Take Me To Your Meter

I read in last Sunday’s New York Times that some new robots can anticipate their own fading power, sense the end is near and stagger to the nearest electrical outlet for a recharge.

The accompanying photo shows a machine that looks like a big upright vacuum cleaner. It has arms and hands and can open doors. We see it deftly inserting its own plug into an electrical faceplate. So, something I thought uniquely human—knowing we’re going to die and having a sense that time is running out—has been installed in a mechanical servant, and unlike us, it can do something about it.

No doubt, the robot’s signal to recharge is pre-set, but once we had a biologically-set signal that told us to eat just enough to survive. Not anymore. What if an electric car feels a little run down one evening, maybe just wants a taste of feeling like a Mazarati—off it goes silently sniffing out power ports, greedily sucking up juice until the PG& E meter blasts off its post.

The Times’ story was more thoughtful than this little ramble—it suggests that if we make artificial intelligence mimic human thought and action too well, we will relinquish those traits and abilities in ourselves. But the part of the story that still startles me are those pincher-fingers sticking that plug into the socket—a machine deciding to tap into the source of its own life to get some more.