Elina Shatkin
It was only a matter of time. The super-smart robots that do everything from spellchecking our blog posts to manning our nuclear weapons facilities have finally grown weary of us.
South Coast Today reports that researchers at NEC System technologies and Mie University (on the Eastern coast of Japan, about an hour south of Nagoya) have developed a robot that can taste and identify dozens of different wines, cheeses and hors d'oeuvres.
That's all fine, but the eagle-eyed editors at Wired, always on the lookout for technology's potential to turn deadly, picked up on the most interesting part of the story, buried near the bottom:
When a reporter's hand was placed against the robot's taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.
Once they've had a taste of human flesh, you think they'll be able to stop? And so the robot hellpocalypse begins.
Way to go, science. I bet the idea of an electromechanical sommelier sounded clever. I bet the infrared spectrometer that identifies and determines an object's chemical composition wowed all your scientist friends.
How does it feel now? Running on your spindly legs, atrophied from years spent in front of a computer screen. Hunted down by your own creation. Devoured by hungry robots like you were a hunk of jamón ibérico.
We Americans are a greasy, delicious lot. Plus, we're too fat to outrun our soon-to-be masters. We have to make some hard choices. I, for one, welcome our robotic, flesh-eating overlords.
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