JIBO – the robot who wants to be the Alice to your Brady Bunch – isn’t out yet.
But they’re sure trying they’re hardest to get you excited about it.
I say “Alice” – not the Jetsons’ “Rosie” because they’re really trying to make him sound less like a machine meant to do your bidding, and more like a dude who might host a Nickelodeon show so that it can help you order carry out and watch those things you made on accident and can’t be bothered to deal with yourselves.
You know, there are pros and cons to this thing.
I myself had a “robot” when I was a kid.
It was called “2XL”. He was this educational machine with programs and buttons I could interact with an learn new stuff (hence the name 2XL = ”To Excel”) when I got bored with devising new narratives for my Polly Pocket to carry out in her home that was terribly prophetic of how small my own would be one day. I didn’t love him, but I also didn’t hate him as much as the guy who made this did:
However, (and I’m totally dating myself here which, as ever, I wish was a literal thing I could do) we’re talking pre-internet and operating from a library of cassette tapes with my retro educational assistant. Early 90’s style.
In a perfect world, if I could have the educational, picture taking, kitchen assistant helper without any potential privacy threat, that’d be cool. And as much as I joke about the “machines taking over”, I get just as excited about new technology as the next person. It’s awesome that we can even do this stuff and I want in on the fun, but legit concerns about privacy-online are always going exist – from saying nunya bizz to the NSA to avoiding those dudes who hack baby monitors and scream at your child in the night. I suppose what the difference is with Facebooking or IGing or Tweeting, is that (while I definitely get lost in the distraction and over-share), I can still remember that’s a machine.
This thing watches you.
So with the human and deceivingly familiar manner (with its softspoken nice-guy-single-dad sounding voice and spot-on swivel action like a cervical spine moves) this online robot has, will we be more willing to forget ourselves around it? Or the next models that get more person-like? Will we open up to the anthropomorphic machine? Does the live image it’s “watching” get recorded somewhere? Will we forget that people can and do hack into anything that’s online? And how many versions from now till they’re tweaked to shoot off pheromones like the ophone? So that the illuminati lizards can pipe in fear molecules and sedatives and whatever else lizard overlords do?
Eh. If it helps, none of this’ll matter.
Not when they all become self-aware.
And start synchronistic fires in everyone’s home.
And then bar all the exits.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do that, Dave…”
That said, if he comes with the Gerty robot voice Kevin Spacey did in “Moon”, I’m sold. Take my social security number! Take my soul! Take the three numbers on the back of my mastercard! No need to incinerate this bish here. ’cause every utterance from that man’s vocal cavity is a love-ballad storming forth on angel fire that melts me on impact anyway.