THE OPERATOR: 411: Smells Like Bacon

You may know that we here at The Operator love love love bacon, but you may not know that we fear the human race will one day be destroyed when the robot army inevitably rises up to take over, which is why the following story was so disturbing. Japanese researchers at NEC System technologies and Mie University developed what they refer to as an "electromechanical sommelier." According to Wired:

"[The robot is ]capable of identifying wines, cheeses, meats and hors d'oeuvres. Upon being given a sample, he will speak up in a childlike voice and identify what he has just been fed. The idea is that wineries can tell if a wine is authentic without even opening the bottle, amongst other more obscure uses...like 'tell me what this strange grayish lump at the back of my freezer is/was.'"

Sounds good, right? Then they had to go and tempt the little mechanical foodie.

"But when some smart aleck reporter placed his hand in the robot's omnivorous clanking jaw, he was identified as bacon. A cameraman then tried and was identified as prosciutto."

Say goodbye human race, we're totally fucked. Knowing how tasty bacon is, we don't blame the robot hordes if they start devouring us immediately.

So, in the interest of preparedness, we googled "bacon, robots" and came across BaconRobots, whose company motto is "Because the only thing better than bacon is a hot animatronic lady to cook it for you." According to their history:

BaconRobots began when a lawnmower's programming malfunctioned on a cold winter day in 2038. The founders wanted a gelatinous mass that vaguely looked like what the old world referred to as "bacon".

"If only there were machines that somewhat resembled human females that would come and cook it for us," they mused. "Bacon Robots." And that is where the magic began.
Since then, the company has steadily grown from its humble beginnings to its current market dominance.

Our love of crispy pork strips and our fear of marauding robot hordes had us crippled at seeing this site. We feel like we're in "Terminator 2," when Schwarzenegger comes back to get John Connor. How do we know which future will come to pass? Will we be eaten by robots that think human flesh tastes like bacon? Or will servile robots come to our homes and cook delicious bacon for us? This, dear reader(s), is our crippling existential crisis for the day.

Robot Identifies Human Flesh As Bacon [Wired via the Rachel Maddow Show]