Her head had ached before the admittedly less than stellar question had slipped free. Now, rubbing at her temples as she pondered how to define humanity for the system, break people down into terms they both could comprehend, the pain had redoubled.
JARVIS had taken fifteen years to develop to what she could comfortably declare an ‘intelligence’. Three more after that before the pronoun had changed from ‘it’ to ‘him’. Constant adjustments and revolutions had been made, the system learning on his own even as she made it possible to do so. The struggle was, with the two of them working simultaneously, but ultimately separately, not even Toni, the system’s creator, knew all of which he was capable; didn’t know if the safeguards she’d enacted were even truly effective. In many ways, JARVIS was as unpredictable, as capable of choice as any flesh and blood human. But did that make him one or, at least, the equivalent?
"You’ve adapted to sound exasperated with me when I ignore you. Do you do that because what you’ve learned declares you should in that situation or because you experience exasperation and frustration?"
"My responses to you are reactionary." The system hesitates, calculates. That does not, however, define them automatically as unemotional. Humans respond with reactions, dictated by what their minds are trained to consider normal. So has he.
"Do you respond with exasperation because you feel it, or because it's an appropriate response? And does your initial inquiry apply to my overall relating to humanity, or whether or not I feel emotions?"
