Who wouldn’t want to buy a tasteful dinette set from this horrifying simulacrum of humanity?Meet Saya, the robot who moved straight from your nightmares to the boundary-breaking nightmare labs of Japan. According to the Telegraph:
Saya was developed by Hiroshi Kobayashi of the Tokyo University of Science in 2004 and had up until recently been involved in a trial at a Tokyo primary school. The robot supply teacher was capable of catching students passing notes and copying homework as well as giving them a rather stern telling off.
Jeezy creezy. I wouldn’t want a robot to give me any kind of “telling off,” let alone a stern one, which for all I know could compute in its robot brain to “a series of increasingly powerful electric shocks.” But now Saya is available to assist shoppers in Tokyo’s Takashimaya department store, able to answer over 700 questions, though I imagine the most common ones, like “Dear god, what hast thou wrought?” and “Where can I find a handy revolver to put in my mouth?” go unanswered. Obviously, like any rational person, I’m deeply scared of the unavoidable robot apocalypse, but I think what’s most upsetting about Saya is how much she resembles this:
(Sorry.)
