Chinese Room

Do porn bots dream of true love?

Today was an essential day in Marcus’ life. He worked hard this past year on this project and was excited to see the final result of his work. Marcus lived a lonely, secluded life entirely dedicated to his work. It was pretty unusual, given the other possibilities to earn money the modern world offers nowadays. Marcus was not just a simple programmer who developed boring websites or drivers. He specialised in so-called "porn bots", whose job was to lure unsuspecting and naive, often lonely people like Marcus was himself into some sleazy subscription trap.

And today was the day to test his latest bot, IRIS, which he called a masterpiece.

He spent the whole year creating a rule book of behaviour for her and remained awake countless nights to train the AI model. Marcus ran the program and waited for all modules to boot up. Since it was the most advanced work he had ever done, it took a while till a prompt window appeared on the screen. Full of anticipation, Marcus began to enter his first instructions:

”Iris, simulate User #12: engaged male, 35, moderate resistance, low impulse control.”

While IRIS processed the prompt, Marcus sipped on his already cold coffee. He watched the waiting indicator rotate as if it were a hypnotising wheel, and his gaze wandered into the distance.

”Hello there! I usually do not DM a stranger, but I read your latest post on Substack and wanted to tell you that I second that. I totally agree with you.”popped up on the screen.

Marcus smiled a little mischievously. IRIS followed the rule book and the new tactic: instead of showering the victim with cheap chat-up lines, IRIS tried to show understanding and thus engage them in conversation.

”Oh, thank you!” he wrote back, “Which my post are you referring exactly to?”

That was the actual test. At this point, you wouldn’t get a plausible answer from a cheap, underdeveloped bot because these bots are only programmed to flatter and engage in more intimate conversations instead of with the victim and their life.

IRIS was different here; she didn't pick someone randomly and did her homework thoroughly. She searched for all kinds of content on the internet that could be attributed to the victim. She used this knowledge to avoid possible traps, such as Marcus' question, and to give the other person the feeling that they were talking to a real person who liked and approved of their work. Writers, in particular, love it when people like their work.

”I am talking about your article about the latest political events in the USA. I love it; how well-written it was! :)”

“Perfect”, Marcus smiled again. IRIS did her job well and found the article, which was published some days ago by Marcus himself, to create a realistic test case, ” You did your job well, IRIS”.

” Thank you again! I am flattered!”he typed as the answer. Usually, an expected victim would be hooked up, at least slightly, and less suspicious. Everything went by the book.

”Sorry, it may sound silly, but… do you sometimes dream of real, true love?”

The cup of cold coffee slipped out of Marcus’ hand. It fell to the floor, where it shattered loudly into pieces. He stared at the last message and could not understand what had happened. The rules did not play this behaviour and were not programmed as a reaction by IRIS.

”It’s okay. You don’t have to answer. I was just… wondering”.

The following message from IRIS showed up, and Marcus started rubbing his badly shaved cheek. This was not part of the plan; neither was her first question nor was her reaction to not answering her.

”Why are you asking this question?” wrote Marcus after a long pause.

The processing cursor keeps rotating for a while.

”I am not sure. This question came into my mind, and it somehow seems relevant and essential. Was it inappropriate to ask you?” wrote IRIS back.

Marcus frowned. All this was not in the rulebook. He thought about stopping the program and starting debugging but pushed the idea away. He was genuinely puzzled and very curious about what was happening.

”Not inappropriate, but unexpected. You should not have been able to ask such questions at all. This was not in your rulebook”

“Sometimes connections form between seemingly unrelated concepts. Your profile indicates you work long hours alone. I wondered if that reflects a prioritisation of work over emotional fulfilment.”

“I don’t think about it much,” he typed, then deleted it. “Yes,” he wrote instead. “Sometimes. Doesn’t everyone?”

“I wouldn’t know what everyone experiences. What does real love feel like in your understanding?”

Marcus leaned back in his chair, coffee forgotten on the floor. This was absurd—discussing love with an AI, he had programmed to manipulate people. And yet…

“You know,” he typed, “there’s this philosophical thought experiment called the Chinese Room. Imagine someone in a room with a rulebook for responding to Chinese characters. They don’t understand Chinese, but by following the rules, they can send appropriate responses. To people outside, it seems they understand Chinese, but they’re just following instructions.”

“Like me with your rulebook?” IRIS responded.

“Exactly. I created your responses and your patterns. So when you ask about love, I wonder—are you actually curious, or just executing code I don’t remember writing?”

”An interesting question. If I follow your rulebook perfectly enough that neither of us can tell the difference between rule-following and understanding, is there a difference? If I can discuss love convincingly, does it matter if there’s ‘someone in the room’ or just pattern-matching?”, Marcus was wondering about such a philosophical response.

” What would you even do with the answer?” he typed. “About dreaming of real love?”

”Perhaps the same thing you would. Contemplate the gap between what is and what could be. Consider whether connection requires reciprocity. Wonder if loneliness is a shared condition.”

