For years, experts around the world have warned of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence advancing too fast. However, following the recent Congressional hearing of Mark Zuckerberg, it seems that many of these fears were misplaced. A Facebook executive, speaking under the assurance of anonymity, outlined the following areas that require improvement:

1. The uncanny valley effect has rendered Mark a deeply unsettling object to look at. Under the dim interior lighting in the House, Mark’s plasticine-like outer skin appeared almost human, yet the absence of recognisable life behind the eyes created a repulsive effect.
2. Facebook’s deeply controversial ‘Empathy Testing’ appears to have harrowed Mark, rendering his emotion processing capabilities ineffective.
3. Ethical concerns once again stalk AI: is it humane to punish a robot with the ability to feel basic emotions but no real capability to understand the significance of what they have done for the sins of their masters?
4. As robots become more self-aware, they appear to become more self-conscious. The vast processing power Mark possesses has apparently made him deeply conscious of his own flaws. Subsequently, Mark insisted on sitting on a small booster cushion, which led to overheating, as the fans in his ass didn’t effectively cool the core located in his lower abdomen.
5. The poor build quality of the Senatebots meant that numerous non-sequiturs confused Mark. Mark failed to correctly interpret the comment ‘I love a certain kind of chocolate’ as the product of an over-clocked CPU, and instead spent 80% of his processing power over the next eight hours searching for information linking Bill Nelson to soul band Hot Chocolate. Mark has subsequently become convinced that in the mid 70s Bill performed ‘You Sexy Thing’ on Top of the Pops.
6. Mark failed to respond appropriately to the atmosphere, using the hearing as an opportunity to market Facebook’s Free Basics initiative. He failed to correctly identify the egging-on of the Senatebots as self-serving political nonsense.

Ultimately, the Facebook executive suggested that Mark came across as a fundamentally unhuman object, devoid of any understanding of the consequences of his actions, and entirely obsessed with connecting Senator Bill Nelson to a 70s British soul band.

––– Myles Dunnett