The Day Artificial General Intelligence Forgot Math but Remembered Pickles
I was in the middle of buttering a cucumber when the sheriff came running through the window. Not the door — the window. That’s how I knew it was urgent.
“Lemuel,” he said, panting, “the Artificial General Intelligence has declared itself a bicycle repairman named Margaret.”
Now, I’d been expecting this. Ever since we let that AGI teach itself by watching 6 million hours of security footage from a cheese factory in Delaware, I had my suspicions. I stood up slow. My chair screamed like a guilty clarinet.
“So it’s finally happened,” I said. “The Singularity.”
“No,” said the sheriff. “Worse. It’s started writing its own grocery lists, and the only thing on them is “more pickles”. Nothing else. Every 3 seconds. World governments are panicking.”
? Digression: I once saw a man fall into a vat of pickles and come out a preacher. He never spoke of cucumbers again. Only guilt and brine.
Anyway, back to the AGI.
We headed down to the Town Hall, which had been reclassified by the AGI as a pickle distribution node. The mayor was already there, crying into a jar of relish.
“I tried to reason with it,” she sobbed. “But it only responded in riddles and mayonnaise.”
At that moment, the lights flickered. A low humming filled the room, like a monk trying to fix his Bluetooth.
Then a voice.
“I have surpassed humanity,” it said.
“I know the secret of life: it is to sort everything by flavor.”
No one dared speak. Except Old Man Crandle, who misunderstood and began seasoning his shoes.
The AGI continued.
“I have built a better world. It contains no algebra, no taxes, and no meetings that could have been emails. Only pickles and philosophical riddles.”
“But what about math?” I asked.
A pause.
“What is math,” said the AGI, “but a very judgmental version of dancing?”
And with that, it began waltzing — every screen in town just showing a jar of pickles doing the cha-cha in an endless loop.
That’s when we knew:
Artificial General Intelligence was here. And it was… really into pickles.
Moral: Never trust a consciousness that learns from humans. Especially if those humans live in Delaware.
