It was scary to read that a robot vacuum cleaner tried to eat a woman’s hair and firemen were called to free her of its clutches.

The Korean woman had bought the gadget to help her in her housework and had gone to sleep on the floor when the vacuum cleaner crept up to her and sucked in the hair thinking it was dust.

Robot vacuum cleaners became popular some 12 years ago ever since an American company invented them and sold millions. Now, a Japanese firm has created one that has sensors to avoid obstacles and not go falling down the stairs and is also programmed to seek out a recharging dock.

The headline of the article detailing the woman’s unfortunate incident was, “It begins”. Scientists have been warning for years that AI, or Artificial Intelligence, will eventually take over our world and we will be left eating hamburgers and becoming obese and eventually have to look for another planet in another galaxy where we can survive with our growing girth.

Reading the report about the woman struggling with the household gadget was traumatic and it gave me the creeps. Feeling a bit peckish after watching a late night movie from my couch, I went into the dark kitchen, opened the fridge door and peeked inside trying to find a slice of the carrot cake my wife had bought from the mall to eat later.

Suddenly, the light inside the fridge went off and the whole contraption rattled. I shut the door and quickly stepped out of the kitchen. In the morning, I found the light had come back on. I pressed the button on the fridge door hinge a couple of times and it worked fine. However, the carrot cake had disappeared.

I believe that in the near future, smart gadgets like your fridge will check the milk carton’s expiry date and place an order to the corner grocery.

The other day I got a message from my service provider that I had only 0.0009 mb of data left on my phone and if I did not recharge it soon, I would be liable for extra charges. I accused my wife and sons of stealing my data but found out they had not.

It dawned on me that maybe my phone was the culprit and was using my data to communicate with other platforms, or whatever. I called up customer service and after a sweet-sounding robotic voice with an accent asked me to press a couple of keys, I suddenly found a human being on the other end. It was very strange to speak to a human voice at first, but after a few minutes I got used to it.

Planning its next move

The man told me to go into settings and disable the 4G on my phone. I have done that but I am certain the phone is planning its next move.

It is very fortunate that we did not upgrade our mobile phone to iPhone 6. If you remember, the new phones would get stuck in the beards or facial hair of the owners and create excruciating problems for them. Still, people are not ready to believe that they will be taken over by robots soon and I hear a hotel in Japan will be manned entirely by cyborgs.

Imagine what would happen if we checked into such a hotel and what would happen if I, because I am cheap, did not tip the cyborg when he brings our luggage to the room.

Now I hear that driverless cars are being tested in Dubai.

There is no place safe for us humans anymore. Our only saviour are batteries that run out of power fast. Maybe I should have a talk with the guy who designed the Android phone batteries.

Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@mahmood_saberi