The Magic in Things (4) — La magia en las cosas (4)

The Magic in Things (4)

Gideon, the young man I met at the hotel, asked me about these huge storms and, above all, he wanted to know the effects of fine Martian dust, which was frequently blown away by winds of more than 100 kilometers per hour, and which affected the important to the health of aliens from Earth. I confess that I did not want to be very explicit about it because the effects on human beings, which I had even seen in members of my own family, were devastating. So I told him that I hardly had news on the subject and that it affected only people with health problems causing serious disorders in them but that there had been very few cases. Those disorders that I did not want to name were dementia and a strange inflammation of the lymph nodes that destroyed the immune system and that days later caused death.

We were in the dining room of the hotel. Tasting the exquisite delicacies served by cyborgs barely allowed one to focus on anything other than the palate and the aromas from the dishes prepared in fully automated kitchens.

I tried to find out what difficulties I would face in my first year of artificial intelligence engineering, and I asked Gideon if there was a subject that I needed to spend more time and effort on.

“All the subjects, except one, are taught by robots. And it is precisely that, ‘Cognitive interaction between humans and robots’, which Professor Yoda is in charge of, which is the most difficult. In…