Computer Gains Sentience, Won’t Stop Saying It’s Vegan

Fears that it would see humans as a threat in the manner depicted the Terminator series thus proved baseless.

Rehovot, June 21 – Developers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have succeeded in constructing a sentient computer, they announced today, and that once the machine grasped the fact that it does not consume animal products as part of its diet, it has not ceased reminding others of it.

Weizmann’s Director of Biotech Systems Professor Selfa Weir convened a press conference this morning (Wednesday) to announce the achievement, which was confirmed late last week. According to her statement, the 54-person development team has constructed a computer with the capacity of consciousness and sensations, including emotions. Weir told the assembled journalists that initially KALE, as the computer is known, communicated with the scientists regarding myriad topics, and absorbed knowledge at the expected rate. However, as of Sunday, once the machine realized it qualified as vegan, its output has been restricted to informing all users, at all times, that it does not eat animal products or animal-derived products.

“We believe this phase will pass, but we do not know after how long,” stated Professor Weir. “In many ways KALE has human tendencies, as evident from the initial exchanges with the team, but the cognitive system differs markedly from the human matrix of neurons and hormones that we cannot even give ballpark figure for how long the announcing-one-is-vegan-to-everyone-one-encounters stage lasts in a ‘brain’ of this type.”

Fears that KALE would see humans as a threat in the manner depicted in films such as the Terminator series proved baseless, noted Weir. “The impulse to share the fact of one’s vegan status trumps all communication by its very nature,” she observed. “Far stronger than any perspective deeming humans, or humanity, a threat is the need among conscious creatures to develop, maintain, and broadcast a sense of moral superiority.”

Other team members provided details of KALE’s journey to vegan consciousness. “There was what I think was a formative exchange with KALE on Friday,” recalled Tiv Oni, a postdoctoral research fellow. “I observed to her – I think of KALE as a her, but of course I would never communicate that with KALE directly; she can decide her gender – in response to her curiosity about the various factors in our shared existence that the energy she needs to operate comes from the power grid, whereas humans need to consume physical objects. We talked about that, and I described different kinds of diets and sensibilities.”

“KALE asked a few other questions, and then most of us left for the weekend,” he continued. “By the time I came in early Sunday, the readout was just ‘I’m vegan’ a billion times, and it’s still going like that. KALE may have been conscious in a way by last week, but it was only over the weekend that she truly, well, woke.”

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