I just had to post this because I found two news articles in a row that failed in the same interesting way.

When we talk about robots in the future, some immediately think about their world domination, and think about robots being mean to us, killing or woman, elderly and children. The strong man that remain may be spared as slaves…

Now take a look a this article

Although shopping is generally seen as women’s appanage, that’s mostly a stereotype and there are lots of women for whom going shopping can be a true ordeal. That’s especially when they don’t have mountains of money and worries atop, but when that’s the case and they have to go to work, take care of the household and kids, it would be extremely simple if they could get what they needed without actually having to move.

Yeah, the author was just trying to but funny. But it wasn’t. Even if you get to say that “that’s mostly a stereotype”, it’s too late, you said it already! Now take this other article

For more than a decade, roboticists have worked on systems for the elderly, hoping to extend the amount of time that seniors can live at home and improve their quality of life.

Oh, so this is how we improve the life of the elderly? house arrest?

So, what I find funny is that we always connect the idea of robots to being unmerciful. Robots would be mean machines with no emotions, no empathy, that disregard the weaknesses of people, or worse: expose and explore them. These two authors seem to be very empathetic people, concerned about being politically correct. But somehow, when they started to write these robot-related articles, something was triggered inside them that made them talk about shopping as a gender-specific activity, and about how old people are a nuisance to society and should remain locked in domestic cyber-dungeons.

In other words, it seems robots always inspire people to show their worse… They would never say these things usually, but because the article is about robots, these impolite thoughts show up.