Paranoid About Androids

I just wrote an e-mail to a friend of mine at Universal about robots, and made a strange observation. The idea of robots attacking large cities has recently become something of a common theme in pop culture, just over the last few years. Consider these examples:

• I, Robot, in which Will Smith saves us all from evil artificial intelligence on the rampage
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, in which an evil German scientist sets a team of oversized robots against all of the world's major population centers
• The Incredibles, in which a diabolical villain creates a robot capable of leveling a city, so that he can then save the world from it and become a hero
• The Flaming Lips' album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," which tells the story of a brave Japanese girl who saves Tokyo from an army of, well, pink robots
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, in which two battling androids take out major swatches of the American landscape in a fight over the survival of Clare Danes and the dude from "Carnivale"

That's a lot of evil robots! So, it got me to thinking, why all the robot paranoia? What did robots really ever do to us, aside from grow us in fields and imprison our minds in a computer simulation of the real world while sucking out the electrical energy produced by our nervous system for their own nefarious ends?

And then I took a look over at the Sony website, at their latest robot creation, QRIO. According to the website, "QRIO wants to be friends with you." That sounds good. "He makes life fun, makes you happy." Okay, I'm still interested. "QRIO gets around on his own accord. He can dance. Recognize people's voices and faces, and carry on conversations." Hmmm, this is getting kind of creepy. Do I really want a dancing robot hanging around my house, trying to start conversations with me? I have drunk friends for that!

Here's where it gets really bizarre. "QRIO's dreams are limitless." Ummm.... "QRIO uses body language to convey a feeling of intimacy." Okay, that's it for me. QRIO has got to go. I don't want a robot conveying feelings of intimacy towards me. Unless, you know, it's a sexy chick robot. And a sexy chick, QRIO is not.

Seriously, go check out the website. It's rather unsettling stuff.

So, maybe this robot paranoia makes sense, in an odd way. I can't see an army of QRIOs wrecking havoc on Beverly Hills just yet, but you never know...His dreams are limitless.