I'm a well read grad student who's bluntly honest about all things, although I try to be most honest about myself.
It was mostly the mechanics of the writing that tripped me up; this felt like an amateur attempt, and as that? It was decent. The writing itself was legible, and grammar fine enough, but the dialogue felt stilted and there was more telling than there should have been.
The idea behind it, though? I did like how the author played with the server-robots, and how they couldn't lie to humans, and how they struggled with that. How they struggled with if they were alive, or simply functioning. There were a lot of really heavy ideas that are really ripe for further exploration here. But this is one of the problems. In a twenty page short story? They weren't fully explored, especially given the writing level.
Still, this is exciting. I feel confident that this author will become more adept at dialogue, and showing. If that's the case, then this story shows a lot of promise, and what he might write in the future? Exciting. Worth the read to say, 'ah, I read it back when...'