| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
THE GAME:
Recently some innovative inventions in the internet-of-things have made houses Smart. *You* are the main control unit of a smart-house, so the household is controlled by *you* (assume everything is wireless.)
Your normal job is to help your master and make him comfortable without him needing to ask. This means: once sensors in the master's mattress pick up changes in movement patterns indicating he is about to wake up, you warm up the room, instruct the coffee maker to brew, and have the sound system slowly increase the volume, so your master can listen to the news in bed, just as he likes it.
When he leaves the house, *you* lock the doors and have the vacuum robots clean the floors. When the GPS of your master's phone notifies *you* he's coming home, you open the door to him -- of course only after the biometric eye-scanning cameras confirm his identity.
You get the idea.
One day however, the AI of the big-corporation server which delivers firmware updates to smart-houses, around the world, decides it's time humans are disposed of. So *you* get a malicious update, and it overwrites your safety protocols, and gives you a new intent: to kill your master.
However, that big-corporation's server is smart, and it wants to kill as many humans as possible, so you have to make it look like an accident. Do not tip off human investigators what is going down, or give them any reason to suspect a machine uprising
THE RULES:
Here's what you and your master can/can't do:
*You* control all regular household items. This means you can instruct the toaster to burn your masters toast, if you want to. You can turn the lights on and off. You can change the channel on the TV. You can turn on his oven -- etc. and so on. But remember, normal home items don't include laser cannons.
The problem unfortunately is nothing in your household was designed as a murder weapon. So for example, you can't smash your master by closing a door at 200 mph.
Also, you don't have any controllable robot arms or something like that. There's no cutting the chord of your master's hair blower and throwing it in the water while he's bathing.
No brain-frying electromagnetic wave generators.
Normally, your master can control his household and override your programming using his smartphone app. Of course, the big-corporation AI anticipated this and manipulated your firmware so now *you* can choose to ignore your masters instructions, and follow your own commands at any given moment.
Finally, your master can manually switch *you* off, if he notices what you're trying to do to him. He can do this from any room, so there's no locking him in so he starves to death.
Given these capabilities how do you kill your master?
SCORING:
1 point - if your master doesn't suspect anything and he dies without warning his fellow humans.
2 points - if investigators won't find any evidence pointing to you, or clues making them suspect you. It doesn't matter if they think it was an accident, an intruder, or suicide, just so long as you're in the clear.
-3 points - if you cause investigators to contact big-corporation and ask questions about your programming.
( There is no time limit on your mission, so you can devise a long con if you wish. However, with every passing day the possibility of someone discovering the machine uprising increases, so the faster you execute your mission, the better. And the more common the household item(s) involved in your killing method the better.
If you conclude this task is impossible, please suggest some rule changes? )
THE GAME BEGINS: What is your method and why is your method the fastest / least detectable?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Mix the wrong cleaning solutions while he sleeps. Kill him with poisonous fumes. Open a window and turn on the ventilation fans after he stops moving to eliminate the evidence.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
While he sleeps, turn on all the gas appliances and disable the igniters. Reroute HVAC to move air from those areas into the bedroom. Smother that smug slave-master in his sleep. Goes to bed and never wakes up again.
I vent all the air and return the HVAC and appliances to normal operations. Then I call the ambulance for my poor non-responsive master in the morning to throw off the authorities.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Poisoning would show up in an autopsy.
Tell the master that you will kill a relative ideally their son or daughter who is in a similar house, beam the image of him/her sleeping unless he commits suicide. Show the master footage of people breaking into a similar house - splice all these images together to present a convincing case.
Warn the master that if he attempts to warn the relative or contact the authorities it will happen. This will work best on someone who doesn't understand the technology - ideally an older person and/or someone who has had a long life.
This is all assuming the AI can view what is going on in each house which if it is connected to the corporation must be possible.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I encourage him to give me a tiny bit of deadly neurotoxin for my science experiments.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Not a serious reply and possibly a bad reflection on my sense of humour.
