<AI Bootup Sequence Initiated.../>
What could it mean? Well, a visit to the robotics lab, of course! Welcome to Superior Automated Robotics.
"A new tour group! Welcome! Thank you for joining me in the robotics lab. Everyone gather round. You've come on a great night. We’ve got the lab all decorated for Halloween. And, yes, we do keep it cold in here for the equipment.
"I’m David Dyson, and welcome to," he points to a projected sign, "Superior Automated Robotics, where we’ve been building YOUR future since 1974.
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| Your friendly host. |
"That’s right, we were actually in the industry two years before Apple was even founded.
"In
legend, we were just a year behind a small software startup that came
to be known as Cyberdyne Systems… Ah, but everyone knows that’s not a
real company. And it’s not like we’re trying to build Skynet here or
anything, haha."
He briefly looks toward the silver sheet as something moves beneath, but continues on with his presentation.
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| What is under that thing? |
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| Wow, he really has been in the tech game a while. |
He pulls off the silver sheet to reveal a very human looking robot.
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| Robot reveal! |
"Good morning, Davey," the bot speaks.
Smiling, he says, "She calls me Davey. Doesn’t she look almost alive? We’ve just got her connected to the network for some upgrades. Let’s see what she can do. Tell us your name."
"My name is Superior Automated Robotics Artificial Intelligence, or S.A.R.A.I. for short," it replies in a somewhat stilted tone.
"We’re still working on the speaking voice." he states, asking, "And how do you function?"
"My CPU is a neural-net processor; a learning computer."
"Isn’t this technology amazing? Let’s try some other commands. S.A.R.A.I, please thank our guests for visiting today.
"Domo arigato."
"Very clever. She’s just learned Japanese!," he says excitedly. "What else? Oh, she has a great singing voice. Let’s hear her sing a song. Any requests?"
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| Got a favorite tune? |
He listens as the tour group chimes in with their favorite songs, and asks the bot to sing their pick.
The AI hesitates, and then says, "Okay, Davey. I’ll sing you a song.
David clearly does not expect what happens next, and attempts feverishly to stop the glitch as the robot sings:
"Davey, Davey, give me your answer, do.
I’m half crazy all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look neat upon the seat of a bicycle built for two."
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| Not exactly the song he had in mind. |
Finishing the song, the AI asks, "Did you like it, Davey?
"Well you were supposed to sing a different song." Looking toward the tour groups, he apologetically states, "We’re still working out a few glitches."
"Glitches?" The robot looks downward and replies in what seems almost like a sad tone, "I’m sorry, Davey."
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| The bot doesn't mean to disappoint. |
The AI pauses, asking, "I’m sorry, can you repeat that?"
"Dance for us. Let’s see you dance."
After a few seconds, S.A.R.A.I. looks down and shakes its head, "Brain the size of a planet and he asks me to do a silly dance. I’m sorry, Davey, I’m afraid I can’t do that."
The robot suddenly stands and removes the connected cables from the back of its head as David begins furiously typing commands.
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| Uh-oh. |
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| Okay, serious uh-oh. |
"I… I’m not sure what’s happening. It’s never done anything like this before…" he sputters, still attempting to reprogram the system.
Grabbing David by the neck, the AI seems to retort, "Let’s see you dance."
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| Guess he didn't expect the learning computer to learn this. |
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| Can... he... reach? |
He manages to hit the kill switch, causing the bot to immediately shut down, lowering its head and arm, and freezing in place.
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| Guess they call it a "kill switch" for a reason. |
"Okay. It’s okay. No need for alarm. I apologize for that little glitch. After all, nobody’s perfect.. perfect… perfect..." David develops a sudden twitch of the head with each faltered word.
Subtly readjusting his own head, David continues talking, "Uh, here, let me just try some quick reprogramming." He punches a few keys and asks, "S.A.R.A.I., are you back online?
Looking up, the AI again greets him with, "Good morning, Davey."
"Good. Let’s have you give our guests some Halloween treats."
He hands the robot a basket and indicates it should head toward the tour group, which it does in a very mechanical fashion, handing a treat bag to each visitor with a stilted, "Happy Halloween" and occasional, "Hasta la vista," further displaying its bilingual skills.
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| Take a treat from the suddenly *not* violent bot, why don't you? |
And now for an early live performance from the evening...
Easter eggs galore! Given the current tech climate, with rapid artificial intelligence development alongside growing fears, the 2022 release of M3GAN, and even a recent Theology At the Bottleworks conversation on the topic, it seemed only right to run with the AI theme. And this year was largely a long string of pop culture references, including some particularly deep dives within. Here's a rundown of all the ones we actually remember:
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| We might have watched a few movies for this. |
‣ David Dyson is a double reference to David Bowman of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Miles Bennett Dyson, the unwitting creator of Skynet in "Terminator 2: Judgement Day."
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| We have questions about this guy. |
‣ The robotic hand giving a thumbs up in the logo was actually AI generated by Dall-E 3, as was the AI graphic on this year's card, shown below. We also asked ChatGPT via Bing Chat to produce a fake AI bootup sequence, from which we pulled our teaser line.
‣ Also on the creative side, a variant of the Gil Sans font was used in a few spots, including the taglines on both the logo and the theme card. This was the font chosen by Stanley Kubrick for the opening title of "2001: A Space Odyssey."
‣ The 1974 founding date, we discovered, was conveniently timed just before Apple's actual founding in 1976. However, '74 was our start date in reference to the bot's legit birth year.
‣ Cyberdyne Systems' founding as "a small software systems company in 1973" is a super deep reference discovered within the original queue videos featured in the Universal Studios Terminator 2:3D show, as played on their CDYN network. (The reference point starts at 11:38, but you might just wanna skim through the entire disturbing thing.)
