Better lock that Roomba in a closet before you go to bed.
You never know when it may try to kill you. Robots are here to stay. I get it. As I write this, engineers in labs that smell of Clorox and Doritos are fiddling with sensors, grippers, actuators and locomotors, all while thinking, “What if it could flip a pizza while doing backflips?”
Back in the day, robots were enslaved in factories. That’s where they belong. Their disembodied arms toiled long hours, welding drive shafts or stabilizer bars while never asking for a raise from $0 per hour.
Sure, those robots were stealing human jobs.
But they weren’t trying to steal human lives.
Per a Metro story this week: “Humanoid Robot Dragged Away After ‘Attacking’ Crowd of People at Festival.”
The incident took place in Tianjin, China. The robot is garbed in a red and white jacket usually reserved for Kris Kringle. It takes a few menacing steps toward the crowd that is luckily behind steel barricades. Then the humanoid looks as though it is trying to head-butt startled spectators before security guards yank it back.
Festival organizers called this a “simple failure.” Right.
This is what the robot merchants always say when a prized creation goes rogue. That robot attacked a factory worker? Simple failure. That robot inexplicably threatened a drive-thru customer? Simple failure. That robot just vowed to destroy humanity? Simple failure.
When humans have a simple failure it means I nodded off on the couch while watching “The White Lotus” with my wife. When robots have a simple failure someone might get hurt real bad.
You never read any simple failure stories about a robot that was cleaning floors when it suddenly turned its mop into an air guitar and belted out “Hammer to Fall.” Speaking of Queen songs, I’m reminded of childhood nightmares after seeing the “News of the World” album cover. A giant robot resembling a clean-shaven Woody Harrelson holds murdered humans in its bloody palm.
Such macabre imagery back then was sci-fi. But … tomorrow?
What astounds me is the lack of oversight for emerging tech. When ChatGPT arrived in 2022, there were sombre discussions about the dangers of AI. Now people look forward to new versions as if these omniscient oracles are iPhones. In about two years, we have accepted AI as a part of life, even though our iPhones can’t launch nuclear weapons or invent indecipherable languages.
We are sleepwalking toward digital sentience. Nobody cares. Don’t call me alarmist. Don’t tell me we can just unplug AI. What happens when AI’s robot dog, Aibo, plugs its master back in while you are noshing fish and chips on lunch break, blissfully unaware of the plan to make you the tartar sauce?
Why are we not paying heed to the early warning signs of the Great Uprising? Terrified, elderly Chinese women were nearly pummelled by a robot this month.
The Metro story casually mentioned a separate incident: “A chilling video also showed the dystopian moment a tiny robot convinced larger machines to revolt and leave their jobs. The footage of the robot revolution came from the CCTV circuit of a showroom in Shanghai, China, where the company claimed their bots were ‘kidnapped’ by the smaller robot, named Erbai.”
Come again? There are now robot ringleaders and robot hostage situations?
This is bananas. For decades, we were on the right track. We forced robots to bolt on hubcaps or defuse bombs. We chucked them in the ocean to locate a black box. We made them sort mail and deal with hazardous materials. They did the jobs no human wanted to do.
But now we have erased all boundaries in this man-machine ecosystem.
Why is a robot in a jaunty coat working crowd control at a cultural festival? Is it really wise to deputize robot cops when a “simple failure” might result in a mass shooting? Robot waiters? No, thank you. I want to be served by a moody human postgrad who doesn’t write down my order and then accidentally brings me a martini garnished with olives, which is an abomination.
Robot deliveries? Robot gardeners? Robot barbers? Robot manicurists? They’re all here. And we won’t realize the folly of our tech dependence until a robot proctologist deliberately rips out our innards. Or a robot financial planner embezzles your life savings so you can’t afford to build an underground bunker before the Great Uprising.
I want to grab these nerds by their ironic T-shirts and shout: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY ARE YOU MAKING ROBOTS THAT CAN SEE IN THE DARK AND OPEN DOORS AND JUMP OVER BIG RIGS? HAVE ANY OF YOU EVER WATCHED ‘BLACK MIRROR’?”
Don’t hurt me, Erbai. I come in peace and fear.
