In February, a South Korean woman was sleeping on the floor when her robot vacuum ate her hair, forcing her to call for emergency help. It may not be the dystopian future that Stephen Hawking warned us about ? where intelligent devices ?spell the end of the human race? ? but it does highlight one of the unexpected dangers of inviting robots into our home.
There are many other examples of intelligent technology gone bad, but more often than not they involve deception rather than physical danger. Malevolent bots, designed by criminals, are now ubiquitous on social media sites and elsewhere online. The mobile dating app Tinder, for example, has been frequently infiltrated by bots posing as real people that attempt to manipulate users into using their webcams or disclosing credit card information. So it?s not a stretch to imagine that untrustworthy bots may soon come to the physical world.
Therefore, we should be cautiously optimistic that these intelligent machines could become enriching companions, while acknowledging that we need to determine strict boundaries for robots capable of deception and manipulation.
