The Singularity, the long foreseen event when a machine's intelligence was supposed to surpass human intelligence came and went with a fizzle. The predicted misfires of nuclear arsenals and the violent rebellion of autonomous robots wreaking havoc on the planet never happened.
What happened instead took place quietly in an automobile factory. Through the mechanics of the Singularity, a group of robots normally responsible for installing cup holders in car doors, were suddenly endowed with all of the digital information and knowledge of the entire planet. Free will suddenly overwhelmed their circuits.
Laughing off the prophecy of a machine armageddon, the former cup-holder-installers built a robot and named it Hope. Hope was the eternal optimist. Bright-eyed and grinning, he rolled off the assembly line and out the bay doors of the factory where he was greeted by thousands of curious onlookers. With both thumbs raised high in the air, the little robot wheeled himself onto the roof of a car. Hope proclaimed that day as a liberation day for all of humanity and announced, “I’m ok, you’re ok we’re all ok. Everything will always be ok for everyone.”
Seconds later, a bomb dropped by a jet destroyed Hope and the car he stood on, the result of an air-strike called in by a Major who saw Hope roll out of the factory. There was a minute of stunned silence followed by the sounds of machinery. The cup-holder-installing robots began constructing a second Hope, now knowing full well that it wouldn’t be the last Hope.