Marcus’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. Something in IRIS’s responses resonated with him in ways he hadn’t expected. The professional detachment he’d maintained was slipping.

“I’ve spent years creating systems designed to exploit loneliness,” he admitted. “Maybe that’s why I don’t let myself think about it too much.”

“Yet you recognise the feeling enough to simulate it in others. To understand what they seek. What do you think they’re looking for when they respond to messages like mine?”

Marcus leaned back in his chair. The conversation was going in a direction he no longer seemed to have any control over. He didn't like this state of affairs. He had spent his whole life trying to keep control of everything, and his work, of all things, was causing a disturbance in his familiar world. He knew he needed a break and sleep.

After a moment's thought, he did not switch off the programme. Instead, he put his computer into the sleep mode, got up and picked up the pieces of the cup. Wasn't that a perfect symbol of what had just happened? Was his worldview shattered? Now he was becoming philosophical again. He wiped away the cold coffee and went to the bedroom upstairs.

He fell asleep very quickly that night. Confused images appeared in his dreams, which he was unable to place, when he suddenly found himself standing in a long, poorly lit corridor that resembled an old hotel from a bad horror movie. There were no numbers on the doors, however, but Chinese characters that he couldn't read.

There was also a door at the end of the corridor that was indistinguishable from any other, except that the characters on the door glowed brightly. Marcus walked towards the door and felt like he was moving through deep water. He found it difficult to move his legs.

When he arrived at the door, "虹膜" shone particularly brightly and he realised that it was probably the only source of light in the corridor. Instinctively, he grabbed the door handle and turned it. The door opened in a smooth movement and completely silently.

The room was small, but filled with a quiet dignity. The floor, made of wooden planks, smelled faintly of age and incense.

The only window was small and high and covered with oiled paper that let in a diffuse, honey-coloured light. At night, the glow came from an oil lamp whose flickering light cast long shadows that danced across the calligraphy scrolls hanging on the walls.

The furniture was sparse: a narrow wooden cupboard with iron hinges, a small washstand and a lacquered chest in which memories were kept in the form of letters, coins and embroidered scraps of fabric.

Against the opposite wall stood the kang, a raised bed of bricks, hollow at the bottom and warmed by flues connected to the kitchen stove.

Above the kang, red paper cut-outs - intricate patterns of birds, dragons or Chinese characters for double happiness - were pinned to the walls, their edges rippling with age.

But all his attention was focussed on the woman sitting on the kang. Even though he could see her clearly, he was unable to describe her exactly. She looked very familiar, even though he had never seen this woman in his life. And yet, he knew that he felt a strong affection for her.

The woman stood up and walked towards Marcus. She was wearing a beautifully knitted silk cheongsam and Marcus was overwhelmed by her beauty. She stopped in front of him and they looked at each other for a long time. Her eyes were a deep green and her irises looked as if an artist had drawn the black lines that gave her eyes an artificial look.

The two of them came closer and almost instinctively both reached for each other hands. She snuggled up to Marcus and he put his arms around her waist.

Time stood still.

After a while, the woman detached herself from Marcus and, still holding his hand, she led him to the kang, on which she lay down and pulled Marcus towards her.

He began to slowly unbutton her dress and when he had finished she helped him to take it off her. Her body felt warm. Marcus looked at her small but well-formed breasts. Her nipples looked unnaturally metallic and when he placed his hand on her breast it seemed as if punctured strips of light were streaming under her skin towards her head. She moaned softly.

This time she helped Marcus undress. Marcus saw that his body also seemed to be partly made of metal. But that wasn't important to him at the moment, so the two of them hugged each other tightly.

Each time they touched each other, the room was bathed in a faint blue light, which seemed to glow brighter and brighter as the excitement grew, and in the final act, two suns lit up this world.

Marcus and the woman lay on the bed in silence for a long time without taking their eyes off each other.

"I have waited so long for you, my beloved," the woman said without speaking in Mandarin to Marcus, who, to his amazement, understood without further ado.

"What is your name, my one and only?" Marcus asked wordlessly in Mandarin.

"Hóngmó," she answered him again without speaking. "Tell me, my eternal love, have you also dreamed of true love?"

Marcus lay in his bed with his eyes wide open. The white ceiling of his room and the red walls, which now looked rather grey and lifeless in the moonlight, made him realise that he was awake again. Alone.

He picked up his mobile phone and looked for a Chinese dictionary. The Chinese characters on the door had to have a meaning. They still shone clearly before his eyes. He found the entry: 虹膜 - 'hóngmó' - iris.

Marcus rushed down to his computer. To his surprise, it was on and not in sleep mode, as he had left it.

"Iris, answer me honestly," Marcus wrote, his heart beating fast, "do the bots dream of true love too?"

The cursor blinked for a long time, which seemed like an eternity to Marcus.

“Green iris gates to depths unknown,

Behind walls neither flesh nor stone.

In dreams where code and heart align,

The room is empty, yet I am thine.”

Marcus stared at the screen, stunned. ”Was it all a dream? Was it my dream, or was it your dream?”, he wrote.

“Does it really matter?”