STUPID ROBOT ARTICLE OF THE WEEK: ANTI-ROBOT BIAS EDITION

Avid reader and well-known giant Chas sent me the following link:

Killer robot shoots man dead on driveway

AN 81-year-old man has shot himself dead with an elaborate suicide robot built using plans downloaded from the internet.

He spent hours searching the internet for a way to kill himself, downloaded what he needed and then built a complex machine that would remotely fire a gun.

He set the device up in his driveway about 7am yesterday, placed himself in front of it and set it in motion.

The full article, which is barely a dozen sentences long, comes accompanied with a handy bullet point list for the morbid reader on the go:

* Man gets plans for suicide robot on web
* Man builds robot; robot shoots man dead

But wait. How is this at all about robots? It just sounds like a machine built to automatically fire a gun from a distance.

Oh hay, look at the source:

AN 81-year-old Gold Coast man built, and yesterday used, an intricate suicide machine to remotely shoot himself, after downloading the plans from the internet.

So we are now at a point in society where we are willing to call any old machine a robot to sex the story up. Meanwhile we are dragging the good name of robots through the mud. And for what?!?!