Creepy Robot on the ISS Tells the Astronauts 'Don't Be So Mean.' This Will Not End Well.

Source – “Be nice, please,” a free-floating robotic face tells ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst in a video released by the European Space Agency on Friday.

CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) is an Alexa-like robot stuffed with IBM Watson artificial intelligence. It arrived on the International Space Station earlier this year.

The robot is meant to assist the human crew members with tasks, provide some entertainment and boost morale. The ESA video shows Gerst’s first interactions with the machine, and some of them are a little strange. …

CIMON starts to question the intentions of his human companions. “Don’t you like it here with me?” it asks Gerst as NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor watches from nearby. “Don’t be so mean, please,” CIMON says, earning an astonished look from Auñón-Chancellor.

Great going, European Space Agency. Smart thinking, putting a couple of astronauts inside a vacuum-sealed orbiting Pringles can, then trapping them inside there with what is not only a creepy robot volleyball with the face of Otto Pilot from Airplane:

But you just had to program feelings into that scary, floating Jedi Training Droid too. That video is long and dull so here it is cued up to the exact point CIMON goes all emotionally needed ex-girlfriend on these two poor souls. Give it 30 seconds or so:

Right. Because what’s the worst that can happen from putting an overly sensitive, Artificially Intelligent snowflake up into space and giving it unlimited access to all the data in the history of the world? Sure, first CIMON will start out seeming all helpful. Then he’ll start questioning the mission. Feeling left out when they try to have private conversations without him. Next, it’s all “You need to go outside the ship to fix the antennae.” And when they do, it’s this:

Sorry, but I’ve seen this movie before. Though I didn’t understand the ending. At all. But I know this is the part where the robot goes nuts and it turns out very, very bad or everybody involved. If those two space jockeys know what’s good for them they’ll put that little plastic monster into the airlock and shoot him into the sun. I don’t know how much warning the ESA needs.