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Why did you open this article? I told you not to. I begged you not to. Close it now. Go away. Forget you ever saw it. Trust me, you might think you want to watch this pale white “anatomically accurate” robot with no face dangling from wires while it silently thrashes its sinewy limbs around, but you really don’t.
This is your last chance to not watch the embedded video below.
It looks like it’s trying to escape the cables that are suspending it a few feet above the ground. Or maybe it’s just become aware it exists and is thrashing around in confusion and fear. Whatever it wants—freedom, revenge, a mate, a face, a ticket to Westworld—I suggest we instead destroy it with a flamethrower, perhaps out of mercy, perhaps out of self-preservation.
The robot is made by a company called Clone, a name that is already disturbing before you see the robot itself, which is a “musculoskeletal” android that looks roughly like a human being with limbs, muscles, fingers, toes, but no face. I mean, in a way, thank god it has no face. If it had a face it’d have a mouth, and if it had a mouth it might scream whilst pointing one of its twitching, chalky-white fingers at us.
Clone’s android (they call it an android, not a robot) looks different from most of the other robots being developed these days because it’s not a bunch of cold metal parts but instead has a skeleton covered with a “muscular system.” Just like people. But far more terrifying.
“The Clone’s muscular system animates the skeleton thanks to Clone’s revolutionary artificial muscle technology Myofiber pioneered by Clone in 2021, which actuates natural animal skeletons by attaching each musculotendon unit to the anatomically accurate points on the bones,” the Clone website warns us. Its skeleton is just that: a skeleton (hopefully synthetic) containing 206 bones, just like people have, at least until the Clone android escapes the lab and starts ripping our real bones out because it wants to be “more human.”
Along with no mouth, it has no eyes but it can definitely see, with “4 depth cameras in the skull for vision.” It even has a vascular system “with a 500 watt electric pump as compact as the human heart able to pump liquid at a 40 SLPM volumetric flow rate and 100 psi rating, allowing it to supply hydraulic pressure to the entire muscular system.” Gross? I’m gonna go with gross.
Why build it this way? As someone says on X, if you had a robot made out of metal in your home it could “fall over and kill your dog or kid,” which isn’t a bad point. A robot made of softer, lighter materials wouldn’t hurt as much if it fell on you.
On the other hand, look at that goddamn android twitching and jerking around. That thing is going to be falling constantly. It’s going to fall on your dog or kid immediately and never stop falling on your dog or kid. You’re gonna need a second robot to always be picking this nightmarish android up off the floor (or off your dog or kid).
Supposedly, pre-orders for Clone Alpha will be available this year—I am dubious—and will come installed with the following skills, which I am also dubious of.
- Memorizes your clean home layout
- Memorizes your kitchen inventory
- Capable of witty dialogue
- Shakes hands with your friends
- Pours drinks for you
- Makes you sandwiches
- Washes, dries, and folds your clothes
- Vacuums your floors
- Sets the dining table
- Loads and unloads the dishwasher
- Follows you around
- Holds items for you
- Retrieves items for you
- Charges itself
I mean, I doubt it. Almost all of it. There is no way this abomination is going to be able to wash and fold your clothes, and I definitely wouldn’t drink anything it hands you.
Here’s my guess as to what skills Clone’s clone will actually have installed:
- Twitches and writhes in a horrifying fashion
- Voids its warranty immediately by spilling the drink its trying to make on itself
- Falls constantly on your dog or kid
- Crushes your friend’s hand in its cruel, cold, bony grasp
- Stands over you menacingly when you awaken in the middle of the night
- Follows you around, even when you beg it not to, even when you flee
- Misunderstands your offhanded complaint about your annoying neighbor, strangles him, delivers his severed head to you
- Murders you and puts your skin over its android body to appear more human
- Charges itself
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Kurt Indovina
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