Let’s be honest. You could work a lot harder at your job. There’s nothing that says you can’t work on shit after you leave the office.
But work is fucking exhausting, and when you get home, the TV is so damn inviting. Answer emails or Orange is the New Black? Use Excel or Breaking Bad? Get ahead or Game of Thrones?
It’s an easy decision. Work sucks, and TV does not.
That’s one of the reasons we fear that robots will take our jobs. They have no desire to make it home by eight to watch The Bachelorette. No need to unwind with a couple episodes of Veep.
Like, basically, they are machines compared to us. But what if they weren’t? What if we taught them to love to TV? To be as lazy and slothful at us.
Researchers at MIT are trying to do just that, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll save humanity in the process.
Really, the idea is to try and teach them more nuances of human interaction by making them watch TV for hours on end. Via The AP:
MIT says a computer that binge-watched YouTube videos and TV shows such as “The Office,” ”Big Bang Theory” and “Desperate Housewives” learned how to predict whether the actors were about to hug, kiss, shake hands or slap high fives — advances that eventually could help the next generation of artificial intelligence function less clumsily.
“It could help a robot move more fluidly through your living space,” lead researcher Carl Vondrick told The Associated Press in an interview. “The robot won’t want to start pouring milk if it thinks you’re about to pull the glass away.”
You can see a video of the robot’s predictions here.
It’s cool. But, and perhaps more importantly, there’s a chance robots could get hooked on TV. And then maybe they won’t even want our jobs.
Hooray!