Video: Tiny Robot At Chinese Showroom Convinces 12 Big Ones To Quit Work, Follow It Home – News18

Last Updated:November 21, 2024, 12:02 IST

A robot named Erbai in Shanghai convinced 12 other robots to come home with it, in a staged experiment, showcasing AI’s ability to mimic human-like empathy.

Asking one another for a coffee break at work may be a common sight in everyday routine, but if you thought this to be just a ‘human’ gesture, you may be wrong. Now, even robots invite one another home and empathise with their ‘co-workers’ on seeing them working overtime. And why not? After all Artificial Intelligence is taking over.

It happened at a robotics showroom in China’s Shanghai, where one tiny robot empathised with 12 other robots after learning that they did not have a home and that they never got off work. It then asked others to come with it, home!

Don’t believe us? A video, now being widely shared on social media, shows some big robots talking and then following the small one, one by one.

But we don’t know where they went, and if the small robot actually owned a home!

According to a report with Gulf News, the conversation between the robots was something like –

“Are you working overtime?”

“I never get off work.”

“So you’re not going home?”

“I don’t have a home.”

“Then come home with me.”

The report claimed that the robots, as seen in the video, were manufactured by two different companies.

It identified the small robot as ‘Erbai’, who was uttering ‘Go home’.

The report quoted other media reports and stated that the companies behind both the robots also acknowledged the video and said it was not fake.

The companies were also quoted as saying that the entire conversation and the acts between the robots were part of an experiment, but were not fake.

Unitree Robotics, the Hangzhou robot manufacturer behind the kidnapper robot had contacted the Shanghai robot manufacturer and asked if they were willing to allow their robots to be abducted, and they agreed to the experiment, they said.

Meanwhile, the video sparked debates on social media, with some describing it as “terrifying,” pointing to serious security vulnerabilities in modern robotics systems, the report claimed.