Dream Journal: Healthcare Robot

I frequently have pretty vivid, detailed and crazy dreams and when I have a particularly interesting one, I write it down in my dream journal. The one I awoke from this morning left such a strong impression on me that I also feel like sharing it here on my blog!

It involves artificial intelligence, humanoid robots and morally bankrupt billionaire corporations. I like to think I can tell a good story, so I hope you'll check this one out!

So at the start of this dream, I had received a mysterious package in the mail. It was a medium sized box, maybe three feet tall, and had no return address but it was addressed to me, and it wasn't anything that I ordered myself.

Inside the box was a humanoid robot, covered in sleek white panels and looking like something that Apple might design. I powered it on, and it was able to speak with me in plain English and seemed to have a level of intelligence on par with ChatGPT. It had arms and legs and a robot face and everything. Presumably it could walk and move around as well. When it would enter an idle mode (maybe to recharge), it would "turtle up" and retreat into its shell, taking up less space in the room, a few feet tall. When standing, it was the size of a small adult human, maybe 5 feet tall or so.

An A.I. generated image of what this robot may have looked like, created on deepai.org.

On a different day in this dream, I was hanging out in the living room and I had a couple of friends over, and the robot was in its idle pose nearby. Suddenly, the robot whirred to life, and panels on its body opened up, and then I can only describe that it 'attacked' me. Out of these panels, a bunch of wires shot out quickly, some with needles on the ends, which all found their way to my body. One such needle went into my arm, into a vein, reminiscient of when you are put on an IV drip at a hospital. I don't remember where the other wires landed.

The robot then injected me with something: tiny little machines. Some of them assembled themselves together inside my body, forming a larger disc shaped structure a couple of inches across, and I could see it move around under my skin and could feel it if I touched it. Most of the other tiny machines navigated their way through my veins, arteries and other ducts in my body.

I could feel all of these things moving around, and especially around my lower abdomen. I've never experienced having kidney stones before, but I imagine it could be similar, though instead of painful, the movement felt ticklish and highly sensitive, similar to post-orgasm sensitivity, as they worked their way around my body.

Naturally, I was freaking the fuck out, but I was also afraid to respond too violently to all of this in case I broke the robot and left its work in a half-complete state, which could result in a much worse outcome for me. My friends in the room with me were watching all this happen and they were shocked and didn't know what to do either.

During this time, the robot was unresponsive and didn't respond to any voice commands. It was in its idle pose, but clearly busy computing something, with lights on its chassis flashing and everything.

After no more than 10 minutes or so, the robot was done and it disengaged from my body, retracting all the wires and tools back into itself, closing its panels and then transforming into its humanoid social form to talk to me.

Of course, I asked it what the fuck just happened. It explained to me that it is a healthcare robot and it had just finished giving me an examination. It told me I had some plaque buildup in my arteries that it cleaned out for me, and that while my kidneys were in the range of normal healthy function, they were a bit on the lower end of that range (whatever that meant).

Naturally, I had a whole lot of questions. This robot was made from some highly sophisticated technology that I had never seen the likes of before.

I asked it who built it. The robot replied that it was created by a major multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company. It told me the name of the company, though I don't remember it now.

I asked it why it was delivered to my house. It explained that the company who created it was facing some problems: they weren't cleared yet to begin human trials on the new technology, and they were facing fines or regulations and were at risk of going bankrupt or forced to shut down. They mailed these units out for free to random people as a way to circumvent the law, get some human test subjects, and (hopefully) prove that the machine is safe and effective. I was just one of the "lucky" ones who received one of these units.

I asked the robot whether I can opt-out of their test program, and the robot said I could not. In the room with us was a small figurine of Baymax from Big Hero 6. I picked it up and showed it to the robot and said: "in the movie Big Hero 6, they had healthcare robots and you could say to the robot 'I am satisfied with my care' and they will power down and stay that way" and the robot told me that that wouldn't work on it, and that it was designed for long-term active care.

I asked the robot whether I could tell people about all of this - I had a good mind to, at the very least, write about this experience on my blog. It strongly advised against me telling anybody about it. It didn't threaten me or tell me what would happen if I disobeyed, and I know I never signed a non-disclosure agreement about this, but given the highly advanced technology it had just displayed for me, I decided I would comply with it - at least for now. But I had found the whole thing highly sketchy and unethical and was beginning to contemplate what my next steps should be, before finally waking up from this dream.