Are Consumers Afraid to buy Robots?

Posted 3 Jun 2007 at 21:22 UTC by steve

The Christian Science Monitor posted an article about consumer acceptance of the increasing number of robots available in the marketplace. They predict we will be seeing more simple robots in American households but suggest potential customers suffer from unrealistic expectations and a "Frankenstein complex" that makes them fear robots. It appears that many people expect robots to have human-level intelligence. Meanwhile, Hollywood seems to have done a nice job convincing everyone that intelligent machines are evil, apparently leading many potential customers to believe their Roomba may try kill them if they don't keep an eye on it.