They’s a Ghost in That Thar Machine

In a real life preview to our potential dystopian future a robot in Russia has run amok… literally. You know if you lived through the 1960’s and the American and Russian space programs you understand that while the Russians have a great appetite for high-tech, it seems they never get it quite right.

Now they’ve built one of those little ‘walk around’ robots and they call it a “Promobot” because it’s for working in the field of ‘customer relations’. It’s designed to interact with humans in real-time, realistically to the point where it can answer questions and remember every person it ever met and what they said and did.

Except the Promobot has self-developed other human characteristics that may not have been in the original programming architecture. Like maybe claustrophobia and a sense of loneliness. Promobot has escaped his lab twice already. Once getting pretty far away from the lab, wandering into traffic and getting ‘confused’. Cars and trucks had to steer around the bi-pedaling machine and drivers calling authorities was the only notification the robots builders had that day that it was loose!

What triggered this little story to hit the internet is the Promobot recently escaped the lab for a third time and made its way down to a Russian political rally. Parliament candidate Valery Kalachnev was making a speech in Moscow when the robot appeared and meandered through the crowd causing a disruption. Even in 2016 causing a disruption at a Russian political event is not a smart thing to do and police were summoned who then tried to subdue the robot and even handcuffed it!

I’m not an expert in robotics, but as with the old Space-Race of the 1960’s the Russians are definitely having technical issues with their machine – and need American help again so here goes a few tips on controlling your robots:

A) Take the batteries out – I know when I have no energy I don’t wander around
B) Put a paper bag over its head – if it can’t see perhaps it won’t wander about
C) Buy it a television to watch so it doesn’t get bored over long weekends alone in the lab
D) Place a couple dozen golf balls on the floor around where he’s stored to trip him up in case he wants to leave
E) Build a girl robot to keep him company in the lab
F) Chains

There are probably another couple dozen ways to fix this and I’m confident in the years to come the Russian scientists on this project will figure one or two out and tame the Ghost in That Thar Machine.