December 16, 2015
So, in honor of the world getting a new Star Wars movie in a few days (and hopefully it’ll be a good one), I wanted to discuss the idea of training our droids to do our bidding.
And to be clear, I’m not talking about this type of droid:
No, as much as that would be cool (and maybe relevant? I don’t know), that is neither the focus of this blog, nor the focus of my wheelhouse. I’m sure there are people out there who can train their phone droids to do what they want, like teaching them to call people and to connect to the Internet and crazy things like that. If that’s what you’re looking for, check YouTube. There’s probably a video about it. No, I wanted to talk about this kind of droid:
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering, “How in the world could I get that thing to do my bidding?” Well, it’s simpler than you might think. It all comes down to psychology. You have to tell your droid what you want. Until you acknowledge the fact that droids can’t read minds, you won’t actually pass this step. You must use the straightforward tenants of psychology to get your droid doing the things you want. But more importantly, it comes down to patience.
Droids are basically machines. Machines can be told what to do. Think of them like parrots: You tell them the same thing over and over and over again, and eventually they automate, freely speaking whatever offensive thing you told them to say, and no one can stop them because they’ve been “programmed” to say that awful thing.
That’s how droids learn, too. Get them into a small room, lower all the lights, throw a blanket over them if you have to. Then lock-on to their eyes. Smile; droids learn faster when you smile. Then slowly and calmly tell them what you want them to do. You may find resistance at first. But keep telling them what you want from them. Eventually they’ll do what you ask just to shut you up.
You train them basically the same way you train your marital partner. Sooner or later, you’ll program that new action into their susceptibly robotic little minds and they’ll do it without you having to ask them in the future.
So, there you go.
Drinking Cafe Latte at 1pm 