Can Robot Be Trusted? Humans have feared a robotic uprising since the machines first appeared in science fiction. Today, experts caution against a more insidious threat: We might like living with them too much

摘要

Being hacked by a robot requires much less hardware than I expected. There's no need for virtual-reality goggles or 3D holograms. There are no skullcaps studded with electrodes, no bulky cables or hair-thin nanowires snaking into my brain. Here's what it takes: one pair of alert, blinking eyeballs. I'm in the Media Lab, part of MIT's sprawling campus in Cambridge, Mass. Like most designated research areas, the one belonging to the Personal Robots Group looks more like a teenage boy's bedroom than some pristine laboratory-it bursts with knotted cables, old pizza boxes and what are either dissected toys or autopsied robots. Amid the clutter, a 5-foot-tall, three-wheeled humanoid robot boots up and starts looking around the room. It's really looking, the oversize blue eyes tracking first, and the white, swollen, doll-like head following, moving and stopping as though focusing on each researcher's face. Next turns, looks at me. The eyes blink. I stop talking, midsentence, and look back. It's as instinctive as meeting a newborn's roving eyes. What do you want? I feel like asking. What do you need? If I was hoping for dispassionate, journalistic distance-and I was-I never had a chance.