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Greetings, earthlings: Do not fear robots or the Honda video about them

I’ve joked about this before but if a robot can ever make delicious, hot, chili-laden mapo tofu – the way the cook at Old Sichuan in Kent, Wash. can dish it up – I’ll truly be impressed.

And of course, a bit perplexed.

But hey, who can complain when a dish of garlicky, spicy tofu sits before you on a blustery, stormy day with winds whipping in the sky and temperatures dropping?

Whether it’s done by ASIMO, the Honda robot, or humans, the successful making of mouthwatering mapo tofu reminds me of that saying by Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese paramount leader:

It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white,” he was fond of saying, “as long as it catches mice.

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“Get me my robot on Line 2. I need to tell it to add more chili peppers to my mapo tofu.”

Photo credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid (laughingsquid.com)

I’m actually late to note The New York Times story last week about robots and concern by scientists that they might become smarter than humans.

In one paragraph, reporter John Markoff explained that scientists, who met in California earlier this year, have

concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.

Markoff pointed to a June article in which he wrote about how a robot in Silicon Valley succeeded in opening 10 doors, going through them and connecting with 10 wall sockets.

Interesting, right?

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