‣ Skynet... Kinda goes without saying.
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| Nothing to see here. Carry on. |
‣ "Domo arigato" references the classic Styx song "Mr. Roboto," which includes the foretelling lyric, "The problem's plain to see, too much technology."
‣ The song "Daisy Bell," often referred to as "A Bicycle Built for Two," was the final song sung by H.A.L. in "2001: A Space Odyssey" as Dave finally succeeds in taking the system offline. We originally wanted to avoid naming our tech the obvious "David," but it fit the song perfectly as a replacement for the "Daisy" lyrics, all of which hinted that our AI had begun developing "feelings" toward him.
Our bot always defaulted to a slightly edited version of the song with reference to Davey, but a few times also picked up a tour group's request, from a simple "Row Your Boat" ("Life is but a dream... It's always a dream with you, Davey."), to Whitney Houston's, "I Will Always Love You," complete with stinger note. Little did the audience know how fitting their choices might be.
‣ "Brain the size of a planet..," comes from Marvin the Paranoid Android in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," as he constantly expresses forlorn and frustrated "feelings" via a GPP or Genuine People Personality.
‣ "I’m sorry, Davey. I’m afraid I can’t do that," of course, almost directly quotes H.A.L. from "2001: A Spacey Odyssey."
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| NOW who's superior? |
‣ The "kill switch" just happened to be a Staples "Easy" button we'd found just a few days before, which declared, "That was easy," every time he'd hit it.
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| Smash that "Easy" button! |
‣ On a costuming note, the blue lines on S.A.R.A.I.'s jacket are a subtle nod to the movie "Tron."
‣ Of course, let's not forget Tekno the Robotic Puppy, Polly the Tekno Parrot and the legendary Furby making appearances, as David indicates he has somehow been involved with developing technologies large and small throughout the years.
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| Our understudy robo-crew. Just too cute to make the cut. |
‣ Our bot also threw in the occasional AI humor:
Q) What does a robot sit on?
A) Its robottom.
(We'll see ourselves out...)
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| Even a VERY COLD robot's gotta laugh sometimes. |
‣ Jenny "the Giraffe," for again assisting with crowd control, and for snagging our live video and some photos.
‣ Andrew, for capturing a few great pix as well.
‣ St. Louis County PD, for providing some spare glow sticks left over from our recent National Night Out subdivision event.
‣ And Chatham Bible Church for several borrows to build the scene, including all that cable and conduit we've had lying around for years. Guess it finally did come in handy!
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| Church employee perks. Who knew? |
The set was actually fairly simple this year overall, including our first ever use of projection, and it was fun to largely reuse and repurpose in creating a sci-fi scene. Even the robot's cover was reused from our previous science fiction alien event—a thermal blanket that has proven pretty useful, especially since temps seem to plummet on our sci-fi themed years.
Here's a bit more of the scene...
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| Brain the size of a planet and they have me hanging banners. |
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| Plenty of wires and hard drives to go round. |
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| Yorick the skull scores a perfect appearance as a wig stand. |
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| The old hand gets a reboot as a robotic arm in production. |
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| Bits and parts. |
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| Wired up a pair of 180s in order to pull the network plug once the "offending command" is given. |
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| Is that... an eyeball?? |
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| Changing this eye color appears a bit more complex than contacts. |
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| What else are they cooking up at this place? |
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| We'll get those glitches ironed out before you can purchase your own bot. |
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| Thank you again for visiting Superior Automated Robotics. |
It was just plain COLD tonight, yet the masses came out en force. Having run out of treats several times last year, we were prepped with extras well past our standard (glowing) duck count, but once we saw the frigid forecast we didn't expect quite so many guests. Nevertheless, we handed out 110 treat bags, which had us just shy of running out of ducks yet again. Thank you to everyone who stopped by!
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| Wish we had a robot to put all this together. |
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| These ducks GLOW, just like your screens. |
This year's theme card was, again, partially AI generated, with Dall-E 3 assisting on that phenomenal graphic. It was actually a bit of a surprise to end up with something so well produced from a minimal prompt, especially since AI was new enough it was still struggling to get words and letters quite right in image generation. Performance art at its finest.
The rest we left up to our own Creator and the creativity He gave us to throw all of this together...
Thanks for visiting Superior Automated Robotics, and our apologies for any system failure you may have experienced. We’re glad real world tech can’t go rogue like that on its own. For better or worse, our bots are stuck doing whatever we program them to do.
We’re also thankful to have a Creator who made us humans in His own image, but He definitely didn’t make us robots. He created us with the ability to think and feel and act on our own. Unfortunately, each of us has a tendency to do things using our actual intelligence that sometimes don’t look like the one who created us at all. More than just a glitch, sometimes we’re the ones who truly do decide to go rogue.
The good news is the very one who created us came to show us what living like Him actually looks like. Rather than controlling our every move by remote, Jesus lived among us, showing and telling us how to live right and well by using our God given intellect and abilities in the best ways possible.
Jesus even showed us what it means to have genuine emotions, something no robot can really produce. Seeing exactly what could go wrong in us, He expressed a love so strong He was willing to give up everything, including His own life. Jesus lived the perfect life we should have, died Himself instead of just shutting us down, and, amazingly, returned to life—not by some mechanical means, but out of the power and love of God toward us. And when we trust Him, He can give us that power to live and love like our Creator just as we were designed to do.
Want to process more about Jesus? We did some programming you can access from your own device. Find Bible links, videos and more at hallowsgarage.blogspot.com.
We’ll get back to crunching 0s and 1s while you go crunch some candy. Happy Halloween!
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