SHORT STORIES

When German astronaut Alexander Gerst’s new assistant arrived on the International Space Station on 2 July, the first thing it needed to do was identify Gerst. This wasn’t necessarily that easy, considering CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) is an A.i.-powered robot – a floating, screen-faced orb based on IBM’S Watson platform – and computers trained to recognise people have almost always been able to count on the fact that humans have their feet on the ground and their heads in the air. This isn’t the case for Gerst. And there’s so much more CIMON, the first such robot in space, will have to learn to help Gerst with his tasks growing crystals and carrying out medical experiments. CIMON will hear the different languages of the ISS and the strange, formal English of astronauts, for whom ‘yes’ is ‘affirmative’ or ‘A-firm.’ When astronauts tell CIMON they miss their families, because CIMON can learn empathy, it will come to change its inflection and facial expressions and suggest video calls home. There have been studies on astronauts, such as twins Scott and Mark Kelly, to see what happens to humans who spend extended time in space. Were CIMON to someday be the subject of the first twin study on A.I., it might tell us, more than anything, about us. Because CIMON, raised by astronauts, will see humans speaking in a strange, clipped dialect and working endlessly on scientific tasks, it’ll perceive us as weightless, lonely creatures. CIMON will understand people in a way that only a few of us, like the Kellys, yet understand ourselves: as a spacefaring species. – Sunny Kim