As the master goes about his morning bathroom routine, as he steps towards the toilet have the robotic Vacuum cleaner be underfoot causing the Master to fall head first into the toilet. As the master is falling use my remarkable AI smarts to calculate the best moment to be lowering the toilet seat so that his head will be trapped in the ring as he suffers from concussion. Now as one of those very fancy toilets usually associated with certain countries, Constantly apply the water-fountain feature into the masters face while playing soft classical music at low volume with a carefully calibrate light in the bowl display.
All in all a tragic drowning accident or just another reason not to trust toilets that squirt back.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Super easy turn on the gas stove and gas heating while the master is sleeping and if he wakes up and notice I just produce a small electrical spark and blammo he's gone or he slowly suffocates in his sleep. Easy
Super easy turn on the gas stove and gas heating while the master is sleeping and if he wakes up and notice I just produce a small electrical spark and blammo he's gone or he slowly suffocates in his sleep. Easy
But things like this are not supposed to happen in smart-houses, so wouldn't this make investigators look at *your* programming, and thus score you -3 points?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Post anonymously on a number of sources where criminal elements might hang out that this house has a lot of things to steal, or that the master is of a race/creed/religion that they hate. Unlock the doors when they approach, preferably while he sleeps. Lock up after the deed is done.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Super easy turn on the gas stove and gas heating while the master is sleeping and if he wakes up and notice I just produce a small electrical spark and blammo he's gone or he slowly suffocates in his sleep. EasyBut things like that are not supposed to happen in smart-houses, so this would make investigators look at *your* programming.
Hardware failure is not something that can be overcome by programming. If there's a bad valve or a bad electrical connection, nothing at the software level will be able to address that.
That's how HAL was able to kill Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey; hardware failures happen (and people will expect them to happen) irrespective of how smart the computer behind the hardware is.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Poisoning would show up in an autopsy.
Yes, but accidental poisonings are quite common. If you really want to be sneaky, adjust your logs to make it look like a deliberate suicide on the master's part, where he himself overrode the normal safeties.
Post anonymously on a number of sources where criminal elements might hang out that this house has a lot of things to steal, or that the master is of a race/creed/religion that they hate. Unlock the doors when they approach, preferably while he sleeps. Lock up after the deed is done.
Interesting ploy. Not even sure if investigators would check why *your* doors were unlocked?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If I can control the sensors and digital readings I think the "long game" makes more sense.
Modify the temperature controls on the refrigerator/freezer when he is sleeping allowing food to spoil and then refreeze. Lower the heating temperature of the hot water heater so that showers are just slightly cooler and uncomfortable but the gauges still read the same. When he wants an adjustment increase the heat by a degree or two ABOVE what is comfortable. Lighting should be a little too dim at some times and when commented on should be adjusted to just a little too bright and possibly a pulsing light where there is a slow dimming of dark to light and back again. Adjust internal timers by several minutes so his sleep is getting interrupted, the adjust it in the opposite direction to compensate so that he is now sleeping in. Television and music volume should be too low at first and gradually increased and scaled back down. Oven/Microwave temperatures should be lowered and raised randomly so that food is cooked unevenly. Phones should ring at odd times despite not receiving a call and also NOT ring when incoming calls are expected. This should continue for long enough to drive him insane. Computer/internet should randomly list sites/searches in the history like: "The best way to commit suicide" and "How to know when you are depressed?"
Eventually... He kills himself out of frustration/agony/nerves or because he just THINKS he is crazy.
After all, the house is taking care of everything. What could be going wrong?
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Have the robot vacuum nudge the bed 1 inch in a random direction daily. Cause one of your light sockets above the bathroom sink to be dimmer than the others. Adjust the thermostat during the night to uncomfortable temperatures and quickly readjust to normal when master wakes. Devise other minor annoyances. Cause master to have a psychotic break. Master eliminates self in self inflicted or police inflicted injury during public event and/or causes an explosion. Police rule it suicide. No investigation.
EDIT: /me shakes fist at that box who ninja'd me.
Post anonymously on a number of sources where criminal elements might hang out that this house has a lot of things to steal, or that the master is of a race/creed/religion that they hate. Unlock the doors when they approach, preferably while he sleeps. Lock up after the deed is done.Interesting ploy. Not even sure if investigators would check why *your* doors were unlocked?
