So back in 1938, Orson Wells came out with radio broadcast War of the Worlds. This piece of fiction sounded so real people really took to the streets expecting aliens. Now, there is social media footage that kinda reminds me of that. Robot freaks out Twitter. Is AI going wild?
So a few days ago, someone put up a Tweet of a robot walking around. This robot looked almost too human. He had all the human forms we do: head, two arms, two legs, was upright, etc. This bot walked around cars in the front yard like it was nothing, with no human help. Before long, this Twitter video got over 5 million views. The feedback was that of fear and even apocalyptic paranoia.
So many called the footage, ‘scary’, ‘creepy’, and ‘terrifying’. Then you have mentalist Darren Brown tweeting, in all capital letters, “We’re all going to die!”. One person tweeted back an evil robot that was on the verge of killing people. Then another person posted a movie clip and in the titles it said, “We’re not going to make it, are we?”. But everybody can go ahead and relax. Because the robot isn’t even real. Because 3D artist Maxim Sullivan used CGI (computer generated imagery) to make Adam, this robot, look all too real.
That’s how I make the comparison between this robot and War of the Worlds. People really did think War of the Worlds was real, and it scared them to death. In the same way, people thought this robot was real, and it was scary. But this should tell you what people think about AI technology in IT support. That is is scary. It is scary that every job from cooking to nursing to computer repair will be replaced by robots soon. Yes, it’s scary to think people are taking robots for mates, even as spouses. Of course it’s scary to think robots will serve as police officers and military personnel one day. No wonder why robot freaks out Twitter. Then you have scary robots that are as real as can be. So what do we do about it?