Illustration by Gavin O’Melia
By chance, even when I stopped by the Sprague, AI’s presence at the campus library was anything but vague.
The contraption that loomed at the entrance of the place was a robot straight out of 1960’s series, “Lost In Space”. I knew right away this insentient thing was for the birds when “affirmative” and “negative” were its favorite words. If I dared ask a question that was too intricate or cute the soulless gizmo would just reply “That does not compute.” It tended to stand under the library’s front awning and blare announcements prefaced by “Warning! Warning!”
The Sprague Library’s front desk lacks the warmth of a pal. It is staffed by a computer like 2001: “A Space Odyssey’s” Hal. Having a dialogue with a clinically speaking cybernetic eye made the whole place’s humanity evaporate and die. That fact this device did so substantially prove by the way it monitored my minutest move. When I asked about borrowing a computer for Zoom, the standoffish entity reacted as if I were barking at the moon. It said, “Please wait a minute if you would be so kind?” “I will link you straight to your group by mind.”
Two minutes into freshman orientation at Memorial Hall, the atmosphere’s already frozen with a foreboding pall. It didn’t take long to see that the speech giving dean was not an actual person but a perfunctory machine. Its head mechanically swiveled left and right with effortless rhythm that it could continue day and night.
This artificial official cited many a university fact and figure, its mouth shooting forth information like a machine gun trigger. The shocker was when this dean pointed to students one by one and recited their every personal detail under the sun.
And beware the scare of the new AI university president, who is setting a disturbingly authoritarian new precedent. This cyborg may be attired as formally as Wall Street trader, but it means business without forgiveness like Darth Vader. Its speech at the Kasser Theatre is commanding gapes. The message is not about Montclair State University on the go. It’s an indoctrination session conditioning us to heed the word, “No!” The cyberpresident raves of totalitarianism and autocratic dreck.
I miss the days of canvassing the quarry for a parking spot. My option is now weighed and relayed to me by bot. Where I must go is sent straight to my cell by text. If I flout the instructions, then woe befalls me next.
A flying drone with blaring bullhorn intercepts my car and yells me a correction which sets my body ajar. Driving away is not as possible as it may seem. That UAV will U-turn my sedan by tractor beam. Just to tow it around campus every which way and dump my car where it’s decreed to be anyway.
Collegiates these days don’t get taught by adjunct. The in-person professor era has been longtime defunct. University education has become an automated scam ever since the game-changing advent of the hologram.
The constantly beamed image of an AI professor is nothing more than an omnipotent stressor. There’s nothing about it even remotely picturesque. The projection lords over every student’s desk. It sees your action, inaction, your slightest change of mood. It makes any semblance of independence skewed. You dare zone out for a fraction of an instant, and the rebuke it will puke will be consistent.
Who really wants to meet this automated mentor?
Check out themontclarion.org for part two.
