Now do you think I am kidding?

There is a change going on... a subtle but very real change. And if you think I am kidding...

Makes you stop and wonder though because the fix is in... and look who's fixing it. Yep, definitely, robots are slowly and surely taking over our world. They are infiltrating at every level in ways the average, intelligent human being would never suspect. Now aren't we sorry that we pushed so hard to create artificial intelligence (AI)?

Just look at some of the evidence: We regular humans love comedy, right? Well Marilyn Monrobot (really) is slaying them on the comedy circuit. "'She' is a 22 1/2 inch robot that tells jokes: "A doctor says to his patient, 'I have bad news and worse news. The bad news,'" says Monrobot, "'is that you only have 24 hour to live.'

'That's terrible,' says the patient. 'How can the news possibly be any worse?'

'I've been trying to reach you since yesterday.'"

The audience roars... of course, because they are probably all robots. I tell you, they are infiltrating everywhere.

Engineer Heather Knight built Marilyn, who also hosts the Robot Film Festival (see, Robert Redford may have already lost... unless he is a ro... No! He/it can't be, otherwise would his face be so wrinkled?

Says Knight, "My job is to give robots the charisma that makes us want to bond with them." What is unsaid is that after bonding, maybe replacing? Give these machines an inch and they will take a mile.

There! Need more proof? There is a new movie out this fall: Robot & Frank, staring Frank Langella as the human jewel thief who uses a robot as an accomplice... or is it the other way around?

Then there is Kate Darling, a (supposed) human who is an Intellectual Property Research Specialist at the MIT Media Lab. She presented her paper, "Extending Legal Rights to Social Robots" at the University of Miami's We Robot Conference. In it, she reasons why we might consider granting limited legal protections to social robots designed to interact with and elicit emotional responses from human beings, much like the protections granted to animals. Oh yeah? This when even many actual human beings in the world don't have such rights. See what I mean?

You can buy a book for $26: How to build an Android, by Henry Holt and actually make a robotic you... so when you die, who would know? Yes, it has been done. Have you ever asked yourself, if Michael Jackson is really dead, how come he is still making all that money? Hmm.

There is another book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that concedes robots probably have dreams.  I guess that would naturally lead to a robotic Sigmund Freud to analyze them. "Hmm, I see. And to any of your dreams have a train going through a tunnel?"

Think robots have no emotions? Where do you think emoticons come from? 

Detroit... and Korea and Japan, etc. are all working on robot controlled cars that drive better than we do. I wonder if those guys wear chauffeur caps and uniforms?  And while we are at it, who do you think builds our cars? And computers? And other robots? This is getting downright scarey.

That's Baxter on the left... for just $22,000, he can be taught to do anything. While first thoughts go to working in factories, Baxter, in affluent households could actually take out the garbage, do the dishes, change the baby, do windows. Who needs men if you have the money. And what are men good for anyway. Oh, don't go there. We have robotic devices that do just fine, thank you.

There was an article in today's NYTimes that supposed many athletes would replace good legs with artificial ones if they made you run faster. With speculation that the marathon record would soon fall to under 2 hours, how about 55 minutes if robots have their way? And it probably would even be a Kenyan robot marathoner to boot.

We have robotic legs that climb stairs better than human legs can do, robot planes that spy and kill, robot bomb defusers, robot vacuum cleaners and robot surgeons who operate under the guise of a human doctor enabler, probably from the planet Zyrcon, if you ask me.

Peter Remine is the founder of the Seattle-based American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots. He says he will know it's time to get serious about rights for robots "when a robot knocks on my door asking for some help."

Ever wonder who is on the other end of those robot phone calls asking for your vote or does it all come down to this... the robot signings that displaced many with eviction notices supposedly coming from lenders?

Have robots not only taken over the top echelon of our society but also, secretly taken over the bottom. That is a perfectly planned operation that could only come from AI (artificial intelligence)... to "squeeze" the human life from the world as we know it. Could a human be so conniving? (Oh, ok... but not all humans.)

Every nation, cause and charity has it banners. So then do robots. Is this the end as we know it... or, the beginning, the beginning, the beginning, the beginning....