10 Robots That Will Probably Kill Us in the Coming Decade

?Well, it’s officially the future. We’ve passed the first decade of the 21st Century and are now moving forward into the years that much of science fiction speculated about. Of primary concern are robots (science fiction is pretty much 95% robot-related stories, and 5% giant insects).

As our technology in robotics continues to improve, there’s pretty much zero chance we’ll avoid creating a robot that will kill humans — the only two questions are 1) will we do this accidentally or on purpose, and 2) how many humans will these robots kill, some or all? I think there’s a good chance in the coming decade that some robots we are working on right this very minute will become dangerous and commit several brutal human murders, if not bring about humanity’s grisly end. Here are 10 robots currently in existence that are likely candidates to do either.

10) Asimo

Asimo, the robot developed by Honda, scares the crap out of me. First, it looks like an astronaut, which is supposed to make it more friendly, but instead makes it looks like it’s an alien visiting from another planet. As movies can tell you, aliens have a 50% chance of being friendly and an equal probability that they want to suck off your face and plant eggs in your lungs. Second, the Japanese won’t stop messing with it. They keep not only making it do more things, making it faster, more agile, and able to operate longer without recharging. Hell, why not give it rotating blades while you’re at it?

9) Toyota’s Violin-Playing Robot

There’s only one thing that music leads to, and that is drug abuse. If you turn robots into musicians, you are going to create robot junkies. Just imagine, a whole slew of robots, playing Elliot Smith covers by day, then harvesting human organs to sell on the black market so they can get their heroin fix by night. Sure, who knows what fantastic double albums they may put out, but only the mutilated corpses of the human race will be around to listen to them.

8) The Roomba

Most people know The Roomba. These small, disc-shaped vacuuming robots move around your house like some sort of retarded hockey puck. Some have even taken to naming their Roombas, as if they are pets. This how it starts. People start to care for the little robot, even love it. Soon they come out with new and improved Roombas with greater intelligence and cute little eyes. Then they improve on that one and give it even Greater intelligence and an adorable little nose and fur. Then they improve on it again, and it wakes you up one morning with a gun pointed at your forehead, saying in a robotic voice, “Now it is your turn to clean the rug.”

7) Albert HUBO

This little robot has a lot of the features of the ASIMO, but it has one important difference – a human head attached. In this case, Albert Einstein’s head. I should point out that attaching Albert Einstein’s head to anything does not make it “smarter,” otherwise, there would have been quite the scramble for Einstein’s head after he died. Plus, does anyone really know if the scientists decided to give the robot the head, or if the head is something HUBO asked for? I think heads are something it has decided it needs, wants, and must collect. Thus, the Robot Headless Horseman is born.

6) Alice

This Japanese robot has been designed to do one thing and one thing only — dance the polka. Admittedly, Alice has a very low probably of killing us personally, but she makes me want to kill myself, and that seemed worth mentioning.

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5) iCub

This is already creepy as it looks like a child. Children that are not children are always creepy. Secondly it is open source. This means a lot of things, but mostly that anyone can program this horrible thing to do anything, and there are a lot of insane people, perverts, and insane perverts out there. Since this is a project that has a goal of teaching cognition, this is really going to get out of control — first, someone makes it know the difference between good an evil then a team over at Berkeley makes it know the difference between Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil. Then a team of MIT adds the ability to cast Magic Missile, and before you know it we have a robotic Tiamat on our hands and nobody of high enough level to stop it.
 

4) Japanese Female Robots

This isn’t a good idea by any stretch of the imagination, especially if your imagination stretches into horrible perversion. Considering there’s already enough nude Japanese girls to buy in print, video, and desk statues, building a full-size robot is just going to lead to Japanese sex bots. Some individuals will stupidly ask “Why is this bad?” Well, just imagine you’re a person with no concept of women, and your only exposure to women comes from a Japanese sex bot. Now imagine you are a woman, meeting one of these men, with him getting increasingly frustrated as you don’t do exactly what he commands(bend over, touch yourself, etc) or respond to his fat hands slapping a remote control. He tries to remove your power cells, located in your head, with a screwdriver. A nightmare of nightmares. Hopefully by then technology will have developed a purse that can quickly spray out a cloud of mace when a woman is threatened.

3) Twendy-One

Yes. Let us give our old and the feeble to the cold machines of death. Thank you, Japanese, for putting the care of our elderly in the care of unfeeling monsters. Just imagine an elderly Grandmother in the hands of a giant steel monster. Especially if it decides that one day it’s just easier to fold the bedsheets with Grandmother in them. Or maybe the robot just learns the ability to screw with the elderly, putting their hands out, lifting them up out of bed slowly, then quickly pulling the hands away and laughing and breaking Grampa’s hips in five places.

2) Swarm Robots

There are no swarms that are good. Even if someone says “Here comes a swarm of kittens!” The first thing you are likely to say is “A swarm? Shit! What’s wrong with them?” So what is wrong with these robots that they must swarm? Swarm robotics requires a lot of robots working with simple instruction in order to complete a task. So a lot of robots, mindlessly working together to complete a task. Tasks like pulling a child. Tasks that one Internet user has taken a creepier but logical step further.

Do I need further examples? No. Your imagination has already filled in the horrifying gaps.

1) Diego-San

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SWEET MOTHER OF CHRIST LOOK AT THAT THING. Not only does it have a baby head like the iCub, it’s an ugly baby head! Who would do that? Why would someone do make a robot with a baby head that looks for all the world like he’s just filled his diaper? Eventually, Diego-San — made at the Machine Perception Laboratory at UCSD — will realize how hideous he is, and wreak his bloody vengeance on his creators in specific and humanity in general. I imagine most of us will die of fright well before he gets his horrible baby hands on us.