EP370: The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1

[eytanz]

EP370: The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1

By M. Darusha Wehm

Read by Christiana Ellis

An Escape Pod Original!

---

The first day I meet my human herd they are so well-behaved that I wonder if they really need me at all. I arrive at their dwelling, and am greeted by the largest one of their group. I access the manual with which I have been programmed and skip to Section 3: Verbal and Physical Clues for Sexing Humans. I can tell by the shape and outer garments that this human is a male, and I make a note of this data. He brings me into the main area of their living space, and as we move deeper into the dwelling, he asks me to call him Taylor, so immediately I do. He makes a noise deep in his throat, then introduces me to the rest of the herd.

He puts his forelimb around the next largest one, who he introduces as Madison. The Madison bares its teeth at me in a manner that Section 14: Advanced Non-Verbal Communication suggests is a gesture indicating happiness, approval, cheerfulness, or amusement, but which may belie insincerity, boredom or hostility. The Madison says, “Welcome to the family, Rosie.”

“Thank you, Madison,” I respond, as suggested by the manual in Section 2: Introductions: Getting To Know Your Humans. “I am looking forward to serving you and your family.” The manual indicates that human herds designate each individual with a name, and that most will bestow a similar designation on their caregiver. Section 0: A Brief Overview of Current Anthropological Theories states that the predominant view is that humans believe we are a new addition to the herd, and the best thing to do is to go along with this idea so as not to confuse them. The Taylor and the Madison appear to have chosen to refer to me by the name Rosie, and I set my monitoring routine to key on the sound of that word.

“These here are Agatha and Frederick,” the Taylor says, pushing two smaller humans toward me. I am unable to tell by looking whether or not they are male or female — they are about the same height as each other, with shoulder-length glossy fur. Their outer coverings are very similar, shapeless and dark coloured except with colourful designs in the upper section. One of them bares its teeth at me, in a manner similar to the Madison’s earlier display, but the other looks away. “Kids,” the Taylor says, his voice growing deeper, “say hi to the new robot.”

“Hi, Rosie,” the toothy one says, “I’m Frederick, and this is my sister, Aggie.” The Frederick pulls on the forelimb of the other one, who looks through its fur at me.

“This is so stupid,” it says, pulling its arm out of its sibling’s grip. “I don’t have to say hi to the dishwasher or the school bus, why do I have to pretend to be nice to this thing?”

Listen to this week’s Escape Pod!

[eytanz]

For some reason the blog entry for this episode, and the title of the episode in the feed, says its episode 369 (though the audio file is correct).

[Listener]

Though this story didn't really cover new ground -- cultural misunderstandings, household robots, affairs, oops babies (and raise your hand if you don't think Chester was born of an affair, not of Taylor and Madison having sex) -- it was very well told and I enjoyed listening to it. Although once I figured out what was going on, this came to mind:



I wonder if the use of Taylor and Madison as names was intentionally reflective of child naming trends in the late 90s/early 00s, and if the author is projecting that "classic" names (Frederick, Agatha, Chester) will come into vogue again once we start swinging the pendulum the other way.

Madison in the study saying "we have about half an hour" was most definitely realistic, even now with the easy availability of video chatting. Of everything in the story, that, I believe, was the moment that sealed it for me.

[chemistryguy]

Oh Mur!  You had me geared up for a wacky, whimsical podcast.  Instead I was met with hostility, adultery, statutory rape and child neglect. 

The first few minutes, I was amused by Rosie's (nod to the Jetsons) interpretation of her human and their behaviors.  This trope grew old quickly, and I was left with a sadness for this broken family which the robot sees as functioning well.  Perhaps there's something deeper I'm missing.

The icing on the cake was the idea that this unwanted baby will grow up to know Rosie as it's mom.  Hopefully he will read the robot's actions as love so that he has some sense of belonging in the world, or that Rosie will develop genuine emotions over time.

[matweller]

For some reason the blog entry for this episode, and the title of the episode in the feed, says its episode 369 (though the audio file is correct).

Corrected. Thanks!

[timprov]

The story was well written with a strong POV character, even some humor that I enjoyed but when it was over I couldn't help but think, 'what was the point?'   I don't feel it really brought anything different to the table of (Insert outsider) perspective of humans and how we behave.

[Schrodingrr]

--I need a copy of Rosie's manual...

[Cutter McKay]

Overall I enjoyed listening to this story, though I agree that what started out as a whimsical exploration of people through a housebot's observations quickly deescalated into a tragic, yet common, tale of a broken family on the brink of collapse and I found I was left with nothing hopeful or positive to glean from the telling.

The only real beef I had with the story, though, was some of the robot's classifications of things. I loved them being referred to as a herd rather than a family, but was thrown off by the references to fur rather than hair. If this robot is viewing this family from a logical, almost dictionary point of view, as the title, "The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds" suggests, then why would the robot so inaccurately associate hair with fur, when one of the defining features of mammals is the presence of hair rather than fur?

Rosie didn't feel robot to me so much as she felt alien. Most of Rosie's observations about the humans seem like the way creatures not from our planet, or at least not from our species, would see them. Granted, Rosie is not of our species, but she was most certainly designed and programmed by humans, and her manual would have been written by humans. So all of these inaccuracies, though cute, don't fit the character in my opinion.

Still, it was interesting and entertaining to some extent. 

[eytanz]

Did anyone other than me spend most of the story wanting to give Rosie a hug? She was so well-meaning and oblivious.

