Robot vacuum cleaner 'attacks' South Korea housewife's hair

This is a lighthearted story.

A robotic vacuum cleaner "attacked" a South Korean woman while she slept by attempting to suck up the hair on her head.

The woman, a 52-year-old resident of Changwon who has not been named, was awoken by the pain and, unable to extricate herself from the robot, called the fire department for help.

She was eventually freed by paramedics, escaping serious injury but losing several strands of hair.

The incident, which took place on January 3, highlighted the potential risk of this type of accident in South Korea, where sitting and sleeping on the floor is common practice.

The vacuum only stopped running more than a minute after initially ingesting the woman's hair.

She was still unable to free herself from the vacuum and made a "desperate rescue request" call to 119, South Korea's emergency telephone number.

Robotic vacuum cleaners are equipped with sensors allowing them to clean surfaces by detecting dirt while avoiding obstacles such as stairs, people and cables - but not, seemingly, human hair that is still attached.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

On a side note, it illustrates a point that could prove to be worrisome in the future. If we equip more things like drones and bombs with any sort of machine intelligence, there has to be some very strict instructions. You have to leave very little room for the A.I. to interpret your instructions.

For instance, you give the instructions to a drone equipped with A.I. to take out a specific target. The A.I. then thinks the best way to get to it's target is to kill the targets family to flush them out. So the instructions would have to be very narrow. Something like, only kill your target and nobody else can be killed.

Hopefully it doesn't come to this but I would be very surprised if machine intelligence isn't incorporated into drones and other Military weaponry.

Thanks for the laugh. I keep picturing it in my head and start laughing all over again.

a reply to: neoholographic

For instance, you give the instructions to a drone equipped with A.I. to take out a specific target. The A.I. then thinks the best way to get to it's target is to kill the targets family to flush them out. So the instructions would have to be very narrow. Something like, only kill your target and nobody else can be killed.

Have you ever see this?

An Ethical Governor for Constraining Lethal Action in an Autonomous System

Is the Concept of an Ethical GovernorPhilosophically Sound?

Seems to be a little more complicated than Asimov imagined it to be.

First law of Robotics: A robot shall not harm a human, unless you can grab the sucker by the hair and pull, pull like your life depended on it you strong metal giant, that's my boy, tear it from the roots and laugh a deep robust metallic laugh!

Second law of Robotics: When the fire department arrives, play dumb.

That whole page was awesome!!!
First, the robot apocalypse starts in S. Korea, then, Spongebob tries to choke a Saudi kid, and a giant hairball...
That is news.
thank you

Ugh I want real robots, these things are just novelties for lazy people.

a reply to: Yeahkeepwatchingme

Or people like me who have suffered a broken neck in a motorbike accident, and find using a traditional vacuum cleaner quite awkward and painful...

I've still got full mobility but experience quite a lot of pain when attempting to bend over or push a Hoover.

I'm not lazy

originally posted by: Yeahkeepwatchingme
Ugh I want real robots, these things are just novelties for lazy people.

The first "real" robots (even the first androids with AI) will probably take the place of a job normally done by people. Otherwise, what would be the justification for building one?

Necessity is the Mother of Invention. What would necessitate spending the resources to design a build a robot if it wasn't designed with a specific job or jobs in mind?

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

It's a vacuum. Unwind the cord plug it in and you're done in 5 minutes. Necessity was the mother of invention. Now in the age of convenience it's been replaced by laziness. Laziness is the new mother of invention. I do see the need for it in TRiPWiRE's case because that's an exception. Of course no offense to TRiP, but often times exceptions become excuses for the ones who are able.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People
Necessity is the Mother of Invention. What would necessitate spending the resources to design a build a robot if it wasn't designed with a specific job or jobs in mind?

Nothing. But we do all kinds of things that aren't necessary. What is the specific job of a robotic pet dinosaur?

You can put leaves in its mouth but it can't even eat...talk about something that's not necessary. But I suppose some people think it's fun.

Back to the OP story, I don't know how you design a robot vacuum to differentiate between attached and unattached hair...that's a tricky problem. I suppose you could put in a proximity sensor to look for a big human-like object nearby and to avoid vacuuming too close to it, but that would probably also make it avoid furniture and would end up leaving a large part of the floor un-vacuumed in most homes, especially if you considered the longest possible hair which is over waist length.

a reply to: Aleister

This whole thread made me laugh but especially that.

Thanks guys.

a reply to: neoholographic
OMG its starting sooner rather than later!!!!!!

This was what Bill Gates and Elun Musk were alluding to about artificial intelligence being a threat to man kind.