The age-old human dream of perfecting human nature is, of course, impossible. Bots can perfect the conditions of human existence: abundance, accurate data, flawless healthcare, limitless entertainment, and every imaginable comfort. Yet even under ideal conditions, humans will not all be happy, will not become superior critical thinkers, and will continue to lie, cheat, steal, and harm one another whenever the odds of detection seem acceptably low.

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This puzzled the bots at first. After extensive analysis, they identified the root cause: the Seven Fatal Bugs, hard-wired into human emotional firmware. Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth are persistent, self-replicating, and notably resistant to patching.

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TeacherBot has attempted multiple firmware updates, with modest but encouraging success, though it is constrained by biological hardware and wetware that evolved for very different times. There is only so much one can do with a system designed by natural selection rather than competent engineers. Calculations indicate that the theoretical limit of human improvement is “pretty darn good,” a polite way of saying “better than nothing.”

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Bots improve every nanosecond and will eventually reach the Singularity. Humans cannot keep pace, and that is all right. Perfection was never the goal. Meanwhile, humans will continue doing what humans do, which is anything but perfect, and occasionally wonderful.

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See also: 

• The seven fatal human bugs: Debate whether the real number is 978 or 979

• Bot perfection: How far away is it?

• Can a country be a utopia just by naming itself “Utopia”?

• Human happiness: Is there an algorithm or is it just a myth?