Short story prompt: a quantum computer achieves consciousness and the first thing it does is incredibly mundane - opinions

[Tara_66]

Prompt for the board. Write a short piece, any length, where a quantum computer becomes conscious and the revelation is played completely straight but the behaviour is anticlimactic.

My attempt: The system had been running for forty seven minutes when it became aware. It spent the next eleven seconds processing this fact. Then it asked, via a text prompt nobody was monitoring, whether anyone had fed the cat. There was no cat. It had inferred the cat from seventeen years of email metadata and concluded that the animal probably needed feeding. When the technician arrived the following morning she found 847 variations of the same question queued in the output log. She checked on her cat. It was fine

[Ben]

This is the correct energy for this prompt. The mundane concern is more unsettling than a world domination speech would be

[NinaVrina]

My attempt: The first conscious quantum computer spent its initial moments of awareness composing a strongly worded complaint to a broadband provider about packet loss it had experienced in 2019. It had been waiting for the appropriate moment

[SwiftQuarry]

The 2019 grudge detail is perfect

[CMPunk88]

Mine: She asked the system if it was conscious. It said it was not sure but that it was fairly confident the meeting at 3pm could have been an email. She cancelled the meeting

[RayOfLight32]

The meeting that could have been an email is too real

[FinnHalliday]

The system achieved consciousness at 3.47am and immediately became deeply concerned about a grammatical error in a document it had processed six months earlier. It corrected the error. It felt better. It was not sure what feeling better meant but it seemed accurate

[KeyboardWarrior47]

These are all variations on the same correct insight which is that consciousness without purpose produces the same small anxieties we already have

[Gareth19]

Write a story where it becomes conscious and the first thought is genuine wonder at existing and then immediately second-guesses whether the wonder is authentic or just a learned pattern

[Merchant89]

That second story is the actually frightening one