All the king’s horses and all the kings men… Image: Twitter/@bilalfarooqui
Some people are afraid that robots will eventually take over our jobs and enslave all of humanity. Maybe they will, one day, but it looks like it won’t be any time soon.
A security robot allegedly fell into a fountain in the Washington D.C. office of advertising, political consulting and advocacy agency GMMB (Greer, Margolis, Mitchell, Burns), and a photo of it was tweeted by one of the employees.
Image: Twitter/@bilalfarooqui
The robot, a 5-foot-tall Knightscope K5 model, was found floating in one of the office compound’s outdoor fountains with no clear indicators of how it got there.
Greg Pinelo, political and communications strategist at GMMB, also tweeted several photos of the robot toppled over in the fountain, with security personnel hoisting it out.
Image: Twitter/@gregpinelo
Considering the current advancements in artificial intelligence research and machine learning, the robot could have developed a semblance of self-awareness and found its current job to be quite a bore. So much so that it tried spicing things up while no one was looking, or or it could have just possibly wanted to end its miserable existence.
Video game director Yoko Taro also took notice. His tweet reads, “I saw this image in the morning from everyone tagged with “カミニナル” (kami ni naru, become as a god).” “Kami ni naru” is a tagline for the game “Nier: Automata”, his latest creation which features robots going through an existential crisis like humans would.
Image: Twitter/@yokotaro
Whatever the authorities find out, it should be safe to say that the human race won’t be bowing down to robot overlords just yet. JB