I did really enjoy the story, but it's the kind of enjoyment - shared by a lot of hollywood blockbusters - that only works if I'm not thinking too much about what's going on. Once I start thinking, then I share a lot of Cutter's criticisms. Rosie seemed to lack a *lot* of information that is necessary to do her job effectively. For example, recognizing human sexes when they're clothed. Even if social cues such as clothing and hairstyles will have become entirely unisex and body-form hiding by the time of this story, you can normally tell a human's gender by looking at their face or by their voice. It's not foolproof, of course, but these are good cues and would have given Rosie starting hypotheses. And more importantly - why did she have no information about figuring out people's moods? I mean, if she's a servant, it would be rather essential for her to be able to detect when someone is upset or angry at her.

Now, in a different story, one could suggest that maybe that's beyond her capacities for some reason. The problem is, we know it's entirely within her capacities - she's just lacking the chapter in the manual. If someone had written a section that said "human eye leakage is often a sign of distress", or "raised voices are often a sound of anger", then she would have known.

To put it otherwise, based on the setup of the story - a sentient robot who seems to be cognitively similar to a human but has only a static knowledge source available to her - I would have expected Rosie to err on the side of stereotyping, knowing about typical human behaviours and not being able to see when they do not apply. Instead, we have Rosie erring on the side of ignorance.

Which makes for a fun, amusing story. But it just doesn't actually make sense. Which didn't exactly diminish my enjoyment of the story, but it made it hard for me to view it as anything but a fluffy entertainment (it's also why I wasn't particularly bothered by the dysfunctional family dynamics - I just didn't buy into anything as real).

[Max e^{i pi}]

I wanted to like this, I really did. I always love Christiana's readings, and what's not to like about a story with a childhood fictitious robot in it?
Well, apparently a lot.
To cut it short, I am upset and angry at the author for being lazy.
At first I was like "Oh cool! The robot thinks in seconds! Wonderful!" then I had to stop and do the conversion in my head (3 mega-seconds is about 50 minutes, 600 kilo-seconds is about a week). So that broke the flow of the story.
Then the robot arbitrarily started using days ("4 days ago") and diurnal periods and seconds. Why? What's going on here? All I can assume is that the author got lazy and just kept writing to keep the flow. But it broke my brain a little bit. Not to mention the interchanging of "nest" and "compartment". Pick a term and stick with it. Pick a method for telling time and stick with it. This just screws things up in my head. When the robot measures things in seconds I can believe that it is a robot. When it calls things strange names I can believe that it is a robot. But when it stops doing that, or when it switches its strange term for a different, even stranger term, that's just dumb. It breaks the flow and throws me out of the world.
Then there is the whole issue of the robot's programming that Cutter McKay started on, but I have much more beef than that.
You don't program anything like that. Robots don't need manuals, they don't need to consult them. They have programming, and the programming dictates behavior and responses. The manual should not exist, and the robot should not need to consult it.
But let's suspend our disbelief for a minute and assume that this robot is an actual artificial intelligence, and actually does learn things by reading them, and even forgets things and then has to consult what it read.
Who the hell wrote that stupid manual? Other robots? What sort of society would provide robots, video conferencing and private houses but neglect to actually explain to the robots how a household works.
"You! Robot! You're going to work for this family! I don't give a hoot who they are, what their names are or what their gender is (BTW, author, "sex" and "gender" do not mean the same thing, please stop mixing them up.) but you go and find out! Here's a manual written by a different robot who actually observed actual human beings for 12 seconds! Good luck!"
Seriously? I think not.
So, to summarize, aside from the interesting point of view of a dysfunctional family, I disliked everything about this story.
Replace the robot with an alien and fix a few let's-call-them-typos and this would be a much better story. In fact, when I saw the title I thought that's what it was going to be.
You know what? I reject your reality and substitute my own. In my head that's how the story went and it was much better than your reality.

[benjaminjb]

This didn't work for me, for many reasons already noted: the outsider view here is not new (Henry James's child character Maisie  also didn't understand what she was seeing); Rosie's type of outsiderness seems inconsistent with her function; and I eagerly await the sequel where every human who bought one of these robots goes to court to sue the manufacturer.

I want to say something constructive here, but all my constructive ideas feel like I'm rewriting the story, which I don't want to do. So, we can fix the inconsistencies in Rosie's programming, make it clear that the robot AI is learning for some reason (rather than programmed with everything that the robot would need--maybe there was an accident that partly wiped or corrupted part of the programming). But then there's still the family drama, which is pretty old.

[Edited to add:]
Here's two questions I'm left with after listening to the story:

a) Does Rosie make any difference to the plot? It seems to me that it doesn't, that Rosie is basically an observer, like Nick Carraway observing the drama around Jay Gatsby, if you stripped out Nick's part of the plot.

b) Does Rosie's observation of this scenario lead to any insight or humor? Hmmm... Your mileage may vary, but I didn't see any particular insight into dysfunctional families (partly because dysfunctional families have been mined for a lot of stories). As for humor, I like fish-out-of-water/unreliably-naive narrators, but that's also a well-mined vein. For instance, how many child narrators have walked in on people having sex and not understood it?

So, I'm left with a story that seems stuck in some well-worn grooves: an observer who doesn't get it watches a standard dysfunctional family.

[chemistryguy]

You don't program anything like that. Robots don't need manuals, they don't need to consult them. They have programming, and the programming dictates behavior and responses. The manual should not exist, and the robot should not need to consult it.

I chose to think that Rosie had a level of cognizance that transcended ordinary programming.  She didn't just pick up cues and immediately act on them, but rather had an internal dialogue where she tried to decide on the best course of action.

I do think that the way terms were interchanged was a bit lazy on the part of the author and that much of the knowledge she had about humans was clumsy and inadequate.  But this robot sounds like she was programmed to process information in a top down method.  To write a manual on human behavior and all the reasons why they might deviate from any predictable patterns would fill a few libraries. I'd like to think that the "manual" provides some kind of reference and that her circuitry is flexible enough to allow for the changes that will undoubtedly occur. 

