March 5, 2024

A humanoid robot with a bare metal chassis looked up and started to walk towards me with its head tilted at an angle. I asked the robot what it was looking for only to find that it lacked the ability to speak. It made a scissor-like motion with its fingers so I looked around the table for a pair. By the time I had found a pair and was about to pass it over to the robot, it had already picked up one on its own. It resumed its advance towards me, but this time with the scissors snipping away in its hand. It got real close to me, the scissors now poking at my arm and snapping right against my skin. However the moment the blades managed to pinch a bit of skin and drew blood as it sliced my flesh, the robot suddenly jumped back and started to malfunction.

I turned to my dad and told him that I thought I knew what was going on. I speculated that the robots had some kind of harm avoidance built into every level of abstraction - it took the form of some kind of kill switch the moment it had hurt a human. It was nearly 9AM.

A robot in the shape of a large cat was now in the room. Part of me believed that it would stop before causing any serious harm but I still felt uncomfortable. It suddenly made a great swing at my dad sitting behind the desk and blood went everywhere. The cat predictably fell over and became non-responsive but the damage was already done. Everything had gone very wrong and I wanted to leave.