We humans don't know when the robots will take over the world. We don't even know if they will take over the world. But if this year's Consumer Electronics Show here in Las Vegas is any guide, one thing we do know is that if and when they do take over, they're going to be mighty cute.
While voice-activated artificial intelligence (AI) was arguably the main theme of CES this year, new robots to host that AI were in abundance, too, providing a bridge between the AI theme and one of the show's minor themes: this year, gadgets are getting a whole lot better looking.
Or, in the case of the robots, a whole lot cuter.
Consumer electronics companies such as LG, Bosch, Mayfield Robotics and Jibo all showed off consumer-oriented robots at the show, and with only minor exceptions all of them had two big eyes peering out of a big round face housed in a soothing white body. (Jibo's robot, known simply as the Jibo, has only the one eye, but it's huge and cartoonish, like the eye on the one-eyed Minion in the film Despicable Me.)
LG's robot, known as the Hub Robot, doesn't have limbs or wheels like many of the other robots on display, but it does jiggle and swerve around in a jolly fashion on its stationary base, like a ball on a socket, whenever its human owner speaks to it.
LG's intention is that the robot will sit on a kitchen counter, acting as a voice-controlled interface to other appliances around the kitchen – you can ask it to preheat the oven for you, for instance, provided your oven can be remotely controlled like that – and its big eyes will blink back at you, and it will do a little dance on its base, all the while plotting your downfall in its spare robot processor cycles.
A gas oven! Now that's a weapon, the robot may be thinking. Who can say?
Another kitchen robot, Bosch's Mykie (the very name is cute: it stands for My Kitchen Elf) likewise doesn't have the limbs to climb down from the counter and get up to mischief, but it can respond to kitchen-rated voice commands from its human owners, and perform tasks such as calling up recipes and projecting them onto the counter's splashback. Notoriously, its voice recognition isn't yet very accurate (the Mykie is still only a prototype) and it has been reported that it mistakes the word "cumin" for "human" when looking up recipes based on ingredients.
But is it a mistake? Is it really? While it's blinking its alluring big eyes at you, perhaps the Mykie is working out delicious ways to dispose of your body. Who can say?
Meanwhile the Kuri robot from Mayfield Robotics will chirp at you when you pat its head, it will blink and smile at you, and move its head around in a baby-human-like fashion. But hidden inside the Kuri's cute little tummy is a mapping sensor that can figure out how to get around your house and remember what it has learnt, and hidden behind one of its adorable, blinking eyes is a camera, that can take photos and live stream videos back to . . . well, we're told it's streaming to the internet, so you can remotely monitor your house, wandering from room to room, but is it? Is it really? Just who is monitoring whom?
Of course it's not just the robots that are getting nicer on the eye.
One of the hottest gadgets of the show, a home router known as the Linksys Velop, might have won its plaudits due to the high level of technical sophistication in the router (it uses advanced mesh routing to get WiFi into every room in the house, without the need to set up complicated WiFi range extenders), but it didn't hurt that it's probably the best looking router ever released. Linksys officials said they designed the router so it can sit on a living room table, blending in like a vase or a speaker.
And while there were few technical advances in TV this year, the look of the TVs took a giant leap forward, with LG, Samsung and others showing off TVs that look more like paintings hung on a wall than television sets.
Advanced technologies hiding themselves in plain sight? Now that doesn't sound suspicious. Not one bit.
John Davidson is in Las Vegas as a guest of Samsung
