First they’re clearing surfaces, next they’re clearing the human race…

On today’s episode of Black Mirror, Google’s parent company let loose a robot to clean its Bay Area offices. Launched as part of Alphabet’s Everyday Robots Project, the machine was first created in the company’s experimental labs before being released as a “general-purpose learning robot” (did The Terminator teach us nothing?)

While that paragraph reads like a forewarning to a sci-fi future, you can rest assured that Alphabet’s robot performed only menial tasks. Wiping down tables and sorting through recycling, the robot wasn’t concerned so much with collective uprising as it was with a clean laboratory campus. Side note, how hard is it to clean up after yourself? 

Clearly unaware of the future army he’s built, Alphabet’s chief robot officer (CRO, I guess?) Hans Peter Brøndmo said the tidying androids are just one step in the company’s goal of expanding self-learning technologies. 

“We are now operating a fleet of more than 100 robot prototypes that are autonomously performing a range of useful tasks around our offices. The robot can now be equipped with a squeegee to wipe tables, grasp cups and learn to open doors,” Brøndmo said. 

I don’t know about you, but there’s something more insidious about a fleet of sponge-wielding robots than had Brøndmo decked them out with grenade launchers instead. You should never trust a robot, but a robot pretending to enjoy chores while planning global domination? Nope.  

The company has found past success in programming robots for specific repetitive tasks, but Alphabet’s new robotic cleaner has shown that the technology can act autonomously outside of controlled environments. If that’s the case, I better start apologising to Alexa for the profanities I hurl at her whenever she plays the wrong song on Spotify.   

Check back next week, when a robot has hacked my mainframe and… <<DISCONNECTED>>