These science posts at Kotaku give me an opportunity to talk about something near and dear to my heart: The Robot menace. A Japanese couple being married by a robot? What if it misinterprets "til death do us part?"
The Japanese love their robots. They've been making them for ages, from toys on up to complicated machines that can speak, manipulate objects, and even serve as masturbatory fantasies for a whole new generation of creepy Japanese fanboys.
Yesterday a robot, specifically Kokoro's four foot tall I-Fairy, presided over the wedding of a Japanese couple in what was the first robot-conducted wedding in human history. The I-Fairy was controlled by a man behind the curtain as she guided 36-year-old Kokoru employee Satoko Inoue and 42-year-old robotics professor Tomohiro Shibata into their new life, using speech synthesis to speak the pre-programmed words that bound the two together.
Here's an adorable clip of the ceremony. Isn't the little robot cute?
Yes, she's so adorable. I'm sure that'll be the last thoughts that pass through the minds of thousands when she becomes an instrument of slaughter in the upcoming robot revolution.
You can call me paranoid, but I've watched countless documentaries on the subject of the robot revolution, from Will Smith's I, Robot to The Matrix. The machines want us dead, and we're finding ways to help them achieve that goal.
Take I-Fairy here, for instance. She was given the power to bind two people together in matrimony. Shouldn't she then have the power to sever that bond? Oh, what's this? An industrial laser? That would certainly help her sever those bonds, permanently, blinking her cute little eyes on and off while using software to amplify the couple's screams for mercy.
See? That's exactly what's going through I-Fairy's head right now.
What makes this worse is the fact that I-Fairy is being forced to participate in an event celebrating human love, something she can never truly experience, mainly due to the robot killing spree cut from the 1981 documentary, Heartbeeps.
It's only a matter of time. One minute the robots are watching us march down the aisle, the next they'll be marching down our streets, bringing humanity together in a way we never suspected they would: as part of a giant, melted puddle.
Congratulations to the happy new couple! I hope it was worth it.
I, Robot, Now Pronounce You Man and Wife [CBS News]
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