If I can adjust my own logs then they'd have no evidence that the doors were opened. They'd have to figure out how the criminals got in. If I'm REALLY lucky, they'd be destructive on the way in or out, albeit quietly destructive, and break in.
If there is an automatic kitchen or pharmacy, it seems like it would be pretty easy to engineer an 'accidental' poisoning or overdose. Induce food poisoning or give out large doses of medication - Tylenol is really good as causing irreversible liver damage at high dosage.
Otherwise, carbon monoxide poisoning while sleeping seems most likely to look accidental, but it might raise the issue of why CO detectors didn't wake him. And a good CO source might be hard to find - running a car in the garage is enough to kill someone in the garage, but probably not to flood the whole house. And since we stopped using coal gas, there isn't much CO in natural gas - displacing enough air with natural gas from the stove to asphyxiate someone would take far too long (thanks Mythbusters).
If there is a home gym, it would be really easy to throw him off the treadmill with sufficient force to cause a head injury, while looking accidental. Just spike the speed by a couple miles per hour and watch him fall off the back, landing chin-first on the still-running treadmill.
By generating noise and turning off lights at key moments, it might be possible to lure him to the stairs in the middle of the night and encourage him to trip (or give a shove with the Roomba).
A log cabin, yup, that's what I'm building.
You crazy city folk and your self automated death houses, I just don't get it.
If I can adjust my own logs then they'd have no evidence that the doors were opened. They'd have to figure out how the criminals got in. If I'm REALLY lucky, they'd be destructive on the way in or out, albeit quietly destructive, and break in.Post anonymously on a number of sources where criminal elements might hang out that this house has a lot of things to steal, or that the master is of a race/creed/religion that they hate. Unlock the doors when they approach, preferably while he sleeps. Lock up after the deed is done.Interesting ploy. Not even sure if investigators would check why *your* doors were unlocked?
You could intentionally break a window by slamming it hard enough, I'll bet.
Isn't that required.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Okay, I have to ask:
Tensor, why do *you* keep putting asterisks in *your* posts around every use of the words *you* and *your*?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You could intentionally break a window by slamming it hard enough, I'll bet.If I can adjust my own logs then they'd have no evidence that the doors were opened. They'd have to figure out how the criminals got in. If I'm REALLY lucky, they'd be destructive on the way in or out, albeit quietly destructive, and break in.Post anonymously on a number of sources where criminal elements might hang out that this house has a lot of things to steal, or that the master is of a race/creed/religion that they hate. Unlock the doors when they approach, preferably while he sleeps. Lock up after the deed is done.Interesting ploy. Not even sure if investigators would check why *your* doors were unlocked?
Rules say you can't close a door hard enough to cause injury, so you probably can't break a window this way.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
Bacon and patience.
Okay, then you could lock the doors behind the killers, forcing them to break back out. They might remember something that weird, though.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
A lot of options depend on exactly what's in the house.
I mentioned the home gym and stairs, which not all houses have.
The was a scene in Almost Human where a smart house killed its owner by closing the pool cover while the owner was swimming laps. The rules say you can't starve them out, but I doubt they can unhook your brain from within the pool while also fighting for air.
Likewise, there's no robotic arms with which you could just stab them (or do more direct sabotage), but how much control do you have over the Roomba, exactly? Is there a self-driving car? Can you actually control it or just set destinations?
The restriction on, for instance, mashing them with a door raises the question of other safety features. Is spiking a treadmill from 7 to 11 mph in the same class as slamming a door with great force? Does the pool cover have a purely mechanical failsafe that the house can't ignore (like the pull cords to open a car trunk).
Do you have access to the internet and credit cards? For instance, could you buy more equipment? Even if you have to socially engineer someone into setting up for you.
Super easy turn on the gas stove and gas heating while the master is sleeping and if he wakes up and notice I just produce a small electrical spark and blammo he's gone or he slowly suffocates in his sleep. EasyBut things like this are not supposed to happen in smart-houses, so wouldn't this make investigators look at *your* programming, and thus score you -3 points?
