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Invest in the future

I am offering you a chance to be a part of history. I am offering you a chance to chisel your name on the bleeding edge of human progress, and memorialize yourself as one of the great, far-sighted patrons of Earth’s well-being for generations to come. I am offering you a chance to see something really cool. I am offering you a once in a lifetime chance to be an initial investor for the world’s first Centaur-AI.

A Centaur artificial intelligence would function like a normal computerized artificial intelligence, except that the digital mind will be that of a centaur rather than that of a human. This AI will not have any physical body (that would be a robot and I am not interested in them) but instead will run on either my laptop or Gary’s (if he lets me borrow it for one more month).

The development of a solid AI is the next big step in the development of humanity. A computerized mind would work diligently, never err and produce amazing results. However, as any avid fan of Sci-Fi knows, the development of an AI also opens the door to a malevolent AI, one that wants nothing more than to steal your pets and your jokes. That would be unavoidable using the normal AI approach. Since man is made in God’s image, an AI made in the image of man would also be in the image of God. Because of that, any human-based AI would probably ignore any programmed directive in lieu of punishing sinners. Centaurs, on the other hand, are only half-made in God’s image. If we could program an AI to be half-horse, then we could successfully make a robot that is only half-god, therefore trustworthy. It’s that simple.

In order to make this AI function, I have devised a plan to wrangle the mysterious yet powerful “big data.” I’ve honestly only heard tales of big data, tales wherein sailors are lured to their deaths by bird-women who shout steady streams of personally catered sit-com suggestions. That’s only a legend though. To possibly wrangle this power, I am planning to scan the Facebook profiles, LinkedIns, Netflix accounts and browser cookies of millions of humans and horses. While I secretly hope all of this data will magically coalesce into a digital centaur, I am prepared to do some dirty work and wade through bogs of horsey code for months before I call it quits.

I still need money to finish this project. I have already sunk around $10,000 of my own cash into hiring people to click “save-as” on any website with a man or a horse on it. However, with a couple extra millions, I am confident this project can come to fruition. So far, the initial tests are underway. I have successfully developed a command-line based AI program that responds to “are you a horse” with: “only half ;-).” Every other response is much more “human” than desirable… but there’s still a horse somewhere… deep in the machine. While I believe this digital horse man might be the solution to all of the world's problems, you don't have to. If I get enough money, I might even start working on a bird-man AI!

Sam Padgett is a Humor writer.

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