So Cute, Yet So Deadly

So I read this article, about robot wine tasters. My first thought was… Oh that’s cute. Look at the cute little robot with its cute little robot face and cute little robot voice… And it’s a wine taster. How cute!

Then I started thinking about it a little more and I thought, Wait. Wine tasting? We’ve got a robot that can differentiate between different chemical compositions and we’re using it to test wine. Really? Really?

Because that seems like a stupid waste of technology. Seems like this robot could be testing food for the FDA. Then, maybe we wouldn’t have so many cases of food contaminent related illnesses? Maybe we could use it to test water tables and supplies? Then maybe there wouldn’t be so many birth defects in places where factories were dumping their wastes into the water table. (And don’t say that doesn’t happen any more. You know it does.)

And how does the robot feel about this? After thinking about this a third time, this paragraph stood out:

When a reporter's hand was placed against the robot's taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.

I’m guessing the robot’s not too happy about having such a useless job. This is the robot saying “Drink it your own, lazy self. I don’t even like wine. Don’t make me use my robot teeth on you.”

You’ve been warned, people.