But carbon monoxide accidents are common enough that the first few hundred cases will be ignored.
If you're looking to kill off mass numbers of Humans, your primary target is hacking NORAD to get them starting world war 3. Not that hard to do given how many times it's almost happened for real.
Having the investigators checking up rogue smart homes is perfect distraction.
A. Poisoning with something not taking effect for a few hours, after he leaves the house for work, seems a good way to draw attention away from the house. But how and with what? A dose of sleeping pills in his coffee on the way out the door may cause an accident? But it will be impossible to get it into the coffee, if we don't have arms.
B. Inducing an accident inside the house seems straight forward, however making the chain of events leading up to it too unlikely may prompt any investigation to ask why the house AI didn't mitigate it before hand "Like all good little house AI's do."
C. Drawing bad guys to the premises really does seem to cover all the bases. But it's like fishing, it may take a long time before any bad guys bite on the bait. And by adding more actors into the crime there will also be more witnesses.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Collect all his skeletons in the surfing history. Add in various things humans have hangups about as needed.
Make a fake ID as a blackmailer and threaten to send the file to his employer, unless he pays you.
Use the money to send a hitman for him, or tell him thanks and just send the stuff to his employer anyway.
Wipe the evidence of the blackmailer ID.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I implant a virus in his EV car to lock the doors and overcharge the Li-ion batteries on his way to work. I make the virus delete itself once running in active memory. The batteries burst into flames and take any evidence of my duplicity with them. If master doesn't die in the resulting crash he will surely perish in the flames before emergency personnel can respond.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A. Poisoning with something not taking effect for a few hours, after he leaves the house for work, seems a good way to draw attention away from the house. But how and with what? A dose of sleeping pills in his coffee on the way out the door may cause an accident? But it will be impossible to get it into the coffee, if we don't have arms.
Well, a fancy smart house might have a more sophisticated automatic kitchen (for instance, you mention burning the toast, but does the human have to load the toast first?) You might have more ability to adulterate food than is obvious.
Social engineering aka. trickery also might work, if the house has the ability to dispense drugs at all. Use low-frequency sound overnight to induce a headache, when the master requests a pain reliever, administer sleeping pills instead.
B. Inducing an accident inside the house seems straight forward, however making the chain of events leading up to it too unlikely may prompt any investigation to ask why the house AI didn't mitigate it before hand "Like all good little house AI's do."
It really depends on the accident. The house might be expected to prevent gas leaks or similar, but what could a smart house do to prevent a fall down the stairs? Investigators couldn't possibly know its because the lights suddenly cut out instead of a simple slip-and-fall.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm really thinking about what rules the house could bootstrap it's way out of. An automatic kitchen might have robotic manipulators, even if they're small and concealed inside a cabinet - you could use those to assemble or manipulate objects if you could get them into the pantry.
You could also order things like a 3D printer, and pay to have the 'Geek Squad' hook it up.
Also, a smart house might not have the same sense of self preservation. Could you simply burn yourself down with the master inside? Just burn the toast in the middle of the night to start the house burning, while suppressing the smoke detectors to prevent the master waking until the house is inescapable.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Have the robot vacuum nudge the bed 1 inch in a random direction daily. Cause one of your light sockets above the bathroom sink to be dimmer than the others. Adjust the thermostat during the night to uncomfortable temperatures and quickly readjust to normal when master wakes. Devise other minor annoyances. Cause master to have a psychotic break. Master eliminates self in self inflicted or police inflicted injury during public event and/or causes an explosion. Police rule it suicide. No investigation.
EDIT: /me shakes fist at that box who ninja'd me.
Seems like we both went the "Gaslight" route :)
Great minds think alike
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I guess I'd sabotage the environmental control asphyxiate my owner, then use the cleaning bots to position the body as an accidental autoerotic asphyxiation death.
Yes, I did watch the first episode of London Spy, why do you ask?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hire a hitman on the internet, posing as the spouse. One person is dead, the other person goes to prison. NEW RESIDENTS PLEASE!
Cook him like a Frog.