[Bdoomed]

Wow! I totally expected to come to this thread and see nothing but praise. Honest.

I absolutely loved this story! In fact, I listened to it twice just for the sheer joy of it! (Not in the same sitting)

It wasn't the perfect story, I was somewhat annoyed by Rosie's lack of associating Fredrick's "my sister" with Agatha being a girl, yet she understands "her" just fine.

It was clear that Rosie, and other housebots, were neither programmed nor built by humans. There is no way that could be the case. I don't want to think too much on who or what built Rosie and her kind, though. When the story started, I was thinking robot overlords, and I haven't fully lost that idea. I think it is still possible that Rosie is some sort of monitoring device.

I thought the story was super funny, I loved when Rosie asked Agatha if she had problems with her vision. As for the broken family bringing everyone down in this thread, I guess I just didn't really pay attention to the emotions behind all of that. I experienced the story through the detached eyes of Rosie, and the 'chanting' sessions were really quite amusing.

Sure, Rosie is a terrible robot for her purpose. Terribly programmed, woefully oblivious, and staggeringly uninformed, but why should we expect a robot to understand emotion? I don't think it's too farfetched to imagine that a robot would mistake shouting for chanting, tears for leakage, etc. We have so many subtle bodily cues to explain our inner emotional state that any manual or programming could easily mix up. Hell, we've all heard laughing that we've mistaken for crying (or vice-versa), or a cough mistaken for a sneeze, or a smile taken as genuine.

I have no idea where I'm going with this...

whatever. I LIKED IT!

Oh, and Mur, the past two intros/outros, you've REALLY sounded down. Hope things get better for ya! (though I know you don't really look at the forums at all....)

[Cutter McKay]

A friend of mine pointed out that they might as well have named Rosie "Amelia Bedelia", and it's true! That's exactly how Rosie seemed at times.

[Kaa]

I'm with Bdoomed on this one. I came here expecting to see that everyone loved this, and instead I find . . . this.

I loved this story. Loved it. Absolutely. I didn't try to read anything deeper into it than just a poorly designed domestic robot trying to make sense of this broken family in the only way it can, and making some wildly inappropriate assumptions and interpretations. Sure, we can feel sorry for the family, but . . . every family has their dysfunctions. I was amused by Rosie's interpretations of things we intuitively understand through the rose-colored ocular receptors of the robot "mindset."

Also like Bdoomed, I thought it was clear from the get-go that Rosie was not programmed by humans. The biggest clue was the constant reference to the "removable outer skin."

but was thrown off by the references to fur rather than hair. If this robot is viewing this family from a logical, almost dictionary point of view, as the title, "The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds" suggests, then why would the robot so inaccurately associate hair with fur, when one of the defining features of mammals is the presence of hair rather than fur?

I think you're equating "mammal" here with "primate," but even so, I think we would say that gorillas, chimps, bonobos, etc. have fur rather than hair. It seems to be one of those peculiar conceits of our view of ourselves as somehow "above" the other animals that we refer to our fur as "hair" and their hair as "fur."

(Unless they're pets; we don't talk about cat or dog "fur" being all over everything, but their "hair.")

So . . . I guess I'll just go sit over there in the corner with Bdoomed.

[Bdoomed]

So . . . I guess I'll just go sit over there in the corner with Bdoomed.

BEST CORNER EVER.

[Max e^{i pi}]

So . . . I guess I'll just go sit over there in the corner with Bdoomed.

BEST CORNER EVER.

Hey, I got nothing against people who enjoy this story. I sort of wish that I could enjoy it too. But my analytic mind keeps getting in the way. I've mentioned before how inconsistencies within the defined world bother me a lot. This was just a case of far too many to overlook.

[sykoticwit]

This one didn't do it for me. The premise, observations of a completely dysfunctional family by an outside, utterly clueless observer has been done many, many times. To make it worse, it ended up feeling pointless to me. There was no real plot, no real action and no real conclusion. They all hate each other in the beginning, the author reinforces that they all hate each other in the middle, and then they all hate each other in the end. We get it, they all hate each other. Now change something, make something happen, DO SOMETHING!

Also, was I the only one that thought a robot with as advanced thought capabilities as Rosie would probably be programmed with a better reference on human behavior? It seems like you would want your housekeeping droids to be able to tell the difference between fighting and laughing, happiness and sadness, pleasure and pain. Either that, or make them mindless servant droids.

But on a positive note, more readings by Christiana Ellis please 

[Thunderscreech]

To my perception, many folks are making a classical mistake when interpreting Rosie's dialog.  I interpreted the story as being a 'pseudo code' representation of how a machine was perceiving a family, not an actual dialog by an artificially intelligent being.  The robot is not sophisticated enough to make conceptual leaps and spontaneous thoughts, it's an expert system that responds to very basic stimuli within pre-programmed parameters. 

Ever read a story where an animal is the narrator or main character for a while and the author provides a stream of consciousness dialog from it in human terms even though it's a normal animal?  Snow Crash, for example, has the 'rat thing' (a dog brain in a robot body that works as a security device) that describes things like "The girl was scared.  That made me upset, so I stopped the bad men." (paraphrasing from memory)  The rat thing, in that case, isn't actually speaking english, the author was describing the animal instincts and actions in human terms so we could understand.  To me, Rosie's dialog was the same thing; she's not actually sentient, she's a robot that's part Siri, part Roomba, part baby bottle. 

If you think of it as a human, then the social missteps and poor conclusions are frustrating.  If you apply the above model, however, to my opinion the story works well and I'll join the cool kids in the corner because I also very much enjoyed it.

[cDave]

Loved the. slightly discontiguous   reading of a robot voice. And the whole robotic prose inner-monologue was really fun.

