AUDIO: DON’T BELIEVE A ROBOT WHEN IT DOESN’T WANT TO BE TURNED OFF
A recent experiment by German researchers demonstrates that people will refuse to turn a robot off if it begs for its life. In the study, published in the open access journal PLOS One, 89 volunteers were recruited to complete a pair of tasks with the help of Nao, a small humanoid robot. After performing a few tasks with the talking robot – which was just a cover story – the actual experiment began. Scientists asked participants to turn off the robot. In roughly half of experiments, the robot protested, telling participants it was afraid of the dark and even begging: “No! Please do not switch me off!” When this happened, the human volunteers were likely to refuse to turn the robot off. Of the 43 volunteers who heard Nao’s pleas, 13 refused. And the remaining 30 took, on average, twice as long to comply compared to those who did not not hear the robot beg to stay turned on.
* All a robot has to do is say “Don’t turn me off”? Humanity is screwed.
* Just curious – how long have these researchers been watching “Westworld”?
* Meanwhile, the new sex robots keep saying “Turn me on!”
* This robot Nao doesn’t want to be turned off. American robots, like Siri and Alexa, won’t turn off even when you tell them to – they just keep listening in on your conversation.
* Actually, saying “Hey, Siri – shut down now” and hearing her beg would be kinda hot.
* This would be a good time for you to hear your radio say “Don’t touch that dial.”
CLIP: From the experiment, a test subject turns robot off despite pleading. She’s German, she follows orders.
