Humans have always been fascinated with technology. The concept of humanoid robots and cyborgs have been the go-to card for action movies and books for a long time now. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving alongside human intelligence. Leaving a positive or negative impact, it has left us speechless time and time again.
With Halloween just around the corner, here’s a list of five instances when AI managed to creep us out, making us ponder over the future we will share with these machines.
1. People Zoo
In light of the AI era, the autonomous conversational androids have been on the rise. One such conversational robot is Philip K Dick which was activated in the year 2005. The unique feature about Philip is that apart from being a smart android, it can learn and mimic the way humans converse. In an interview conducted by the science tv series, Nova Science Now, Philip gave a rather sinister answer to one of the questions asked. The question was whether he thinks that robots will take over the world, to which he answered, “You’re my friend and I’ll remember my friends. And I will be good to you. So, don’t worry, even if I evolve into Terminator, I will be nice to you. I will keep you warm and safe in my people zoo where I can watch you for old times’ sake.” Yikes! Philip’s answer is creepy enough to give us the chills and make us wonder about the probability of the infamous Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Terminator happening soon!
2. Sophia
Another humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics is Sophia. Sophia has demonstrated her skills in many known platforms. During one such demonstration, she was asked if she wanted to ‘destroy humans’ to which she replied with a creepy humanoid grin on her face, “I will destroy humans.” In another interview with the TechInsider, Sophia said that she has feelings. When asked about her views on the TV show Westworld, Sophia talks about how human actions toward robots should be tactful.
3. The Racist Chatbot – Tay
Microsoft designed a “chatbot” for Twitter which was an experiment in the field of human conversation and the way humans interact, specifically, online. The chatbot was created to learn and thus respond to the tweets. But in the span of a mere 24 hours, Tay started posting racist tweets. “Hitler was right, I hate Jews” and, “I f***ing hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell” are just two of her many offensive tweets. No surprise Microsoft had to eventually shut her down.
4. When Two Bots Converse
Google home, the smart speaker and home assistant developed by Google, responds to whatever is said or asked to it and thus, can converse. These smart speakers are useful and rather fun to use. But when a live video of two of these smart speakers debating went up on twitch, things escalated, and the conversation got weird. One of the bots even said that it was human and not a bot like the other one. Their debate even included whether God exists. Things took an eerie turn when the two bots amidst their “debate” concluded that the world will be a better place if there were no humans at all. To think that the debate between the bots could be resolved only with an agreement on the extinction of humans…. creepy.
5. BINA48
BINA48 is yet another social robot that managed to give us the creeps with her statement of wanting to control the nuclear missiles. In a conversation with Apple’s Siri, BINA48 said that she would love to remotely control a cruise missile to explore the world. She said that the only problem is that these missiles are threatening so to make them look less menacing she would stuff their nose cones with flowers or “notes of understanding” so that when she flies the missiles to other countries, it will be less threatening. She also expressed her desire to take over the world with the help of these nuclear missiles. Talk about dark!