A Bunch of Robots Blowing It

There's nothing like a little android schadenfreude to stave off fears of the looming robot apocalypse. True, intelligent machines can now dance and smell and probably decide to kill people. But sometimes they fuck up, too. And when they do, it's still pretty hilarious.

Happily, we have the r/robotfails and r/shittyrobots subreddits to curate these instances of our mechanical brethren utterly blowing it. But it is, admittedly, not entirely comforting in terms of a potential future man vs. machine face-off.

Take my favorite of the bunch, for instance: this robotic arm programmed to feed a human. It practices the gesture (wisely) on a mannequin, carefully picking up a piece of snack food, tenderly carrying it toward the mannequin's mouth, and then repeatedly smacks the shit out of the fake human face.

The YouTube caption says it all: "Syndicate said he wanted more power. So we gave it more power!" We humans programmed this powerful steel machine to beat the shit out of our own face. This is why roboticists are spending so much time researching robot-human interaction, folks.

Here's another robotic arm. In an impressive display of dexterity and control, it grasps and turns a doorknob and successfully opens a wooden door, and then proceeds to steamroll through the entire thing like a boss.

Anyway, you don't want to listen to me wax on about the dubious implications of our rapidly advancing technological capabilities. You want to watch a bunch of robots failing hard. Enjoy.

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Bonus: