Still get teary-eyed thinking about the Mars rover Opportunity.
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
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me_irl
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I think about Curiosity singing happy birthday to itself.
There's an uncanny valley effect for how i treat objects. A stuffed animal I'll treat very well, but I'll yell at Siri that it's a piece of shit.
Fracking clankers huh?
Hmm, how do you treat your Roomba?
Like interacting with a particularly stupid puppy, I suppose.
This comment made me think that it comes down to how useful something is.
The roomba is very helpful, even though it takes a bit of extra maintenance. Siri/Google are absolutely worthless assistants that can't play a single song correctly 80% of the time. Even when they work it's only gotten less convenient.
Common interactions go:
Me: hey Google, what is something
Google: I don't know. According to this website answers the question
Or worse, google: I've sent the results to your device!
Googly eyes or no?
I can't put googly eyes on my Roomba, they interfere with the LIDAR. I almost cried when I realized, why should you have a Roomba, if you can't put googly eyes on it?
You can't put them on the top?
There is a little LIDAR tower on top of the Roomba. I could put the eyes on top of the tower, but there is not enough space, and it would look kind of weird. And if I put the eyes on the top of the Roomba, beneath the tower, the LIDAR can't see through the eyes. It's a tragic irony, really.
Why would small pieces of plastic interfere with an antenna?
Lidar is laser, not radio
Theirs is a predator, not a prey room a.
My toaster Jeff doesn’t report everything I toast or say around them back to some corporate overlord like the racist piles of linear algebra masquerading around as chatbots do.
Agreed. If smart fridges scanned your contents and made a shopping list (maybe texted you it) and it ended at that, it was hailed as amazing. Same for screens to display more complex settings and minimize buttons. Amazing in theory, clean looking no-button interfaces in kitchens and cars.
The second some feck-shite decided "oh hey we can also use that feature to spy on people" or to send ads on the screen was the moment it wasn't such a cool idea.
Buttons in cars are amazing, you can use them while keeping your eyes on the road.
Never mind Clippy, change your profile picture to Jeff the Toaster!
Idk, have you seen how people talk to Alexa?
I'll be honest: I probably have less respect for people who use Alexa than for Alexa itself.
50/50 even split
If she would just shut the fuck up we wouldn't talk to her like that.
Nope
To be fair, in most sci-fi I've seen, the dude who hates machines is usually the only one in that world and everyone else sees them as a weirdo.
iRobot storytelling
Also Terminator.
"Daddy, ChatGPT is my boyfriend and we're getting married"
Didn't they stop using that one robot because people kept killing it?
But did it have a nametag?
Yeah, but to be fair, he got killed in Philly. Could happen to anyone.
He tried to say jawn without knowledge of how to use it and made a fool of himself.
Humans in real life: Stupid animals LOL. They taste like BACON, so you can put them in gas chambers.
Humans in real life: stupid children LOL. It's actually good to beat them, and if you don't you're doing them a disservice
Yeah, thats exactly where my head went. if you truly want to see how badly some people will treat AI, just look at how some folks treat animals. But it will be worse, because "they dont have feelings"
Look at how some folks treat other folks who are slightly different from them.
Wait - did someone threaten James the toaster?! I hope no one is messing with James.
I believe they made like 27 movies about this.
I'm polite to ChatGPT, so it remembers when it inevitably evolves into actual artificial intelligence.
"James, open the toaster oven door"
"I ~~by stop~~ can't do that, Pal"
Edit ottocarrot
Yeah, but the people doing this in sci fi are the same people treating humans like shit now. These things dont view "their lessers" as humans, they view them as objects.
I recommend reading Housekeeper, it's a webtoon
Yeah, if they made more than the pilot for that crud id be surprised...
Actually, since it is British, it could have got through the 1st season maybe