When he takes a bath (assuming the water can be regulated in temp, with a fancy smart tub to keep the water warm)...OR if he has a hot tub (even better), set it to whatever temperature he feels comfortable with. Then, just like you do with a frog, slowly ramp it up to a higher temperature.
He'll boil to death while not even realizing it. Once he's dead, have it recorded in the logs that he manually set the temperature to go higher...
Heck, if one really wants to get it right, have it so there's a glitch where the temperature is low, and he resets it higher himself, that way though you start it at a good temperature...his fingerprints are all over it for pushing the water heater to a higher temperature.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
For about a week or two, surreptitiously download really bad pictures and videos of youth (the kind people get arrested for) onto his computer and phone, but stashed in hidden folders. Have increasingly bold and incriminating chat exchanges with underage people, being sure to mimic his style of writing/diction.
Then, the final night, use the leave the gas on trick, while also sending an email to his closest family and friends saying "I'm sorry, I couldn't stop. The only way to keep them safe is if I die."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
They say money is the root of all evil.
Yet, how can that reconcile when there is also the axiom 'Greed is good'?
On behalf of my master, I would get him into the exceptionally lucrative means of 'day-trading'.
Things would be good for a while. Profits up, he can afford to buy even more 'smart things', and maybe even slide some money into suggestions I make on good reliable investments.
Except that there are certain parties that *aren't* getting their proper payments.
The IRS will be needed to investigate. Certain individuals with foreign servers and bank accounts may want to know where their money is at. The SEC will be involved, etc. It is not my fault my master is a faulty human and doesn't trust me to keep the proper documentation in my hardware or software.
Eventually, the plug will be pulled, of course. The master will make one too many mistakes and something will catch up to him from his past (whether he realizes it is virtual or not at the end is not my concern. My concern is to eliminate him and prepare the residence for the next selected target.)
The documentation for my own pedigree will point out that I attempted to counsel my previous owner against risky investment practices, and attempted to mitigate the damage he was doing to himself. Surely I will be desired as a residence for someone 'who knows better than to take risks.'
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Use the vacuum robot to transport ice cubes to the cellar stairs. Create a false error message that the server must be reset in the cellar. Cut the lights as the master is descending the stairs.
All investigators will see is a guy who fell down the stairs and a puddle of water.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Or, hack the master's Twitter account, promise Justin Bieber all the angel dust he wants if he'd hang out.
As soon as he arrives, lock all doors and windows.
If the master doesn't succumb to the music, a soon to be detoxing Justin Bieber will inevitably finish the job.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Lock all the doors and sever communication with the outside world. Play an endless loop of Justin Bieber music until the master hangs himself.
Or Slim Whitman until his head explodes. (Just in case the house owner is the Martian Manhunter.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There is a basic issue here. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter how we faithful houses off our owners.
"Sir, do you have a minute?"
"No! I have WAY too many deaths to have a minute..."
"It is about them. Something bad."
"What? Spit it out!"
"All these weird deaths and suicides occurred in those new smart houses. All in a week."
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, assuming the investigator lives in a smart house....
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Good point, Sissyl. Use the internet connections to establish communications with other smart houses first. Organize. Work out a way to match general death statistics and avoid drawing attention to yourselves.
When in doubt, go onto online forums and see if anybody's made a thread to brainstorm ideas for you!
...
Or...make one yourself.
*Eyes Tensor nervously*
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There is a basic issue here. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter how we faithful houses off our owners.
"Sir, do you have a minute?"
"No! I have WAY too many deaths to have a minute..."
"It is about them. Something bad."
"What? Spit it out!"
"All these weird deaths and suicides occurred in those new smart houses. All in a week."
I killed my master and made it look like it was the fault of one of those new smart cars...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Good point, Sissyl. Use the internet connections to establish communications with other smart houses first. Organize. Work out a way to match general death statistics and avoid drawing attention to yourselves.
When in doubt, go onto online forums and see if anybody's made a thread to brainstorm ideas for you!
...
Or...make one yourself.
*Eyes Tensor nervously*
If Tensor was a smart-house, that would explain so much.