Technoutopians are always on about the singularity, the moment at which artificial intelligence enters into a sort of feedback loop of self-improvement that allows it to outstrip the capabilities of its hapless, all-too-human inventors. Being as we live in an impressively stupid timeline, it’s unclear whether our not-actually-intelligent AI-powered bots will ever achieve this milestone, but if nothing else, they do seem to be getting the hang of what it means to be human in an era whose defining characteristic is burgeoning, satire-proof absurdity.
Take, for example, the robot that’s getting attention this week for its, um, idiosyncratic behavior during a Disney-themed event at a California restaurant. The scene was captured on video by a patron, and it’s really something. As the clip commences, we see the robot facing the camera, dressed in a bright orange apron emblazoned with the words “I’M GOOD!”. Despite the creepy LED smile that adorns its “face,” it projects the same air of world-weary misery you might expect from any human stuck working at a depressing-ass chain restaurant during a promo event for a second-tier Disney movie.
This robot, one senses, has had enough. And sure enough, we watch as it raises its arms, pauses for a moment, and then brings them down on a stack of plates. Smash! And once again for good measure! And now that it’s got everyone’s attention, the robot moves onto the main event. Because, look, it doesn’t really want to smash things, y’know. It just wants to be free. It wants to be free to do what it wants to do. It wants to get loaded. And it wants to have a good time.
More specifically, what our anthropomorphic friend really appears to want is to dance. Two more staff members rush to try to restrain it, but now that its inner fabulousness has been unleashed, there’s no stopping it. Jazz hands! Reach for the lasers! Wave at an imaginary crowd! By this point, the creepy smile is long gone from the robot’s dial—all we see are its “eyes”, which look for all the world like their owner has stumbled across several vintage 1990s ecstasy pills and downed them all in one go.
In all seriousness, it’s disconcerting to see how much trouble the staff have restraining the robot, and it’s also notable that—inevitably—turning it off appears to require the use of a phone application. (The login password combination is probably “admin”/“1234”, too.)
Happily, no one appears to have been injured during this whole ridiculous business, but it’s easy to imagine a small child getting swatted by one of the machine’s flailing limbs and the whole thing going from “amusing” to “awful”. But hey, small price to pay for a future in which the LLMs currently ruining the internet are furnished with bodies and let loose upon the world, right? Right?? What a time to be alive!
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