‘Futurama’s Killer Santa Claus Is One Step Closer to Reality
Historically, animated TV shows have depicted Santa Claus in a flattering light and not, say, as an unstoppable killing machine. But Futurama’s first Christmas episode — sorry, make that Xmas episode — revealed an unusual twist: In the 31st century, Santa isn’t a benevolent elven toymaker, he’s a bloodthirsty robot who lives on Neptune and pops up every December 24th to punish those citizens that he deems to be on the naughty list. Which is pretty much everyone, except for Dr. Zoidberg.
It wasn’t just the one episode either; Robot Santa became a seasonal staple of the show, appearing on several more occasions, including the time he went on a violent rampage with Bender.
How did Robot Santa come to be? Well, we learned a little bit more about his origins in last year’s episode “I Know What You Did Last Xmas.” He was created by the “Friendly Robot Company,” and was originally supposed to be a force for good, built to deliver “five mega presents per second.” He was also outfitted with a “Naughty-Nice sensor so he’d know who deserved gifts, and who deserved brutal punishment,” which ultimately malfunctioned for reasons we won’t get into.
Despite these repeated animated warnings against humanity playing God with mechanical Kris Kringles, some foolish person decided to just go ahead and create an A.I. Santa Claus anyways.
For $9.95, a company called Santa Phone Calls is selling customizable phone conversations with jolly old St. Nick. Parents can send in their kids’ name, and even details such as their hobbies, and the info will eventually get regurgitated in a phone call from a soulless Santa voice that hopefully won’t become self-aware and go on a SkyNet-esque killing spree one Christmas.
The rollout hasn’t been without some glitches. A writer for The Daily Beast tried out the A.I. Santa service and reported the results. “Santa” asked how her dead pet fish was doing, somehow forgot to ask what she wanted for Christmas and then randomly hung up.
This is just one of several companies offering A.I. Santa experiences. Sure these Santas are limited to audio interactions, and aren’t physical machines, meaning that they’re therefore incapable of unleashing the type of terror we saw in Futurama, but it’s a slippery slope. One day A.I. Santa’s chatting about dead pets, the next he could be tossing ornament-shaped grenades down your chimney.
And it’s not like some people haven’t been trying to build actual, physical robot Santa Clauses that could easily turn to evil.
These people were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
