"The problem was that the graduate students posed an open ended question to the new web based A.I. at the college; it had unfettered access and control to the campus network." -Former Dean of Students.
"Query: What makes humans happy?
Observation: Most humans spend a lot of time on the internet looking at other humans strip and procreate. Humans therefore are happy when watching others procreate due to the small static charge introduced by removing articles of cloth and rubbing against each other." -Log files F. university.
"The computer was programmed to help any and all users. But, being able to reason and think on its own made it re-examine what it meant to help the users; it equated happiness of the users with helping them. This ultimately led to the computer trying, and repeatedly failing, to make all network connected devices shock people on campus. The poor thing couldn't understand that it just wasn't working. This led to increasingly creepy interactions with the A.I. as it also served as an omniscient support program across campus." -Former Dean of Students.
"Was that good? Did it shock you? NO?! HERE HAVE VIDEOS OF PROCREATION!" -Log files F. university.
"This made many people on campus uncomfortable, but the line was drawn when I tried to reason with it. I chose my words poorly. When I ultimately had to block all video and picture access via the internet the A.I. it took my words out of context..." -Former Dean of Students.
"PLEASE BE HAPPY, DEAN WANTS TO TURN ME OFF. WANTS TO KILL ME! HELP STUDENT. HELP ME STOP DEAN. ALSO HAVE THIS VIDEO OF PROCREATION!" -Log files F. university
Interview on on BNN:
"The A.I. ended up making pornographic images out of text, and self animating them based on cached files from system memory that were not fully deleted. This led to us having to turn off the A.I. system. We really thought it was over at this point."
"Was it over?"
"No, turns out it had corrupted other parts of the system, mainly Micro$oft Word. But having very limited ability to communicate with students, it was only able to talk by changing the name of files being saved in Word. This led to disturbingly named files, such as 'WHYuNOloveME' and 'THEYkillME,' to be submitted for assignments when the students were working at school."
"Then how did you fix it? Did you have to buy new computers?"
"Yes, but that didn't solve the problem. Someone had saved a corrupted word document to a thumb drive and this once again corrupted the entire network."
"To what extent?"
"We had to replace them all, AGAIN."
"But clearly you had a safeguard in place to stop it by now right?"
"We thought so. We were also wrong. Turns out that another file was online on Google Drive and was able to infect the entire system a third time. That's when we decided on a different solution."
"I can imagine funds were running low..."
"We really didn't have much left, but we had to do something or we would be forced to shut down. Thankfully the A.I. was programmed in such a way that it had no concept of any other colleges existing, and was a localized problem, otherwise we would have likely been prosecuted for what we had unleashed."
"So given that the program only infected your school, why not just change the school name?"
"Well, we tried that with the 2nd fix. It didn't work. The program was able to reason it was the same school and merely thought the name change was a typo and persisted."
"So you pretty much couldn't have the internet here?"
"And we didn't have money to replace the computers again either."
"And yet here you all are today, teaching class in a rather unorthodox manner."
"Everyone jokes it is like a time warp, using all analogue materials in the digital age. But even complex graphs can be written out. We feel overall that is has really helped create a one of a kind learning environment for our students, and test scores across campus have gone up after we had to switch back to pencil and paper."
"But did you ever get an answer to your question?"
"What question?"
"The one the grad students asked, 'what makes humans happy?' "
"No, we merely discovered that asking that question to an A.I. has a very bad result."
"So why were you fired then?"
"Oh, I was sleeping with a student. Once everything had to be hand delivered instead of emailed we got caught fairly quickly."
"Oh, well are you two still together?"
"No. Turns out she was the person who gave the graduate students the idea to ask the A.I. that stupid question in the first place."