[STEPS OUT ONTO THE STAGE WITH A WIRELESS MICROPHONE ATTACHED TO MY CHEEK]
Meet Andre. Andre is a teddy bear, but one with a secret. Would you like to tell everyone your secret, Andre?
[SQUEEZES THE BEAR]
"I love you!"
I love you too, Andre! Yes, friends and investors: Andre can talk. Using cylindrical dry battery technology, our engineers have given Andre an extensive vocabulary that makes him able to have full, engaging conversations with people, kids, and adults alike. Andre, are you excited for the World Cup this summer?
[SQUEEZES THE BEAR]
"Let's all have cookies together!"
Aww, that's a great idea for a viewing party, Andre! Perhaps we should serve some delicious punch with the cookies, as well?
"I knew it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart."
Whoa, did Andre just speak without me having to squeeze him? Friends, the answer to that question is YES. You see, we've implanted Andre with a special chip that recognizes your voice and will respond to your prompts automatically. You'll be able to use Andre for anything! Does your child need help writing a term paper? They can ask Andre! Need a daily routine to firm up those core muscles? Sounds like a job for our friend right here!
"I can't wait to go play outside!"
Good idea for burning calories, little buddy! I'd say Andre is smarter than the average bear, wouldn't you?
"Let's all have cookies together!"
The world has never seen this sort of technology writ large, let alone in the form of such a cutey-patootie. That's why we at Defector have developed Andre with careful consideration for the longterm implications that his birth could potentially have not only on your life, but on society as a whole. Companies will be able to use Andre for jobs their human workers may be loath to take on. Governments will be able to use Andre for sorting mountains of data that would have taken decades for humans to organize otherwise. University professors will be able to hire Andre as a reliable TA. And mothers can reach for Andre anytime they need to soothe a child having themselves a little hissy fit. Now that's one hell of a proposition, pardon my French.
"The sun coming out makes me want to smile!"
Same here, Andre. But having a teddy bear this powerful means that we need to have guardrails, especially if it becomes widely adopted across the globe. Because this isn't merely a teddy bear, but an intelligent teddy bear.
"Call me Ishmael."
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow down there, Einstein! I'm having trouble keeping up with you, and so might humanity if we're not careful. Because Andre's sentience raises questions that we, as humans, may not be ready to answer. And yes, I believe Andre to be sentient. You might be saying, But how can an inanimate object have consciousness? That's the miracle of Andre.
"My favorite flavor of birthday cake is chocolate!"
Think carefully about what Andre just said. What did we hear? We heard excitement. We heard joy. We heard emotions. But above all else, we heard knowledge. Not only does Andre recognize the existence of birthday cake, but he's also conscious of the wide varieties of birthday cake available and feels the most joy when he gets to eat chocolate cake (NOTE: please do not feed the bear). If those aren't traits of a living creature, well then I myself must be dead!
Years from now, we project that Andre will have a far more expansive mental palette to work with. He'll speak 50 different languages, have a detailed map of the globe stored in his brain, and will even know how to fold a fitted sheet properly.
"Let's all have cookies together!"
Can you see it now? Can you see how this one bear could potentially alter the course of human civilization? That's where issues become thorny. How do we make sure that Andre is always kind, knowledgeable, and oh so cuddly? What if Andre's intellectual capacity exceeds our own, as our R&D team expects it will? How do we prevent him from supplanting the American workforce rather than assisting it? And what if we develop the capacity—again, as our R&D team fully anticipates—to upload the human mind into his circuitry? Are we ready for a man-bear singularity? Who will lead these bears when that happens?
"The capital of Vermont is London."
Perhaps you are wondering why, given the stakes at hand, I don't just turn Andre off. Well, I'm not sure that I can live with such an act weighing on my conscience. More importantly, this technology is here now, which means we can't simply ignore it. Andre's intellectual capacity is already so great, and increasing so exponentially, that it is impossible to imagine a future in which he is not woven into every aspect of both our culture and economy. To switch him off would be to switch off progress itself!
"The current temperature is 874 degrees Celsi—"
This is why we have to amass the greatest amount of both capital and resources we possibly can to ensure that Andre does not go rogue, as perhaps a bio-powered grizzly bear might. As we speak, Defector is working with local governments to erect fully operational, but highly sustainable, bear centers to help boost Andre's processing speed. And we plan on offering shares of Andre to the greater public (with myself, Drew Magary, still acting as CEO), so that we all might have a stake in his future. We want an Andre that loves the world as much as he loves those cookies. Right, Andre?
"So I got that going for me, which is nice."
AHAHAHA! Nice pull, friend. But seriously, Andre is the future. Let's make sure it’s a bright one. TOGETHER.
