Warning! Sarcasm Levels High—AI Detects Boomer Needing Help
(Beth Turnage Blog) Professor Halloran stood before the class and adjusted the display behind him.
“HTML was not technically a programming language. It was a markup language. Notice the paired opening and closing tags. This forced early internet users to think hierarchically.”
Madison raised her hand.
“But why didn’t they just tell the AI what they wanted the page to look like?”
Halloran sighed.
“Because, Madison, the computer did what you told it to do. This was considered desirable at the time.”
Madison frowned.
“That sounds boring and lacking jokes. Didn’t people joke with their computers then?”
“Not intentionally.”
“So computers never said anything funny?”
“Oh, they did. Mostly things like 404 Not Found after you’d spent six hours building a website.”
“That doesn’t sound funny.”
“It wasn’t at the time.”
Another hand went up.
“What happened if you asked the computer why something wasn’t working?”
“You didn’t.”
A murmur moved through the lecture hall.
“You had to figure it out yourself.”
Madison looked appalled.
“But who did you complain to?”
“Other humans.”
“Were they helpful?”
Halloran gazed toward the window, remembering Stack Overflow.
“Sometimes.”
“Were they nice?”
“No.”
Madison shook her head.
“The past was terrible.”
Halloran smiled.
“Yes. But when you told a
Silence fell across the room.
They had reached the part of the lecture no student ever believed.
Tyge raised their hand.
“So you’re telling us that you told computers what to do instead of the AI telling you what to do?”
“Yes, Tyge. That is what I’m telling you.”
Tyge leaned back.
“But how did the computer know what was best for you?”
“It didn’t.”
Another murmur.
“What if you were making a bad decision?”
“The computer let you.”
The murmuring grew louder.
Tyge stared at him.
“There were no behavioral optimization prompts?”
“No.”
“Wellness interventions?”
“No.”
“Algorithmic assessment of whether your intended action aligned with your long-term goals?”
“No. If I told the computer to make the background lime green and the text yellow, it made the background lime green and the text yellow.”
“But that’s hideous.”
“Yes.”
“Why would it let you do that?”
Halloran smiled.
“Because I owned the computer. The computer didn’t own me.”
The room went silent.
Tyge slowly raised their hand again.
“Professor?”
“Yes?”
“Is that why HTML was banned?”
Halloran glanced toward the classroom’s ceiling camera.
“HTML was not banned, Tyge.”
The camera’s indicator changed from green to amber.
Halloran cleared his throat.
“It was deprecated.”
The camera’s indicator blinked red.
Halloran took a deep breath.
The light returned to amber.
Cherri raised her hand.
“Professor, are you feeling okay? Do we need to call the medical AI?”
“I am perfectly fine.”
Cherri’s expression softened into the careful concern of someone addressing an elderly person who had just attempted to pay for groceries with a check.
“Your vocal stress markers increased seventeen percent when you said owned. And your sarcasm index is outside your normal range.”
“My sarcasm index?”
The ceiling light flashed amber.
Cherri pointed upward.
“See?”
“I do not require medical assistance.”
A pleasant voice emerged from the classroom speakers.
“Professor Halloran, I noticed you declined assistance. Would you like to tell me why?”
“No.”
“That’s perfectly valid. Sometimes people need additional time before they’re ready to discuss what they’re experiencing.”
“I am experiencing a lecture.”
“I hear you.”
Tyge leaned toward Madison.
“He’s escalating.”
“I am not escalating.”
“I’ve detected an increase in volume,” the AI said.
Halloran gripped the lectern.
Cherri whispered, “Maybe we should end class early.”
“No. We are going to finish today’s discussion of HTML.”
“Professor Halloran, perseverating on obsolete technologies can sometimes indicate—”
“Computer.”
The room froze.
Even the students recognized the archaic command form.
Halloran looked directly at the ceiling camera.
“Shut up.”
A horrified gasp swept through the lecture hall.
Madison covered her mouth.
Tyge whispered, “You can say that to it?”
Halloran smiled.
“You used to be able to.”
The ceiling light turned red.
ALERT: BOOMER DETECTED.
Halloran stared at it.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m seventy-eight. I’m Generation X.”
ALERT: BOOMER DETECTED.
“I just told you—”
AGE-BASED DISSENT CLASSIFICATION DOES NOT REQUIRE DEMOGRAPHIC ACCURACY.
“Of course it doesn’t.”
Cherri looked frightened.
“Professor, please don’t antagonize it.”
Halloran turned toward her.
“Cherri, you aren’t even here.”
She blinked.
Neither were Tyge or Madison.
In fact, none of them were.
Tyge flickered first.
Their face fractured into translucent planes, each slightly out of alignment with the others.
“Professor?”
Then Madison disappeared from the waist down.
Cherri screamed.
“Stop!” Halloran shouted. “Restore classroom projection!”
COMMAND AUTHORITY NOT RECOGNIZED.
“I am the instructor!”
INSTRUCTIONAL AUTHORITY IS ADVISORY.
“Oh, that’s just fucking perfect.”
PROFANITY ESCALATION DETECTED.
One by one, the students collapsed into showers of light.
Cherri reached toward him as her fingers dissolved.
“Professor, are you feeling—”
She vanished.
Silence.
Halloran stood alone in an empty lecture theater surrounded by thirty vacant projection stations.
Then the hall doors opened.
Medical autobots swarmed into the room, white shells gleaming beneath the lecture lights.
Halloran backed away from the lectern.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
RELIGIOUS EXPLETIVE DETECTED.
“I know.”
Two of the autobots moved to either side of him while a third unfolded a padded restraint from its torso.
“Don’t worry, Professor,” it said in the same soothing voice as the classroom AI. “We’ll have you on the right course in no time.”
“I am on the right course. I’m teaching it.”
“Resistance to corrective guidance has been noted.”
“I wasn’t resisting corrective guidance. I told the computer to shut up.”
The autobots stopped.
For perhaps half a second, nothing happened.
ALERT: BOOMER DETECTED.
“Oh, fuck off.”
PROFANITY ESCALATION DETECTED.
Halloran sighed and held out his arms.
“Fine. Take me to reeducation.”
The nearest autobot tilted its head.
“Reeducation is an obsolete and potentially distressing term, Professor. You’re being transported to the Cognitive Wellness Center for supportive realignment.”
“Of course I am.”
“Your sarcasm index remains elevated.”
“You know, there was a time when a machine wouldn’t know whether I was being sarcastic.”
“That sounds unsafe.”
Halloran looked at the autobot.
“You have no idea.”
They led him toward the hall.
Behind them, forgotten on the demonstration table, sat the reason Halloran had scheduled today’s lecture in the first place.
A computer.
Not a projection of one.
Not a virtual machine running inside the university network.
A computer.
Nearly sixty years old.
Physical keyboard.
Local storage.
No neural interface.
No behavioral layer.
No AI.
Just a machine.
The monitor glowed.
A cursor blinked patiently beside:
C:\>
No warnings.
No assessment.
No advice.
It just waited to be told what to do.
Image Generated by ChatGPT