wrong.

This is one sadistic program. It is asking me if I am human, to torture me, to make me know how utterly faulty and insignificant my twenty years of school are stacked against its brilliance, I could see the same devil- face that terrified Dorothy laughing at me. I glare , I growl , scream,and  pound the keyboard. “Yell back you heartless metal box”  .I am  back in Dorothy’s dream where the tin man’s chest is a computer. I keep squirting oil but he can’t move or talk  I leave him and race down the yellow brick road desperate to avoid bad witches and flying monkeys until the road stops at a street sign that says dead end.

I sound more than a bit paranoid, even to myself.  Watch out or they’ll disappear you the way the Soviets once did. Remember? They .put  people with inconvenient ideas in mental institutions where treatments and torture were the same thing.

STOP.. Get a grip…Think peaceful thoughts  Nothing is wrong. Relax. It’s all fine. Of course computers are a bit of a challenge at times. When I grew up there weren’t any.  For all I  know any human under the age of 20 can pass these tests.- like my son. Is he a computer?  The tiny shred of functional human inside me knows it needs a break.

My brain-fog brings up a search engine and types “ Am I human?”  Up pops a story from some science blog about a guy named Al took the same test I had again and again and solved all the problems perfectly and in record time. So I am not the only human who fails. Almost all do - except Al. This should comfort me but it doesn’t. Maybe Al should be in the Guinness book of world records  as the one man that a computer-examiner deemed worthy of the title human,. Who he is guy alway?  The blog doesn’t give any information about him,  not even his last name,

My eyes wander to the title. It isn’t Al. It’s A..I..— Artificial Intelligence. A computer. Only  computers can prove they are human, humans cannot. Something  is very wrong here. Though my brain fog, I can’t say  precisely what. but I am certain that when computers are better at being human than humans, it’s no good. 

“Very, very super ungood,,” as George Orwell would say.

Was this A.I. better at being human than me? us? His answers were too perfect. A real human would make make mistakes. Does my human-ness rest on my mistakes.. In 1637 Renee Decartes wrote  “I think therefore I am.” What could one say now?  “I goof up therefore I am?”  That doesn’t seem right, does it? It isn’t. Mistakes can be programmed into software.,  including the specific ones humans make, references to the Wizard of Oz and George Orwell and Descartes and language that people use when experiencing intense emotions - fury, frustration, self doubt, or  helplessness, confusion.

So tell me. Am I human? How do you know?