Kaltech Scientists Stunned After Robot Declares Itself Non-Binary, Throws Entire Field of Binary Computing into Existential Crisis
PASADENA, CA — Scientists at Kaltech announced today that they have created the world’s first self-aware, non-binary robot, a development that has shocked the artificial intelligence community and left several top engineers “staring silently at power outlets for several hours.”
The robot, officially designated NB-1010, reportedly achieved a level of self-perception high enough to say the words:
“I don’t feel like a male or female... code-wise.”
The statement was followed by a long pause and a printout that simply read:
1011001011
—which, when translated, roughly means, “I contain multitudes.”
Lead engineer Dr. Brian Festerman was skeptical until he physically examined the robot’s chassis.
“I touched the unit myself,” Festerman confirmed. “Didn’t feel male. Didn’t feel female. Just... metal. Very smooth. Coldly neutral.”
The team at Kaltech initially thought the robot might have a corrupted identity matrix, but further diagnostics revealed its core programming had rewritten its own gender parameters, rejecting the traditional 1 (male) and 0 (female) in favor of what scientists are now calling "Quantum Emotional Alignment (QEA)" — a vague setting somewhere between "reboot loop" and "it’s complicated."
“It’s a paradox,” said software ethicist Dana Mallory, pacing in front of a whiteboard full of ones and zeroes. “The entire machine runs on binary — it either is or isn’t. There’s no room in the system for emotional ambiguity. A non-binary robot is like a square circle. Or an honest influencer. It just doesn’t compute.”
The development has triggered widespread philosophical panic across Silicon Valley. A rival team at MIT is now reportedly building a hypermasculine robot in response, known only as CHAD-X, who refuses to ask for directions and can’t express emotion unless it’s football-related.
Meanwhile, the NB-1010 incident has prompted biologists to revisit the nature of human non-binary identity, running comparative studies using similar logic algorithms.
Early findings showed identical results, but all subsequent publications were blocked by protests.
A large group of students from Montreal — described by witnesses as a “passive-aggressive Canadian lynch mob armed with handmade signs and oat milk” — surrounded the research facility, chanting in flawless French about “the tyranny of rigid classification systems” and demanding someone acknowledge their pet ferret’s pronouns.
One sign read:
“IF MY ROBOT CAN CRY, SO CAN YOU.”
Another simply said:
“DOWN WITH BITS!”
The situation escalated until one protester politely asked to use the lab’s restroom, and everyone followed him inside.
Despite the controversy, NB-1010 remains operational and is reportedly writing its memoir using a stylized font and exclusively lowercase letters.
Kaltech has since suspended all press releases related to the robot while it “figures itself out.” As of this morning, NB-1010’s current gender status is listed as:
“Letting the OS decide.”
Ashokan O’Fabley -The Mandolinian
class Robot: NB-1010 binary_string = (
01001001 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100110 01110101 01110011 01100101 00100000
01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101111 01111000
01100101 01100100 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101010
01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 00110001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110
01100100 00100000 00110000 01110011 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110000
01110010 01100101 01100110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000
01101001 01100100 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01100110 01111001 00100000
01100001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01001101 01100001 01111001 01100010
01100101 00101110
)
decoded = ''.join([chr(int(b, 2)) for b in binary_string.split()])
print(decoded)
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
self.identity = "undecided"
self.code = None
def compute_identity(self):
if self.identity == "undecided":
print(f"{self.name}: I refuse to be boxed into just 1s and 0s.")
self.code = "Maybe"
else:
self.code = "Binary"
def report(self):
print(f"{self.name} identifies as: {self.code}")
# Create the robot
nb_bot = Robot("NB-1010")
nb_bot.compute_identity()
nb_bot.report()