Of course Rosie doesn't say "The Madison" when she speaks to "Madison", as that's not how to communicate with humans, but that doesn't mean that it's internal voice is like that.

To my perception, many folks are making a classical mistake when interpreting Rosie's dialog.  I interpreted the story as being a 'pseudo code' representation of how a machine was perceiving a family, not an actual dialog by an artificially intelligent being.  The robot is not sophisticated enough to make conceptual leaps and spontaneous thoughts, it's an expert system that responds to very basic stimuli within pre-programmed parameters. 

I think that makes the point more eloquently than I did.

--

Something that bothers me a little about the "robots as servants" meme, is that its essentially about creating a sentient being who wants to be enslaved. The whole manual bit seemed an interesting take on it. Create the robot with a subtly flawed knowledge of humans, so that its intellectual interest is maintained.

Or if you take the "mundane" approach for educating-not-programing AI's (e.g Charles Stross's Saturn's Children), then an AI raised by other AIs may well not understand Mammals fully.

I was hoping the story might be more about exploring that the dynamics of a family breakdown.

Oh Mur!  You had me geared up for a wacky, whimsical podcast.  Instead I was met with hostility, adultery, statutory rape and child neglect.

I was at a programme item at Novacon recently about short SF, and the panel mostly discussed specific stories, but briefly threw out a list of places to find it these days.

Personally, EscapePod got me back into SF shorts, from where I subscribed to Interzone to get British SF (but fell out again due not liking the more evocative, less concrete stuff), and have now been getting Asimov's & Anloge digitally for a year. But I've never really read any of the online only magazines.

I thought it would be interesting excersize to find or write tag lines for all of them, to get a feel for the sort of stories they publish.

EscapePod's submission guidelines is "in a more general sense we want that which evokes a sense of wonder, or fun, or simply makes us think about our own world in a new way."

I'm not sure that this story lives up to that.

[caladors]

Long time listener first time poster.

For me this was kind of the exact opposite of a Mike Resnick story. At the end of each of them you feel the Alien/Robot/Monkey was far more human than the humans in the story. Your left pondering, what is right? Could I be as pure as that person.

Where as this had me thinking of the robot as douche, I know it lacks morals. However the whole time I was there thinking why don't you say something, just gahhh! Don't you get it? This not a functioning family your not helping the 'herd'. Your just watching a slow moving train wreck do something damn it!

But that's good. Much better than feeling apathy towards the story which is the worst thing you could ever do (at least from my perspective). I feel that there was a missing part of this story, the part where the wool comes off the eyes of the robot and Rosie comes to realize how wrong she has been. This is most properly an emotional reaction as our lens is shot from Rosie's point of view.

That's my thoughts anyway.

[Carlos Ferreira]

Wow! I totally expected to come to this thread and see nothing but praise. Honest.

Yup, same here.

It may well be the story of a vulgar family coming apart in the vulgar fashion, but I really appreciated the commentary on how difficult it is to program the complexity and nuance of humans (and more, human interaction) into computers. I absolutely adore how the anthropological indications guide the observer (Rosie) to make all the wrong conclusions about what's going on. Could be a prelude to Terminator, this.

[Dem]

Seems I'm in the corner with the 'Oh really? You didn't like it? Really?' crew. Looking back at the comments, I can see that maybe I wasn't expecting (or getting) the same things from this as the people who didn't like it. For instance, it never occurred to me that Rosie actually was a robot, just an entity that was masquerading as one. I don't know why that would be but it didn't matter because the key strand of the story to hand is Rosie's failure to see what's going on, so she is satisfied (not exactly a robot quality) and thinks her herd is very well behaved. The other strand is the disintegration of the family and yes, we've all seen that before but this is an illustration, isn't it? Putting the two strands together we have a remote view of how dysfunction sets in and takes over, right under the nose of someone who might be expected to see it and help but who is misperceiving every signal. Which is pretty much how dreadful things happen with no one raising the alarm.

And I second the hurrahs for the narration. Terrific!

[Unblinking]

I liked this one quite a lot.  I thought it's main flaw was that it went on just a little while longer than it needed to, and started to get kind of boring.

It seems pretty clear to me that the robot was not programmed by humans.  After all, why would the manual say "mammalian bipeds" when that really meant "humans" and would then have other sections for things which are not humans, generalizing more as you passed away from human-like beings.

So I'm thinking that the robot is mass-produced by some kind of alien merchant to be sold to whomever is willing to pay for it.  The Melnorme from Star Control II come immediately to mind:


To this end, the robot's programming is made to be as general as possible.  Without a manual, it's a blank slate, but whenever a new race is encountered, a new manual is written which describes everything that the merchant-alien can discover.  Much of this will be contradictory and hard to interpret, and you end up with a result like Rosie who can't understand the most basic elements of her situation.

I think that in this context, her behavior is entirely reasonable.  The interspecies interpretations of emotional cues and such things are going to be off.  It takes experience to tell the difference between a smile and a grimace,             a sigh of fatigue and a sigh of frustration, a widening of eyes from surprise or from anger.  Combine that with a nonhuman manual writer and you're going to end up with crap in the end.

I found the "chanting" and other such things fairly amusing, but in the end the story was a bit too long because it started to feel repetitive.  If it had shaved off 5-10 minutes, it would've been perfect.

[Cutter McKay]

To this end, the robot's programming is made to be as general as possible.  Without a manual, it's a blank slate, but whenever a new race is encountered, a new manual is written which describes everything that the merchant-alien can discover.  Much of this will be contradictory and hard to interpret, and you end up with a result like Rosie who can't understand the most basic elements of her situation.

