As if this world wasn’t dystopian enough, a new study has revealed that humans will do literally anything robots tell them to.
In a depressing day for the fate of our species, an investigation conducted by researchers at Georgia Tech has concluded that if robots tell you to put your hand in the fire, you will stick your hand in that fucking fire.
And this is still the case even if you think you’re smart enough to know better, as the researchers concluded that ‘people may trust robots too much for their own safety’, as reported by Inverse.
One part of the study went like this:
A guide robot led the volunteers into a conference room before researchers flooded the hallway with fake smoke and set off the alarms. The guide robot then activated its emergency LEDs and pointed the subjects to the back of the building, in the opposite direction of visible exits.
Amazingly, but shockingly, 26 out of 30 participants blindly followed the robot.
Some of the subjects were then told that the robot had broken down – yet all 100% of them still followed its orders.
So even when we’re told a machine has broken down, we’re still more inclined to follow it than our own human instincts.
Alan Wagner, a senior research engineer at Georgia Tech added:
People seem to believe that these robotic systems know more about the world than they really do, and that they would never make mistakes or have any kind of fault.
In our studies, test subjects followed the robot’s directions even to the point where it might have put them in danger had this been a real emergency.
What a great moment for humanity…
