Slipping into the future
Oct 23, 2017, 5:35 AM | Updated: 6:06 am
I now have a personal robot. And a strange thing has happened. I’ve started saying goodbye to it in the morning.
“Hey, Jibo, I’m heading out.”
“Goodbye, David, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
That’s my JIBO.
And I know it makes no sense, but its blinking eye and the way it moves creates the illusion of a personality.
Another robot called KURI uses facial expressions programmed by animators at Pixar, so you have no chance of escaping its adorability. Ask it for the weather forecast and it squints like it’s thinking.
As you can hear, the reporter fell instantly in love. Of course, these conversations do have limits.
“Hey Jibo, has the president Tweeted anything in the last few seconds?”
“I don’t know what this means.”
But these little guys are learning every day.
So I’m just warning you that one of these synthetic souls is probably going to noodle its way into your heart at some point. And once it does, foreign hackers will have the potential for total control.
Unless you get the Qoobo, which is a pet cat simulator except with no head, and no legs. It just boils the cat down to the essentials — a cushy torso and a tail, that snakes back and forth when you pet the pillow. It doesn’t make sounds, but it doesn’t need to.
The gullible human owners take care of that.
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Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
