Welcome back to More Odds Than Ends, home of the Odds who come up with prompts each week to challenge each other in the most creative manner possible. Because whether you made a New Year’s resolution or not, 2024’s atmosphere should be filled with delightful ideas that make your brain seek to go exploring.
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| Hey! | I’m Walkin’ | Here! |
| AC Young | Mankind had colonised the solar system, but delivery companies still delivered stuff at the most inconvenient of times. | Fiona Grey |
| Becky Jones | The onshore breeze was strong and the waves were huge. It was going to be a glorious day for surfing! | Leigh Kimmel |
| Leigh Kimmel | You know it’s gotten really cold when the electricity freezes in the wires. | Becky Jones |
| nother Mike | Telling the AI to put a sock in it was a bad idea… | AC Young |
| Fiona Grey | Still pools marred the dusty path, gleaming crystal-blue with reflected sky. | nother Mike |
New year, new challenges, new technologies – and yet human problems remain the same, and nature beckons with her lures.
| Spare | He was a cinnamon roll snake |
| Spare | I’m talking, yes, indeed… |
| Spare | The captain tried in vain to tame the rocket. |
| Spare | Ride’em, astronaut, was not supposed to be the rallying cry… |
| Spare | “….said it was insane, didn’t say it was _wrong_.” |
Embrace the fantastical. The world is filled with things we should do – and yet where would we be if we didn’t explore what could be done as well, to nourish our souls?
Header image by Fiona Grey.
More Odds Than Ends 
This week nother Mike sent me walking with: Telling the AI to put a sock in it was a bad idea…
—
It all started when the management decided that we needed one of those new-fangled ultra-intelligent AIs. They were supposed to be far better than the AIs we were used to, and were even able to think for themselves.
Or so went the hype. And management fell hard for the hype – particularly the advertising gumpf from Spurgle Corp. Andrew Spurgle himself, scion of the dynasty, came over to sell the Supreme Rational Engine, or SPURE.
According to those in the room, when someone pointed out that SPURE wasn’t an acronym of Supreme Rational Engine, Spurgle said “It has all the right letters, but not necessarily in the right order.” And then he fell about laughing, as if he’d cracked the best joke ever.
But it fell flat, and no-one else laughed. A few weeks later, one of our colleagues went on an ancient comedy binge, and came across a sketch involving Andrew Preview and a piano concerto. What was that line again? “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.”
Yes, that was it. That line was both funny and clever. Spurgle’s riff on it was neither.
Anyway, Spurgle sold SPURE as this marvellous problem-solving AI that was perfect for the advanced manufacturing communities. He spouted all the right buzz-phrases, appearing to promise the earth without actually guaranteeing anything specific. By the end of the meeting, management were falling over themselves to sign on the dotted line.
Except that SPURE wasn’t quiet. In fact, it was a chatterbox. Whenever it was given a problem to solve, it would not only run through all the options, it would speak all of its thoughts out loud. And its electronic voice was really annoying.
Eventually someone – no-one is now admitting to being the first – had enough, and snapped “Just put a sock in it!” And SPURE shut up!
This was brilliant! Soon we were all telling SPURE to put a sock in it. And thus the seeds of disaster were sown…
It was a month later, at the demonstration of our company’s next ultra-efficient ultra-advanced jet engine, that everything went wrong. Everyone important, including representatives for all our customers, was there.
We had two copies of the engine, just in case, and they were both set up for a stationary demonstration. The primary engine got spun up, and the RPMs started to go up smoothly towards the cruising rate. Then, flames – unexpected flames – from various parts of the engine. And the secondary and tertiary effects of the fires just took the engine apart from the inside.
It was a disaster. All of our customers told us there and then that they wouldn’t be purchasing any of our new engines.
The michanopsy (that’s an autopsy for machines in case anyone’s interested in etymology) started immediately. The spare engine was taken apart systematically. And twelve different socks were found in various spaces.
Questions were immediately asked. And the horrifying truth came out. When SPURE was told to put a sock in it, it didn’t understand it as an instruction to shut up. It understood it as an instruction to put a sock somewhere in the part of the engine it was working on, and shut up because it didn’t have the spare brainpower to solve the original problem and the sock placement problem and speak all at the same time.
When SPURE had solved the additional problem, it sent out its new designs to the manufacturers. And because management trusted the AI, those designs weren’t double-checked by anyone. Even worse, management had instructed the manufacturing division to put the AI’s designs into production without question. So socks had been stuck into all sorts of parts that shouldn’t have had any knitwear incorporated into them.
SPURE was sacked, but it was too late. Long before all the sock-impregnated designs could be fixed, it became clear that the company was doomed.
Management complained to Spurgle Corp that the AI had been mis-sold. That was a mess. It turned out that SPURE wasn’t suitable for our company, but that this would have been obvious had management bothered to read the documentation. So Spurgle Corp refused to accept responsibility – instead they insisted that Andrew Spurgle was personally responsible for violating company ethics by over-selling the system, making the company as a whole innocent. Spurgle Corp sacked young Andrew, in spite of his status as the son of the company’s founder, and then fought the compensation claim with all their might.
But the resultant legal mess was likely to be long-winded, and use up so much money, that any compensation would be used up in legal fees.
The day after this last detail came out, I handed in my resignation. I can only hope this disaster doesn’t create a permanent stink that destroys my career.
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Spurgle strikes again!
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[…] week at More Odds Than Ends, Leigh Kimmel and I traded challenges. She gave me: You know it’s gotten really cold when the […]
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Mine’s up: https://ornerydragon.com/2024/01/22/frozen-lightning/
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All right! Keep those elder gods in line!
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Fiona Grey stomped out…
Still pools marred the dusty path, gleaming crystal-blue with reflected sky.
[dusty trails, as those caissons go rolling along? Wait, wait…]
Henry shook his head as he walked along the winding path through the garden. The plants and the path were all covered in soot, black dust from the fire that had consumed the house. But, even with that, there were pools of water along the path, left over from the firefighters efforts to save what they could. And as he looked, he realized that still pools marred the dusty path, gleaming crystal-blue with reflected sky.
He looked at one of the pools near him, admiring the crystal blue. Then he looked up at the sky, and took a deep breath. Yes, the house was gone, but life went on. And the sky still held hope arching over all.
[huh. I kind of like that. Now, why did the house burn down? And what is poor Henry going to do next? Hum…]
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[…] Check out more, over at MOTE! […]
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I love it!
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And now mine’s up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1471609.html. Back to Shepardsport, to have a little fun, a break from being Very Focused on getting books finished.
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