If robots end up becoming sentient and are not biological they won’t have evolved like we have being vulnerable to bacteria, diseases and poisons/toxins and because of it our sense of smell detects bad odors, we wash our hands, take showers and have a strong aversion to things that disgust us.
Robots may just happily pick up shit, dive in dumpsters and roll around in sewage. And why wash your hands or take a shower when water could hurt you? Who even knows if they would perceive smell the same way we do.
Clean machinery last longer.
Bingo. I think they’ll just smell like warm oily metal, but otherwise will clean themselves.
Cars are machines, they get wet and have protections around the parts that shouldn’t get wet. Why would robots be less complex?
So they’d smell like a freshly oiled gun? Not sexy, but I could deal with that.
“your customer satisfaction has been noted.” Bang!
Perhaps, or a freshly cleaned and lubed engine at normal operating temperature.
Hell, they might not smell like anything at all. There’s a company that is making artificial muscles for robots that only involve water, pressure, and tubing. I think the rest of the bot is plastic.
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/humanoid-torso-clone-water-powered
They will have their own wash cycles/protocols because everyone knows that filth slows things down, especially joints and moving parts. Indoor ones will be programmed to stay sanitary for our sake, so they may even have UV-based self-cleaning capabilities.
They can’t perceive any sense the way organic brains do, but they can still pick up on chemical composition; I recommend that you get an air filter with a reactive/smart detection system. We already have carbon monoxide, radon, etc. detectors, after all. They’ll be really sophisticated! And they’ll cost accordingly…
They could have concepts of self maintenance, which include cleaning, degreasing and re-lubrication during repair. Would that be considered clean by non-biological standards?
This feels like a plot to a movie
In a maybe similar vein, car exhaust is stinky, and industrial colors (lacquer) is toxic to inhale.
If robots start doing disgusting things their companies will probably just fix it. Not doing so will worsen their image I think.
Maybe not—current AI seems more focused on mimicking and distilling human behavior than on reasoning out optimal behavior on its own.
You just mean they would have different standards. Dogs will happily eat shit and we happily chew mint which supposedly will keep entire species away from an area. If they were sentient robots would obviously be attracted and deterred by different things than we would.
