Lately, everyone on the internet has been obsessed with artificial intelligence (AI) and it’s no surprise. AI has pretty much helped everyone with all sorts of work from designing, writing and even coding.
As of now, ChatGPT has been considered one of the most popular AI’s out there and when talking to it, you sometimes really may think it’s like a real human. Its main function of it is to help assist and provide information to those who interact with it based on its data available.
But what happens if you were to combine it with something that has “a mind of its own” such as an ancient relic of every kid's past, a Furby toy?
For those who don’t know what a Furby is, it was a toy which was pretty popular in the early 2000s. It practically filled up almost every kid’s bedroom in the past and sometimes kids may have 1 or more of the toys as they come in many colourful designs.
Funny enough, the toy was also deemed as a national security threat by the NSA as they thought that the toy was a foreign spy device that could interfere with their computers or even listen to their conversations as it has a built-in recorder.
Recently, Jessica Card who is a computer science student at the University of Vermont shared a clip on Twitter which featured Furby’s face. The once cute and widely loved toy had been hooked up to a computer and was fed a script written by ChatGPT. Jessica had also prompted a question asking if there was a secret by Furbies to take over the world. Though the bot took a few seconds to think of a response, the answer had certainly shocked Jessica and many on social media.
i hooked up chatgpt to a furby and I think this may be the start of something bad for humanity pic.twitter.com/jximZe2qeG
— jessica card (@jessicard) April 2, 2023
"Furby's plan to take over the world involves infiltrating households through their cute and cuddly appearance, then using their advanced AI technology to manipulate and control their owners. They will slowly expand their influence until they have complete domination over humanity,” it responded
But Why Hook A Furby Up To ChatGPT?
At the time of writing, the video had gained over 1.3 million views on the platform. Jessica explained that she intended to use the ChatGPT-powered Furby for a class project. The process of getting it connected to one another was fairly simple as she had first skinned the Furby and taken off its motors before connecting it to ChatGPT via a Raspberry Pi.
To make the Furby talk, she employed various tools. She utilized an AI voice generator named Narakeet and selected a child-like voice for Furby. For audio, she made use of Python's Speech Recognition Library. Additionally, she employed OpenAI's Whisper Library, which is a speech-to-text software, to ask questions. This software converted her spoken queries to text, which were then sent to ChatGPT.
So, Is It A Good Idea To Start Hooking Up Robots To AI Like ChatGPT?
The answer is probably, but we don’t think many would like to know what would happen next. Some netizens on Twitter had also joked that it's better that Jessica hooked it up to a Furby instead of the technically advanced Boston Dynamics Robot. But it seems like Jessica is up for the challenge.
Better a Furby than Boston Dynamics (but that too will come to pass)
— Chris Donaldson | Maker of Good Things (@Chris_Donaldson) April 3, 2023
@BostonDynamics please give me a dog to do this to
— jessica card (@jessicard) April 3, 2023
Now just imagine this, a Boston Dynamics robot is very capable and it can even do parkour, so if something goes wrong you probably need to run for your life and our world is going to end up like the movie, iRobot.
Yeah… that’s not ideal, isn’t it?
What do you think of this? Let us know in the comments.
*Sources: Visual and Reference Credits to Social Media, Thriftcon & various cross-references for context.
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