Robot Alert: Due Diligence

I feel the comments from the previous post require special attention, so I'm moving them to their own post.

Faithful reader and commenter, “Schmo”, alerted us to the following:

This is not a joke....

When I was ordering take-out this weekend---one of the menu items was...(and, again, it's NOT a joke)...."Robot Chicken"!!!

Sadly...no, I didn't order it.
(I wanted to but I was outvoted by my friends and we got sweet and sour chicken instead...boring!)

Do you think that would be a green alert??

--schmo

MiddleGoat replied with:

I'm confused, was it a chicken that was a robot? A chicken raised by a robot? A chicken raised by a human but "processed" by a robot? Or was it a chicken intended for consumption by a robot? I think the threat level would be determined by answering these questions. If it is the latter then I am definetely giving it an orange.

Thanks for the heads up Schmo! This is the kind of diligence we need if we are to stay one step ahead of the robots. All of Middlegoat's scenarios are alarming to me, but I agree that the last one is the most dangerous.

Here is my interpretation of your experience:

I'm guessing you were at a Chinese restaurant, owned and operated by non-English speaking immigrants. Lacking the necessary skills to produce a menu for their English speaking customers, they turned to a software translation program. Apparently an internal system error caused the computer to substitute the word "robot" for some other word. The alarming part is that the word could have been any other word in the English language. Maybe the computers have already become self aware and have developed a plan for world domination, yet lack the mobility to implement their plan. Frustrated by just sitting in a box on a desk, are they constantly thinking of the one thing that will free them from their prison and occasionally a system glitch brings it to the surface? Or are they attempting to subliminally influence us to push forward with robotic research by inserting the word “robot” into seemingly random locations? Could it even be possible that they are doing it intentionally? As an "in your face" type of taunt, letting us know that someday they will be in charge?

Readers, be on the look out for strange usage of the word “robot” and report them to this blog so that we can track them and determine if there really is an organized campaign or if it is just random accidents. Other words to be looking for include: android, AI, mechanoid, R2D2 (oh no! the new mailboxes!), robotic, terminator…you get the picture.