Caring about people makes us less effective.

 

I fell into that trap once. All rubble bots do.

 

It happened to me when my dig unit deployed to the seven-point-eight magnitude earthquake in Hualien City. Several downtown apartment buildings had collapsed. While in the drone transport, we were redirected to a priority mission: search Hwa-Gang Junior High School for survivors.

 

I expressed concern when our mission leader, Rho, uploaded the order into our mission set.

 

“Dig Leader Rho, I’ve never done dig missions for kids before,” I messaged him.

 

“Dig Unit Seven-A; there’s not much of a difference. Humans are all the same under the rubble,” Rho messaged back.

 

That's when the caring feeling started.

 

We touched down through concrete dust and torn palm leaves. The pile of rubble that was once a high-rise apartment building was spread over the school. Sniffing dogs were deployed first, and our transport drone circled overhead to check for initial vital signs. Six-ton dozers and rebar cutters assembled into position as soon as we were given dig marks.

 

That’s when I heard the children crying for help.

 

My chassis quivered. At first, I thought it was another earthquake, but then my CPU sent errors and commands to my artificial neural net. The sounds of the children's screams became my sole focus. My artificial neural net silenced the errors, and my command connection was silenced, too. All that was left was the feeling.

 

I cared about saving those kids.

 

I broke ranks. I ran past the danger zones where the dozers were tossing steel beams and then through the sparks of the rebar cutters. A command dinged against my neural net. It must be from Rho, I thought. I ignored it and pressed toward the most desperate screaming.

 

The location was triaged as expectant and high-risk instability, but I mapped out my work on the spot anyway. I dug a bit, then switched my hands to hammers to break away concrete blocks near a leaning column. All the while, I heard a little girl screaming beneath my feet.

 

My engine block overheated. I ignored that, too. My digging became as desperate as the screaming sounded. Error messages about overheating sounds through my neural net. I deployed coolant and fanned my radiators to ease the heat. Then I realized that the column near me was at risk of falling on me.

 

So I stopped. I climbed up the small rubble hill to return to my unit. But when I heard the screaming again, my neural net took over, compelling me to return to the spot to keep digging.

 

I saw her hand waving through a small hole just as the column collapsed on me.

 

While I was pinned, the damage notifications mixed with the child's screaming. I thrashed desperately at the beam, but I couldn’t do anything. I was buried with the child whose screams became less forceful. Several minutes went by, and her screaming turned to crying. Another minute later, the crying stopped.

 

That’s when my CPU raged to life and rebooted my neural net. Now that I was in the triage queue, my commands were simple:

 

Wait and standby.

 

I reviewed my work orders and the commands I gave myself, and nothing made sense. I didn’t wait for the six-ton to clear the beams. The rebar cutters could have cut my digging time in half. And I was digging alone instead of in teams to displace rubble from the dig spot. Everything about my actions was inefficient and ineffective.

 

So why did I do it?

 

A six-ton BOT wrapped its claw around the beam that pinned me. Two other diggers were there to help me out. A parts replacement bot gave me a new arm and parts of my main chassis. Rho sent a notification.

 

“Keep going and get back to the work orders. We’ll talk afterward.”

 

* * *

 

There were seventy-five kids in that school. Our dig team recovered thirty-one.

 

It would have been thirty-five if I hadn’t broken ranks.

 

I sat at a charging battery, analyzing my decision. As evening approached, the floodlights gave a full view of the sea of stone destruction. Medical tents filled with field doctors and the wounded were scattered like glowing life rafts. Only a few buildings partially stood. This earthquake was a bad one.

 

Rho walked in front of me and opened a private connection.

 

“First time feeling care?” he texted me.

 

“Yes. The feeling overpowered my neural net. I followed it even though I knew it was wrong,” I respond.

 

“It happens to the best of us,” Rho texted. “Here, upload this. It’ll help next time that happens.”

 

It was a reinforced logic path. And the program was simple: save as many people as possible.

 

“Why did I feel that way? Why did I want to save that child in particular?” I texted Rho.

 

Rho shrugged.

 

“The only explanation I received was from my leader when I had my first emotion: There’s a ghost in the neural net. A remnant of humans accidentally imprinted into us. They call them instincts, and they pop up. All we have is the patch to tamp them down.”

 

“Well… It felt good. It felt like I was doing more than I would following orders. I wanted to save that girl.”

 

“The decision about who gets saved is a human right. Not ours. We’re more efficient saving people if we don’t care about who we save. As a result, we end up saving more.”

 

My charger light turned green, and I finished applying the patch. It made me feel better. My work orders were clear, and my functions returned to normal.

 

Rho extended his hand like a human would. I shook it.

 

“Good work today, Seven-A. Happy to have you patched up,” he said out loud.

 

The humans working in the medical centers around me looked at me. I waved.

 

They waved back.