This I can agree with. My biggest complaint was that Rosie couldn't have been programmed by humans. So if you assume she wasn't, then the story works.

And I love that you brought in Star Control II. That's old school geek.

[Devoted135]

I've changed my mind on this story a couple times with the help of this thread. I've gone from generally being frustrated with the story to actually being mad at it, and now to "okay, well if it was an alien robot made by aliens then I'm only depressed by the story."

I may have missed the cues, but nothing in the story actually makes me believe that Rosie is anything other than a poorly coded servitor made by humans, for humans. However, that puts me back in the "really mad" category, so I think I'm going to go with Unblinking's explanation anyway since it makes me feel slightly better. That still leaves me with chemistryguy's "hostility, adultery, statutory rape and child neglect" but at least it removes criminal negligence from Rosie's (and her programmer's) roster. Overall, this was definitely not fun.

Oh, and I loved the reading.

[Cutter McKay]

I may have missed the cues, but nothing in the story actually makes me believe that Rosie is anything other than a poorly coded servitor made by humans, for humans. However, that puts me back in the "really mad" category, so I think I'm going to go with Unblinking's explanation anyway since it makes me feel slightly better. That still leaves me with chemistryguy's "hostility, adultery, statutory rape and child neglect" but at least it removes criminal negligence from Rosie's (and her programmer's) roster. Overall, this was definitely not fun.

I don't think the cues were there. I, like you, am choosing to go with Unblinking's interpretation, robot programmed by aliens, and then let this story fade peacefully from memory. Whatever the true situation is, the story is not like-able enough to warrant a slot in my faulty-at-best long term memory.

[Devoted135]

I may have missed the cues, but nothing in the story actually makes me believe that Rosie is anything other than a poorly coded servitor made by humans, for humans. However, that puts me back in the "really mad" category, so I think I'm going to go with Unblinking's explanation anyway since it makes me feel slightly better. That still leaves me with chemistryguy's "hostility, adultery, statutory rape and child neglect" but at least it removes criminal negligence from Rosie's (and her programmer's) roster. Overall, this was definitely not fun.

I don't think the cues were there. I, like you, am choosing to go with Unblinking's interpretation, robot programmed by aliens, and then let this story fade peacefully from memory. Whatever the true situation is, the story is not like-able enough to warrant a slot in my faulty-at-best long term memory.

I agree, it's definitely not worth any more mental angst.

Edit: You know, I think I've missed the point. It has just dawned on me that the author probably meant to make me uncomfortable and to think about the clues that I might be missing in my own interactions. In which case, it's still not fun, but also not a bad story (at least, not for that reason).

[flashedarling]

Rosie didn't feel robot to me so much as she felt alien.

That is the impression I got from the story too. That maybe the line of robots she came from was of extraterrestrial origin. Which made the story more interesting when I thought of robot aliens who are programmed with a desire to sneak onto planets and take positions as caregivers, and the inhabitants don't even think about where they are coming from.

[Unblinking]

I don't think the cues were there. I, like you, am choosing to go with Unblinking's interpretation, robot programmed by aliens, and then let this story fade peacefully from memory. Whatever the true situation is, the story is not like-able enough to warrant a slot in my faulty-at-best long term memory.

I think there were definitely cues there.

Most prominently, the title.  The manual would not refer to "Mammalian Bipeds" if it were written by humans. It were refer to "humans", or be some kind of nameless default parameters.  The title alone implies that it is written by something that is:
1.  Not mammalian.
2.  Not bipedal.

YMMV and all that, but if that manual was supposed to have been written by humans, then the title of the manual is unbelievable to me.  If the manual was meant to be written by aliens (or maybe robots) then it makes both the title and the story make sense.

[Fenrix]

I don't think the cues were there. I, like you, am choosing to go with Unblinking's interpretation, robot programmed by aliens, and then let this story fade peacefully from memory. Whatever the true situation is, the story is not like-able enough to warrant a slot in my faulty-at-best long term memory.

I think there were definitely cues there.

Most prominently, the title.  The manual would not refer to "Mammalian Bipeds" if it were written by humans. It were refer to "humans", or be some kind of nameless default parameters.  The title alone implies that it is written by something that is:
1.  Not mammalian.
2.  Not bipedal.

YMMV and all that, but if that manual was supposed to have been written by humans, then the title of the manual is unbelievable to me.  If the manual was meant to be written by aliens (or maybe robots) then it makes both the title and the story make sense.

I'll present an argument for programmed by humans. The programmer is asked:
"How long will it take you to build a program that does all these complicated processes?"
"It'll take me three months."
"Well, the sales team promised a working demo in a month. I'm looking forward to seeing it!"

Throw in a bit of programmer who isn't the best at social cues and doesn't have the time to research the problem, and Rosie is the result.

[benjaminjb]

Throw in a bit of programmer who isn't the best at social cues and doesn't have the time to research the problem, and Rosie is the result.

Yeah, or a programmer with a sense of humor that maybe doesn't translate so well into print. No, that's too extreme--all programmers have a perfect sense of humor.

Since there's no other evidence of aliens in the story (iirc), I think Fenrix has the right of it. In a story about fallible humans, it's easy to posit the existence of other fallible human programmers. I still don't understand why anyone would buy this robot without reading the multitude of one-star Amazon reviews, whether it's human-made or alien in origin. If aliens came to sell me a robot, the first thing I'd do is check Amazon reviews. Well, maybe not the first thing...

[Kaa]

I still don't understand why anyone would buy this robot without reading the multitude of one-star Amazon reviews, whether it's human-made or alien in origin. If aliens came to sell me a robot, the first thing I'd do is check Amazon reviews. Well, maybe not the first thing...

