ChatGPT hooked up to a Furby is the apocalypse we deserve

The apocalypse will be full of pampering. The researcher Jessica Card ha connected ChatGPT to a Furby, the typical interactive toy of the 90s. A mix of nostalgia for the past and generative artificial intelligence, which could be a commercial success or a robot uprising very different from those described in science fiction stories.

A Furby connected to ChatGPT makes the robot apocalypse sweeter

The time has come. It won’t be Skynet with robots that look like young Arnold Schwarzeneggers armed to the teeth to rebel. But a furby army connected to ChatGPT to conquer our planet. Actually, the biggest risk is that an army of nostalgic Millennials will buy lots of animated soft toys to use as smart speakers. We’ll leave it to you to determine which is worse.

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Programmer Jessica Card in a tweet admits: “I connected ChatGPT to a Furby and I believe this may be the beginning of something malevolent to mankind”.

AI software, Raspberry Pi and technology from the nineties

In a series of subsequent tweets, the researcher explains how she made her work – perhaps the last great human invention before the end of the species. She took an old Furby, she opened it up to show the internal components, which it connected to a raspberry pi. It is a complete computer, but in a less powerful and palm-sized version. A mini computer on which you can install various types of software, including those of OpenAI.

In addition to ChatGPT, Card also installed Whisper, the OpenAI software capable of transcribing speeches made to Furby (text-to-speech). After installing the nostalgic robot’s digital ears, he also installed his software voice with the software Narakeet.

The next step for Card will be to give its own creating the ability to move the eyes and mouth independently (unlike the random movements already introduced in the 90s when it was just a toy).

Furby’s plans to conquer the planet explained by ChatGPT

“Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Furby. What do you want to talk about?”. These are the first words Furby speaks after upgrading with ChatGPT. But by continuing to ask the robot questions, the situation becomes much more disturbing.

In fact, when Card asked Furby what are his plans to subjugate humanity, the robot replied in a calm voice: “Furby’s plan to conquer the world involves the infiltration of houses through their cute and cuddly appearanceand then the use of their advanced AI for manipulate and control their owners”. Then he concludes: “They will slowly increase their influence until they have complete dominion over humanity.”

We know that ChatGPT is based on a probabilistic algorithm (stochastic, to play fake experts). So the bot simply parsed through its own set of information it found online about Furbies – which we assume is two Wikipedia pages and too many conspiracy forums – and then decided which words to put next to each other. It has no malicious intent, but only the task of creating meaningful sentences. That said, we are terrified.

The NSA was already on Furby’s trail, long before ChatGPT

To make the vision of a Furby who seems sentient and intent on dominating the globe even more disturbing, it is enough for us to report a true event. In the 90’s, the NSA, the American national security organization, had banned the Furby from the homes of all its employees.

That’s because the Furbies had gods recorders to hear when someone was addressing them and respond by moving and making sounds. So a group of spy experts feared interactive toys even before anyone had the idea to plug them into an artificial intelligence.

We do not want to create false alarms: there are no real risks to human existence. At most there will be a toy company that will re-propose the Furby to take advantage of this news and increase its turnover. But this news goes to show that if there ever is some kind of apocalypse, it could be completely different from all our sci-fi dystopias. And much more cuddly.