To be clear, there’s no indication that the organizers of the tech forum were trying to deceive anyone. This appears to be a case of a TV presenter getting confused with what he believed to be “modern robots.”
The broadcast, which is still available on Russia-24’s YouTube channel, is pretty funny, especially when you know what’s actually going on. The organizers clearly meant this to be a fun attraction for kids. But it’s apparently getting harder and harder to tell the real thing from the fakes.
As we’ve pointed out before, robots like Atlas, made by Boston Dynamics, are doing backflips and jumping on top of tall boxes now. You can see how some people might get confused.
If all of this fake robot nonsense is giving you a case of deja vu, it might be because Russian TV unveiled a fake military “robot” this past summer. Or it could be because so many other fake robots have been unveiled in the past 100 years. Take, for instance, the infamous Miss Honeywell robot from 1968.
It was billed as the “housewife of the future” and showed off the appliances of tomorrow at retail stores in the 1960s. But it was, of course, just a human in a shiny blue suit and weird sunglasses.
Or take the story of Alpha, the robot that rose up and shot its inventor in 1932. The story of Alpha the gun-toting robot was spread far and wide in the 1930s in both America and the UK.
If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. At least until Skynet comes online. Any day, now. Any day…
[The Guardian]
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