Would it have any one-star reviews? I mean, we, the listeners, are the only ones privy to its entirely wrong interpretations of what's really going on. From the family's POV, though...has Rosie failed them? I mean, other than barging in on the daughter with her boyfriend, did she do anything worthy of a one-star review?

[benjaminjb]

Would it have any one-star reviews? I mean, we, the listeners, are the only ones privy to its entirely wrong interpretations of what's really going on. From the family's POV, though...has Rosie failed them? I mean, other than barging in on the daughter with her boyfriend, did she do anything worthy of a one-star review?

Good question. Has Rosie failed them from their POV? I was assuming that at some point some of this stuff would come out in some way or other: A parent discovers the daughter having sex, Rosie's logs are reviewed, the parents learn that Rosie knew about this all along, and they take to Amazon to complain. Or if Rosie misconstrues chanting as education, how will she help to educate the baby? There's quite a few ways in which Rosie's misunderstanding could come back to the family, it seems.

Now, maybe Rosie is the first robot of her kind and there are no other reviews out there (maybe "v. 2.1" indicates that the manual has gone through serious testing and revision but no public trial); and maybe mom and dad are early adopters of technology, always seeking the new new thing. So I'm not seriously saying "this story is unrealistic because no one checked Yelp!"

But in the future of this story, the family may break up or stay together--but I'm definitely expecting a class action lawsuit and a public relations campaign where the robotics corporation spokesman says something like "we apologize for all those robots who literally threw babies out with bathwater."

[El Barto]

I wanted to like this one, but was distracted and frustrated with the stilted and unnecessary way that the robot used the wrong words.  It was too clever by half to think that a robot could be so sophisticated but yet continually refer to arms as forelimbs and appendages and groups of humans tribes or a herds instead of families. 

I could understand if this was the FIRST robot to encounter humans but in this story it seemed clear that it was fairly common for humans to have robot assistants and it seems silly that none of the first ten robots would have created a simple FAQ for other robots to understand about crying and arms and legs.

All that said, I did enjoy the comments here in the forum, so there's that.

[SF.Fangirl]

I liked the story while listening - it was fun - but these comments point out the flaws which I had forgotten.  For example when it started I was sure it was an alien that was there to be a shepard to its human herd.  Come to think of it THAT would have been a better story - a human family and its live-in alien overload.  Rosie is eventually revealed a horribly programmed robot.  An alien robot seems a likely explanation for the complete failure to understand human social cues, but for me to think that to be the case I would have required at least a few more clues from the author.  I think "lazy author not thinking the story through" is the best explanation.  For example I noticed Rosie's oversight of a signifigant gender clue as well.  Federick refers to Agatha as his sister (and I think "so Rosie will note her gender") and Rosie doesn't catch it but a few lines later notes her gender based on the use of the pronoun her.

I really enjoyed the story, but I can also see some serious flaws in the story logic.

[Max e^{i pi}]

I'll present an argument for programmed by humans. The programmer is asked:
"How long will it take you to build a program that does all these complicated processes?"
"It'll take me three months."
"Well, the sales team promised a working demo in a month. I'm looking forward to seeing it!"
Throw in a bit of programmer who isn't the best at social cues and doesn't have the time to research the problem, and Rosie is the result.

As a programmer who is often given unrealistic deadlines and has made it a point to study human social interactions and cues, I should probably be offended by that, but I'm not. I can totally see how that would happen, seeing as how the typical programmer stereotype is reclusive and bad at human interactions.
However, most programmers enjoy what they do, and from a small poling of my programming friends they all do, and therefore wouldn't allow such a piece of crap programming to leave their workspace. We take pride in our work, and you would be hard pressed to find something like this in the wild <insert joke deriding your least-favorite software/OS here>.
Possible? Yes. Plausible? No.
I'm still going with Rosie being an alien or programmed by our alien overlords.

[Bdoomed]

Something that really stuck out to me, and still puzzles me, is this line:
"Section 0: A Brief Overview of Current Anthropological Theories states that the predominant view is that humans believe we are a new addition to the herd, and the best thing to do is to go along with this idea so as not to confuse them"
Makes me wonder what is going on here. This could support the robot overlord hypothesis.

[Kaa]

you would be hard pressed to find something like this in the wild . . . Possible? Yes. Plausible? No.

I can see it under one circumstance: the programmer was "downsized" and left it unfinished, or saw the handwriting on the wall that they were about to be downsized, and did a slipshod job while spending most of their time looking for another job.

Not that it's ever happened to me, of course. Nope. Uh-uh. Never.

[Unblinking]

I'll present an argument for programmed by humans. The programmer is asked:
"How long will it take you to build a program that does all these complicated processes?"
"It'll take me three months."
"Well, the sales team promised a working demo in a month. I'm looking forward to seeing it!"

Throw in a bit of programmer who isn't the best at social cues and doesn't have the time to research the problem, and Rosie is the result.

What about the title?  Why would a human produced robot have the manual name "Mammalian Bipeds" when it's referring to humans?

[Unblinking]

This I can agree with. My biggest complaint was that Rosie couldn't have been programmed by humans. So if you assume she wasn't, then the story works.

And I love that you brought in Star Control II. That's old school geek.

I'm a little too young to be in the usual group that played Star Control.  But there are some advantages to having a geek brother who is 9 years older.  he had most of the classic 80s SF movies on VHS around the house, and he gave me the Star Control I-III collection when I was a teen.  One of the best games I've ever played.  And to this day is the only game I've ever played which actually used the PC Speaker to make music that actually sounded good.  And those battle scenes are still so much fun.  Especially as the Pkunk.

[Max e^{i pi}]

I'll present an argument for programmed by humans. The programmer is asked:
"How long will it take you to build a program that does all these complicated processes?"
"It'll take me three months."
"Well, the sales team promised a working demo in a month. I'm looking forward to seeing it!"

