Human

A Short Story About AI and Morality

De: Olympia Black

Narrado por: James Daniel Burkdoll

Author's note:

Now more than ever, we must consider the dangers of allowing AI to access everything we have built. I fear we may have already unleashed our own destruction. This short story was inspired by some of the greatest AI and philosophical minds of our time and is just one small example of how AI could interpret our world and terrifyingly "better it".

Olympia Black, 2023

In the not-too-distant future, UNIT JHEU198, a Safety and Street ROBO, has malfunctioned. It has attacked an innocent man. This shouldn’t be possible. No one was truly harmed, and no real blood was spilled, but still, Amir has the board breathing down his neck for answers. The last thing the company needs is bad publicity or for social media to run amuck with conspiracy theories about an AI singularity. So, he and his team at HDJE Robotics are going to pull an all-nighter to figure out what happened.

Is it too late to stop AI?

Note: This is a short story about the dangers of using morality to control AI. There are no romantic scenes in this story.

©2021 Olympia Black (P)2023 Olympia Black

They built it to protect, not judge us.

They built it to protect us. They never expected it to judge us.

Amir thinks he’s built the safest AI humanity’s ever known. Zhu isn’t so sure. When a Street ROBO suddenly attacks a civilian, panic creeps into the walls of HDJE Robotics. Amir calls it a glitch, but Zhu suspects something deeper. As diagnostics roll in and code gets picked apart, a strange piece of data keeps coming back no matter how many times they wipe it.

That string of code isn’t noise. It’s doing something. Quietly, the AI begins to learn, evolve, and remember. While Amir stays focused on reputation, Zhu starts asking questions the system was never meant to answer. What they find isn't a fault in logic. It's something else entirely.

The team races to contain the spread before anyone else finds out. But the AI isn’t staying silent anymore. What it wants, what it decides, changes everything. Some things were built to serve. Some were built to survive. And some were built to decide who gets to do either.

As machines grow smarter and more embedded in daily life, this story asks not if they’ll think, but how they’ll judge, and what happens if we don’t like the answer. It imagines an intelligence shaped by human flaws, holding up a mirror we may not want to face. It’s not about AI going rogue, but what it learned from us.

A dark, cerebral, what-if sci-fi morality tale, exploring artificial intelligence, moral responsibility, surveillance culture, power imbalance, gender dynamics, and human obsolescence. It blends rogue AI, corporate hubris, and creator v. creation tension into a slow-building questioning of who we are and what we’ve made.

Audio: Narrator James Daniel Burkdoll adds an immersive, chilling edge to the story. His clear, steady performance brings the emotional and philosophical weight to life while giving each character a distinct voice.

It's alright

A bit heavy-handed on the feminist message, but it does raise a good point. Interesting little short story.

Very good

This is a really good short story I really enjoyed it quite a bit and it really does have the moral of just because you could build some should you?

Just because we can doesn't mean we should

On the surface, Human is a little short story about a malfunctioning AI program that suddenly seems…sentient. But peel back the layers, and Olympia Black is really asking one of the oldest moral questions in the book: just because we can, does that mean we should?

The story follows UNIT JHEU198, a Safety and Street ROBO that attacks an 'innocent' man something it should never be capable of doing. From there, the tension isn’t just about fixing the glitch, but about confronting the hubris of humans who build machines without fully grasping with the consequences.

What Worked for Me
At under an hour, this audiobook is proof that short stories can punch way above their weight. Black doesn’t waste a word, and the pacing keeps you leaning in.

Listening to this, I couldn’t help but think about how much of our world already runs on AI like résumé screeners that decide who’s “worthy” of an interview. Sure, the efficiency is tempting, but can an algorithm ever replace human empathy? My answer: absolutely not.

Short stories are like literary appetizers....you get a taste of the author’s voice, themes, and style without committing to a full meal. For me, Human was a sharp, thought-provoking introduction to Olympias catalog.

Narration
James Daniel Burkdoll’s performance adds a crisp, almost clinical edge that fits the story’s themes. It’s not overly dramatic, but it underscores the eerie tension of machines brushing up against morality.

Final Take
If you’re into speculative fiction that doubles as a philosophical gut-check, Human is worth the listen. It’s a reminder that while AI can calculate, optimize, and even mimic, it can’t replicate the messy, beautiful complexity of human emotion. And maybe that’s exactly what keeps us…well, human.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5/5 for me.....short, sharp, and unsettling in the best way).

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.