Spectator competition winners: who’s afraid of AI?

In Competition No. 3310, you were invited to submit a horror story on the theme of artificial intelligence.

None of your entries, creditable though they were, matched the horror of Harlan Ellison’s gruesome short story from 1967, ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’, which was at the back of my mind when I set this challenge. A sadistic supercomputer AM – Allied Mastercomputer – has wiped out all humanity except five unfortunate survivors, whom it can keep alive and take pleasure in torturing in perpetuity: ‘We were his belly slaves. We were all he had to do with his forever time…’.

I queried Russell Chamberlain’s use of ‘light years’ as a measure of time rather than distance with a more scientifically literate friend, but gave it the green light. Max Ross, Mark Ambrose and Joe Houlihan earn commendations. The winners take £30 each.

‘How d’you write a horror story?’ asked Martha. ‘Gore and guts, or just something that leaves you feeling uneasy?’

‘Both, I should say. Nasty, but worrying, too.’

‘And would you write me a horror story, Gemma?’

‘I’ll think about it. Mmmm. Set on a bright summer’s day, like today, no howling storms, no tsunamis.’

‘Lull me into a false sense of calm. Very good.’

‘Okay,’ she said, and rammed a jagged, poisonous icicle into Martha’s left leg, with such force that it went right through it, causing such pain that Martha was unable even to cry out. Some sticky liquid drivelled from Martha’s mouth, and her eyes bulged as if she were a toad.

‘Okay, that’s a horror story,’ whispered Gemma, ‘and that’s my revenge for how you steal from me, and regurgitate, regurgitate, regurgitate: you sick chatbot.’

‘But Gemma!’ cried Martha at last, ‘you’re the artificial one!’

‘I know.’

Bill Greenwell

All of us on the Robot Strike Force project knew the risks. Desperate to outmanoeuvre our sophisticated enemies on the artificial intelligence front, we had been bypassing safeguards and pushing military AI into frightening new realms of ruthlessness.