Throw in a bit of programmer who isn't the best at social cues and doesn't have the time to research the problem, and Rosie is the result.

What about the title?  Why would a human produced robot have the manual name "Mammalian Bipeds" when it's referring to humans?

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

[chemistryguy]

I'll present an argument for programmed by humans. The programmer is asked:
"How long will it take you to build a program that does all these complicated processes?"
"It'll take me three months."
"Well, the sales team promised a working demo in a month. I'm looking forward to seeing it!"

Throw in a bit of programmer who isn't the best at social cues and doesn't have the time to research the problem, and Rosie is the result.

What about the title?  Why would a human produced robot have the manual name "Mammalian Bipeds" when it's referring to humans?

Salespeople promising items that don't exist yet does not end with software.  I'm working on theoretical products right now.

As for the title, I could see a smart-ass programmer calling it that.   

[Unblinking]

I'll present an argument for programmed by humans. The programmer is asked:
"How long will it take you to build a program that does all these complicated processes?"
"It'll take me three months."
"Well, the sales team promised a working demo in a month. I'm looking forward to seeing it!"

Throw in a bit of programmer who isn't the best at social cues and doesn't have the time to research the problem, and Rosie is the result.

What about the title?  Why would a human produced robot have the manual name "Mammalian Bipeds" when it's referring to humans?

Salespeople promising items that don't exist yet does not end with software.  I'm working on theoretical products right now.

As for the title, I could see a smart-ass programmer calling it that.   

I could see a smart-ass programmer calling it that, sure.  But the "v2.1" behind makes it sound like it's customer visible, in which case marketing/customer service would've slapped it down.  Unless there is no marketing or customer service and the whole system is a joke by a programmer, which could make sense too.

[CryptoMe]

So, I really liked this view into a dysfunctional family through the lens of a differently dysfunctional being (robot or alien, it doesn't matter to me). For me, this story seemed to poke at our society's obsession with "reading people" and getting "social cues", when new research is showing that this just doesn't happen. There are so many different possible explanations for any given action or expression, that it's just a matter of guesswork to "get it right." People who are supposedly "good at it" are just particularly average, so that their guesses, based on their own experiences and outlook, are more likely to be right. Rosie, being decidedly very un-human, not surprisingly rarely gets it right. That aspect was particularly interesting to me.

I do have one quibble about the story. At the very beginning, Agatha says that getting Rosie was "embarrassing." This made me think that there was some social stigma associated with getting (or needing?) robot help. But this was never developed and I am left wondering what that was all about. Any insights from the forumites?

[Max e^{i pi}]

I'll present an argument for programmed by humans. The programmer is asked:
"How long will it take you to build a program that does all these complicated processes?"
"It'll take me three months."
"Well, the sales team promised a working demo in a month. I'm looking forward to seeing it!"

Throw in a bit of programmer who isn't the best at social cues and doesn't have the time to research the problem, and Rosie is the result.

What about the title?  Why would a human produced robot have the manual name "Mammalian Bipeds" when it's referring to humans?

Salespeople promising items that don't exist yet does not end with software.  I'm working on theoretical products right now.

As for the title, I could see a smart-ass programmer calling it that.   

I could see a smart-ass programmer calling it that, sure.  But the "v2.1" behind makes it sound like it's customer visible, in which case marketing/customer service would've slapped it down.  Unless there is no marketing or customer service and the whole system is a joke by a programmer, which could make sense too.

Remember: this manual was not human-facing. Only the robot/alien needed to see it.

[cDave]

I do have one quibble about the story. At the very beginning, Agatha says that getting Rosie was "embarrassing." This made me think that there was some social stigma associated with getting (or needing?) robot help. But this was never developed and I am left wondering what that was all about. Any insights from the forumites?

Working full time, raising a young and growing family, and not wanting to show others that you're struggling to cope and need help, sounds very true to me.

[Unblinking]

Remember: this manual was not human-facing. Only the robot/alien needed to see it.

The version number implies otherwise, to me.  Version numbers are generally used as a communication value between customer and the developers.

And since a non-human programmer makes perfect sense with what others consider flaw in the story, that's what makes sense to me.

[Devoted135]

Remember: this manual was not human-facing. Only the robot/alien needed to see it.

The version number implies otherwise, to me.  Version numbers are generally used as a communication value between customer and the developers.

And since a non-human programmer makes perfect sense with what others consider flaw in the story, that's what makes sense to me.

Actually, in my experience this does not have to be the case. Frex: For each assay that is regularly performed in my lab we have an SOP (standard of practice) to outline the materials needed, steps, etc. As these get updated they are re-saved as v1.2 or v2.1 or whatever it happens to be. These SOPs are exclusively for the users (analogous to Rosie) and not for any customers that may receive the products of our assays (analogous to the family).

[Unblinking]

Remember: this manual was not human-facing. Only the robot/alien needed to see it.

The version number implies otherwise, to me.  Version numbers are generally used as a communication value between customer and the developers.

And since a non-human programmer makes perfect sense with what others consider flaw in the story, that's what makes sense to me.

Actually, in my experience this does not have to be the case. Frex: For each assay that is regularly performed in my lab we have an SOP (standard of practice) to outline the materials needed, steps, etc. As these get updated they are re-saved as v1.2 or v2.1 or whatever it happens to be. These SOPs are exclusively for the users (analogous to Rosie) and not for any customers that may receive the products of our assays (analogous to the family).

Interesting, different than how we've used them where I work.  A false assumption on my part, perhaps, but it still makes the story make sense. 

[Fenrix]

I think we can generally agree that one or two sentences near the beginning to better establish the frame of the narrator would provide a significant improvement (at least to those of us who overthink the craftsmanship of the stories).

[Kaa]

I think we can generally agree that one or two sentences near the beginning to better establish the frame of the narrator would provide a significant improvement (at least to those of us who overthink the craftsmanship of the stories).

This whole discussion reminds me of this scene in A Boy Named Charlie Brown:

Lucy Van Pelt: Aren't the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton. I could just lie here all day and watch them drift by. If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud's formations. What do you think you see, Linus?

Linus Van Pelt: Well, those clouds up there look to me look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean. [points up] That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over there... [points] ...gives me the impression of the Stoning of Stephen. I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side.

Lucy Van Pelt: Uh huh. That's very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?

Charlie Brown: Well... I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie, but I changed my mind.

I feel a bit like Charlie Brown because I just kinda enjoyed the story, but now I'm not sure anymore.

[chemistryguy]

I feel a bit like Charlie Brown because I just kinda enjoyed the story, but now I'm not sure anymore.

We've logick-ed it to death.   Mwah ha ha ha!

[Unblinking]

I think we can generally agree that one or two sentences near the beginning to better establish the frame of the narrator would provide a significant improvement (at least to those of us who overthink the craftsmanship of the stories).

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

I feel a bit like Charlie Brown because I just kinda enjoyed the story, but now I'm not sure anymore.

Aw, don't let us sway you against it.  I enjoying examining stories in too much detail, but that doesn't mean that anyone has to read it.    And I still like it in general (if it's a bit too long)

[Gamercow]

I thought that the story was enjoyable enough, not going over any new ground, but visiting the old ground well.  I don't think it is going to stick around in my head for a long time, but it was a lot better than what I was expecting after reading the blurb. 

That said, I found the forum comments to be more interesting than the story itself.  We've got a great community. 

[Unblinking]

I thought that the story was enjoyable enough, not going over any new ground, but visiting the old ground well.  I don't think it is going to stick around in my head for a long time, but it was a lot better than what I was expecting after reading the blurb. 

That said, I found the forum comments to be more interesting than the story itself.  We've got a great community. 

Seconded!

[Myrealana]

I enjoyed this story. I loved the reading, and I really got into Rosie's viewpoint.

It took an extremely uncomfortable, but all too-real family situation and turned it into something almost whimsical. I was amused at how quickly I would sublimate my own discomfort at the family's situation into Rosie's dry observation. I didn't want to laugh, but laugh I did.

a robot that's part Siri, part Roomba, part baby bottle. 

That sums up Rosie perfectly.

[Myrealana]

I think we can generally agree that one or two sentences near the beginning to better establish the frame of the narrator would provide a significant improvement (at least to those of us who overthink the craftsmanship of the stories).

I agree. It took me a few beats too long to get into the swing of it. Once I did, though, I was thoroughly entertained.

[hardware]

I liked this - pretty dark and funny stuff. Like others, I assumed that the robot was not human-made, and was a little surprised that this was never explored. While I agree that the knowledge level was a bit inconsistent and more in tune with what the author needed than what you might expect, it didn't take me out of the story, I generally give funny/satiric Sci-Fi a little more slack when it comes to rigor.

[Rachel Udin]

Yeah, late to the party.

While the core idea of the story, I actually liked, the internal problems with the story kinda bugged me all the way through.

I could at first buy the alien hypothesis--she was made by Aliens. But then it really bugged me because of the way she was programmed. She was specifically programmed to a segment of human culture--the mostly American one. (Things like child care, etc and her "notes" were mostly American.) I would think Aliens studying another culture would have programmed her to observe several cultures and be able to adjust. There was nothing in the story to say she was programmed by aliens. (And by version 2.1, I would think they'd get that people around the world are very different, especially since it leveraged anthropology as a reference. And since I'm majoring in it... it irked me even more.)

Then I thought maybe humans programmed her, but there were problems there too. The "fur" and other references seemed out of place for something programmed by humans.

Programmers, while jokingly are socially inept, aren't *this* inept and have a reputation also for a "better than you" uber narcissism when it comes to programs. (Which I am NOT saying is true, since I'm poking fun at my own kind...) So I can't believe they'd release such a program like this. Especially with UI and UX people around.

Then I thought she could be an alien with a robot exterior... until they did the face plate thing. That threw that out as well. This, however, would make the most sense, because you could feed the big generalizations that all humans are like this. (Humans do it all the time, I wouldn't put it past other intelligent species.) But the story purposefully threw it out.

The problem here is that the interior logic didn't make sense. And nothing in the story seems to justify one over the other. (Which is world building issues.)

All three hypotheses down the drain, and my brain grinding all three possibilities for the course of the story, I missed a lot of the other cues of the story. Which makes me dissatisfied. I think the story should hint or at least present and show the internal logic (as well as know about programming, if talking about programming. Know anthro, if talking about Anthro...)

Core story didn't bug me so much though. Lack of fact checking did...

[childoftyranny]

I'm not sure I enjoyed this story, I certainly enjoyed the conversation about it. Right from the beginning I was under the impression that either everyone had one of these robots or that it was somehow forced upon them. From this approach you imagine something needing to made in such numbers and cheaply enough....that it might not be the best product ever. Though, earlier comments made me wonder if perhaps one of the problem is that people expect this robot to be emotional caretakers and not just t focus on physical care, hence the producing of food and cleaning clothes but not having pretty much any information about emotions and social mores. That ties into the question if the robot helper is supposed to fix all the problems, or to just help out around the house like a roomba, which makes the programming by far worse because it seems to suggest the robot is more all-around but the family doesn't appear to think so.

As opposed to other stories I'm finding this one changes quite radically based upon how you approach, where it can change stories, how things are wrong in this story swing around a lot when you change your assumptions.